Wrong Priorities In Lean Times
They say that to succeed in life, you ought to begin with the end of your life as a frame of reference and work from the beginning towards achieving the end that you plan for yourself. This law which is called ‘beginning with the end in mind’ is a law that appears to have been lost on the present administration in Nigeria. Now why do I say that? My readers may recall that at the beginning of this year, former president Olusegun Obasanjo had rightly said that Nigerians should expect harsher economic times due to the then looming global recession. So many pundits called him names, but what the man said was the truth because globally the economy was beginning to unravel which meant that governments the world over would have to be frugal in their expenditures. Now Nigeria being a country that is almost entirely dependent on oil rents from the oil majors would obviously be caught up in this global recession so it was not a surprise when the president suggested that the salaries and emoluments of political office holders be slashed to reflect the current economic realities. That seemed a laudable gesture and was applauded.
Now given that the federal government is aware that there is a global recession which has not eased and appears to be getting worse and being that the government has admitted that its income is dwindling and that it may have a deficit budget in 2010 it would be natural to expect the government to cut its coat according to its size and spend only on the most essential items.
For instance, Nigeria’s power generation is abysmally low and the government has been unable to fulfill its promise of declaring a power emergency or generating 6,000 MW of electricity. Then again, Nigeria still imports fuel and the FG has recently expressed delight at the prospect of importing fuel from Senegal even though Nigeria is a major exporter of crude oil. Even at this moment, the Nigerian Labour Congress is gearing up for a monumental struggle with the FG over the withdrawal of petroleum subsidy which the government has said it can not afford. The deplorable state of our roads including but not limited to the Lagos-Ore-Abuja road and the Abuja Kaduna road which are so bad and have claimed the lives of prominent Nigerians have to be fixed ASAP and ASUU has had to go on strike for several months this year due to inadequate funding of the education sector. All these are priority areas on which we must focus our scarce resources before we engage in frivolous luxuries.
Now with the dire state of our finances and the urgent needs in our country, you could imagine my surprise when the federal government presented it’s budget to the National Assembly and requested appropriation for four new presidential jets at a cost of $210 million USD. Now this portrays us as a nation that does not know the difference between its needs and its wants. The last thing we need is another presidential jet. In fact what we ought to be doing is to sell the presidential jets we already have and plow the funds into areas that need urgent attention.
Indeed the FG recently obtained a $300 million loan from the International Development Association to boost the power sector. Perhaps officials of the IDA may have wondered why we needed that loan if we had $210 million to spend on four new presidential jets.
The British Prime Minister flies in a British Airways commercial or Royal Air force auxiliary jets and this is a country several times richer than Nigeria at the present moment, so would it kill our own president if he cuts his coat according to our size and flies in a commercial airline?
The news of the four new presidential jets to be purchased for the presidential fleet was put into greater perspective when in the same budget the FG proposed to buy ‘fairly used’ helicopters for our armed forces so they could police our borders. Where are our priorities? Has it not occurred to the president’s kitchen cabinet that there is no national carrier in Nigeria today, yet we have a robust presidential fleet?
The wasteful expenditures of the executive which does not reflect our present dire financial straits is also being copied by the legislative as was seen by the plans of the House of Representatives to purchase 18 bullet proof vehicles for its principal officers. What is happening here? We are a country that regularly receives financial aid from Western donor nations whereas these Western donor nations will never indulge in these types of wasteful expenditure, any wonder then why we are still receiving aid and they are still in a position to give us aid?
I wonder how the Senate President or the Speaker of the Nigerian House of representatives feel when they travel abroad to discuss with their counterparts in other nations and the issue of financial aid crops up. Would they not feel uncomfortable that they have budgeted for themselves 29 billion naira for their international travels while NO western democracy spends as much as that on their legislators travels? Would they still have the confidence to ask their host country for financial aid? Would they not suspect that their hosts would be saying to themselves that ‘you are not serious if you expect me to give you more money so you can spend more billions on international travels that do not yield tangible results for your country’? My readers may recall that the Speaker of the British parliament had to resign over a travel expense row involving less than 1% of the amount that Nigerian legislators have budgeted for their international travels.
We can’t keep behaving like children and squandering our resources on the most non essential vanity items. Nigeria is the largest black nation in the world and we need to provide leadership to our brethren all over the world and we do not do this when we can not delay gratification especially as most of our population lives on less than a dollar a day. The $210 million to be spent on these presidential jets could build a new power plant to boost electricity generation, could build a new refinery to reduce fuel scarcity, could repair roads and reduce untimely deaths via road accidents or could provide soft loans to peasant farmers to boost Nigeria’s food security.
In the final analysis, the choice is before Nigerians as 2011 approaches. Do you/we want to continue this way where our government lavishly spends our scarce resources on non essential items while our human development index is steadily dropping or do we want a government that is responsible to the needs of Nigeria and spends our resources on only essential itmes? The choice is yours to make in 2011. Please register to vote, encourage others to so do and then prepare to vote in 2011 and most importantly be prepared to guard your vote and make it count.
Once again, God bless Nigeria.
PU.
