Article published in The Nation Newspaper
03/03/2010
The ongoing Federal Ministry of Education Review Summit 1-5TH March will be another global warming ‘yabbies’ talk shop and waste if within three months the 70,000 schools do not each receive the 1st of ‘ANNUAL LIBRARY GRANT’ funds for or a LIBRARY BOX OF 300 BOOKS costing N200,000 to reverse the 20% pass rate and low functional literacy in youth.A school is not a school without a library.
After Haiti claimed 220,000, Chile’s earthquake claimed 1,000+ and Europe has floods. Nigeria’s earthquake is ‘Politics, incompetence and Corruption’ claiming many unsung lives with MASS MISERY on 100m+ Nigerians daily condemned to suffering. Burundi has an election in June 2010 and has a published voters register of 3 million, compared to Nigeria’s 50 million+ qualified voters out of a population ‘wildly’ estimated at 100-150million. However we should study Burundi quickly and start our own registration update early to avoid the Anambra voter disenfranchisement where only 15.4% of the 1.8m registered voters actually voted. Of course some of the 1.8m registered voters in Anambra were mere ‘numbers’. We must have the first ingredient of a Free And Fair Election, ‘FAFE’, an honest and regularly updated voters register of those attaining 18 and those leaving or dying. To give Anambra a voters register from another state is no mistake but criminal. All documents and registers should be displayed beforehand and signed-for down a chain of command. Presentation of wrong registers was deliberate and with criminal intent to disenfranchise Fellow Nigerians. The EFCC or ICPC can easily trace, prosecute and jail the culprits for POLITICAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT & TERRORISM -economic and corruption crimes. Wayward electoral officials must be jailed as dismissal of corrupt, murderous police and criminal public officials without prosecution encourages crime and corruption.
President –Yar’ Adua, we pray for you and love you BUT if you cannot lead, do not allow us to be pushed with unseen hands into an abyss of poisonous political proportions. The multi-ethnic P-YA fan club and its sympathy is shrinking daily at this 90 day hide-and-seek, midnight movement, in and out of ambulances, never seen in public- Howard Hughes style, fly-in-by-night endgame. This is about more than P-YA and Acting P GL J. It is about – RESPECT FOR OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS AND EQUITABLE POWER BROKERAGE IN NIGERIA. If the constitution is changing let us again consider ‘A SINGLE 4-5 YEAR TERM’ for President ,VP, Senators, House of Representatives, and Chairman and members of LGAs to allow more performers on the political stage. ‘Age’ and ‘experience’ are cunning exclusion traps in Nigeria to disenfrachise others. The excuse of continuity is lame –continuity of incompetence and corruption? Second terms have brought nothing and incumbent bufoonery brings no VAT –Value Added To the long suffering citizenry. Nigeria is filled with good suffering people disenfranchised by the ‘FATTENED COWS OF POLITICAL CARCASSES’, the entrenched recycled clique of ‘the favoured few’. We have a glut of good ideas and suffering Nigeria urgently needs new faces and ideas, replaced frequently. Look at Fashola –a Mandela Moment which would have been lost if we had three terms. ONE TERM IS IDEAL-get in- work – get out. Change is good, frequent change is better. If not, why a four year term in the first place? FOUR YEARS- NON-RENEWABLE.
The President may or may not be on oxygen but the citizens are on African sun superheated carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from 1 million okada and generators substituting for the 100% power failure and no public transport and railways. There is a malicious rumour that Nigeria is planning TO EXPORT ALL ITS NIGER DELTA GAS OFFSHORE, TURN AROUND AND RE-IMPORT IT AT INTERNATIONAL PRICES. Imagine government shouting about subsidising gas prices!
Thinking point: If Buhari or Babangida had not given Danjuma et al oil well[s] now worth to Danjuma alone N170,000,000,000 or N170billion, several states budgets, and instead given the oil wells to the local communities then perhaps Nigeria would have avoided the Niger Delta War. Did Buhari ‘give’ any to Niger Delta citizens?
Nigeria is ‘blessed’ with a deaf devious goverment and a newly defiant people thirsting for good governance and 24 hour power. We have political power without performance – a prolonged preganancy promising a baby but without delivery or delivery of a stillbirth again and again like an Abiku. Remember Nigeria without cellphones? Unbearable now! Imagine Nigeria with 24 hour power. Paradise gained! The Federal Ministry of Information is calling for a website design for Nigeria@50 ‘celebration’. We do not want a ‘celebration’ come 1-10-2010. Power is a must, like the air we breath. WE MUST HAVE 24 HOUR POWER to ‘celebrate’ 1-10-2010. We have useless political power and ethnic distribution of electrical power. Does it make sense that ¾ of imports of diesel and petrol and 5,000 tankers are used exclusively in order to suppy Nigeria’s 100,000Mw deficit in power supply through the 1,000,000 generators nationwide. Nigeria is in a major power and transport jam caused by powerful ethnic monopolies which can only be solved by GL J spearheading efforts to DECENRALISE ELECTRIC POWER AND RAILWAYS to the states. The states are the real custodians of the citizens and must count their people correctly. CountdowNigeria@50- 195 demand government provides 24 HOUR POWER before it ‘celebrates’ 1-10-2010. Begin a DECADE OF DEMOCRATIC DECENTRALISATION AND INTER-ETHNIC RESPECTor DIE. Nigeria will not survive in a centralised state. Ag President GL J should lead this charge for change.