Experience teaches us that a new year is a gift. Nobody is entitled to it, and no one can boast he will achieve it.
That is why, when we enter a new year, we celebrate. Sometimes, it with a tinge of guilt as we think of those who did not make it into that pivotal new day. That day includes yesterday, the first of 2022, as we entered the third COVID-19 year.
Three days ago, the WHO reported 5,411,759 deaths attributed to the virus in the past two years; 812,577 of those were in the United States, where I write this, and 3027 in my home country, Nigeria.
There continue to be the ‘traditional’ killers. Cancer, for example, took nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, WHO also said. With cancer, we sometimes have a chance to say the goodbyes that COVID-19 often denies. But that opportunity is often at great cost, as families must endure the pain of watching the sufferer waste away.
But what about road crashes, which claim about 1.3 million people lives every year? WHO’s profile of road crashes shows that they cost most countries 3% of their Gross Domestic Product.
Of critical interest to such communities as Nigeria is the revelation that “93% of the world’s fatalities on the roads occur in low-and middle-income countries, even though these countries have approximately 60% of the world’s vehicles.”
Put that the other way, the high-income countries, which possess 40% of the world’s vehicles, suffer only 7% of the world’s road fatalities.
These figures are not difficult for observers of Nigeria’s mass transit—and I speak only figuratively—to understand. We have no real road system, as it is under perpetual construction or repair, every government finding ways to keep the ruse going, and officials happy to pursue projects they know will not endure.
For eight years from 1999, and particularly through President Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari in the past seven years, road development has continued to be a major drain on the nation’s purse. Rarely is there a breakthrough road; major highways often lack modern technical designs.
The point of this is that there is little surprise that Nigerians to die in massive numbers on roads that are barely there. Short stretches of good road cost lives. Long stretches of bad cost lives either by themselves because of vehicles competing to get through, some collapsing in invisible trenches or floods, or armed herdsmen and other criminals taking advantage of the poor roads to maim, rob and kidnap.
Still, as a people, we hope. We pray. We beg our leaders to do the right thing by our votes.
But we deceive ourselves. Our leaders are not the problem; we are.
Think about it: I criticize Buhari a lot, and he deserves it, but Nigeria’s democracy was defined two decades ago by President Olusegun Obasanjo, who now pronounces as having been a great leader. I have called him Nigeria’s First 419 President, and profiled him several times, including in this story. He is single-handedly responsible for Nigeria’s direction, or lack of one, in the past two decades.
But for Mr. Obasanjo, Mr. Jonathan—facing criminal charges on his record from a panel Obasanjo had himself set up—would never have become vice-presidential candidate, let alone president. But for Jonathan’s atrocious performance in office, including vowing everything under the sun but never delivering, Buhari would never have become president. And Obasanjo pretends everyone has forgotten that he tried to subvert the constitution and obtain a third term in office!
When I developed my original “Countdown Calender,” it was for Obasanjo when he began his second term in 2003. I argued that based on his record, the issue of corruption would define his legacy.
I wrote: “Whatever else he imagines he is accomplishing in office, the issue of what he does, or does not do with the corruption question is what he will always be remembered by. It is the signature of his government.”
It was, given the way he ran the Peoples Democratic Party, bragged about how many decades it would keep Nigeria in a chokehold, and singlehandedly picked members of its presidential ticket. It was the template that would bring Buhari to power.
Still, as a people, we hope.
In mid-2019 when I inaugurated the Buhari Countdown Calendar, he had 1444 days left in office. When I last updated it, he had 1261 days. Today, after running considerably out of steam and with his heart fixed on enjoying the spoils of office, he has 512.
Now that we know better, it is not an argument as to whether Buhari has anything left, it is whether he had any in the first place. Over the next 17 months, he will commission some projects to convey the impression of a successful campaigner, but they will be the effort not of a few years, but of eight consecutive years of under-performance, unconscionable borrowing, and layers of budgeting.
And he will own the record of the most corrupt era in corruption in Africa. If you are literate and have tears to shed, open this page for yourself for an intense picture of the Buhari years. They are the Auditor-General’s reports but don’t worry, nobody important reads them.
By this day next year, Buhari will have 149 days left. I doubt that anything would have changed because his severe limitations will continue to complicate and confuse governance and consolidate his failure.
This is an unrepentant nepotist who is constructing a $1.9bn rail line into another country because “I have cousins, family members, etc., in Niger Republic. I shouldn’t just cut them off.”
But consider this: on Friday, Rotimi Amaechi, his Minister of Transportation, cried out for $36bn, which Nigeria lacks, for the nation’s rail network, which includes the Niger rail. But only three years ago, the same man put the figure at $16bn, $20bn less! What we have is clearly a strategy of project launchings with no commitment to completion.
And consider also that last weekend, Clem Agba, the Minister of State for National Planning, declared that in 2021, the government completed 500 rural roads. I immediately dashed to the ministry’s website, and then to Works and Housing, but could not find the list. Showcasing Buhari’s “achievements” on Thursday, Lai Mohammed, the Information and Culture boss, did not highlight these “roads.”
Still, we hope. It is our nature.
But the last 21 years have exposed us. We are empty, indeed as porous as a Buhari promise.
We fail to follow our prayers and hopes with action. And when we do, it is with either fear or cynicism, such as accepting gratification from politicians we put in office. We let them hide away in the cities, or when they visit us, in mansions built with our money. Before our eyes, they guard themselves with thugs and the police and we vote for them again.
Hope is good. But it is meaningless unless accompanied with the strength and determination to rise and scream, “No more!” That is how Jesus cleared the temple.
As 2022 begins and the politicians again prepare to label you a cheap fool, remember that.
- [This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials]
• @Sonala.Olumhense
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