BABATUNDE Raji Fashola used to be the ‘official’ boy wonder of governance in Nigeria, especially for states. Whenever his promoters spoke of good governance, they pointed his way. And Fashola was media-manufactured, as the new face of emergent Africa. Apparently, if Africa is to have a future, it must be made in the image of Fashola and or his clones. And the great majority of the peoples, including apparently the very elect, was bewitched or cajoled. Fashola was then set up as the new Godot, whom the nation must await unto its redemption.
Implied in all these spin therapy targeted at the people on behalf of Fashola, was the logic that the nation needed Fashola more than Fashola needed the nation. The assumption was that what Fashola did with Lagos, he would replicate in the nation.
Well, the sages have always advised us to be wary of what we ask of the gods. The danger is that they might just as well grant us our wishes. And now it’s happened in Fashola’s case. The gods have gifted Nigeria with Fashola at the centre.
And somehow the wind or is it the fart of change came. And this selfsame Fashola was selected by the sheriffs of the winning APC government, as a super minister, the Godot made flesh. He was to be a special minister in every particular meaning of the word. And amongst the responsibilities given him, was the task of delivering electricity.
Now, if it is true that Fashola performed well in Lagos, the facts as they are on the ground confirm that he has lost his mojo, running shop from Abuja. In fact, the joke is on. It goes like this. How many strands of white hair did Fashola have to grow to succeed in Lagos? 1,000. How many strands of white hairs does Fashola need to fail in delivering ordinary electricity to the nation? One million. So, with more white hairs, Fashola is in spite of himself and increasingly, unable to deliver common electricity to consumers. In fact, under his watch, municipal electricity has come to its nadir. Now, consumers are whining of zero electricity services that are being charged like presidential luxury services. My God, what a fate for a former wonder boy!
It is at this point that Dr. Laurence Peter comes in. Dr. Peter is a North American management type. After surveying the world, as he saw it, he came to a conclusion that a lot of guys get promoted beyond their competences. That is to say an employee’s competence, as a foreman is not a signal that the guy should be made a manager. He may for all you know have exhausted all that is in him, all that is him. When Dr. Peter made his disquisition, it sounded so counterintuitive and nearly nobody believed him. However, the data as they roll off, seem to confirm his insight every now and then.
And Fashola is a perfect totem of the Peter Principle in Africa. Indeed, it is not just Fashola; it is the whole APC gang, her operatives and operators – head to toe. And Nigerians have captured the matter in their own tongue. It is now tradable common currency, which, while the APC is not prepared for governance, the PDP is not prepared for opposition. Thus, Nigerians are saying without the management-speak of a Dr. Peter, that both Fashola specifically and APC generally, have been promoted and or elected beyond their competences. Ahiazuwa.
However, it may be wrong to blame Fashola and or APC. The blame is the electorate’s. They voted as if they never heard of Dr. Peter. Now, they have promoted exhausted incompetents, flash in the pan characters and handed our high destinies to them. And these men are bringing us all low. No light, no power, no money, no job, no hope, nothing. All we now have are new surges of genocidal mayhem by herdsmen, new highs in kidnapping and a culture of Dr. Peter style characters, giving us basketful of excuses.
Why do we hate Nigeria?
TABIA Princewill is a Nigerian journalist. She writes with the Vanguard newspapers. On November 18, 2015, she wrote: Why do we hate Nigeria? And she whined on why and how Nigerians would rather sympathise with French nationals over a terrorism occasioning a few deaths, and not with ‘fellow Nigerians’ when hundreds are killed in Borno [and lately Agatu], over similar terrorist acts. It is definitely a very serious topic. But we guess that space constraints prevented her from detailed inquiry, and she merely asked for readers’ responses.
Well, if she had bothered to inquire into the matter the details are fairly simple. And they are as follow:
There is no country called Nigeria, except in the geographical, that is space-entity terms only. In the sense of a common cultural and shared destiny, Nigeria is a nonentity. And to be sure this situation cannot be made better by our pretences or ignorance.
To help us separate the paradox of shared space on one hand, and separate cultures, sociologies and thus destinies on the other, let us give the examples of Israel and Russia vis-a-vis America. Now, for all practical purposes, Israel is geographically a Middle Eastern country, as much as any of her Arab neighbour nations.
