Our country isn›t going in the right direction, not in the least. Everything appears to be in regression. At the time of writing our Supreme Court was still struggling to make local governments another tier of government. The court said the LGAs should get their statutory allocations directly and ensure they have elected officials in government at that level. The apex court didn›t specify how the local government officials would be elected. Would the local governments become another level of government? And who conducts the election into the local government councils? Would it be the same state governments and governors they desire to sidetrack?
We have seen what the governors can do if they retain power to organize the polls. Wouldn’t this amount to cutting the nose to spite the face? At the same time many of us saw six European countries sending satellites to space, we had our President in the midst of some other Nigerians celebrating the establishment of the Ministry of Livestock Development, not minding that the Ministry of Agriculture is still in place. Hahaha! Professor Wole Soyinka once described this as “cycle of national stupidity.” Gerrymandering. Silly struggle for supremacy ideology.
It is time we begin to talk and take hard measures. Passivity which has grown in leaps and bounds has become a big threat. Mahatma Gandhi who initiated India’s leap to modernity despite very high population and cultural cum religious diversity said: “Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.” Conspiratorial compliance has become a bane. Elie Wiesel, a scholar, was perhaps talking to us in Nigeria when he told citizens, “You all must always take side on how you and your society are governed.”
«Neutrality» he continued, «helps the oppressors and misdirectors, not the victims. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented.” There are truths we must tell ourselves. Given where we are today it has become very pertinent that facts and truths be stated clearly. A powerful clique in political power management from the north has been at the root of most of the challenges bedeviling the country. They keep multiplying but retaining the same ideology. The effect on the country hasn’t been salutary at all. A northerner brought structural adjustment and took us into the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), when our outlook has remained secular. It was the same forces that added Sharia jurisprudence into what was touted to be a secular nation state. Currently, people from the Sahel region in Africa have become inhabitants even in my remote village. Deliberate political engineering to achieve in the near future a predetermined end. We lay out contradictions and turn round to wonder why all indices fall on the negative borderline.
«Our country isn›t developing» would be the deduction reached by anybody whose sense of judgment is in place and who means well for humanity, not just the people found in our space. The world has a population of about seven billion persons currently and out of that figure, Nigeria contains about two hundred million. This is a huge figure by any chosen perimeter.
In world affairs, it is a fearful figure for what can come out both positive and negative. In the event of a mismanagement and things move from instability to conflict and dovetail to war of attrition, Africa will suffer a great deal from the spillover. Our displaced population can overrun neighboring countries. The world will feel the negative impact, no doubt about this. On the other hand, a huge population is an asset if properly managed. Inside it would be abundant human resources essential for development and of course huge market for goods and services, factors that possess capacity to enrich both the individual and the country.
As it is today, we have taken the country and the people to ruins. We are in a cycle of near total destruction. Rather than be frightened by what we have done to ourselves through reckless choices, we prefer to continue on the path of perfidy and that is the tragedy. Nigerians took us there! The consequences live with us and yet the same forces see no reason to backpedal even when it is very glaring that the folly of the few has brought nothing but death of innocent citizens and destruction of vital national assets.
By the time I substituted my earlier discourse that would have been on «Judiciary and Democracy: Experiences From Other Lands» with this one you are reading, the federal government announced removal of tariffs on imported food items for an initial 150 days. That was a confirmation that hunger and starvation had become the lot of millions of citizens in a country richly endowed in virtually everything. We can name a few: arable land, crop varieties, human capital, all kinds of minerals including crude oil and gas. The disclosure of the decision to import food confirmed our inability to achieve food security.
In the study of nations and recognition, a country that can›t do the elementary thing of feeding its population is not counted as an entity. It is labeled as a «concentration camp.» Dislocation is massive and deprivation is the culture. Nigeria, our beloved country has become a time bomb waiting to be ignited by a simple angry touch by one very depressed person. Don›t ask if the act of just one person can set a country on the roll. All we need to do is look to Tunisia during the Arab Spring. One act of self immolation by Mohammed Bouazizi provoked a near revolution. Hundreds of millions are very hungry and diseased, cholera is ravaging everybody. These are signposts to how much our situation has degenerated.
