The Dream, The Distress
Prologue “Some folks want their luck buttered.” —Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet “The only thing about luck is that it will change.” — Francis Brett Harte
Let us proceed by provoking Nigerians, especially the youths of today, without apologies. If the tweeting and face-booking tribe of largely uninformed Nigerian youths become aware of, or had been privy to, the private discussions of most politicians and public office holders, they would rise against them.
Their anger would be directed at leaders across the divide in a non-partisan manner. In fact, if Nigerians, generally, know just a fraction of what goes on behind closed doors when politicians or public office holders meet, there would have been riots on the streets. Lo! They cannot. Not just yet. Because they do not have the benefit of the total picture. Now, does that make them ignorant? Yes. But in a sense, that is potentially positive; because, once they disembark from that posturing of ignorance, the positivity that would be fired up in the pursuit of knowing the right, true picture of things, would be unimaginably strong.
Without prejudice, ignorance can be powerful, indeed blissful, especially when it is borne out of innocence. Ignorance is said to be a state of “not knowing”. The innocence of not knowing is what political leadership in Nigeria has been exploiting since after independence in 1960. Their interests almost always never really find a co-terminal point with the interests of the masses. And with increasing evidence of massive looting during the last administration, there is no nation that can survive the type of pillaging and despoilation that went on. For instance, the tallest building in the world situated in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, cost just about $1.5billion in construction.
That is less than what was allegedly stolen from Nigeria’s Central Bank by some people, between 2014 and 2015. That should annoy and provoke any right-thinking Nigerian. Another administration spent over $12.8billion without anything meaningful to show for it. Yet, another, rather than embark on massive infrastructural development of the country, chose to allow the slave mentality to overwhelm him by rushing to pay off loans owned by government to western financial institutions – mind you, for the ego-tripping pleasure of ‘I DID IT’.
Today, after repaying the over $30billion, the nation is back in debt of about $10billion. Not that Nigerians did not have the dream of a better country; or that Nigerians, at independence, did not dream dreams. Of course they did. And work had commenced in earnest to actualise the dream. That was why in the famed First Republic, before the military struck in January 1966, there were signs of development in every part of Nigeria. But that momentum was
halted by the military adventurers; and those who came after them. And that is the binding wire that links the following together: Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Ramat Mohammed, Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo (his first shot as military head of state), Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari (his first coming as military leader), Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, Sani Abacha, Ernest Adegunle Shonekan, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan!
They all came, saw but did not conquer. Each may claim to have presented flashes of good governance in one form or the other. Meanwhile, the underlying essence of governance is not about those effervescent displays of cheap but good intentions as typified by dots of public relations projects. Governance is about long-term vision and the linkages that can be wrought in the process for the provision of the general good for the largest sum of people. But guerilla arguments are always brought in to justify mediocrity. Had the much quoted Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore consigned himself to the commissioning of boreholes and painting of school fences, Singapore, that tiny island nation, would not be where it is today.
But, here in Nigeria, over the years, laughable projects, such as painting of school perimeter fences, have been celebrated as achievements. In fact, a serving state governor, in 2001, celebrated the establishment of an eatery’s outlet in his state capital as democracy dividend — that was 41 years after independence. Because Nigeria is a country where opinion is cheapest in the world, and where good sense is trampled upon, we celebrate the intended and unintended idiocy the unintelligent bring into the public sphere when they attempt to rationalise an otherwise clear case of lack of capacity. And because, as it is said, form can always fluctuate while class remains what it is – class – the dreams and labours of Nigeria’s past heroes may end up in vain, contrary to the preachment of the country’s national anthem, on account of the nation’s backwardness. Nigeria typifies the distress of sub-Saharan Africa in
“The Looting Machine, a book by Tom Burgis, which is a searing expose of the global web of traders, bankers, middlemen, despots and corporate raiders that is pillaging Africa’s vast natural wealth. ‘’From the killing fields of Congo, to the crude-slicked creeks of Nigeria, a great endowment of oil, diamonds, copper, iron, gold, and other minerals, has become a curse that condemns millions to poverty, violence and oppression.
That curse is no accident.” But even if the curse was an accident, accidents, by their very nature, are sometimes the culmination of a series of activities culminating in what we describe as accidents. In the book, especially in Chapter 3, Incubators of Poverty, Nigeria is given good mention, from the border atrocities by men and officers of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, between the Niger and Nigeria border in Kaduna, to the despoilation of the Niger Delta and the extraction of crude, the bare-faced stealing of the nation’s wealth, to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which Burgis suffered on account of the slaughtering of humans in Jos sometime in 2008. The story is about missed opportunities and a lack of visionary leadership.
