Nigeria: Still An Abandoned Project
Please, could somebody just walk across to
President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cozy castle in Aso Rock and ask him how he
felt when he saw the report that the two survivors of the December 10
crash of the Sosoliso Flight 1145 in Port Harcourt were flown to
South Africa for medical treatment? So, Mr. President, does it make
you feel good that after nearly seven years of encumbering the ground as
Nigeria’s ruler, and at a period the nation earned an unprecedented,
jumbo windfall from oil, your hapless country cannot boast of a single
hospital anyone can confidently send such accident victims to and people
would not think he is making a costly gamble with their lives? If this
does not make you to recoil with shame, Mr. President, then you must be
a strange specie, from some very distant planet, far removed from this
our own!
Dear reader, who has ever heard that huge earnings in a country translates to unspeakable suffering and deprivation for the people?
Sosoliso Flight 1145 had crashed in the
afternoon of December 10, within the premises of the Port Harcourt
“International” Airport, and caught fire. About sixty young, hapless
school children, who may not be aware that their country has since
become an abandoned project were aboard the ill-fated aircraft. Their
par ents who had waited patiently to hug and caress these their precious
gifts from Loyal Jesuit College, Abuja, as soon as they emerged with
wide grins from the belly of the aircraft, were suddenly startled by a
very loud bang and fire alarm somewhere within the premises. Somehow,
they were able to break through security barricades and rushed to the
scene of the crash. Behold, the aircraft was on fire, and their loved
ones were trapped in there, screaming for help!
“So, why is no one attempting to put
out the fire and rescue our precious, tender children?”
“Sorry, Sir, sorry Ma, a couple of our
manageable fire-fighting trucks arrived here almost immediately the
crash occurred, but you see, we have no water or any functional
equipment to fight the fire. Let’s just hope some of them would be able
to jump out from the raging inferno, like one or two gallant ones have
already done. Nigerians must, however, appreciate our prompt response
to this tragedy. We arrived here almost immediately the plane fell!”
Dear reader, we are still stuck with this
gloom-fille d imagery of scarcity in the midst of plenty; or else, how
can anyone complain of lack of water to fight a fatal fire in a state
called “Rivers”? Now, I am not joking here. Indeed, how can any
sane person explain that a country that could squander billions to host
COJA, CHOGM and a meaningless carnival cannot afford a few millions to
acquire ordinary fire-fighting machines, to save the lives of its
citizens? And if you think that you have been reading an extract from a
novella set in some stone age community, you better wake up and face the
benumbing reality that Nigeria is a perfect example of an abandoned
project, a vehicle with neither a driver nor conductor. The December 10
tragedy is just one of the high costs of this cruel abandonment.
Did you watch the presidential farce
captioned, “Aviation Stakeholders Meeting,” which played out in Abuja
the other day? I suppose the president expects us to take all those
barking and raining of insults on the other members of the cast in the
hall to mean that he is “doing something” about the rot in the aviation
industry? Exactly the same way he was, reportedly, “personally directing
rescue operations” at the October 22 Bellview Airlines crash site when
his officials were yet to locate the site of the crash! The truth we all
know is that after all this body language, aimed at capturing the
headlines and knocking off this temporary distraction from public
consciousness, the president, will simply heave a sigh relief, and go
back to what he considers the real meaningful work – the one that really
animates him, namely, the 2007 Project (including tackling the MRD/MDD
challenge, and, of course, the Atiku question). But what I would want to
ask some of my colleagues who were naively casting such ambitious, but
laughable, headlines like “Obasanja Vows to Sanitize the Aviation
Sector,” and all such crap is: what has this Obasanjo done in the
past six years he has been on the throne to ensure that the aviation
sector did not degenerate to its present sorry state? Must one wait for
one’s child to die of neglect before rushing in to revive him with
emergency care and attention? Must governance remain a fire-brigade
affair? Whatever happened to vision and foresight with which great,
achieving leaders are known? Shouldn’t a responsible ruler, instead
flying around the globe, sit down to articulate a blueprint for every
sector in the country he claims to govern, and then monitor the pace of
development to be sure that his vision for every sector is being
thoroughly implemented? How then does Obasanjo distinguish between a
performing minister and a non-performing one, if there is no goal he has
set for them within a specific timeframe? Are we to take it that
Obasanjo is simply overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of the
task before him? If yes, is it not better to be open and sincere about
it, than abandon the country to rot and die?
It is cheap to arbitrarily ground airlines
and sack permanent secretaries just to show that you are “sanitizing”
the aviation sector. What credible mechanisms are being put in place to
ensure no one cuts corners among airline operators to make more profits
and more tragedies? If, as you have told us, Mr. President, the Ministry
of Aviation is corrupt from top to bottom, what are our laws there for?
