Nigeria is seen as the most populous black nation in the world, with an estimated population of nearly 200 million people.
The oil rich country, Nigeria, has abundant agricultural and solid mineral resources.
Its vast trading has helped the West African sub region economically.
Though, one major issue bedevilling Nigeria since independence on October 1, 1960, is poor leadership, in other words, bad leaders.
Since her emergence in 1960, as a sovereign and indivisible nation, Nigeria has witnessed relatively low growth and development, when compared with her peers like India, Brazil and Malaysia, to mention but a few.
In 1999, when the civilian rule returned in earnest, the country has recorded oil windfall in bulk and bulkier, but quiet unfortunate such money goes to the private pockets and bank accounts of high ranking diabolic government officials.
This is done through dubious mean s ranging from siphoning, embezzlement and prodigal spending thus enriching themselves and their cronies to the detriment of the masses.
In 2015, we witnessed a change in leadership baton, from the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the now ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in an election veracity, which produced President Muhammadu Buhari as the number one citizen and head of government.
I have been closely following the activities of this government, and whenever I have the opportunity, I try to find out the opinions of some masses, with reference to youths, as regards the performance of the incumbent administration.
When I hear certain conversations by some people, my body turned incredibly ancient, with long scrawny neck, in which my veins and arteries just stand like a roof; beneath my garment emerges scrawny legs resembling a chimp, my skin is wrinkled as threadbare, and my belly swells.
This shows how my life has turned.
I have been struggling with the soil, turning it, breaking it and bent over like a hoe.
All this was done with signs and groans of cheerful prayers.
These series of temptation ruckus, rumpus and tumultuous ensues when I heard the conversation of some young Nigerians, their scolds, their loathsomeness, their vituperations, their repugnance, their vilifications, and their revilement.
Astonishingly, I realized that hardship faced by many Nigerians is simply as a result of the fact that almost everyone of us, I inclusive, benefits from the cycle, rectangle and triangle of corruption.
Consequently, suppliers, bricklayers, labourers, plumbers, painters and tilers, etcetera, are all complaining bitterly because building construction has slowed down massively, noting that thieves and pen robbers no longer have money to spend on real estates.
The car dealers are grumbling, murmuring daily, because their exotic chains of cars are kneeling for patronage.
No money to siphon and spend wasteful.
Private school owners are shouting, noting parents and guardians can’t afford to pay outrageous sums and are withdrawing their children and wards.
I was flabbergasted extremely, when I learn that in a popular private tertiary institution in Abuja, parents and guardians are busy writing undertaking at the account section, for their children to be allowed to write exams….
and its goes on and on.
Frankly speaking, a lot of people are now returning to what is referred to as “default mode”.
We have been living in houses and mansions that our ordinary incomes can’t afford.
Our children are going to schools we can’t afford.
We are driving flashy cars that ordinarily we can’t maintain.
We go to hospitals that we can’t afford.
We eat and wear what we cannot afford.
Thus, all along we have been living a fake and cheated life.
Now the reality is before us and we don’t want to accept it, what a delusion.
This categorically shows how morally bankrupt we are.
You can’t have your cake and eat it.
Let’s take note! Apparently, you got billions of naira from the bank without collateral, using your influence politically, investing half of the money into business and spent the other half on exotic cars, jewelry, etcetera.
Indeed, your business will employ 100 workers on normal basis, you get illegal waivers and concessions to import raw materials at rock bottom price, still you get over-inflated contract to supply government some goods your company produces….
In a nutshell, the firm is afloat of corruption.
But the present administration says: no more ridiculous waivers; no more inflated contracts; no more bank loans without collateral.
Government’s strict surveillance ensures that such cartel must pay off the billions of debts own.
In the aftermath, the Assets Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON, takes over such companies, staff are laid off….
they come on air saying their heart felt desire, saying further government is causing unemployment.
But the reality on ground is that such people and their companies were never in business, they were rather feeding off the system.
To call a spade a spade, myriads companies and banks are funded by corruption.
When we erase corruption from the system they suddenly deteriorate while still showing lackadaisical and languid attitudes and pointing accusing fingers at the government for the collapse of the corrupted company.
I adduce that it’s like our system and corruption are interwoven and inseparable, that removing one will smeared the other.
Dr.
Yunusa writes from Bauchi; [email protected]
Editorial
Solutions to perennial flooding
In September 2009, the federal government officially commissioned the herculean task of dredging River Niger.
