Enough of this monkey business

By 

Jide Osuntokun  

The Year 2000 is gradually coming to an end and for us Nigerians, it is a year of mixed feelings and results. It brings to my mind what Proverbs 13:12 says, that is "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick but when the desire cometh it is a tree of life".

We had hoped that by now we should begin to enjoy democratic dividends as everybody had promised on the restoration of democracy. But we are far from even beginning the journey to the democratic Eldorado that we were promised. What we have at the centre is the Executive that is almost in a mortal struggle with the Legislature. The result seems to me to be inertia and non-performance by both the Executive and the Legislature. In spite of the unusually high prices the world is buying Nigeria’s crude oil, they do not seem to be translated into the reduction of the general frustration and immiseration noticeable all over Nigeria. Plans for improvement of electricity supply have not been translated into regular supply of energy necessary not only for industrialisation but some reasonable expectation of comfort.

Fuel supply remains fitful and one is never sure when fuel will be available. The result is panic buying all the time. I had to convert my car from diesel engine to regular gasoline at considerable cost to my personal exchequer. If I had not done this, I would be immobile because diesel has joined the ranks of "essential commodities". Nobody that I know has water. In fact in Lagos and Ibadan where I live, we have given up on the water corporations of both States. The interesting thing, to put it mildly is that we keep getting crazy bills running into thousands of naira from NEPA. And when you go to them to pay whatever you can afford, then the smart alecs will turn round to demand five hundred naira penalty for "reconnection" fee even though you have not been disconnected. What on earth would give me a N17,000 in a month without previous indebtedness when I only have light three or four hours daily and I am just an ordinary academic reading and writing and not using NEPA’s power to bake bread for the masses!

The great tragedy of Nigeria is that we have nobody to go for quick arbitration. Certainly not the courts. A wise man told me in Lagos that rather than hire a lawyer, one would be better served if one took the money one would have expended on the lawyer straight to the judge in his chambers. That way, you will get what you want. Not that I am digressing. Has it ever occurred to anybody that strange as it may sound, the Sharia courts may be quicker in dispensing their own variant of justice than the so-called modern judiciary? The sad thing about the Sharia courts is the extension of their jurisdiction to criminal matters and imposing decapitation of hands, legs and necks with cutlasses and swords as the Kano courts have recently expressed their intention to do, too.

I sometimes wonder why the federal government is not doing as well as we all had expected. I mean in spite of his faults, Obasanjo is probably the best President we can produce for now. The man is experienced. He has even been there before. This uniquely places him at an advantage vis-a-vis any other President of Nigeria in recent times. He is also well read and intellectually sharp, perhaps a little bit conceited, feeling he knows it all and surrounding himself with yesterday men, but this is not enough reason for the apparent failure and inertia on the energy front.

Recently, his Vice-President, whose loyalty to him is increasingly being questioned, announced to the whole world that within two weeks, 300,000 barrels of Nigeria’s crude oil were stolen by bunkerers and spirited to the European spot market for sale. We are also told that this has been going on for long time. This incident was first raised by the Managing Director of Shell. The Chairman of Revenue Mobilisation Commission, Hamman Tukur also said some of the oil companies had not for years made full disclosure of the number of oil wells in the country. A federal government permanent secretary in a related ministry to the Ministry of petroleum also said at a recent conference I was privileged to attend that, we really do not know and have not known how much oil Nigeria is and has been producing. Now, should any reasonable man not ask what are all the security outfits in Nigeria doing? We know that during the Abacha regime, they were jailing, exiling and detaining and killing Yoruba people instead of securing the economic lifeline of the country. Having worked in government, I also know the level of intelligence of our so-called intelligence officers. Intelligence is a serious business and it ought to occur to our government that intelligence officers do not necessarily have to come from a favoured and politically dominant and dominating part of the country. We are really in trouble if we cannot, as it were, protect our economic lifeline from rogues and buccaneers. It will not surprise anyone if the military men of yesteryears are involved in the economic brigandage alluded to earlier. One just has to listen to Generals accusing each other at the Oputa Panel to know the way this country has been run and run down in the last 40 years. General Jeremiah Useni has publicly told us that all members of the PRC during Abacha’s regime were each allocated 25,000 barrels per day of Nigeria’s crude oil for sale. Is it therefore surprising why President Reagan in reaction to our plea for debt write-off threatened to release the names of one hundred Nigerians who can easily pay off all the debts we are owing? In a way, I feel sorry for Obasanjo for being President at a time like this. How many war fronts can he contain at the same time?