How are the federal and subnational tiers of government reacting to this seemingly terrible state of things? Simplistic and very unorganized. Everyone is on its own. No vision and consequently no synergy. Each tier wants to do road construction and talk glibly about giving help to farmers who in the first place can no longer make do with the profession because of insecurity, which has made venturing into the farms the most dangerous venture to undertake in the country.
How did insecurity become such an issue? A few very unpatriotic elements from the northern divide beside taking to wrong politics in pursuit of narrow interests, chose to fancy hegemonic supremacy far and above nationalism. They would rather have a country carved in their narrow picture or have the entire edifice pulled down. The country has always entered the cycle of dictatorship and tyranny when someone or persons of Northern extraction get into power at the centre. Ibrahim Babangida wasn’t easy to deal with, his government was part of the group that changed the face of federalism by the terrible way they distorted the country’s political administrative structure. A few examples will suffice.
Lagos with a very huge population far greater than you will find in any other place within the country has 27 local governments while Kano with near the same population has 44 in a setting where the local government system is constitutionally not only accepted as another tier of government but draws funds directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation also known as the Federation Account. It is supposed to be a tier at the same time the Constitution still requires the state to make laws for its proper administration. Confusion. Still recalling dictators, we can›t fail to mention General Sani Abacha and former President Muhammadu Buhari. The country was virtually on edge during the reign of these two men as leaders of the country.
Constructive engagements meant nothing to Buhari. It didn’t matter if the nation was deeply plural. He just carried on as an emperor. President Bola Tinubu in his Democracy Day address just last month acknowledged that the country is diverse and that dialogue should be the chief weapon for nation building. Beyond the speech, and all the good postulations made, what concrete steps have we seen? Rather, at a time fuel subsidy has been removed with attendant huge suffering in the land, and amid another era of ceaseless borrowings, he picked up unbudgeted N90 billion which experts say can establish nine power stations and gave away to Muslims as subsidy for religious obligations. He is yet to say how much he will give the Christians and of course traditional religion adherents. A case of double posturing.
The same Muslims of the north have got the North East Development Commission established within a short time and it is functional and drawing from the national account. The commission for the North West is almost ready. The best of the country›s rail, the most modern, runs from Kano and finds its way to Niger Republic. Yet the eastern region is grappling with the old narrow gauge rail, if it is functional at all. It starts from Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital and terminates in Aba. Yet this is one Nigeria where unity is non-negotiable.
Amid the above, the President is telling us all the planes in the presidential fleet are outdated, so we must buy new ones. For what purpose? Going to seminars organized by mere agencies international organizations, who use such fora to release funny statistics on areas of their interest. Insecurity in the country is mainly political, it was Nigerians who said it is better to leave our borders open, the same forces built railways into the Sahel Now we reap the recklessness of having a rich country without borders.
The truth must be said if truly we would rise from the ashes of near total destruction to build a country worth the name. Before last week some of our citizens chose to elevate the ridiculous to something far higher than that when they asked that the national parliament confer citizenship on cows. Now a group of fellows woke up and began to pursue a colony for cows in areas not culturally aligned to trade in cattles. The Federal Government is about to release public funds to entice states.
Biggest one is that the Tinubu administration has resolved to establish a Ministry of Livestock Development. Remember the Ministry of Agriculture is still in existence. By the time some of us checked, the cattle business is a private initiative. So many other Nigerians have businesses peculiar to their cultural inclination but nobody is giving them attention. Cattle colonies and livestock ministry became issues because herder’s militias were imported into Nigeria and given guns to terrorise the native populations a group desires to supplant.
Truth is that those relentlessly pursuing this line of action either don›t take Nigeria seriously or have this erroneous belief that by might they can overrun the rest of the sections. History doesn›t have any such history. We are not homogeneous to that extent. It is better we let them know they are trying very hard to reenact the Sudan and Rwanda genocidal misadventures. It won›t help anybody. This is the truth.