Patitos Post

We need to care for our youth by showing concern for their education and the development of their mind. For too long they have been at home idling away through no fault of theirs and we all know that the idle mind is the devils playground. The other day the police were on T.V proudly parading some undergraduates who had been caught robbing a neighbourhood in Lagos and while this is bad,  the truth is that these young men would most likely have not engaged in such a practice if they had something positive to occupy their minds. The minds of our youths are currently wasting away and every responsible adult must speak up and advise the government to address ASUU’s grievances chiefly because a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Education is a necessity and we can meet ASUU’s demands if we curb luxuries like convoys. A brand new car costs about $25k and there are an average of 5 cars per convoy. The President, governors, LG Chairmen,  their deputies and their wives, minister/commissioners, Legislators, heads of parastatals,   agencies and  military/paramilitary personnel have convoys totaling about 700 (I’m being conservative here. That’s 5 cars x 700 convoys x $25k= $88million which is about what it takes to meet ASUU’s demand. Wouldn’t we benefit more as a nation if we had less convoys and more opened universities?

If Nigeria is ever to attain to greatness, we have to prioritze our needs. We also have to discipline ourselves such that we can delay gratification. We can not eat our seed money as we do. Some weeks ago, I was reading about how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is to spend 4 billion naira on furnishing its offices. This four billion can be likened to a seed. When we spend it on something as non generative as furnishing offices that already have furniture we are actually eating our seeds. If on the other hand we spend this money on improving our educational facilities, we will ensure the development of the minds of our youth and thus improve our future work force and ultimately gain much more than the 4 billion invested.

This apathy shown by the federal government to the crisis in the education sector is one of the reasons Nigerians have lost any hope and trust in those that govrn them and this loss of trust is also responsible for the apathy Nigerians display towards paying taxes. As an individual you will never give money to someone you do not trust. Since Nigerians do not trust the government they have a hard time paying taxes. I honestly believe that when Nigerians begin to see a government that is judicious in utilizing the scarce resources available, the rate of tax evasion will reduce.

The government will do well to begin to curb its luxuries such as the billions in esta codes paid to civil servants for unnecessary travels, the billions budgeted for ’security votes’ for the president and governors for which they do not have to account for and the billions spent on sports fiestas like the upcoming FIFA tournament scheduled for Nigeria which we can ill afford. Rather at this critical juncture where revenues from oil are drying up and our population is increasing in geometric proportions, Nigeria has to be keen to spend its scarce resources in developing her youth to be better able to compete in the global market place where the manual worker is gradually being replaced with the knowledge worker.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

It is a sad thing that members of the Nigerian armed forces are used to rig elections and intimidate voters on election day. They do this and at the end of the day a government emerges with a fraudulent mandate, but that is only half the story. One would think that having helped in getting the government of the day elected, members of the armed forces would be the better for it. But is this the case?

The case of the 28 soldiers recently sentenced to life in prison reminds us of the futility of encouraging election fraud. I can confidently say that a genuinely and democratically elected government will never endorse the injustice that was meted out on these soldiers. Punishing them for protesting the disappearance of their allowances while nothing is done to the man (or men) who perpetrated this act. Now consider how many more soldiers will face a similar fate as these soldiers who protested the embezzlement of their wages.

Not only do I feel sorry for these soldiers, I also feel sorry for former president Obasanjo. What has he got to gain for forcing this government down the throat of Nigerians? Not only has the present administration reversed his policies including the laudable ones amongst them, the government has gone one step further to cut him to size by limiting his influence in the PDP and national politics. His political enemies are being given sensitive appointments to spite him, and governors who were almost his nemesis in the PDP 2003 primaries and were pursued by the EFCC now form the kitchen cabinet of the present administration and he is gradually fading into political irrelevance.

Now I daresay that had chief Obasanjo allowed for a free and fair election, most of his current travails would have been avoided. He would have been honoured as the father of modern Nigeria and he would sleep easy at night. But what does he face today? This is why it is so futile to stiffle the people’s voice. Yes the people will lose, but you the usurpers partner will lose also because there is no honour among thieves. My readers will notice that what is happening to Obasanjo is also happening to almost all ex-PDP governors. The only ex- governors who are enjoying peace of mind like Bola Tinubu are those who allowed for free and fair elections.

Certainly chief Obasanjo who presided over Nigeria’s exit from the Paris club by paying Nigeri’a debts can not be happy as this government goes willy nilly acquiring more debts. Can Obasanjo honestly say that he is happy that the privatization of Nitel has been reversed. Can he truly be happy that the impressive foreign reserves he amassed are being depleted in alarming proportions? Can he be said to be happy that the NIPP power projects that he instituted are being abandoned with turbines from GE worth billions of dollars rotting away at our ports as we speak? No he can not be happy, in fact it will torture him because his legacy is being torn to shred and if nothing at all chief Obasanjo is a man who is conscious, very conscious of his place in history. This is what you get for aiding electoral malpractices.

