Article published in The Nation Newspaper
14/10/2009
Let us, all 100million+ of us, loudly shout the ‘Countdown to Nigeria@50’ to remind the politicians that there is much more to be done by the October 1st 2010 party. The ASUU strike is suspended for two weeks. But the strike is not about ASUU but the marginalisation of the teacher and the ignoring of the Nigerian professional first to the military and now by the politician who insults us in their style, salaries, services and actions. Yet there is no known link in the world between fatter salaries for politicians and being among the top 20 economies.
A politician manages or manipulates or murders or money launders a way through a ‘selection’ or an election. Then that political person immediately can earn in one month what is earned in a year or two by a professional teacher who sacrifices 20+ years and to study, research and teaching the youth, the nation’s future. The politicians arrogate to themselves stupifying ‘expenses’, ‘grants’, and ‘projects’ and then decide to allocate a ‘pension’ after four years of overpaid partial work when the pension lines are long and deadly.
What is the Nigerian politican and what is the impact of the Nigerian politician? A burden or a beacon for 50 years? He or she tell us how much we should earn and cuts our budgets, denies us scientific advances, ignoring the massed professional opinion and advice of thousands of neglected Nigeria’s experts. The Nigerian politician often rejects the truth. This has left Nigeria’s infrastructure in disgraceful ruin. Bad politicians mean bad roads, education, hospitals and high mortaility rates. Doctors do not build or equip hospitals. Engineers do not build good roads. Teachers do not build libraries or equip laboratories. All professionals have all lost their powers to the politician, ignorant or biased. The politician pays his wife more than a lecturer but refuses to even keep the Ore Benin Expressway and Ogere on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway open. Imagine a country with 70,000 empty schools with no libraries and where it can take 12 hours to travel 120km and professionals have to strike to get their legitimate demands met. Imagine a country which offers 6,000 Mw of electricty –perhaps to its 100+million citizens in need of 100,000Mw. Imagine a country where pothole filling is ‘nuclear physics’ and railway is beyond ‘nuclear physics’.
Imagine a country where hospitals lack emergency life-saving equipment but where the President’s wife raises N20billion for a single cancer hospital in Abuja instead of raising N20b for cancer diagnostic equipment and treatment in 100 existing hospitals in Nigeria. Imagine a country which NYSC servers seeking daily bread find deadly reward after a life time of struggle. They are brutally killed by having their heads cut off, their bodies burnt or being raped by their host community, not once, not four times and the President does not visit, or send his wife or VP to visit the families to console the inconsolable parents and siblings for such a heart-rending national sacrifice. Imagine a country where murderers kill the great and the good and the poor and the police can do nothing or do nothing and have not got the simple skills of ‘preserving the crime scene’ or equipment or technics for even 100 year old ‘basic’ Sherlock Holmes type forensic investigation with adequate separation of the individual suspects to get evidence. Imagine a county where the police is infamous for taking bribes at 1000 checkpoint nationwide or twist you in knots if you do not ‘play ball’.
Imagine a country where the road transport workers are feared more for their part in political mayhem than loved for their safe transport prowess. Imagine a country where an amnesty reveals such a huge cache of weapons. Imagine a country where political incompetence and corruption are endemic while the lifeblood- tens of millions of youth- are undereducated, unemployed and unemployable. Imagine a country where the commonest long stay hospital admission is okada accident victims. Add your own ‘imagine’ and pray there will be changes in the next 365 -14 days. Time waits for no Nigerian politician –eleven months is more than enough time to have put N200,000 books in a ‘library box’ each of the 70,000 schools –cost N14b or one quarter the cost of the 50 km Airport-Abuja 10 lane road. What hope for Nigeria is there when we have 30m children in schools without libraries and 1million teachers who have never had an encyclopaedia or visted a Science Museum-all mundane in the top 20 economies? Which of those countries do we hope to knock off their pedistal? Guinness celebrates 250 years of brewing. Why does it not give out 25,000 copies of Guinness Book of Records to Nigerian schools to ‘cerebrate’? Books, text and novels, laboratory equipment and well eqipped teachers will equip our youth, nothing more and they can be done by 1st October 2010. That is what the ASUU strike is about. Return the dignity to the citizen, to the Nigerian professional and empower the youth by making our schools and universiites, roads, railway and security systems among the Top 20 Countries in the world by 2010.
UK profesionals say the UK will need to train 43,000 engineers in 10-15 years to be cutting edge. Not rebranding o! How many engineers do we need in Nigeria to rebrand Ogere and the Ore Benin road. Only 341 days and who is counting? Who’s working?