Development re-defined, ridiculed

The word ‘development’ could mean ‘a recent event that is the latest in a series of related events’. It is also defined as ‘the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced’. This latter definition is the sense in which the word ‘development’, within the purview of this piece, isused. Our pattern of development as a government and as a people has over the years become ridiculous of thisdistinctive definition of the word. Some instances of policy summersault and flip-flop implementation of programmes would be cited to illustrate how we have, in Nigeria, ridiculously re-defined development in the light of a checkered, irregular and retrogressivemodel.

A quick glance at our constitutional development as a nation reminds us that regional politics was the foundation upon which Nigeria’s First Republic was founded. A strong argument against this structure was that party politics in the First Republic evolved and progressed along ethnic sentiments; a critical impediment to the much desired unity of a multi-tribal country like Nigeria. This inspired the country to opt for the presidential system of government when Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1979. 

Unlike the parliamentary model of the First Republic, the presidential system provides for the whole nation as the constituency of the president because he is required to obtain 25 percent of votes cast in at least two-third of the states in the federation. About 40 years after the country’s choice for a presidential system, one finds it ridiculous that some selfish Nigerians are yet talking about restructuring; clamouring for a return to regional structure of governance. What a comical instance of a country’s long ride to nationhood!

Another re-definition of development concerns the introduction, abolition and re-introduction of toll gates on the nation’s highways. With a view to ensuring proper maintenance of roads and to also extend their lifespans, the federal government introduced the payment of tolls by motorists who ply some selected highways in the country. Unfortunately, the collection and remittance of tolls to government treasury were marred by corrupt practices; resulting into poor maintenance of the roads. Government thus leased the toll gates to private operators. In 2003, however, former President OlusegunObasanjo’s regime demolished all the toll gates on the nation’s highways. Obasanjo’s argument was that government, even withthe private operators, was earning less than what it needed annually to maintain the roads. 

In November 2017, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, BabatundeRajiFashola, announced that the federal government had concluded plans to re-introduce toll gates at 38 locations on highways across the country. This simply means that the toll gates should not have been demolished by Obasanjo; an action he undertook amidst protests from Nigerians. Only side structures of the toll gates were spared and later used as highway offices by the Federal Road Safety Commission.The demolition was an escapist decision taken by Obasanjo,who perhaps, feared to confront the corrupt practices that were ruining the operations of toll gates. Why did we have to demolish structures which we needed to re-build another day? This cyclic development is a huge waste of the country’s scarce resources. It would sound ludicrous if we refer to this policy disorder andritual of ‘building-bulldozing-rebuilding’ as development.

Third in this discourse pertains to the forward-and-backward position of government on Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (P-UTME) conducted by universities in Nigeria. P-UTME is a second screening testintroduced in 2004 and conducted for candidates who obtained the required minimum cut-off point in the UTME organized by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). 

Some of the reasons that prompted the introduction of P-UTME included the complaints by universities that JAMB’s Unified Matriculation Examination (UME) results had substantially lost credibility. The National Universities Commission (NUC)’s intervention to allow universities conduct P-UTME was designed to be a validation process to authenticate JAMB’s UME results and to also give candidates the opportunity to defend their results. Soon, the P-UTME developed into a burden that outweighed all the potential gains that informed its introduction.

In 2011, there was a heated debate in the Senate when Senator HeinekanLokpobiri moved a motion to investigate the validity or otherwise of the P-UTME. Besides subjecting candidates to psychological stress and risks associated with traveling over long distances on Nigerian roads, P-UTME further became exploitative as many universities turned the exercise into a money spinner. JAMB’s deployment of technology in the administration of UTME and the prompt release of its results significantly improved the integrity of the exam. 

Thus, when the Minister of Education, MalamAdamuAdamu, eventually announced the scraping of P-UTME at a JAMB’s stakeholders’ meeting in June 2016, it was a long-awaited decision hailed by UTME candidates and their parents.However, the scrapped P-UTME was again un-scrapped at the 2017 gathering of JAMB’s stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja; anillustration of Nigeria’s flip-flop pattern ofdevelopment. This was in spite of all the logistic and socio-economic arguments against the exercise.

Fourth is another instance of a re-definition of development by Nigerian lawmakers as it affects the number of times voters exercise their franchise in a general election. In the general elections of 1979 and 1983, a total of five elections were held on each occasion. This arrangement,which required voters to go out for five consecutive weeks to elect leaders for elective positions at the local, state and federal levels, was considered by many asboring and cumbersome. When Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, the elections were reduced to three. The number was further reduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to just two elections as witnessed in the conduct of the 2011 and 2015 elections. The benefits of having only two sequences in a general election include cost effectiveness, ease of logistics, reduced voter fatigue and the prevention of possible outbreak of violence. 

Only recently, both chambers of the national assemblyridiculed existing democratic culture when they amended the 2010 Electoral Act; reverting to the old, clumsy and hectic order of three separate elections even though conducting just two elections has, in the past, proved to be better. While development in advanced climes implies a departure from traditionalist to improved way of doing things without reverting to the outmoded practice, the same word (development) has been re-defined in Nigeria to mean a departure and subsequent return to the old and conservative way of doing things. May Allah (SWT) guide us to discard the distorted definition of development for the common good of the country, amin.