Today Nigeria is almost at war in the Niger Delta, but what thinking people must ask is how did we get to this point? The answer again leads us to election rigging. It has been reported again and again and most recently established by the Justice Kayode Eso panel in River State that these militants were armed by desperate politicians mostly from the PDP for the purpose of rigging elections. Now after ‘winning’ their elections these politicians expected these unemployed youths to hold on to their arms and do nothing until the next election. How wrong they were!

Not only did these youths morph into ‘militants’ many of them have turned into kidnappers and their targets are the very politicians who armed them as well as their families. In fact many politicians have had to relocate their families to Lagos or Abuja for fear of kidnappers! This is sad but at the same time this is poetic justice. This reflects the oft repeated proverb that if you get a tiger to fight your enemies, when the fight is done and there are no more enemies to fight, the tiger will face you!

Now when you consider the traditional institutions in Nigeria, the emirates in the North and the kingdoms in the South, you begin to see how some of these referred royal fathers are treated with indignity by governors and when you consider the governors treating them this way, one and all they are governors who have questionable mandates. Imagine governors talking down at royal fathers and threatening them with dethronement or withholding of allowances or some other punitive measure.These royal fathers being so treated have my sympathy, but should also remember that a child allowed to steal by his father does not go stealthily at night to rob, but will march in broad day light and breaks into a house and when he becomes rich from stealing will end up disrespecting his elders. The fact remains that a governor genuinely elected by the people of the state will think twice before treating a royal father so poorly because he knows this will incur the wrath of the people and he will pay the price at the next election. But where a governor was rigged into office why would he care what the people think.

The same goes for elder statesmen in our states who are having running battles with their respective governors. Some have even had the indignity of having their houses demolished for the purposes of building non existing roads as a way of spiting them and cutting them to size. Elders have to understand that a she goat does not suffer in her parturition while an elder is in the house.

The bottom line here is that we all pay the price for electoral fraud. One way or the other it will eventually catch up with us because what goes around comes around. It actually pays us more to have free and fair elections. Anything short of that will keep us perpetually a feeble giant of Africa trying to catch up to a nimble midget like Ghana because as we know, size matters but it is better to be small and called mighty than to be big and called…………. I can not even complete the sentence because it saddens me. My fellow Nigerians we have to wake up and realize that we are our own salvation. God has given us everything we need to stand but we also have the choice to fall and what a great fall we have fallen.

I sometimes am so saddened by the state Nigeria finds itself that I am almost moved to tears. But emotions can not solve Nigeria’s problems, we need positive action from all lovers of Nigeria and we need it now.

Once again God bless Nigeria.

PU.

Yesterday I wrote that Ribadu had been vindicated by the sentence from Mrs. Clinton to wit that ‘the EFCC has fallen off in the last two years’. When did Ribadu leave the EFCC? Two years ago. It is not that I/we need Mrs. Clinton to come and enlighten us of this fact. As a matter of fact, the very first post on this blog was on the subject of Ribadu and I said that Nigeria would be worse off without him. But the reason I mention Mrs. Clinton’s statement is because of the wide coverage it enjoyed which goes to show that indeed a prophet is without honour in his own country. As I also said on my facebook page, any administration coming after Yar’adua’s ought to apologize to Nuhu Ribadu, reinstate the rank that Obasanjo gave him and restore him to the headship of the EFCC (if he will accept) and then get him to build the institution until it is strong enough to survive his exit (which is the ultimate goal).

Expectedly many emailed me asking why I held this view and my answer is this. To do a proper analysis of an individual in a leadership position, you need to compare what existed before him, what happened during his tenure and what obtains after his departure. Ribadu delivered results and not activity which is what the present EFCC is doing. Yesterday (Aug 20th, 2009)  Farida Waziri the new EFCC chairperson  stated that Mrs. Clinton’s comments had been ‘overtaken by events’ apparently referring to her agents arrests of some bank chief executives and their principal officers. But what she failed to tell us is that the whole episode of the bank CEOs is a direct result of the CBN governor Sanusi Lamido’s initiative and the EFCC is only being reactionary and tagging along. While it is too early to celebrate their arrests, but if any glory is to be gleaned for that, such glory should be directed at the CBN governor, not Waziri’s EFCC.

Of course corrupt persons will also say that Ribadu was used to fight Obasanjo’s enemies, but the question to ask is has Ribadu ever gone after innocent people? Of course NOT! Under this young man there was a fear of law enforcement. Nobody, I mean nobody was unafraid of him. He had the audacity to go after powerful ex-rulers and governors. He went after barons of the 419 syndicate. Such was his influence that it is on record that he prevented a man whom he suspected for one reason or the other from ascending to the office of the Presidency. Much as Dora Akinyuli tries to rebrand Nigeria, I make bold to say that nothing in the past 15 years as been as successful in cleansing Nigeria’s image as Nuhu Ribadu and the EFCC which he headed.

