Abubakar Kamara Mohammed

abunane@yahoo.com

Harry Truman once said “there is one thing worst than being talked about and that is being talked about”. In Nigeria you ought to be talked about in order to get a fulfilling recognition. If you are condemned today you would be heroically hailed tomorrow. As far as you were once an issue of criticism you would someday in this clime be wine or water. But it is pertinent to say our society is saturated with style, not just the usual style of clothing but also the embellishments we use in all most all aspects of our life. Majority in our population are struggling to eke out a living for themselves and their family, I presume this dearth to be within the detriment of our leaders but our country seems to celebrate poverty when the need arises. Figuring in it out better with the examination of the recent tsunami rally held in Lagos by the ruling party, for those who did not attend the rally , they missed the noble gesture of our dear president who doled out albeit through his agents the paltry sum of N200 each to those that attended the tidal wave rally. Our leaders deceive us with a cliché of adopting the America model of democracy, but common sense keep asking them perennial questions. A Nigerian should ask himself what enabling environment the government have provided for him or her, the answer is right there in the length and breadth of your room. It is either you are personally generating your light or you are in an abject darkness. What our crop of leaders have failed to observe is the fact that power holding company is just a formalization of privatizing the power sector. I for sure have been living under a private power generator for long, yours I don’t know? The energy we have in abundance is glaringly a disgrace that every right thinking Nigerian would find indignation in talking about. Security is absolutely absent. The men in black are synonyms of murderer s, armed robbers and in absurdity mere thieves. Recently, a policeman was caught in my neighborhood stealing from the reserve of a tomato seller popularly called “IYA LATA” in Lagos as early as 6am.the youths on the street pounded the police thief to comatose and finally handed him to his “MEN IN BLACK”. It is disheartening to see such a melodramatic scene in our country occurring and reoccurring, but what is the cause of this quagmire, dilemma is what we should be asking each other.

History teaches us that never in a period of this country have we all lived like kings & queens nor wannabes.right from independence, prophets, soothsayers, elders only envisaged a better Nigeria ahead. Our national heroes labored hard to make Nigeria a great country with hope and prosperity. Those who are alive today see their dreams darkened in frustration while those who have left mother earth anguish in their grave. I keep on asking myself whether our nationalists were just been quixotic. The Awolowo that is idolized in the southwest emphasized free education for all and sundry, if this great is given an opportunity by the almighty to visit the southwest once more, he will totally disown the present crop of leaders and declare them sacrilegious. In the north the great Ahmadu Bello called for a power shift to the grassroots areas, an emphasis on self-reliance, with large-scale system as the foundation for future generation. The reverse is the case presently. in Nigeria we no more have leaders to epitomize but altruistic elites and international statesmen ambitions.

A good example is the governor of Jigawa state who was once accused of globetrotting but before you say Kauran Namoda the man and the state are used as paradigm. Publicity and accolades for the state governor is reaching another level, just of recent, it was shown on Nigerian television how the governor is willing to provide drinkable water to all the hooks and crannies of the state. The governor himself gave conjecturing figures of boreholes to be provided. The crowd at the event were singing all sorts of praise songs,this is usual in a country where mediocrity is celebrated with obvious malnourishment scathing everywhere precluding the canopy where the governor and the state elites are seated. Those who were privy to have watched or attended that gathering would no doubt agree with my postulations that Jigawa’s priority as of now is not the ICT that is given so much hoopla . Even Lagos that flourishes in the cyber business does no view the policy as noble. At worst why do we celebrate the provision of water to the people? It looks as if the money used to provide infrastructures in Nigeria is at the cost of the leader. It has almost been forgotten that there is a term called “SUBVENTION” taken from the coffers of the federation.

I once told a colleague that the grandstanding coming out from Jigawa is hoodwink, if Saminu Turaki had invested the taxpayers money in agriculture nay Arabic gum the state is said to be blessed with, the labor it will employ will be appraising talk less of the exporting value of the latter. The information technology is to be a commended programme but doing the right thing at the right time not the right thing at the wrong time should have subsumed their thinking in Dutse the advise one could give if asked to was to allow the private sector invest in the field which could precipitate competition and make Jigawa a haven for information technology. Or am I to say there is no private sector in the state I come from? The popular believe is that the state government in one of its numerous junketing visited Singapore, shocked with the IT revolution-taking toll in the tiny Asian country, and on returning to Dutse decided to replicate the innovation with the tax payers money whom are majority semi literates or full blown illiterates. These are people viewing ICT as a diminishing figure on their scale of preference.

An article written by one Monday Philip Ekpe at the pack page of This day newspaper July 30^th smells fishy, if the writer wasn’t paid for, then I blame the editors for allowing such unfledged, half witted and discountenance assumptions on the page of a paper widely read. The writer reputed jigawa state as having the highest number of professors in Nigeria, absurd! Even the most patriotic heuristic fellow from jigawa would not blow such monotonous trumpet .i have searched for NUC’s website to verify this claim but found none. And annoyingly I searched for a Jigawa.net or.com and found none too. Why would a state boast of an IT broadband and fail in having a website or is this a de javu of the NFA errors. This is simply grandstanding at its crescendo. A practical approach in ameliorating the suffering of the populace is what the good people of the state are clamoring for. What concerns a farmer who have invested his crop earnings to sponsor his child to school up to OND level with an ICT initiative when the child he spent his life earnings for has been denied a job due to a directive from dutse which calls for a halt in employment. As far as Jigawa is concerned the policy is bound to be esoteric. The governor should go back to his economics textbook and learn the meanings of opportunity cost and scale of preference. When taxpayer’s money is involved ingenuity and clairvoyance would need to be imbibed when carrying out actions.

From 1999-2003,Governor Saminu Turaki competed bumper to bumper with the President on who to visit this and that island first. Aso Rock now cheers and yawn that the much criticized trips has paid off with the recent pseudo debt relief while Governor Saminu is slapping backs with bootlickers in the name of the arrival of dividends from far away Singapore. I live this intricacy to my amiable reader because I wonder in a bewildering situation who best fits the ‘KING OF DECEPTION’

abunane@yahoo.com