NOT long ago, this quote, attributed to Joseph Evah, coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG) and popular Niger Delta activist, went viral on the social media:
“Give the 13% derivation money to Julius Burger, G Cappa, RCC, etc Instead of the Governors and charge these companies to turn Niger Delta to Abuja. That was how Babangida gave crude oil to Julius Berger in exchange for massive construction in Abuja…”
Hardball is unaware of any denial by Evah. It therefore assumes it is true, even if you must handle, with utmost caution, information from many social media sources, bar the serious and credible online newspapers, and research websites that can demonstrate the processes leading to the information they give out.
Even then, with the level of distemper in that oil rich region, with its dirt poor masses, these sentiments expressed are probably apocryphal, given the allegations and counter-allegation of sleaze coming out of that region.
Hardball is, for now, not really concerned about the tales of alleged sleaze, even with its dire under-development implications; and its resultant fearsome poverty and crippling penury.
What irks Hardball is what appears a total loss of confidence in the political elite of that area, vis-a-vis the trenchant call for “restructuring”, to prune down the powers — and cash — from Abuja, and domesticate the two in the local elite of the “new” , federating units.
If you blow a clarion for “restructuring” because the Abuja central power elite have failed; but crave to pass resources direct to contractors, simply because you can’t trust the local political elite with their alleged itchy fingers, how far can your “restructuring” campaign go?
Even if the Evah recipe is right, wouldn’t that suggestion, even if it leads to a great surge in physical infrastructure in the short run, not also strengthen the hand of the hated centre, and further retard the ability of the new “federating units” to really take charge, and turn cash, first into wealth and later, development and prosperity?
Indeed, the Evah recipe has set Hardball thinking, which nevertheless conforms to an earlier hunch: the more “restructuring” is mainstreamed, as an idea “whose time has come” (to borrow that popular cliche), the more it appears a mere catchy slogan, which its advocates grimly hope would be some magical open sesame, or what in Classical Greek drama is deus-ex-machina — a–shoe-fits-all magic, come to solve all problems! Nothing like that exists.
The moral in all of this is, of course, that while everyone blames the central authorities (and for good reasons, to be fair), the local political elite, patriotic champions of “restructuring” themselves, boast no restructured ethos!
Indeed, when the “open sesame” to arrest the Niger Delta’s developmental laggardness is bypassing the governors and shoveling cash direct to contractors, that have absolutely no stake beyond their bottomline and corporate name, then something well and truly terrible has dawned!
Nigeria needs a radical re-tinkering of its political infrastructure. It sorely needs to re-federalize to make development bottom-up and organic.
But restructuring itself would end as another hollow slogan if everyone, Abuja and regions or state, don’t first radically restructure their minds.
Leave a Reply