What happened to those bogus stories floated by those corrupt people whom Ribadu arrested? I recall some people spreading tales soon after he was kicked out of the EFCC that Ribadu had mansions in Dubai and the United Kingdom. As is the case with all lies, they always get overtaken by truth no matter how far they have traveled. If Nuhu Rinadu ever reads this, I want to remind him  to remain steadfast and strong because when all is said and done he has retained more honour than those who think they have destroyed him.

What can Nuhu Ribadu give me? Nothing at all. I am wealthy from God’s provision and my sweat and effort which He blessed. I have no other agenda other than patriotism in saying what I say here. I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that Nuhu Ribadu actually did much more good than harm to Nigeria and I personally will do all within my power to see that he is given his rightful due in the course of time.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

Many emailed me to know the motivation behind yesterdays suggestions on health care as the president receives treatment in Saudi Arabia. It stems from my visit to Botswana where Nigeria had to send Akinola Aguda in the seventies as Chief Judge because they had no qualified personnel and now they have a world class health system whose doctors saved Morgan Tsvangirai’s life after the crash which killed his wife. It further stems from the fact that recent findings reveal that Nigeria with 2% of the world’s population accounts for 10% of the worlds maternal mortality. I/we can not afford to maintain a dignified silence in the face of this scenario. Indeed since we have the ability, we therefore have the responsibility to ACT.  PU

As president Yar’adua receives treatment in Saudi Arabia, I pray for his quick recovery. On his return however,I urge him to set up a commission to contact all Nigerian doctors practicing abroad and offer them irrevocable interest free loans (of at least half a million dollars) if they are willing to return to Nigeria to set up practice so that the average Nigerian can also enjoy the services that president Yar’daua receives abroad. Life should not be a thing money can buy.

President Yar’adua could use his health issues as a point of contact with the average Nigerian. His condition should enable him empathize with what millions of Nigerians go through on a daily basis. Most Nigerians who have life threatening conditions will die from such because they have no access to health care locally and can not afford to go abroad as health tourists. The other day we lost music Icon Sonny Okosuns because he could not afford the cost of treating his colon cancer in the U.S. Prof. Omo Omoruyi is today seeking for funds to treat his prostate cancer. There are many millions more people in this same situation and we have to give a care for them. How many times have we read in an obituary that some person or the other has died after a ‘brief illness’. The problem is not ‘home trouble’, the problem is a lack of access to even the most basic health care. If president Yar’adua can find the political will to do this he would like princess Diana to the British have written his name in the hearts of the Nigerian people.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

The spate of apathy currently shown by Nigerians to the political development of Nigeria gives me cause for worry and should concern all genuine lovers of Nigeria. There is so much despair among Nigerians today and the thinking is that things will never get better and that their votes will never count. Now there may have been reasons in the past to cause these feelings especially with the way and manner the 2007 election was rigged, but the truth is that we can not afford to continue with this apathy for that will mean that we live in an utterly hopeless state and a hopeless life is hardly worth living. We need to understand that since we do not have any other country failure is certainly not an option. Some may think that they will emigrate to better run climes, but this is actually not a solution, it is only postponing the evil day.

I have been traveling much of late and I see all over Nigeria a lot of things that should not be. For instance it has become common place to find political thugs and hangers on driving in hummer SUVs and other exotic cars while professors and lecturers in our universities do not have cars or where they have they are constantly at the mechanics place trying to put life into a lifeless vehicle. And in a country where most of us live on less than a dollar a day, I also read of 300 million naira weddings and 120 million naira anniversary bashes in a Nigeria where young people of marriageable age now delay marriage simply because they cant afford to start a family. In my travels I have also sadly experienced Nigerians scavenging food from dust bins and thrash heaps while Nigeria’s nouveau riche openly boast about how many millions it cost them to feed their polo horses. Now when I see this contradiction, I begin to understand why there seems to be such an apathy among Nigerians.

However, this apathy though understandable is not permissible if we are to expect to free ourselves of the current set of parasitic political elite that we have. In fact it plays right into their hands.

We are very good at complaining about our problems in beer parlours, under mango trees, and in molue busses, but we are very slow to act. Nigerians seem to think there is wisdom in being quick to complain, quick to anger and slow to act. As Fela sang ‘my people self dey fear too much, dem fear for the air around them, dem fear to fight for freedom, dem fear to fight for justice,  dem fear to fight for liberty, dem always get reason to fear, I no wan die, I get one child, I just build house, mama dey for house, papa dey for house, I no wan die‘.

