Article published in The Nation Newspaper
14/07/2010
Congrats to Spain for winning the World Cup. Netherlands are not losers, just second in the world. Now can we get back to our old life? ‘Forex falls by $1.7b’ news flash. Beware, we are backsliding into debt. The N711m for 2540 science kits among 10,000 secondary schools would have been better if boosted to 10,000 sets immediately. A country willing to spend N10b on fireworks etc for a 50th Anniversary party should have N3b for landmark science kits for all its schools. The coming 50th anniverary is a powerful testimony to the people, not the politics of Nigeria. It is the resilient people, each a ‘Citizen Nigeria’ surviving without support and under un-endurable odds who have been burdened with the trauma of being born Nigerian.
Can you point out ten good things that happen to Nigerians by virtue of being born Nigerian. Is it the wonderful schooling, the wonderful university system, the wonderful housing, the wonderful road and rail network, the wonderful sports system, the wonderful pension scheme, the wonderful security network, the health programme, the wonderful power supply network or the wonderful political system that marks Nigeria out above all other countries and makes its citizens so enthusiastic in ‘Praise of Nigeria@50’?
What is our claim to fame? It is backbone of ‘Citizen Nigeria’ who has somehow survived the political failure of two generations without revolution, without hating every politician, without taking the law into their hands, with great restraint. Our children are the ‘Generator Generation’. Our elders are the ‘wonderful Pension Line Generation’. Our professionals are the ‘Ignored Generation’ while our politicians are our ‘Self-Seeking Generation’. And we collectively are the ‘Road Generation’ having been denied the opportunity to become the ‘Railway Generation’ by the powerful long haulage lobby. Surely if the long haulage lobby can be attracted to ‘buy into’ the railways perhaps they will ‘allow’ the railways to happen in Nigeria? Anything is better than being stuck along with 500,000 ‘Citizen Nigeria’ in 25,000 vehicles on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway last Sunday from 12.30 -6.20pm by broken-down overloaded long-haul trailers, with six feeble FRSC personnel pretending to solve the problem. Oh for the Buhari/Babangida killed Jakande Rail and a low or high speed train between Lagos and Ibadan like in the old days and like in most civilised, citizen servicing countries. I still remember 1968 or 9 doing Ibandan to Zaria by rail for NUGA Games in 1 ½ days. In the interest of Nigeria’s future, can nobody wrestle the railways from anti-railway lobby?
Life is so very serious and we play so much with the life and death of our people being injured and dying needlessly. Our road accident level is among the highest in the world -35,000/ annum, the same as USA with ten times the cars and thrice the population. Add 350,000 injured in okada ‘attacks’ not ‘accidents’. We still in 2010 have over 100 newspaper political congratulatory pages this week at the citizens expense of N40,000,000 when schools still have no books even as we wonder at the zero reading culture and 2% NECO pass. Soon there will be another excursion ‘abroad’ to see with ‘shock and awe’ the massive public spectacle buildings, monuments, museums and exhibitions built by corporate giants who build nothing here. They will return home to our nothingness –mere empty ‘gardens and parks’ in Abuja leaving a huge empty ‘GAP’ in the brains of our children.
A nation does not need to have a war to be ‘war torn’. Visit any government school to see ‘war torn’. Visit the Ibadan end of the Expressway or the Ore –Benin road to see ‘war torn’. Nigeria’s terrible triumverate of corruption- corporate, political and ethnic greed- combined to eliminate a generation of Nigerians from development. Does the ‘leadership’ know the deaths, damage and disasters they have combined to cause in families across Nigeria by their greed and inactions. Little wonder the roads do not last a week. If our children did not die in neglected pregnancy or childbirth and survived to enter school they became cretinous in empty schools lacking every vestige of ‘standard’ education from books, libraries, sports equipment and even well motivated teachers. A school without books is not a school. Remember that 99% of our teachers have never held an encyclopaedia or good dictionary so what can they impart to your children? How many Nigerian children, Nigerian by an accident of birth, have been unable to achieve their full health, brain and emotional potential because of a lack of adequately funded facilities due to a lack of funds – stolen and stored in forgotten or inaccessable Swiss and ‘ offshore’ banks. The Nigerian student is supposed to miraculously learn in an environment lacking in the four primary pillars of support for education –books, picture posters and models and exhibitions in science and technology. A picture is worth 1000 words except in Nigeria.
Recently Nigeria’s FAAN allowed the cutting up abandoned aeroplanes to be made into plates instead of Aviation Museum prized exhibits. That is the reality of Nigeria for youth. No one gives a toss about you, youth and children! Nigeria must rely on ‘Citizen Nigeria’, the backbone of Nigeria and not NASS or LGAs for survival. Indeed LGAs ‘staff’ are now flagrant robbers and oppressors of the people at illegal checkpoints countrywide even inside Ibadan City. Visitors and businessmen beware! And then politicians want to do party for CountdowNigeria@50?