General Colin Powell’s military strategy is that when and if America goes to war, the goal it wishes to attain must be well defined, resources must be made available and forces must be concentrated to overawe the enemy and politicians must give free hand to the military. Using this strategy against the enemies of this Republic, where is the Army that Obasanjo will use? Is it the police or the judiciary? What will be his goal? There is an anti-corruption Act of Parliament which has received Presidential assent. What has become of it?

The moment a thief is arrested, he will immediately say he is being persecuted because he is a Yoruba man, Igbo man or Hausa. I remember a former Managing Director of NNPC who was arraigned before a magistrate court for stealing. On being granted bail, he was carried shoulder high by his village people who publicly said, why is it that it is only a Rivers man who was being asked to explain the source of his wealth when Hausa people have stolen millions without anybody asking them to explain the source of their sudden wealth. This was all in the public and I believe this is the dilemma facing Obasanjo. Corruption cannot be eradicated as long as those who stole money in the past are allowed to keep it. We are gradually approaching a situation of incipient rebellion by the masses who are living in abject poverty in the midst of plenty. Recently, Orji Kalu, the illiterate Governor of Abia State accused Obasanjo of non-performance and that if nothing had happened to improve federal roads in his State by March 2001, he will bulldoze the tollgates in his State. I think the governor’s noise is the case of pot calling the kettle black. What has he done to ameliorate the sufferings of his own people? Was he not part of the Abacha crowd? Freedom is not licence and he should be more decorous in speaking to the President of Nigeria. This brings me to the non-performance of most of the governors in their various States. With the exception of a few governors who have been up and doing, there is almost a silent absence of governments at the State level except when we are jolted by the piercing noise of their sirens. Oyo State is perhaps the worst of all the States of the federation. Ibadan is littered with uncollected garbage. The roads are mended with sand even during dry season. The streets are filthy and but for the mercy of God viral epidemic could have broken out as a result of the uncaring attitude of the State government. Lamidi Adesina should take a trip to Akure to see how urban roads should be. He will be pleasantly surprised that he cannot fool us forever with his mantra of free education which is just mere coded words to say each pupil will receive a few exercise books. The state governments need to do more to justify their election. The federal government is just too remote from our problems and we really cannot blame all the failings in the system on the federal government.

What about the local government councillors being paid 120,000 naira per month for doing nothing. Have we really gone mad? Why will anybody recommend such salaries for local councillors in 774 unwieldy and unviable administrations whose configuration followed no rational basis? Take for example, my own local government made up of Okemesi, Aramoko, Ido, Ajindo, Erio, Ikogosi, Erijiyan, with two first-class Obas, such as the Alara of Aramoko and Owa-Oye of Okemesi and with a population of over 400,000 and compare this with Ikenne and Odogbolu local governments. There are probably worst comparisons in other parts of the country whose creation depended on the Nigerian philosophy of "man know man".

My local government chairman in Ibadan is a well-educated man. When he was running for office he campaigned on the platform of being an engineer and an educated man. Since he was elected he has not done anything anywhere in our local government. We sent a delegation to him that our culvert had collapsed and that he should help. He retorted that construction of culverts was not in his agenda. Three of us in the area contributed money and constituted ourselves into a local government and did what had to be done. There are just too many examples of gross mismanagement and outright dereliction of duty. What is to be done? I think the federal government should call all the governors and chairmen in council to discuss how to declare a state of economic siege. Within six months of such declarations we must see noticeable changes in our lives.

The much awaited energy improvement must be made to happen. The States and local governments must be directed to embark on rural and urban renewal, particularly through road rehabilitation and reconstruction. The primary schools in most parts of Nigeria must be rebuilt with simple but elegant structures.

The Awolowo mud-built schools of the 1950s should be replaced. It is about time. There are millions of young people who want to work and cannot find work to do. Let us put our cement factories into full production so that we can rebuild these simple structures in our primary and secondary schools as well as simple houses for our people. Let us create wealth by working. It used to be said in Europe that Africans were lazy drones who sat under the fruit trees expecting ripe fruits to fall into their laps. It is high time we dispelled this myth by climbing the trees to collect the fruits.