On my facebook page, I am often asked by young Nigerians how we are to guard our votes in the face of violence from thugs and the security forces and my answer is that even though I have a plan to mitigate rigging which I do not want to reveal now so that riggers do not plot a strategy to avoid it, we (including me) should be prepared to die if necessary to fight for genuine and free elections. These parasitic politicians that are in power today are legally earning millions every month and are corruptly enriching themselves by millions more, they are benefiting from the status quo and will never allow for free elections that will cause them to lose their current benefits. It has to be brought about by the will of the Nigerian people. It will not just happen. If you think of Nigerians as a herd of Buffalo and these nefarious politicians and their thugs and the security forces who aid them as a pack of wolves, you will understand the problems we face. When a few wolves attack a herd of tens of thousands of Buffalo the Buffalo always run in a stampede rather than face the few wolves. In the stampede they lose control, some are trodden to death, while one or two are targeted by the wolves and attacked and feasted on. You begin to wonder why the Buffalo who are bigger and more in number than the wolves always run from the wolves when they can resist the wolves and even kill them if they are aware of the power they possess.

Another thing I say to people is that it is almost impossible to rig an election where there has been a large voter turn out as Robert Mugabe recently and bitterly learnt in Zimbabwe. The truth is that most Nigerians who complain about the state of Nigeria do not vote. They do not even register to vote but are the first to complain of bad rulers forgetting that bad rulers are voted in by good people who refuse to vote. Low voter turn out  is actually conducive to rigging.

In Nigeria, it is actually possible to vote and guard your votes even against the PDP. Take Bauchi state as an example. In 2007, the incumbent PDP administration tried their best to force another PDP administration on the state, but the people resisted and some died, but they remained steadfast and they got the government they wanted. The same thing happened in Lagos and Edo state. It is possible!

Register to vote, and then identify credible people at all levels and then vote in 2011. Come out and actually vote. Vote and remain in the vicinity until the results are released and if the wrong results are released then raise hell. Remember that if you do not, then the money that would be used to pay university lecturers to teach your children will be spent on buying exotic cars for those political godfathers and their  thugs who are there trying to manipulate the results and your children who will have a sub standard education because of these folks will end up serving them.

And as I have said on this blog before, Nigerians, especially the middle class would have to lose their complacency and cynicism. They should not spread their cynicism and hopelessness to their relations and friends who depend on them by saying things like ‘na today‘ or ‘abeg leave matter‘ or ‘na dem, dem‘ or ‘wetin concern me‘. You see the Nigerian middle class has mistaken cynicism for wisdom. When we parrot these cliches, we are not showing that we are wise, we are only showing that we are hopeless and clueless. And if we want a better life for ourselves, the earlier we lose this cynical attitude the better it will be for us. If we can not do it out of self love, we should do it out of love for our off spring. If we want a better Nigeria, we will have to make the sacrifice to get it. It will not just happen. More of the same will only produce the same old same old. We have to be tied to our potential rather than our history.

So my fellow country men, without further ado, I urge you to take advantage of the next voter registration exercise, and get registered and immediately begin to identify credible people at all levels paying particular reference to how they made their money, who their associates are, what kind of past do they have as well as their consistency in doing right. If we do this, we will get leadership right, and when we get leadership right, all other things will fall into place.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

It is very disheartening that 10 years after Nigeria returned to democratic only 3 states have developed their Internal Generated Revenue to an extent where they can be independent of the Federal Government. All other states depend almost entirely on the federal allocations they collect monthly and the Federal Government itself depends on Oil rents for 90% of its revenue.

In our individual lives we all know what we do with money that we have not worked for, not sweated for. It is very difficult to put such finds to the best use because as they say, easy come, easy go, and this is the dilemma facing Nigeria today.

Nigerians do not pay tax and as such do not feel that they have a stake in government and this accounts for the politcal apathy displayed by most of us. The state and federal governments do not develop other strings of revenue like taxation because they are so focused on the easy money from oil rents and as a result our governmental structures have suffered from an arrested development because there are no stake holders in government other than God fathers and money bags who bank roll desperate politicians.

At this moment Nigeria is hemorrhaging because there is no structure in society that breeds good leadership and without good leadership we will never have good followership.

You will find that the propelling force behind citizens taking a greater interests in government and moving from onlookers to stake holders is taxation. Where we can develop a proper tax regime, peole who pay tax will lose their political apathy and will demand accountability and good governance because their money is involved. People including Nigerians will never care enough to confront government unless their taxes sustain the government. To move people you have to get them to commit financially to an idea. Once a man’s money is involved, his heart will automatically involved.

For instance as an individual notice how much more aware you become of a friends spending pattern when that friend owes you money. Before he owed you money you never cared that he bought drinks for everyone at the bar you both frequent, but whilst he owes you money this gesture takes on a whole new meaning. Then notice how you lose interest in what he does with his money soon as he pays you back. The reason for this is that before he owed you money, your paradigm, which is the way you see things, was that of a beneficiary of his largesses, but while he owed you, your paradigm changed and you saw yourself no longer as a beneficiary but as an unwilling benefactor. This is what the English mean when they say ‘he who pays the piper dictates the tune’. Unless Nigerians pay the piper from their pockets they will never dictate the tune.

For Nigeria to make progress, she needs a patriotic leader who can gradually begin to develop and enforce tax laws to such an extent that taxation rather than oil rents becomes the major source of government revenue as it is in other democracies. Unless these states who depend on the federal government can start developing tax regimes that will create a sustainable Internally Generated Revenue they will never grow from independence to dependence to interdependence with other states in Nigeria.

