Friday, December 16, 2016

Nigerian Officials and Overrated Sense of Self By Abimbola Lagunju



Give any Nigerian living in Nigeria a small post and it goes into his head. He immediately invents paraphernalia of office to boost his self-image. The formerly unknown transforms himself into a star, wielding his new post as a weapon of domination and oppression of those who knew him yesterday as just one of them. He lives and breathes his new status. He changes his wardrobe and swagger. He becomes haughty and arrogant. He inserts layers of advisors, aides, security operatives between him and his environment. His phone becomes too heavy for him to carry. His eyes become glazed; he cannot see his immediate surroundings again.

This overrated sense of self is a national disease. It cuts across the whole sphere of our national life and the most afflicted of the disease are political and religious leaders. A General Overseer (GO), hero-worshipped by his congregation that has been cowed into submission by their physical, economic, social and political environments, adds a small “d” to his acronym. He becomes and plays GOd. He celebritizes himself. He is impossible to see or to speak with. Between him and the people are many aides, junior and senior pastors and security staff. They glow in their subservient roles to the GOd of Man. This is not about heaven; it is about gleaning from the celebrity status of the Big Man of the Church. Since there is no script to their roles as servants, they act as their spirit commands them.  When the GOd travels, his convoy of police escort, vintage vehicles and pastors acting as thugs is a menace to other road users. These thugs threaten violence on other road users who do not hearken to their sirens and convoy. The road must be cleared for the GOd or hell will be let loose on the transgressor in form of punches, whipping and verbal violence. My son-in-law suffered this in the hands of some servants of a local GOd a couple of years ago, on a Sunday afternoon and on a wide road, free of traffic. His offence was that he did not clear off the road in good time for their high-speed convoy to pass.

I have seen convoys of some Vice Chancellors and Chief Medical Directors of University Teaching Hospitals too. They all have the same aggressive attitude to other road users. They blow their sirens even in the night when the roads are free. This overrated sense of self has nothing to do with level of education. It is simply a primitive ego drive to impress an imaginary audience.

The most afflicted of the disease are our elected politicians and government officials. This group of human beings is probably one of the worst set of elected and public officials in the world in terms of raw display of oppressive public relations. Local government chairmen, governors, Ministers, parliamentarians at the state and federal levels, permanent secretaries, and heads of parastatals become a strange breed of slothful individuals once they get elected or appointed. Their temporary position is like curare. It weakens all their muscles. They cannot talk; they can only speak through an aide. They cannot carry their phones; another aide has to carry the phones for them. They cannot write; their pens suddenly become very heavy; aides write and tweet for them. Their bags are carried by policemen. Their shoes are cleaned in public by employees of taxpayers. They cannot carry their own umbrellas when it rains. They can no longer hold their brooms to sweep away the filth around them.

And it is sheer horror when these elected officials move from one part of the city to another or in-between cities. They disrupt the traffic. They push off other road users into gutters. They maim and kill the taxpayers with whose money they acquired those vehicles and pay themselves salaries. The scenario they play each time is reminiscent of that of a warlord with his bunch of cutthroats driving through a hostile environment.

I have often asked myself the following questions: Where is the big man rushing to? Who decides the size of the convoy? Why does an elected official have such a phobia of the people that employed him that he has to scare them off the road? Is the elected official sleeping while he is being driven at this senseless speed? Who is he trying to impress? Under which rules does this madness operate? I have no answers to these questions. There is no logical reasoning to justify this strange behavior of our officials.

Official visits of these elected and their unelected spouses to some other parts of the country are nightmares to the hosts. The official visit paralyses the city. It stops all economic activities and taxpayers who depend on their daily earnings for feeding their families go to bed hungry for the duration of the visit. A bad reminder of a raw display of an overrated sense of self was the visit of Patience Jonathan to Lagos a couple of years ago. Patience paralyzed a city of over eighteen million people to fuel her ego. People complained, but our elected officers have not changed their ways.

Just yesterday, 15th December, Punch Newspaper under the headline,”How Buhari shut down N’Assembly for 2017 budget” reported that “Administrative and commercial activities were paralysed at the National Assembly Complex Abuja on Wednesday when President Muhammadu Buhari visited the complex to present the 2017 Appropriation Bill…” Why should the visit of the President paralyze other peoples’ legitimate routines? Is the President aware of what is going on around him? Does he realize that his aides are alienating him from everyone? In which constitution is it written that economic activities of taxpayers must stop when the President is visiting a neighborhood? Who is behind these ruthless rules? What are they trying to prove?

I do remember that President Buhari, on coming to power, said he would not be worshipping at the Abuja Central Mosque because he did not want to disturb Friday traffic and bring hardship to road users. That was the President people knew and elected. A considerate person. What has changed?

Nigeria has this uncanny ability to transform the simplest or most insignificant activity or intention into its most horrific, nightmarish and unimaginable form. The idea of ferocious security and multiple aides apparently originated from the military era. The military structure probably demands this. Nigerian elected civilians and government officials, have not only kept this military tradition, but have also transformed it into its most hideous version. And in order not to be left behind, church leaders, heads of government and private corporations, bankers and many other self-imagined VIPs have followed suit.

Whatever reasons they may have, this behavior is far from civilized. It gives the wrong impression of desirable public conduct to young Nigerians’ impressionable minds.

It is not only school children that need lessons in Civic Education…

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Nigeria – Land of Wastage By Abimbola Lagunju


Nigeria wastes everything it touches. Wastage is an ideological, political, governance and existential philosophy in our country.

