Weep Nigeria, well and long. You have been forced to operate at 10% capacity, a failure but alive. But your future was decimated, miniaturized by our leaders who have led us to loss. Blame nobody else, no war or enemy action. While Nigeria wobbled, our sister and senior independent country, Ghana@57, has done it again. Congratulations for signing a ‘High Speed’ train contract for $2.6b with the African Development Bank.
I asked why Nigeria was not signing high speed railway contracts. I was told Africa is not ‘ripe or ready’ for ‘150-400km high speed’ trains yet. They said that about the cell phone remember? We have the cellphones but no cell phone factory in Africa. But Ethiopia, Kenya and Morocco have active ‘High Speed Railway’ Programmes! Apparently Ghana and the ADB’s Akinwumi Adesina, are following suit. Nigeria ignores its injuries, and loss of trillions of hours of Lagos travel time inflicted upon us in 1983/4 by unitary government’s Buhari’s action cancelling the visionary Lagos State’s local Jakande Metrorail Project. Buhari’s action negatively impacted Nigerians till today. We are stuck in Lagos traffic and Apapa gridlock from persistent government policy myopia. In fact, Nigeria@60 paid a contract cancellation fine of $84m- 184m. The citizens received no apology. Belatedly a second term Governor Fashola rekindled the Lagos railway to partial fruition through the ‘Lagos Light Rail Project’. Stuck in traffic, we stare at the stalled constructed concrete beams hanging over us like a burial tomb. How dare a then serving Lagos State governor, Ambode, repeat painful history and ‘re-cancel’ the light rail perhaps due to differences in contract sums or policy? Instead, gridlock reigns as Lagosians suffer where there should be no suffering -like on the Lagos-Ibadan ‘Expressway’ at the hands of Eighth National Assembly – NASS-8.
‘How dare a then serving Lagos State governor, Ambode, repeat painful history and ‘re-cancel’ the light rail perhaps due to differences in contract sums or policy? Instead, gridlock reigns as Lagosians suffer where there should be no suffering …’
Even with Obasanjo’s opposition to Lagos and Tinubu, why did Fashola not restart the Lagos city railway back in 2007 with Lagos State’s megabucks Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). But that was not the only ‘failures to grasp future’. Obasanjo recruited late Chief CSO Akande to redraw a national rail master plan. From 1999, Obasanjo had the US, Canadians, Chinese, Indians and Germans begging to support him with railways. Little or nothing happened and we suffered on.
Read Also: Hate Speech Bill, a bad law
Nigeria has the disease ‘Developmental Myopia’ plaguing many Nigerian leaders who are technically blind when they attend forward-looking international conferences. They utilise international standards only for self-interest and not spirit and practical people-development. Ride on Ghana. One day, perhaps, Nigeria will be led by ‘Great thinkers and doers’, not those who will execute another ‘Death Sentence’ – willing to kill to ‘win’ state elections. If not, we will remain in this misery in gridlock at roundabouts and on roads formerly called expressways. Even our current 2019 upgrading of railways will need an immediate re-upgrade to the 21st Century. What warped logic says that in 2019 a Lagos Ibadan-Express train has to run just once a day or through Abeokuta instead of a new railway parallel to the existing expressway and run hourly back and forth and side by side on two tracks?
We must identify several components of the current NASS-9 rush to enact ‘strange fruit’ as new bills- particularly as relates to hate speech and NGO Bills in particular and the much advertised ‘DEATH SENTENCE FOR NEARLY ALL’. Professor Soyinka has spoken against the death penalty. Listen to him. Strangely NASS 1- 9 have never recommended the death sentence for any corruption crime even in billions and costing citizens’ lives. In regard to NGOs, first Nigerians know that government has failed to deliver in spite of trillions, mostly stolen, misappropriated and mis-acquired by all arms of government. In addition, our poor showing on all international positive indices and accompanying actions, including abolishing history, that have caused many NGOs to step up with kobo-kobo private and international resources to cover government failures and fill the gaping hole created mostly by theft and corruption. Poverty and social problems from schools still exist worldwide and need solutions. Although ‘political and good governance and human rights NGOs’ will be first targets by the ‘full force of law’, old students associations social care-givers and their supporters will follow. After six months in office, nobody will be free.
The NGO Bill is an all-encompassing draconic Unitarian piece of ‘illegal’ legislation breaching human rights which if passed will cause many to stop involvement as advocates of the needy, back-away from being philanthropists, withdraw volunteer time and reduce money available to be spent often substituting for the failure of governments to provide adequately for the down trodden citizenry. And this as the NASS basks in the stupendous ‘legitimately’ acquired luxuries of office which would probably be considered before God if not the judge as ‘illegally legal’ or illegitimately or immorally acquired when placed on a scale of every other UN government political structures worldwide and Nigeria’s ‘enforced’ corruption-driven poverty.
Another NASS-9 Law – ‘Hate Speech’ Law with a Death Sentence. This must go along with ‘Hate Action’ Analysis. You cannot take a comment on a mass murder calling for the prosecution of perpetrators of a particular group as hate speech without full appreciation of the horror of the ‘Hate Action’. Ignoring hate speech in our history which has laid the mistrust of today will merely create government backed illegitimisation of genuine expressed concerns and internationally accepted legitimate responses to Hate Actions today. Nigeria is plagued with more hate action than hate speech.
Leave a Reply