My readers and Nigerians will say that they will not pay tax unless they see a good government, however they have the process backwards, they will never have a good government unless they start paying tax simply because they will not care enough to demand better from their government until they evolve from being onlookers to stake holders.

I challenge anyone to point to a matured and thriving democracy in which people do not pay taxes. There is no such thing. It is a myth. Recently in England, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, resigned because of a scandal involving expense claims of his fellow parliamentarians that involved a figure less than what a Nigerian legislator takes home in a quarter. While not personally involved, he resigned as a result of public anger and the reason for that public anger is due to the fact that this figure though not very large came out of the pockets of the tax payer. Now why haven’t Nigerians raised dust about the 532 billion spent on the National Assembly since 1999 with only 523 laws being passed, worse still those few laws have had little to no bearing on Nigerians? Simple, because this money does not come out of their pockets. The source of the money is oil rent. The only people who feel bad enough to complain are some in the Niger Delta and the reason is because the oil rent comes from their land hence they feel they have a greater stake in oil which they do.

My fellow county men do you now see the relationship between having a stake in government and demanding good governance? Unfortunately citizens can not initiate a tax regime only people in power can. So where do we start? Always with ourselves. This is where we come to the difference between a leader and a manager. Leaders will create wealth, managers will be allocated a budget. We need to move from management to leadership come 2011. Nigerians have to care enough about the state of Nigeria to jump start her development by identifying and voting into power men of proven leadership capabilities. It will not happen unless Nigerians make it happen. We can not leave the business of politics to charlatans and expect that we will make progress. No. As Veno Marioghae sand in her 80s hit tune ‘Nigeria go survive’ ” Andrew no check out o, stay and build your country, na who go die for you o?”

We have to care about Nigeria enough to insist on good governance. It might require a sacrifice that may lead to some losing all, and all losing some, but it is worth it. We can not continue the way we are where men of low morals hold us to ransom and give the world the impression that Nigerians are not capable of running their affairs when we have men of proven integrity and leadership, with a track record of honest service to the community who are willing to serve.

AsI keep saying and never tire of saying, a people deserve the type of leader they get! Nigerians, we have to awaken the giant within us and step up to the plate by making an intellectual decision today to participate in the political process with a view to making 2011 the turning point in leadership for Nigeria. God bless Nigeria!

PU

The level of social injustice currently prevailing in Nigeria is reaching alarming heights and we are beginning to feel the effect in the level of discontent amongst the citizenry as demonstrated by various uprising against the state such as the Boko Haram incidence, the Niger Delta Militancy, OPC and Bakassi vigilantes and what have you. I have consistently counseled the federal government to find time to address the glaring social problems in Nigeria especially those which can be resolved with very little effort, but my counsel falls on deaf ears.

For instance, when you consider that Nigeria has a population of about 140 million people and a police force of 370,000 policemen it does not take a lot of thinking to come to the conclusion that Nigeria is severely under policed particularly when the United Nation prescribes a ratio of 1 police man per 400 citizens. But the sad aspect of this situation is that even as we are grossly under policed, the federal government tolerates a situation where 100,000 police men are detailed to guard privileged Nigerians who are connected to those in political power circles. So in actual fact there are only 270,000 police men catering to the security demands of 140 million Nigerians. The question begging to be answered here is of what importance is the security of the average citizen to the federal government?

Now when this issue almost came to the maintream media as a topical issue, the reaction of the government was to suggest that Judges be stripped of their security detail! Now we see here that men of power in Nigeria will rather strip the criminal justice system of its essential security than strip politicians of their goffers.

So when we have 100, 000 police men guarding fewer than 100,000 ‘big men’ can we be surprised that our security forces were caught unawares by the boko haram incidence? Or should we surprise that they were caught napping when Atlas cove was attacked? So when we read in the papers that robbers spent three hours robbing a bank without any resistance, we should understand that the reason behind this is that our police men are otherwise engaged in providing security for our ‘big men’ leading to citizens taking to self policing as a reaction to the current state of insecurity existing in Nigeria.

These social injustices are becoming so glaringly obvious to the common man on the street and this has led to a large spectrum of our population to lose faith in Nigeria and this is something that the federal government has to address if it does not want Nigeria to become a failed state.

For instance, while it is common knowledge that most of us live on less than a dollar a day, we are made to understand that 523 billion naira has been expended on our National Assembly since 1999. Now in the period between 1999 and now the National Assembly has passed only 523 laws and this begins to raise questions as to the relevance of the National Assembly to Nigeria given its productivity. But consider that ASUU is on strike over poor pay. Now also consider that our Univerisities graduate over 250, 000 graduates every year. When you juxtapose this against the fact that since 1999, our public universities have not seen the type of money that has been committed to our legislature. How are university lecturers meant to feel when they provide such a vital service and are so poorly remunerated while our legislators inidvidually walk away with tens of millions each year even where their productivity is so low? And we are told that they want an ‘automatic ticket’ to return in 2011. This is even more sad when you consider that the president, vice president , the minister of information and the minister of eduaction (who had a multimillion naira bash while ASUU is on strike) are former lecturers (in the case of the minister of education, he is a former ASUU state chairman).