How many people have you docked already? Is the anti-corruption General
already battle-weary? Why is the Aviation Minister, the head of that
rotten body, the “professor” who not only failed woefully in the
Education ministry, but whose nomination was rejected several times by
the Senate, still retaining a job he has sufficiently proved himself
unfit for? The mere fact that his “professorship” is still a subject of
intense contention in enlightened quarters is sufficient evidence that
he is incapable of reliable outputs. Is it not a big shame that in this
twenty-first century, we are still talking about thunder bolts
destroying planes when the installation of deflect ors can simply save
us the agony of further tragedies? Is Nigeria the only country that
experience thunder storms? Why is there so much despair and helplessness
in a country whose leaders, their family members and cronies flaunt
unimaginable wealth?
The truth is that this nation has been
cursed with leaders who do not care a hoot whether the people lived or
died. Why, in this world, would anyone banish Slock Airlines, a credible
outfit that would have made a lot of difference in our aviation
industry? Now, Slock Airline is the national carrier of Gambia and
servicing many countries in Africa. The other time they were talking of
going to Europe and America. Maybe, this is really the time to ask the
president to put aside politics and think Nigeria first. Even if you do
not like the face of the man who is behind Slock Airlines, must you
cruelly render unemployed those hundreds of innocent Nigerians employed
by the company? Now that Sosoliso is grounded, Slock banished, and the
roads to the East still very scary, going to the Eastern part of Nigeria
has become an extended nightmare.
Nigeria is an abandoned project, and there
is always a price to pay for every abandonment. The rot has been
there, invisible, but it has now begun to announce itself in the form of
these avoidable tragedies. What does President Obasanjo discuss with
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa each time they meet? Do they at
all compare notes? What does he learn from his countless overseas trips?
Has he ever asked himself why South Africa and even several other small
African countries are able to offer quality education to their people?
Is there any sign in the last six years that the present administration
has any noble vision for Nigeria? What is Obasanjo’s blueprint for the
education sector, and what percentage of it has already been achieved?
If there were quality schools like Loyola Jesuit College in Port
Harcourt or even anywhere in the East, why would all these parents take
their children all the way to Abuja to study? Why is this nation cursed
with visionless le aders who do not bother about development, progress
and advancement? What indeed does the Federal Executive Council even
discuss when they gather every week?
The rot is spreading fast, and very soon,
everyone would feel the touch. Third term or no third term, Obasanjo
cannot be rule Nigeria forever. Ditto for all other categories of
rulers. They will soon come down to meet us down here. The schools have
virtually collapsed and producing substandard professionals, including
doctors. Those who have accumulated enough loot for medica l treatments
abroad, may one of these days, in an emergency situation, be attended to
by these “doctors” and possibly get the same guess-work therapy and
concussions that have sent several poor people to their early graves.
Talk of one being consumed by the evil he helped to breed! What about
our future pilots? Won’t they still be products of this totally grounded
system?
The speculation now is that, maybe, very
soon, Nigerians may start going to Liberia for quality education and
medical treatment. You can dismiss this as a hu ge joke, but if the
gaggle of Harvard and MIT rookies who are Obasanjo’s advisers continue
to drum it into his ears that government has no business doing several
vital things for the people, the extent of decay the country will
experience, before he quits the stage in 2007 (assuming he will agree to
leave peacefully) would take a longer time to rectify. And that is, if
his successor is not intimidated into carrying on with the soulless,
fatally flawed reforms.
What no one has told me is the person that
made this law of Medes and Persians “that changeth not,” about
what government should do and what it should not do, and which cannot be
adjusted to suit the peculiar circumstances of individual countries. In
other countries, when governments withdraw from some things, it is to
stimulate healthy competition and allow more space for private hands,
already doing well, to flourish. It is not another name for abdication
of responsibility towards the citizenry, or a way of providing
pernicious justification for non-performance. In fact, the government is
still actively involved in the area of monitoring and provision of
enabling environment to ensure the success of these private initiatives.
It can even intervene from time to time, to save situations. For
instance, right now, in Britain, from where some of these ill-digested
theories are plagiarized, there is a serious debate and move to return
rail transportation to exclusive government management because it is has
become evident that since that sector is capital intensive, pr ivate
operators, in attempt to make profits, may want to cut corners and risk
people’s lives. That is what I call responsible governance, not the
heartless variety we have here that encourages irrelevance of
government.
This does not mean that I am against
reforms. No, I am not. What I am against are anti-people, impoverising
and soulless reforms, that add no value to the lives of the people.
Well, today, credible studies have shown that about 99% of the nation’s
resources are in the hands of just 1% of the population. Any reforms
that will change this will get the full support of people like me
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