Article published in The Nation Newspaper
01/09/2010
As a university lecturer and intellectual President Jonathan must allow the nation to benefit from his level of education and his personal agenda. He should also be aware that, while the Amnesty addresses neglect of youth in the Niger Delta, the majority of nelected youth are not in the Niger Delta but around the country-as exemplified by the poor exam results. They are all in dire need and the Jonathan Presidential Address on Nigeria@50 should be a radical departure from the self congratulations at our collective lack of achievement. It should rather include a major youth policy on the creation of a network of small medium and large Youth Centres at ward, LGA and State and federal level in addition to government committemnt to upgrading the national museums from ancient only to ‘Ancient and Modern’ attractive, multi-focused ‘Arts, Culture, Science and Technology’ hothouses of knowledge presented in a new and exciting way for meeting the national youth development agenda and tourism potential. This Jonathan Youth Agenda should continue into the 2011-2015 Agenda.
So Babangida has rejected sound advice at 69. IBB –‘I Beg Babangida’ to leave Nigeria alone and not contest 2011 elections. He fancies himself but Nigeria needs a new clean-break leadership willing to give Nigeria back to all Nigerians, not just the favoured few in a small part of the country. A nation which ignores, or rewrites, its history will have no future. We must build on the past. Babandida is a devastating part of the wobbling foundations of Nigeria. Nigerians should not dig him out of those foundations, represent him as ‘saviour’ or ‘New Improved Babangida’ for the future. Babangida should be left where he left us- in the bitter past, a very painful past of: naira shredding/devaluation, coup-plotting, summary execution, killed railways, SAP and other poor economic initiatives, extended transition to civil rule, annuled election, Giwa parcel bomb, corruption and settlement, dissappeared 1st Gulf War windfall money, no electricity power plan. Special mention must be made of the cancellation of the Lagos State so-called Jakande Rail which was stopped by the military coups of Buhari-Babangida when they combined or separately forced Nigeria to pay $184m as cancellation penalty rather than allow Southern rail development and complete the rail which by now would have been carrying its 1billionth passenger around in Lagos? Ethnic agenda at work! Is this the man we need to develop 2-400kph highspeed rail in Nigeria in general and Southern Nigeria in particular? He is in our past, leave him there. Let no one impose him on our unprotected children as he will be the main danger to our present and will ruin our future, if his past antics in power are to be used as a barometer of his abilities or lack thereof! Most of the 10+m Fellow Nigerians in diaspora, a whole generation of economic and political exiles, are there because of the direct punitive misrule of Babangida. Please teach your voting age children ‘all’ about Babangida and Machiavelli and Maradona before another bomb goes off! And Raymond Dokpesi has followed. Is he dragging AIT into the Babangida quagmire or going it alone? A frontline AIT is not a station you would expect a Babangida to count on. Na wa O! Is Babangida really wealthy beyond Forbes Fortune 500-an unsung very multi-billionaire and backer of many of Nigerian major stockmarket players in successful businesses from cellphone companies to airlines? Or is that lies? Is it true that everything we do contributes to Babangida’s growing wealth –from phone calls to putting fuel into your generator to fight the perpetual military induced darkness? If true, then Dokpesi should advise him to ‘buy love’ with a Babangida Foundation $10,000 cheque for library books for each of the 70,000 schools in Nigeria as a Nigeria@50 ‘compensation’ present. I pray Babangida will not celebrate Babangida@70 in Asorock. Minna is Ok! In 2011, Nigeria deserves a fresh, Obama-like, Carmeron-like, clean start and does not deserve this reverse to reserve genarals, after years of military darkness –the Buhari, Babangida Abacha -BAD- Dark Ages. Are there no other Nigerians offering to deliver Nigeria from the collective clutches of the ex-military clinging to the political stage. Some have presented themselves. President Jonathan may also. Is he the man for the job? So far he is making the right noises largely put together by his team. But what does the real Jonathan think? We enjoyed his outing abroad shortly after he took over. What will he do with railways, with the 20 LGA in Lagos vs the 44 in Kano? Does he know that South Africa’s President Zuma is in China negotiating a highspeed rail while our own myopic and ethnic stranglers of the railway are happy at 25-50kilometres per ‘year’? They deprived our ports of ‘railway evacuation of goods’ an essential key to being designated ‘An International Sea Port’ and a reason why goods are diverted to neighbouring countries. Now the long term ‘powerholders of Nigeria’ now ‘suddenly’ see the need for railways to ‘lift’ their goods into the hinterland from ships that will ply the newly dredged Niger River. Having dragged back Lagos and Port Harcourt Ports for years, they are suddenly ‘seeing the Northern light’ and using federal might to develop intra and intercity rail in the North. Will they now allow interstate and intrastate lateral rail in the South? Serious questions for a seriously good President, not Babangida!