Nigeria wastes lives. See the statistics of infant and underfive mortality rates, pregnancy related deaths, youth and adult death figures. Ill-equipped health facilities, armed bandits, insurgents, bad roads, bad water and security forces take their turns to waste lives. Reading about violent and untimely deaths in the newspapers is a daily menu – building collapses on people, some gun others down, someone throws or detonates a bomb, a tanker spills it fuels and roasts other road users, a mad bus driver somersaults on the road, hospital mismanages a patient  and many other woes that bring life to an end. Lives are wasted at enormous rates in Nigeria. Life almost has zero value. No one cares.

Nigeria wastes its natural resources. No one seems to know exactly how much oil comes out of Nigeria on a daily basis. Whatever revenue is earned is wasted. Gas is flared. Oil is spilled when not stolen. Sea-life, which many countries depend upon, not only for food, but also for income is wasted. Low-grade and formalin-loaded fish is then imported for public consumption. We have no idea of the number of trees felled a day in this country. Our rivers are polluted. Soil erosion is considered normal.

This country wastes even God-given oxygen. No one controls dangerous emissions by factories. Those who live in the neighborhood of cement factories across Nigeria breathe any other thing but oxygen. No one cares. Dust from untarred roads, plied by smoking vehicles of forgotten dates of manufacture, convoyed by numberless motorcycles has relegated oxygen in the cities to history books. No one seems to know what it means to breathe unpolluted air.

Nigeria wastes its own infrastructure. All major infrastructure either built by the States or the Federal Government invariably get stuck before they reach service level. Then they lay waste. Steel companies get built half-way and then get sold off to cannibals, who strip them to the bones. Nigeria is one of the few countries in the world, where telephony has been reduced to a nuisance of dangling wires and broken poles. Nitel was wasted. I was dismayed during a recent visit to Warri to learn that the multi-million dollar infrastructure that Shell Company built in Warri has been abandoned to all types of reptiles after the company pulled out. A monumental waste.

Justice is wasted in Nigeria. Justice is bartered and sold. It has been let out of court rooms and it wanders in the market place, where criminals and the guardians of justice hag over its price. It is handcuffed to the tree of perpetual injunctions and interminable adjournments where it wastes away. Justice is as much a victim as other victims of injustice. In addition to genocide crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the ICC should consider introducing Crime Against Justice in its books.

Nigeria wastes hope. Hope that things will be better in the future is no longer a dream. No one has such dreams any longer. And that is why some hold on tightly to the past. They romanticize the days when it appeared there was hope. Very few people, if any at all believe in the future of Nigeria or the competence of governance. Elections have been reduced to a change of batons between the devil and the Red Sea. Either way, one loses. And that is why many sell their votes for anything tangible during elections. They prefer cash to nebulous campaign promises. Hope is bartered and then slaughtered. The buyers of votes are the murderers of hope. The sellers of hope are their unwary accomplices. Done away with earthly hope of a functional society, the sellers of hope flock to religious houses, hoping for a miraculous way to keep their heads above water in a hopeless society. Their religious leaders, who are in cohorts with the murderers of hope, oblige them. They hook them on heavenly hope and empty their pockets. They take back the sellers’ earnings from the sale of their earthly hope.

Nigeria wastes brains. Parents train their children in universities, polytechnics and technical schools and put them at the disposal of the country. Nigeria ignores the huge potential in these graduates. These smart graduates then export themselves legally or illegally to Europe, the United States and other parts of the world to practice their trade. There in these countries, some of these bright people rise to great heights and we read of them in the newspapers.  However, for every successful one, there are many other Nigerian professionals wasting away doing menial jobs. Nigeria is not bothered. The country is satisfied with the waste. Does the Nigerian government know how many doctors, engineers and other professional we have in other countries?

A Premium Times report of 12th December, 2016 says, “President Muhammadu Buhari has frowned at the high rate of illegal migration of Nigerian youths to European countries through the Mediterranean Sea. The president, who was represented by Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, called for an immediate stop to the action by Nigerians, saying it was unfair to European countries”. Unfair to European countries!?! No Sir! It is unfair to Nigeria, Mr. President. That is brain and muscle waste at its worst! The report further states that “an average of 83 Nigerians crossed illegally from Nigeria to Europe, daily, via the Mediterranean in the first nine months of 2016” and this number does not include those who lost their lives in the crossing. Colossal waste, Mr. President.

Locally here, we read of young people who can refine crude oil in their backyards; we read of people who can make guns; we read of people who can manufacture all sorts of useful implements. What does Nigeria do? They arrest them. They put them in jail till their creativity dies off under bad prison conditions. They waste them in detention. No one bothers to see how these smart and creative people can be put to use for common good. Nigeria prefers to buy guns from Pakistan and other countries that are not in any way better than us. Nigeria prefers to import refined fuel and other finished products.

The leaders of Nigeria wastes goodwill of the citizens. This is our lot. The tale of wastage of goodwill is a long one. Obasanjo came and frittered away all the goodwill he had with an illegal third-term ambition. Goodluck Jonathan, who claimed he didn’t have shoes when he was going to school, emotionalized everyone, including those who did not have shoes as adults to win the election. He was given a goodwill capital which he squandered in no time. He surrounded himself with people who were in brain-rest mode and who didn’t care about wastage. History has made its statement.

Mr. President, I did not sell my hope during the elections that brought you into power. I still have hope and still believe in you. Stop the wastage, Mr. President.


I am probably wasting ink writing all this too….