Therefore, when the late China Achebe, the great novelist, summarises Nigeria’s problem as a failure of leadership, almost all of Nigeria’s past leaders represent that useless pole on which the billboards of failure are hoisted. Whereas Africa is said to possess 30% of the world’s oil and minerals and 14% of the world’s population, it doesn’t appear shocking to Africans, nay Nigerians, that 43% of the world’s poor are Africans When a man like Jeffery Sachs, who is the Director of The Earth Institute, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy Management and former Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, discusses poverty, the world must listen; Nigerian leaders must listen and listen good. In his book, THE END OF POVERTY – HOW W
E CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN IN OUR LIFETIME, Chapter 3, WHY SOME COUNTRIES FAIL TO THRIVE, specifically the subhead, WHY COUNTRIES FAIL TO ACHIEVE ECONOMIC GROWTH, he educates that “eight major categories of problems can cause an economy to stagnate or decline: the poverty trap, physical geography, fiscal trap, governance failures, cultural barriers, geopolitics, lack of innovation and demographic trap.” The only factor that Nigerians, as a people, would not have been able to do anything about would have been ‘physical geography’ – where the country is situated and on top of which mineral resources are available under the soil — but even that is a blessing to Nigeria because the nation is massively endowed with mineral resources spread across. The seven other factors have been mismanaged in manners gargantuan leading to multiple jeopardy. Consider this: “He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers”, so says Robert Hooker, English theologian. The tragedy of today — and which the All Progressives Congress, APC, government of Muhammadu Buhari must watch — is that, having gotten to power on the crest of change, and having been bogged down by the contemporary reality of a now battered economy occasioned by the present recession, those who are going about to “persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be”, may also never want attentive and favourable hearers.
As our illustration depicts, the Nigeria of the founding fathers was one that should have done better than today’s Singapore had the momentum been sustained. But the shambolic environment of today, with its attendant chaos, is what Nigeria has been reduced to. Is there hope? Yes, there is! If, and only if, those eight factors as enumerated by Sachs are put to positive use by the present administration of Buhari, a man who still enjoys public sympathy, but who may be in danger of losing it. Source vangaurd
Their anger would be directed at leaders across the divide in a non-partisan manner. In fact, if Nigerians, generally, know just a fraction of what goes on behind closed doors when politicians or public office holders meet, there would have been riots on the streets. Lo! They cannot. Not just yet. Because they do not have the benefit of the total picture. Now, does that make them ignorant? Yes. But in a sense, that is potentially positive; because, once they disembark from that posturing of ignorance, the positivity that would be fired up in the pursuit of knowing the right, true picture of things, would be unimaginably strong.
Without prejudice, ignorance can be powerful, indeed blissful, especially when it is borne out of innocence. Ignorance is said to be a state of “not knowing”. The innocence of not knowing is what political leadership in Nigeria has been exploiting since after independence in 1960. Their interests almost always never really find a co-terminal point with the interests of the masses. And with increasing evidence of massive looting during the last administration, there is no nation that can survive the type of pillaging and despoilation that went on. For instance, the tallest building in the world situated in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, cost just about $1.5billion in construction.
That is less than what was allegedly stolen from Nigeria’s Central Bank by some people, between 2014 and 2015. That should annoy and provoke any right-thinking Nigerian. Another administration spent over $12.8billion without anything meaningful to show for it. Yet, another, rather than embark on massive infrastructural development of the country, chose to allow the slave mentality to overwhelm him by rushing to pay off loans owned by government to western financial institutions – mind you, for the ego-tripping pleasure of ‘I DID IT’.
Today, after repaying the over $30billion, the nation is back in debt of about $10billion. Not that Nigerians did not have the dream of a better country; or that Nigerians, at independence, did not dream dreams. Of course they did. And work had commenced in earnest to actualise the dream. That was why in the famed First Republic, before the military struck in January 1966, there were signs of development in every part of Nigeria. But that momentum washalted by the military adventurers; and those who came after them. And that is the binding wire that links the following together: Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Ramat Mohammed, Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo (his first shot as military head of state), Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari (his first coming as military leader), Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, Sani Abacha, Ernest Adegunle Shonekan, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan!