I am sick of complaining. The year 2001 must be a make or break year. Our people are tired and discouraged. There are too many rickety vehicles on the roads causing deaths and damage to travellers. When for goodness sake are we going to be able to travel by train or when are we going to have urban and municipal buses? Those old enough, remember, we used to have these in Lagos and in some of our urban centres. Why is poor Ghana able to do this and Nigeria is not able to provide minimal services to her people. If all the governments of Nigeria can just concentrate on provision of power, water, infrastructure, education and health services and leave the rest to the private sector, this country will be a better country. In fact, what we need is investment friendly-environment and even what I have enumerated above can be made available at reasonable cost to us by the private sector. I am a believer in the concept of government is best when it governs least, this brings me to the bureaucracy. This body sees itself not as a facilitator of government policies but as a hurdle over which few shall stride to get things done. In spite of government’s declaration, it still takes, sometimes, a year to register companies.

Why on earth must every company be registered in Abuja? Why not in the six zones in the country? Why this over centralisation and over concentration in one place? Our problems are legion. Who can solve them? This is why there is a need to talk among ourselves as soon as possible. There are too many local governments and States. There are just too many! Ekiti State used to be just one local divisional council. Parts of Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Ogun, Edo, Delta and parts of Bayelsa used to be one region. Imagine how much can be saved if this crowd of States and local governments can be down sized.

Where do we begin to tackle all our accumulated problems? Certainly we will not solve these problems during the life of this Obasanjo administration or even in our times. But let us begin as President J.F. Kennedy would have said. We should look at the structure of government. Is what we have the best we can construct? There is a need for restructuring. There is a need for a new constitutional conference to fashion out six governments out of the present crowd.

We also do not need more than 200 local governments. Then there must be devolution of powers to the constituent zones or regions. We must also embrace the principles of fiscal federalism meaning resource control and autonomous revenue generation. Then we must go back to the era of development planning and not the innocuous "rolling plan" of yesteryears. A rolling stone they say gathers no moss. The so-called rolling plan was a euphemism for not planning at all. Why the military was rolling the national plan they were making individual and independent plans for their own greedy future. With sound planning, fiscal federalism and restructuring, will come the era of hard work and competition. The present comprador economy of commissions taking without work will be replaced by the principle of whoever does not work shall not eat. If we are working hard, there would be no time to plan evil of ethnic cleansing and committing ethnic murder. We would be too busy and too tired to notice that the person living next to us is from another ethnic group. We must also choose good teams at all levels to effectuate all our plans. But what do we do right now to make an impression. The answer is blowing in the wind. Change personnel of government and change methods and strategy of service delivery. Move away from two much politicking about 2003. Who knows who will be alive tomorrow not to talk about 2003? We also need to recover all monies looted by all not just the Abacha family. There is too much easy money in many hands.

After this, we need apologies from those who in the past have made life difficult for Nigerians. These propitiations need to be made before God will heal this land. Obasanjo and the governors need our prayers and our support. But they must earn them, right now their performances leaves much to be desired. Am I hopeful that our problems will be solved one day? Well as a Christian that is what my faith dictates. Our position as the foremost black nation compels us to try and justify the fact that we are not creation freaks and that we belong to the family of Homo sapiens and not just hominids, half apes and half men. Rudyard Kipling once described Africans as half devils half children. I hope we are not. But we need to prove that we are not specimens of arrested human development. We need to join the ranks of the rest of humanity who do not have to write episodes on provision of such ordinary human needs as water and electricity. Our youth needs to be given hope. Right now, our children are scattered all over the world doing jobs that nobody wants to do. They are prostituting themselves in the streets of Italian towns and selling themselves into slavery all over the world including even North and South Africa. We have an emergency in our hands but our governments do not seem to know. The handwriting is on the wall and it says the fire next time!

It is not easy to be a prophet. I prophesied the present situation during Abacha’s time and it earned me a near-death experience in his DMI gulag. I pray that our democratic regime survives. It can only survive if we are all stakeholders in this present dispensation. We will be stakeholders when we have something to lose if the regime collapses. We do not have to be office holders, but democracy must usher in better living conditions for our people before we can be joint inheritors of what Kwame Nkrumah calls the political kingdom which he asked us to seek. The present regime of government by politicians for politicians is not what we all sacrificed so much to get. We need to say this so that politicians in the Executives, the Legislators all over the land would realise how precarious their hold on power is. We, the people would call them into judgement when the time comes. Nigerians are no longer fools.

Enough of this monkey business!

Mr. Osuntokun is a Lagos based jounalist