Let us leave ASUU for now. They have backed down from their strike threat. I hope they get all they legitimately deserve. I learnt from someone high up who should know that some professors hold down jobs in 10 universities. They don’t even have to show up more than twice. They get fully paid because their friends are the ones taking the decisions. This paddy-paddy arrangement is what has laid Nigeria bare today. We could do with a lot of transparency and accountability.
The circle of hypocrisy continues. I read somewhere last week that Ebonyi State government bought SUVs worth N1.6Billion for lawmakers and other big men. 68 in number. This happened just as the governor had complained about resources to take care of the millions of needy people there. Some years back it was board members of NDDC (whom the president has now asked to be audited), who went on a luxury car binge, purchasing 70 cars, including 7 luxury SUVs for N87million each, even when they owed contractors for years, and complained about no funding. Prof. Sagay was the one that shouted out in 2017. The obsession with cars made me write articles about the addiction in major newspapers. Nothing has changed. Nigerian people care more about ego, status, outward appearances, and it doesn’t matter if the nation is dying, they get whatever is their full benefits.
I should have known this will happen. In President Buhari’s first and probably only multimedia national chat, a certain Dr Mrs Ngozi Anyanegbunam asked him how he planned to infect the civil service with his anti-corruption fervor. I remember the look of disdain in the president’s eyes that day, even as some of my Buharist friends mocked the lady for fawning over Buhari. I wrote a whole article in defense of that lady, for the president had said in reply to her question ‘the civil servants will be attending their normal promotion training’ and I felt we had already missed our way. The president himself had been a letdown because he refused to declare his assets openly contrary to expectations about his integrity. Those interested in getting the information were told to head to the Code of Conduct Bureau where they were promptly stonewalled. For me it wasn’t about how much he is worth but the need to keep one’s words. What happened next was that the APC governors met in 2015 and actually gave a statement never to declare their assets. The link is there on the internet. The corruption war was dead. The fear of a Buhari who was a scourge of corrupt people started evaporating. Even Buhari’s ministers, appointed 7 months into his tenure, hit the ground demanding for their houses in Abuja – even those who owned mansions here. We had been fully scammed and the rest is history. Mind you, before Buhari, there was a certain Goodluck Jonathan who said he warned Yar’adua not to declare asset because ‘we should not play into the hands of some people’. I am still trying to figure out what he meant by that. Thankfully, Yar’adua refused to listen to him, and actually compelled him to declare openly, a feat he dared not repeat once Yar’adua was gone. We almost had a country.
So it is no wonder that the National Assembly engages in yearly purchase of SUVs, or that a large chunk of our yearly budget is deployed for inanities. Being in government is like being in a different world. The complaints and wailings of the populace are a distant, irritating din. It is none of your concern. Those who still try to take our budgets apart have a strong heart. There is nothing in those budgets for the people of Nigeria. Most line items are fully owned, or heavily padded by strong men from not only the legislature, but the executive, judiciary, bureaucracy, and even if a cleaner or clerk could get favour in the eyes of some big man, he gets something inserted for himself in the budget. Almost everything is being conducted in the country with a fraternal, cultish frame of mind. No one cares about standards, or professionalism, or the delivery of good outcomes from projects.
The other day the debate raged about whether Nigeria should set up a Charity Commission. I supported the idea, much to the chagrin of some of the chief proponents. The charity commission would have ensured that new religious places were duly registered and also monitored to ensure that they were not conduits for the perpetration of fraud by fake religious scammers. But it would also have exerted some control over NGOs some of whose missions are clandestine and evil. They would have none of it. They refused to see the bigger picture. Even the well-established ones who could have used the opportunity to consolidate their positions and help maintain sanity in the space, will have none of it. We hear some of them are controlling huge funds whose ambitions are not altruistic. The violent reaction from some of them was shocking. Anyway, Buba Jubril, the rep member who was sponsoring the bill, died, and with him died the initiative. Not even the fact that such a bill will have helped to curb things like violent religious sects early could have convinced our people. No, Nigeria is finished. But did it ever start? A situation where people are at daggers drawn to protect undue advantage is one that holds a nation back in primitive captivity.
You want more examples? What about owners of property? Minister of finance is telling us daily that we have a revenue problem. But when big people like her were asked to pay property taxes in Akwa Ibom State, they shut down the motion with vehemence. In Abuja, similar ideas never see the light of day. Okonjo-Iweala once spoke of the need for a luxury tax. The idea flatlined before she finished speaking. Even she had no intention of seeing through the idea, neither did fast-talking Britisher Kemi Adeosun. All of them have lined up to fork this country over to whoever their masters are. Almost 80% of pension funds in Nigeria has been borrowed by government to build infrastructure that we cannot see. The fact that such infrastructure don’t generate cash flow and repayment may be an eventual problem does not matter. N5 trillion of taxpayers money sits in AMCON, already shared by our banks to people of no character who call themselves big men in Nigeria. The government is still mulling how they want to stop AMCON debtors from benefiting from government contracts. If they were common men they probably will be in Kirikiri.
So long as we cannot get past this primitive acquisition stage, where we all move around starry eyed everyday looking for how to gyp the system, where we are not ready to take a little breather, shift some space so that society may advance a little, we have no country here. I say this, because at least I tried. I put my life on hold hoping Buhari was real. He wasn’t. I did again when I ran for president. I know it has implication and many opportunities have I lost. But I believe it was worth the sacrifice. Now, I can tell, that the country was not meant to work. It is a free for all. How it shall culminate, nobody knows.
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