By Tamuno Dagogo
Often times, the citizens of a country pray to GOD and endeavour within the limits of human ability to enthrone honest and caring leaders. In the case of Nigeria this prayer has never been answered while primordial considerations of various sorts as well as greed and selfishness has made the citizenry incapable of working hard to get good leaders. Unfortunately, under the rule of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which came to power in 1999, there have been successions of bad and dishonest leaders who tell bare-faced lies to the people and pretend about the true situation of the country. The only exception was during the three year rule of late President UmaruYar’Adua, when there was a conscious effort to tell the truth.
. Since the nation’s independence, things have been well mostly for those in power and their friends, family and cronies, and very bad for the majority of Nigerians. And for this reason the average Nigerian and those in authority live as if they are from different planets. There is no common reality or appreciation of reality among the leaders and the led.
One area where there a total lack of appreciation of reality between the leaders and the led, is on the issue of whether Nigeria is a rich or poor country, and whether the average Nigerian is rich or poor. This controversy was made popular by the erstwhile government of former President Obasanjo, when the latter, perhaps in the attempt to credit his deceptive government of some achievement not only lowered the indices of measuring poverty but also took offence whenever there is the talk that Nigeria is a poor country.
President Goodluck Jonathan, an Obasanjo acolyte has taken the lies and argument to a ridiculous level that makes an average educated person to wonder whether the President was ever introduced to basic economics.
On two separate occasions recently, the number one citizen who brandishes a doctorate degree (no matter the discipline) had the effrontery to reply the World Bank of which he is enamoured that Nigeria is not a poor country. This was after the President of the World Bank had listed Nigeria as one of the five countries in the world that has some of the highest concentration of poor people. Second, President Jonathan drew the ire of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) when he remarked in his usual unguarded manner that ‘poverty was not Nigeria’s problem, but wealth distribution’.
With a President who can say that a people who do not have access to the basic necessities of life are not in a poor country, it is understandable why all the prosperity bandied about by economic team do not affect the lives of millions of Nigerians.
The most curious thing about the position of Jonathan about poverty in Nigeria is that he is taken issue with a pronouncement of the World Bank in whom he believes so much. Jonathan’s Finance Minister and economy coordinator is a former staff of the World Bank, as with a few others in his government and when that bank or its top officials make declarations about the status of national economies like Nigeria which are unfavourable, the President takes offence. It is a pity for the President, being a Nigerian leader of the People Damage People party; he would have wished that the international bank to lie to favour Nigeria under him! The World Bank has an international constituency and does not lie to look good before any set of citizens as political leaders of states would wish.
It is important for the President to note that some of the indices of poverty which is very much with us in Nigeria despite the availability of millions of petrol dollars routinely stolen by his aides and loyalists to the detriment of the Nigerian people are; 70 per cent of the population of 170 million Nigerians live on less than N300 or $2 a day! millions especially educated youth unemployed, poor health services and facilities with the result that in 2014, hundreds of Nigerian citizens still die of cholera and other water borne diseases, a housing deficit of 17 million homes which has prompted the NLC to embark on a massive housing scheme, 10 million children of school age out of school and low standard of education forcing the privileged to invade foreign universities to educate their children.
Other indices of national poverty caused by deep- seated official corruption which again, President Jonathan denies is among Nigeria’s problem, are collapsed industries and manufacturing sector caused by chronic lack of power, poor road network and poor maintenance of existing network, poor health services, poorly equipped universities and tertiary institutions plagued by frequent workers strikes, lack of water for domestic and industrial use, poor skill acquisition due to falling standard of education, lack of patriotism caused by massive corruption and absence of sanctions resulting in poor capacity in the nation like inability of the national defence force to combat local terrorism etc.
The above are a tip of the iceberg of the poverty indices in Jonathan’s rich country. Nigerians should beware!
Dagogo wrote from Jabi, Abuja