The situation I painted above is just a tip of the ice berg especially considering that the IMF has recently reported what we already knew i.e. that 85% of Nigeria’s resources are consumed by 1% of her population leaving the remaining 99% to share the balance 15%. Obviously we begin to see why there is a crisis in the Niger Delta and why Boko Haram extremist took to arms (not that I support them). As I write this piece, Nigeria’s elite have gone beyond flying themselves and their families to Europe for treatment, there some who actually fly their polo horses to Europe for treatment. This would not be so bad if these were folks with identifiable sources of income who have ventures that employ people and add value to Nigeria’s GDP. No. These are men and women whose only claim to fame and wealth is that they have at one time or the other been men of political power and influence in Nigeria.

We have lived through the era of military rule where ministers publicly commented that ‘telephone is not for the poor’ and where General Sani Abacha famously said of the over 1000 citizens who died during the June 12 riots that ‘people did not die, only demonstrators died’ and we celebrated the return to civil rule because we had the expectation that the a civilian administration will have a better regard for the worth of the average citizen and it will be too bad if long suffering Nigerians continue to be treated as they were under the military. That would mean that we live in an Orwellian world where the more things change, the more things remain the same.

The Federal Government will do well to heed the advice of well meaning Nigerians to begin to pay greater attention to the welfare of the average Nigerian and begin to take action that creates a level playing ground and provides for social justice in Nigeria. We need to begin to prioritize how we spend our resources. Things that matter most should not be at the mercy of things that matter least. So before we spend 4 billion naira in furnishing the ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja (which we did last month) we need to make sure that we have furnished the needs of our intellectuals who man our ivory towers and produces the work force that Nigerian needs to compete in a knowledge worker age. Before we spend 2 billion fuelling generators in the presidential villa, we have to make sure we are paying the salaries of primary school teachers who have been owed salaries for 5 months in many states.

When President Umaru Musa Yar’adua was being sworn in, he promised Nigerians he would be a servant leader who would reform the electoral system and declare a power emergency and Nigerians were expectant. However two years after he made that promise, Nigerians may be forgiven if they think that he meant to serve himself rather than serve them and reform the EFCC of its effectiveness, rather than reform the electoral system and declare a power emergency so he could emerge as the real power in the PDP as against the old guard that remained after Obasanjo had left.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU

I was in Europe recently and met a Dr. on a flight from Brussels who asked me where I was from. When I answered Nigeria he informed me that he had several Nigerian patients. I was curious to know their identities but unsure if he would tell me due to the patient doctor privilege, however when I asked if he knew their names, he proceeded to reel out the names of important Nigerians in leadership positions. It was like a who is who in Nigeria. As I listened to him speak, it occurred to me that perhaps the single most important reason why our ‘big men’ politicians have not thought it wise to improve the health sector as well as health delivery is because they do not patronize Nigerian health facilities.

How many governors or president know the state of general hospitals in their domains? Very few if any at all. How can you improve something of which you have little or no knowledge of?

I know of a son of an ex-ruler who publicly (in a Thisday newspaper interview) boasted of flying his polo horse to Switzerland for medical check ups. This at a time when millions of Nigerians do not have ‘paracetamol’ to take when they have aches and pains. This can only happen because there is a disconnect, a disjointedness between Nigeria’s leaders and the led.

I now understand why we have spent so much on defense, security and aviation. These are areas that affect our big men. They spend the bulk of the our resources on defense and security because they have to protect themselves from Nigerians who have been so impoverished that many are frustrated into kidnapping of politicians and high profile persons. But this is only treating the symptoms. The underlying problems are there and can not be wished away.

The same goes for education. Nigeria is perenially listed by The U.N and UNICEF as one of the countries who budget the least portion of their budget on education. Nigerians we have got it wrong. It is not that the cabal does not know the value of education they do. The real reason they do this is because all their children school abroad. Many Nigerian leaders only visit our public universities when they are to be conferred with honorary degrees which they have not earned but which the university authorities feel compelled to give them as a means of attracting funding. And then the big men proceed to talk down on and talk at rather than to these intellectuals who have been so impoverished to the extent that they depend on ‘hand outs’ to feed their families.

It may surprise many that a lot of privileged Nigerians actually donate monies to foreign universities especially those their kids attend. The sad thing is that the schools back home in thier states are desperately in need of funds.

If Nigerian leaders are hospitalized abroad, have their kids delivered abroad, school their children abroad, fly only foreign airlines, wear imported clothes and eat imported food how can they have a stake in Nigeria? And if they do not have a stake in Nigeria, how can they have the political will to fix Nigeria’s problems?

But I never like highlighting problems without talking of solutions.