However, Israelis consider themselves and act the reality that they are European people and a key participant in the march of Western civilisation. And the Westerners oblige them in full favour. Thus the Americans and Europeans take Israel as a Euro- American outpost in the Middle East. That is Israel is just like Australia, a European offshore colony. It is just that while it is Middle East for Israel, Australia is in the [far eastern] Asian continent. And this is exemplified by the fact that Israelis are members of the pan-European soccer league, and even more so, by the reality that Israel is ‘fully integrated’ in the military-industrial complex of North America and Western Europe. So, Israeli destiny is with Europe and Europeans, even as she is trapped in a shared geography with her Asiatic Arab blood cousins. So, blood is not even the matter. Choice is. Freedom is. And these two, choice and freedom, trump geography and or armed-thuggery-derived coups and their consequences.
Russia, the next example, was once a mighty country-empire. But she never found or founded the formula to weld her peoples into a cultural whole. And it so happened that the Russian claim of being Scythians – part Asiatic, part European – failed her. Gobarchev came and the myth unraveled, as the Russian peoples went their separate ways and destinies. They were never one people; they only shared one geography, not one destiny. You don’t share destinies by force or armed thuggery, aka coups.
The Russian failure is in contradistinction to America. In America, peoples come into a space, in which all peoples, to use a Nigerian phrase, are equal founders and equal joiners. So, without brandishing guns, Americans are self-decided they are one and are in it together, even if with Dimka. They too had a civil war, but their victorious factions did not begin to rig and reap the nation to favour their regions, by spurious creation of new states, LGAs, Federal Constituencies, in the image of the victors; or rewrite the constitution to tacitly give their section a veto over the federation and the lives of other peoples. That is, make their regions, some kind of self-elect permanent Security Council members of a nation. This American way is the very opposite of all General Gowon and his successor Generals, who all happened to be Northern, did, in forged and self and region serving false patriotisms. So, Nigeria by Gowonic logic is not workable. And since Gowon, its creator, made it not workable, why should we ordinary peoples sweat ourselves to make what is not workable, work? The only solution is first to have Nigeria remade, into a workable social technology.
And nothing illustrates the ‘un-serviceability’ that is built into Nigeria as the recent, virtually mindless call to genocide against the Igbo by the DSS. Now, all through Nigeria the Fulani cattle men, have been literally on killing jamborees, perhaps, DSS countenanced, murdering innocent hundreds, perhaps, thousands of innocent peoples, and the DSS kept her feinted silence, the silence of a deadly co-conspirator. Next, for reasons that are not far to fetch, DSS sets up alarms, virtually calling on Fulani and other Nigerians to descend on the Igbo/IPOB and start bogus revenge killings. Tacitly, the DSS seems to be saying: Do it; we shall give you cover. And it makes sense for them, since studiedly, nearly the whole security apparatuses in Nigeria is a Northern/Muslim/Fulani private estate and province. I can now call out to the DSS: DSS come and kill me, I am Igbo, Oru properly, but it doesn’t matter.
So, why should you love and not hate a country where the very security arms that should protect you are partisan, are northern, are Fulani, in orientation, and are arrayed against you? It will be insanity to love that country. So, for Nigeria to be lovable, its security arms must be dismantled and made to be manned and defended by all Nigerians, not just Fulani or northerners in commanding heights.
Meanwhile, let the DSS and Fulani love Nigeria; after all, it is the Nigeria of their creation. By the time Nigeria is returned to the peoples of Nigeria, Nigerians shall summon the mandate to love her. For now, Nigeria has to make do with the fact that she is unloved, and worse, unlovable.
So, we canvass and advise that Nigerians must resist the folkloristic deceit that Nigeria is a mission, as being propagandised from Abuja, by equally deceitful organs like the DSS and those who sent them. To believe or play Nigeria as a mission is to be gamed. Nigeria is a game, and the DSS is affirming it by words and deeds: We are a mere geographical expression, perhaps, ruled by Fulani-prone DSS and associated security apparatuses.
So, is it still any paradox, that that Nigeria is completely unloved, in fact, hated by her 170 million peoples, in justice and in fairness? And this is no thanks to Gowonism, DSS and all that jazz.
And the monster-nation they constructed and are constructing remains unloved and unlovable.