Our Girls are still missing since 15th April 2014 even as younger girls are ensnared an evil abuse of the Nigerian child, creating ‘female’ child soldiers forced into terrifying mass murder by suicide bombings. Child soldiers were the sad, pitied and tortured product of war-torn distant African nations where murderous mutations like the Lord’s Resistance Army unconscionably send the loved children of other people to kill and die. Children are easily manipulated, instructed, memory erased, hidden in crowds, name changed, fed, mourned, buried and easily forgotten as they have no history. So now we have our own 10-year old child soldiers forced by threats of violence by others or brainwashed into blowing themselves up. Boko Haram and ISIS have exposed us to an age of spiralling dangerous depravity. Now we have millions of Internally ‘Disturbed’ Children, unable to go to school or enjoy a normal life among the Internally Displaced People being treated like refugees in their own country. They ‘live’, lifeless, less than half of them in IDP camps, the majority unrecorded, scattered with family across Nigeria. Our Catholic Church with other groups collects funds to help IDPs recover their dignity. IDP camps are not national job-creation centres or photo opportunities for politicians. Importing NGO manpower to run IDP camps is wrong. Vacancies must filled from the IDPs first and then from local communities. Each IDP, like bomb survivors, has personal problems of despair, dignity, esteem, self-sufficiency and responsibility mostly solved by paid jobs or self-employment with donated or loaned business funds. Making a displaced person a paid staff or a teacher in the IDP camp will help repair the psychological and financial needs of a family. The policy of ‘IF IDPs CAN DO IT, LET THEM’ should be IDP Camp recruitment policy. Meanwhile, our myopic political leadership, mired in divisive politics, neglects the ‘Matters of Urgent National Interest’ facing Nigeria, preferring dangerous selfish political manipulations. Meanwhile, dying for Nigeria are more than 100 normal citizens last week and how many armed forces and police personnel? Dying for what? Nothing?
Meanwhile the naira value has lost 45% in eight months. Nigeria makes no single ‘machine’ in science, medicine, industry or business- all attempts killed by 39 years of political and electricity power failure. So the cost of every business has risen while profits plunge. We all suffer from naira devaluation. All except the banks which inexplicably defy logic, making annual multi-billion naira profits but doing nothing useful for 99% of Nigeria’s businesses in Nigeria –a ‘Banking Corruption Cartel’ requiring the Buhari Effect to ‘Challenge Bank Culture’ which ignores the naira. Why must Nigerians borrow at 22-25%? What business pays such profits? Only banks! The banks are infamous for internal collective corruption from illegal roll-over of government funds and from round-tripping forex. Bank of Industry tells Nigerians that it is different, even giving loans for solar factories. Good but not enough. We demand low interest funds for all Nigerians.
Following the ‘Years Of Plenty’ running paradoxically in parallel with the ‘Years Of The Locust’, the economy enters ‘Years of Famine’ with recession and Corporate Nigeria facing austerity and lower earnings. The obvious casualties will be the N4b+ CSR Budget and the beneficiary NGOs and needy. Big companies in the service sector, auditing, accounting, maintenance, catering and entertainment, hotel running give little or no CSR. This must change.
CSR has often wrongly been misused as cheap publicity PR gimmicks by corporates. ‘Change’ in CSR and in the Corporate and banking ‘Bonanza Millionaire Culture’ is urgently needed. Genuine CSR must be separated from corporate advertising and bonanzas. The malignant epidemic of ‘Instant Millionaires’ has created a psychological culture among lazy youth of ‘get-rich-quick-and –for no-work-done’. These corporates therefore have responsibility to reverse this mind-set among Nigeria’s youth of ‘Wealth Without Work’.
CSR ignores the villages, grassroots, the source of corporate earnings. Most CSR is concentrated at ‘Corporate HQ’ and neglect the revenue source – markets, shops, offices, petrol stations, schools, hospitals in villages and towns.
Nigerians demand a ‘CSR Change Policy’- a ‘Corporate CSR Local Impact Policy 2015’- with more CSR spent at local Points of Sale. At Annual General Mettings (AGMs), corporate shareholders should demand dissemination of CSR to every village. The inclusion of ‘CSR Local Outreach Awards’ for Corporate bodies during Annual Media events will encourage new CSR Strategies. Yes, reward distributors but also use distributors as a ‘CSR Channel’. Use your staff as a ‘CSR Channel’ to their home neighbourhoods and villages. Ask staff to suggest CSR projects. Customers make distributors successful. Corporate Nigeria must ‘Change CSR Strategies’, in CSR, let BRANCHES AND DISTRIBUTORS DISTRIBUTE CSR to communities.
Corporates must ‘change’ the ‘Instant Millionaire Policy’ reducing THE SIZE AND INCREASING THE NUMBER OF PRIZES AND WINNERS who must be required to DONATE SOME OF THEIR WINNINGS to their chosen needy cause. There are many orphanages and NGOs in real need of small regular amounts-N10-100,000. If Corporate Nigerian insists on making 2000+ instant millionaires’ annually then put in a ‘’Winners’ CSR Provision’’ to make the winners donate 10-25% to a charity, school or hospital as cash/books/equipment. The magic of N1,000,000 works abroad, where incomes are higher, but Nigeria’s desperate 120m+ population, poor pay and poverty demand a new Corporate Policy ’change’ with more winners. Corporates would be more relevant, sensitive and valuable, touching lives of more economically, and assist 10 times more families by giving 10 prizes of N100,000 instead one N1m prize.