They all came, saw but did not conquer. Each may claim to have presented flashes of good governance in one form or the other. Meanwhile, the underlying essence of governance is not about those effervescent displays of cheap but good intentions as typified by dots of public relations projects. Governance is about long-term vision and the linkages that can be wrought in the process for the provision of the general good for the largest sum of people. But guerilla arguments are always brought in to justify mediocrity. Had the much quoted Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore consigned himself to the commissioning of boreholes and painting of school fences, Singapore, that tiny island nation, would not be where it is today.
But, here in Nigeria, over the years, laughable projects, such as painting of school perimeter fences, have been celebrated as achievements. In fact, a serving state governor, in 2001, celebrated the establishment of an eatery’s outlet in his state capital as democracy dividend — that was 41 years after independence. Because Nigeria is a country where opinion is cheapest in the world, and where good sense is trampled upon, we celebrate the intended and unintended idiocy the unintelligent bring into the public sphere when they attempt to rationalise an otherwise clear case of lack of capacity. And because, as it is said, form can always fluctuate while class remains what it is – class – the dreams and labours of Nigeria’s past heroes may end up in vain, contrary to the preachment of the country’s national anthem, on account of the nation’s backwardness. Nigeria typifies the distress of sub-Saharan Africa in
“The Looting Machine, a book by Tom Burgis, which is a searing expose of the global web of traders, bankers, middlemen, despots and corporate raiders that is pillaging Africa’s vast natural wealth. ‘’From the killing fields of Congo, to the crude-slicked creeks of Nigeria, a great endowment of oil, diamonds, copper, iron, gold, and other minerals, has become a curse that condemns millions to poverty, violence and oppression.
That curse is no accident.” But even if the curse was an accident, accidents, by their very nature, are sometimes the culmination of a series of activities culminating in what we describe as accidents. In the book, especially in Chapter 3, Incubators of Poverty, Nigeria is given good mention, from the border atrocities by men and officers of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, between the Niger and Nigeria border in Kaduna, to the despoilation of the Niger Delta and the extraction of crude, the bare-faced stealing of the nation’s wealth, to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which Burgis suffered on account of the slaughtering of humans in Jos sometime in 2008. The story is about missed opportunities and a lack of visionary leadership.
Therefore, when the late China Achebe, the great novelist, summarises Nigeria’s problem as a failure of leadership, almost all of Nigeria’s past leaders represent that useless pole on which the billboards of failure are hoisted. Whereas Africa is said to possess 30% of the world’s oil and minerals and 14% of the world’s population, it doesn’t appear shocking to Africans, nay Nigerians, that 43% of the world’s poor are Africans When a man like Jeffery Sachs, who is the Director of The Earth Institute, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy Management and former Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, discusses poverty, the world must listen; Nigerian leaders must listen and listen good. In his book, THE END OF POVERTY – HOW W
E CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN IN OUR LIFETIME, Chapter 3, WHY SOME COUNTRIES FAIL TO THRIVE, specifically the subhead, WHY COUNTRIES FAIL TO ACHIEVE ECONOMIC GROWTH, he educates that “eight major categories of problems can cause an economy to stagnate or decline: the poverty trap, physical geography, fiscal trap, governance failures, cultural barriers, geopolitics, lack of innovation and demographic trap.” The only factor that Nigerians, as a people, would not have been able to do anything about would have been ‘physical geography’ – where the country is situated and on top of which mineral resources are available under the soil — but even that is a blessing to Nigeria because the nation is massively endowed with mineral resources spread across. The seven other factors have been mismanaged in manners gargantuan leading to multiple jeopardy. Consider this: “He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers”, so says Robert Hooker, English theologian. The tragedy of today — and which the All Progressives Congress, APC, government of Muhammadu Buhari must watch — is that, having gotten to power on the crest of change, and having been bogged down by the contemporary reality of a now battered economy occasioned by the present recession, those who are going about to “persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be”, may also never want attentive and favourable hearers.As our illustration depicts, the Nigeria of the founding fathers was one that should have done better than today’s Singapore had the momentum been sustained. But the shambolic environment of today, with its attendant chaos, is what Nigeria has been reduced to. Is there hope? Yes, there is! If, and only if, those eight factors as enumerated by Sachs are put to positive use by the present administration of Buhari, a man who still enjoys public sympathy, but who may be in danger of losing it. Source vangaurd