During a ceremony in Lokoja, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua vividly spoke of his sevenpoint agenda, saying that the project would help in the realisation of his regime’s Vision 20-2020 dreams.
There was a thunder clap from excited Nigerians, especially those whose communities are traversed by the river, as they welcomed the bold initiative.
They also saw the task, when accomplished, as breaking a 43-year-old jinx.
It was hoped that River Niger would experience an incursion – the kind it had not faced since the days of explorer Mungo Park.
As the then transport minister, Alhaji Ibrahim Bio, explained at the ceremony, 572km of the river would be dredged across eight states from Delta through Anambra to Niger, and some 152 communities.
The project was to be executed within three or so years.
The late Yar’Adua stated that the dredging would “provide unobtrusive, cheaper and safer means of haulage of goods and trading activities among adjoining communities and people of states neighbouring Lower River Niger.” It would then be possible to reach Onitsha in Anambra state from Lokoja in Kogi state within 50 minutes by speed boat and not eight hours or longer by road.
Given the deplorable condition of the network of roads along the axis now, it should take longer hours.
About nine months after the commencement of the dredging exercise, Yar’Adua passed on.
And as it is typical of the mentality of our leaders, the project was pursued desultorily and later abandoned.
As at 2009, the condition of the river was nowhere as terrible as it is today.
Our leaders did not appreciate the dual benefits of the exercise – boost the water transportation and free flow of water along the course of the river.
But three years later, precisely in 2012, Nigeria experienced perhaps the worst fury of flood along the river in 50 years, killing no fewer than 500 people.
Economic life was halted and an estimated total of seven million people were affected, while damages and losses caused by the floods were put at N2.6 trillion in the 30 states affected.
The then President Goodluck Jonathan had declared the flooding as a “national disaster” and established a National Committee on Flood Relief and Rehabilitation.
On October 9, 2012, his administration announced it was providing $110m in financial assistance.
In the areas affected by flooding, the displaced are huddled together in camps set up by the state governments.
Ironically, the disaster came calling at the time the dredging exercise would have been completed and Nigeria would have been spared the yearly disasters.
The late Yar’Adua saw the future! There was a relative respite between the 2012 episode and the current flooding being experienced in the frontline states.
Within the period, the immediate past administration which abandoned the dredging exercise three years earlier went to sleep, perhaps in the belief that it would take another 50 years for the danger to return.
We do not need a prophet of doom to drum it into our consciousness that River Niger and its partner, River Benue, have long been overdue for rehabilitation over the years.
The two major rivers have had their waterways severely narrowed due to incursion of shrubs and vegetation from their banks.
It is common to see trees sprouting from the middle of the rivers at various points.
Many boat mishaps on our waterways in recent years have also been caused by undersurface barriers like fallen trees, etc.
Owing to the obstruction along their paths, sand dunes shaped like pyramids have also gradually surfaced.
These barriers inhibit free flow of water.
The clogging is responsible for the overflow of the rivers as the water would naturally find the paths of least resistance among adjoining communities, whose inhabitants help flooding by building along waterways and stuffing drainages with refuse.
In recent times, flooding has been a recurrent problem in most parts of the world.
But unlike in other countries like the United States whose calamities are fueled by natural phenomena like hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, the disasters are caused by incessant rainfalls occasioned by the effects of the climate change which is a global challenge.
It is high time the federal government and those states that are always in the eye of the flood took the issue of dredging of the two major rivers as a matter of national emergency.
The time has come for government at all levels to pay equal attention to our waterways the way our roads are being rehabilitated and reconstructed.
Nigeria would save billions of naira being spent on rehabilitation, resettlement of flood victims and rebuilding damaged communities, besides stemming avoidable loss of human lives and properties on yearly basis, by seriously addressing the major factor causing the calamities which is the freeing of the two rivers of all barriers along their ways.
Interview
How Gov Bello reverses infrastructure decay – Commissioner
Infrastructure developments have always taken the front burner as a yard stick for measuring the performances of all levels of government.
In Niger state, how the administration of Governor Abubakar Sani Bello is reversing infrastructure decays as a means of development recently took the centre stage in the scrutiny of the administration’s scorecard as presented by the Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure Development, Alhaji Ibrahim Balarabe Kagara, in a parley with the Niger state media strategy committee.
AIDELOJE OJO was there for Blueprint Weekend.
Ministry of Works’ special task The task of my ministry has to do with infrastructure development.
We have three major components of the ministry.
They are the civil engineering department, electrical and mechanical department and public building department.
These three departments are saddled with the responsibility of infrastructure development of the state.