I sustained my thought process on this issue and then it hit me. You see the only way we can have a better health care system is by enacting legislation that compells all elected officials to patronize only Nigerian health facilities. Privileged Nigerians are not aware of what the masses go through because they fly to Europe at the slightest sign of ill health. Their wives also have their babies abroad and their inner circle of friends do likewise all at public expense.

Similarly we need to legislate that all elected officials must have their own wards and children educated only in Nigerian public schools be it primary or university. They have to be compelled to feel what the people feel and suffer what they suffer. Then and only then would they tackle the problems faced by every day ordinary Nigerians.

We should also stop this practice of the government at all levels acquiring air ambulances. We need to have ambulances on the road to cater to our road accident victims who are actually victims of Nigeria’s notoriously bad roads. Until we have enough ambulances on the road, we should not have an ambulance on the air. Nigeria is meant for us all, not just for big men.

Ordinary Nigerians and youths as well as middle class Nigerians (if they still exist) who read this should not feel powerless. We can have real change if we begin to be more conscious of how governance in Nigeria works and speak out about its failures in other to make others conscious. When there is a critical mass of people who are conscious of the need to change Nigeria positively more and more will begin to act and progress will ensue. And it is happening already. It is! We have begun to see youths take out their anger on unresponsive public officials. But rather than stone these elected officials with rocks and sticks, we need to stone them with votes, i.e vote them out of office in 2011 and guard your votes and make it count. The people of Iran are doing so, we in Nigeria should take note of this.

If you think of Nigerians as a herd of Buffalo and these nefarious politicians and their thugs and the security forces who aid them as a pack of wolves, you will understand the problems we face. When a few wolves attack a herd of tens of thousands of Buffalo the Buffalo always run in a stampede rather than face the few wolves. In the stampede they lose control, some are trodden to death, while one or two are targeted by the wolves and attacked and feasted on. You begin to wonder why the Buffalo who are bigger and more in number than the wolves always run from the wolves when they can resist the wolves and even kill them if they are aware of the power they possess.

Another thing I say to people is that it is almost impossible to rig an election where there has been a large voter turn out as Robert Mugabe recently and bitterly learnt in Zimbabwe. The truth is that most Nigerians who complain about the state of Nigeria do not vote. They do not even register to vote but are the first to complain of bad rulers forgetting that bad rulers are voted in by good people who refuse to vote. Low voter turn out  is actually conducive to rigging.

In Nigeria, it is actually possible to vote and guard your votes even against the PDP. Take Bauchi state as an example. In 2007, the incumbent PDP administration tried their best to force another PDP administration on the state, but the people resisted and some died, but they remained steadfast and they got the government they wanted. The same thing happened in Lagos and Edo state. It is possible!

Register to vote, and then identify credible people at all levels and then vote in 2011. Come out and actually vote. Vote and remain in the vicinity until the results are released and if the wrong results are released then raise hell. Remember that if you do not, then the money that would be used to pay university lecturers to teach your children will be spent on buying exotic cars for those political godfathers and their  thugs who are there trying to manipulate the results and your children who will have a sub standard education because of these folks will end up serving them.

I close with the immortal words of John Lennon in the song ‘Imagine;

‘ you may say I’m a dreamer

‘but I’m not the only one

‘I hope some day you’ll join us

and the world would be as one”

Once again God Bless Nigeria!

PU.

Sometime ago I wrote that we must enact laws that would make it mandatory for all public officers in Nigeria to receive medical treatment only in Nigeria,and for their children to attend only Nigerian schools and for them to invest only in Nigeria, (at least for the duration of their public service, or disservice if you will). I received a lot of feedback and most agreed with my suggestion, but there where some who very vocally and publicly complained that enacting such laws would infringe on the fundamental rights of our public officials.

Now these types of responses remind me of the psychological disorder known as Stockholm Syndrome, which is characterized by victims having loyalties to their abusers. This Stockholm syndrome is daily played out in Nigeria and may perhaps explain why there is so much resistance to positive change on the part of our public officials.

Let me explain. Nigerian elite and the middle class love to complain about the state of Nigeria. In fact I daresay that if you gather three or more Nigerians together, one of two things will dominate the conversation and that is foot ball or politics. And we are very passionate about the two. Nigerians complain about the government, corruption and mismanagement which is as it should be. But the part that gets me is that these same Nigerians are nearly always star star struck when they come into the presence of these men who man our positions of power and who are the cause of so much misery.

To give a vidid example, I was watching the BBC not too long ago and there was a noted Nigerian civil rights activist who had been invited to comment on an issue in Nigeria. Apparently the Nigerian Government had made a claim about a civil disturbance and the BBC had obtained evidence that put that claim to doubt and wanted this activist to weigh in. Imagine my surprise when the activist ponctuated every reference he made to the minister in question with the words ‘the honourable’. He used this term a total of 12 times in a 3 minute speech. Now after watching this interview, one may be forgiven if they thought that civil society groups in Nigeria are an extension of the government. This is not to say that civil activist should not respect government officials-far from it, however there is a difference between respect and boot licking!

