Those who are afraid to die

And even if it were global best practice, nothing stops a country from choosing its own set of rules, which befit its circumstances and fits with its stage of development, evolution and its vision for itself. The problem seems to be that there is no vision per se on ground for Nigeria apart from those with which the executives are dazzled in their splendid chambers.  There is no originality to most documents moving around.  And Nigerians are known as a people that are most averse to the truth.
The issue of choosing what is good for a country, as different from what other countries do, came up recently in a chat with a friend on Facebook. In analyzing the controversial increase of school fees at LASU by Governor Fashola, he brought the example of total free education to PHD level in a Scandinavian country where he lives and has enjoyed that free education to the highest level. He believes that Nigeria can ‘afford’ to give the same to its citizens.
I tried hard, to no avail, to convince him that the word ‘affordability’ is one which is most misunderstood, and which comes to bite its users many a times. I also prodded that the ancestors of Scandinavia may have made sacrifices in the past, which we too may need to make now, in order for our children to enjoy like that in the future.  
He will not be convinced. To the gentleman and many out there, the subject of sacrifice should not come up, given that those who went before us had enjoyed so much – like scholarships, free education, new cars upon graduation, free food in their hostels while in university – we should simply demand for ours, and the growing generation should also demand for theirs.
My take was that in spite of the evident corruption and wastage of public resources, in spite of the cheating, in spite of the injustice, what we still need to do is sacrifice. Time has not come for us to start “largessing”. A people must plan painstakingly for those who are coming after them. Comparing the history of Europe with Nigeria, this is more than evident. And to underlie this fact, we have to notice changes around us. For example, Nigerian population has tripled since 1960. We had better be careful about how we spend money. And how we think.
My concern for today is still about this debate about Fiscal Federalism or resource control. I have several well-publicised articles which argue on end about several issues surrounding the phenomenon; will it not lead to economic apartheid within the same country? How much of the country’s territorial waters should belong to a littoral state?  Are we not merely chasing the wrong quarry? Shouldn’t we be talking of fiscal RESPONSIBILITY and an end to corruption and inordinate self-enrichment? Is the clamor borne out of logic or out of prejudice? Do we understand what makes a country thrive? What do others do; how do they manage their resources?
A neighbor of mine just came back from Canada on a study trip and intimated me about how they do it in Canada, which is also a resource-heavy country. Canada produces anything like 4million barrels of crude oil in a day mainly through tar sands.
The gentleman told me that the country has an equalization fund, which ensures that the minimum standard of living FOR ALL CANADIANS is met, by taxing those rich territories and spending more on infrastructure in the non-producing states/territories.
Canada, mind you, is a developed country, where our people flock to for residency and citizenship. It is a G20, OECD country as well, which means that they cannot be said to be taking half-baked decisions out of primitive sentiments.  In Canada, the objective is to ensure as much as possible, a minimum standard of living for anyone who calls themselves Canadians, and indeed anyone who lives in Canada, including many Nigerians, or former Nigerians,  mostly from southern Nigeria.
In Nigeria, the aim seems to be to ensure an increasing economic divide. This is at a time when the world is discussing the effect of inequality and what the future holds, as exemplified in the frenzy still being generated by Thomas Pickety’s book “Capital in the 21st Century”. It’s as if we have no economists in this country!
I will write about the twin evils of Moral Hazard and The Agency Problem in Nigeria’s governance on a later date.  For now, I can only use one example to define the problems we have on hand.
You see, when one has access to too much unearned money, it creates new problems that most people will not understand. The ‘richest’ state in Nigeria is Akwa Ibom State, which receives from the Federal Government, over $20billion each month. In the year 2013, according to the Finance Ministry, this state alone collected $1.7billion or N260billion, from the Federal Government alone, in raw cash.
This is aside from their Internally Generated Revenue, and is 4 times the entire budget of Liberia (which has 4.6million people – double the people in Akwa Ibom), and occupies 111,000 square kilometres, as against 7,500 square km for Akwa Ibom). Akwa Ibom’s allocation, alone, is more than a quarter of Ghana’s budget, and Ghana has 40million mouths to feed, 20 times what Akwa Ibom has to worry about. Yet, Akwa Ibom says it wants more money from the Federal Government, that it wants all or nothing in terms of the resources derived on its land. The same argument is put up by states like Rivers, and Bayelsa. I think this can only be driven by a special kind of wickedness and selfishness.  
In an interview granted social media activists by Rotimi Amaechi, the governor of River State, he said government should give more money to people who ‘worked’ for the resources. The fact is that we really need to determine those who WORK for Nigeria’s crude oil.
Sitting in your office on land, and claiming money for work being done by white men far into the sea, doesn’t seem like work to me. These states are cheating Nigerians.  And Obasanjo, that wily, self-conceited old man, is to blame for the confusion he causes all over the place. This nonsense was meant to punish the north but now it is poised to tear the country apart and punish all of us!
It is evident that too much money runs people mad. And that is abundantly clear with the way Nigerian ‘leaders’ spend money on frivolous things. But what is of concern to me is a certain idiocy going on, which was exemplified by the Akwa Ibom pension imbroglio. That is that when people ‘make’ so much money, they begin to fear death more than anything else.
After asking for a pension of N200million as one-off payment, a 5 bedroom house in Abuja or Uyo, plus housing allowance of 500% of basic salary on top of the free house, tons of security men, a change of convoy every four years, the governor also wants a provision of N100million yearly for his medical.  The idea to me, is that this person wants to be kept alive, BY ALL MEANS.
But he, and others like him, are mistaken. What is facing them is the foolishness of all the acquisitions they have made. Life is vanity. Madam Dora Akunyili died yesterday, four years after leaning on Umaru Yar’adua and stabbing the man in the back. What is life? Can’t we see that the only worthy thing is sacrifice and service? No one lives forever.