This fawning over high profile officials is so widespread and prevalent that even when it is expected that Nigerians have had it and are actually fed up with the daily instances of mismanagement of their national patrimony, you end up being surprised by the actions of the people who are victims of this mismanagement. Is it that we have become so used to our predicament that we would rather remain the way we are?

Going back to the issue I started with, my readers may perhaps want to know that the only way you can change peoples behaviour is by changing their roles. Presently, Nigerian politicians do not patronize Nigerian medical facilities, so how can they actually be stake holders in improving the Nigerian health care delivery system? The key to participation is involvement. They are not involved in the process, so how can they participate? And if they can not participate, how can we ever expect any improvement being that they are the ones in charge of making the improvement?

It is the same thing with education. Nigerian public officials do not care about the deteriorating public education sector in Nigeria for the simple reason that they are not participants. Their kids do not attend public schools, as a matter of fact, most of them school their kids abroad. So if they are not affected, how can they care enough to improve this sector?

There in lies the dilemma we face. Our public officials are not total participants in the Nigerian project in that they access most of their vital services abroad. As the philosopher once said, where your treasure is so also will your heart be, many of our public officials have their treasures over seas, and there is where their heart is.

Now to all those who wrote that my suggestion that we salvage the situation by enacting laws to make it mandatory for public officials to use only Nigerian medical facilities and have their wards educated only in Nigerian schools as well as invest only in Nigeria , to all those who wrote that this would infringe on their rights, I remind them that rights come from legislation and the grundnorm of all legislations in Nigeria is the Nigerian constitution which provides that ALL Nigerian citizens have a right to education, a right to employment and to good health and that it is the principal responsibility of government to promote these rights and as such any actions that will impede on these rights will in essence be in violation of the constitution and can therefore not be a right. The Nigerian constitution, as imperfect as it currently is, codifies our social contract with our government and while there is sufficient evidence to support the argument that it should be amended, there are enough provisions contained in it that can be explored by creative persons to spur the enactment of sub laws that will give greater effect to the elementary civil rights contained in the constitution.

The truth is that unless government officials have no alternative to Nigerian health care, they will never be fully committed to improving healthcare facilities in Nigeria.

A good example would be the late General Sani Abacha, who, because of the travel sanctions imposed on him, could not travel to the West was left with no other option but to build a state of the art medical facility at the Aso rock villa to cater for his liver cirrhosis ailment. Not stopping there, his wife also built a state of the art hospital in Abuja then called Women and Children Hospital, but which has since been renamed The National Hospital, and is today the most modern hospital in Nigeria. Do you now see how condition drives behaviour? The political conditions of the time which made Nigeria an international pariah under his administration was the catalyst that changed Abacha’s status from being an onlooker in the Nigerian Health care sector to a stake holder and participant, and it was this that led him to invest in the hospital in the villa.

Another example in the education sector will also suffice. The same General Abacha had a daughter who read law in the United Kingdom, and the media reported that because of the deep unpopularity of his administration in the Southwest, he felt it was a security risk to have her attend the Nigerian Law School in Lagos. So what was his solution? He created another Law School in Abuja, and instead of one Law School, Nigeria had two. In time this decision led to the creation of Law Schools in Kano and Enugu, which was progressive to legal education and consequently to the legal profession and ultimately to the Nigerian state. But the catalyst of this chain reaction was the the prevailing circumstances at that time which changed Abacha’s status from that of an onlooker to a stake holder in the Legal education sector. Now imagine would have happened if his daughter was also placed on travel sanctions. Obviously he would have built better universities in Nigeria to cater for his daughter and his other kids because he would have been forced to become a stake holder in the Nigerian education sector and not just legal education.

It is within this frame of reference that people should see my suggestion that we should enact the laws I suggested. Not because I am draconian, nor because I am playing to the gallery, or because I want to infringe on peoples right. It is because I know through study that changing peoples roles is the key to changing peoples behaviour because wherever your interests lie is where you focus your attention and where you focus your attention is where you see improvements.

You see in the final analysis, we must understand that Nigeria is in a desperate state. Our population is increasing geometrically, while our resources are dwindling. At the same time corruption is on the rise and we have a rapacious political elite. This is a lethal combination that is breeding discontent and extreme poverty amongst the masses and this is the desperate disease that is causing symptoms such as the Boko Haram crisis, Niger Delta militancy, the increasing state of insecurity in the country (which as Jubril Aminu rightly pointed out is worse now than it was in most parts of the country during the civil war). This desperate disease which affects Nigeria calls for desperate remedies and we have to use creative and radical approaches to bring about rapid development that will result in the improvement of our rapidly crumbling social services in Nigeria. We should not wait until we get to the level of Somalia where Central authority collapsed due in large part to the silence of the middle class and elite in the face of brutal oppression by the ruling class. The time to act is now.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.