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Abuja Makes You A Dirty Multi Millionaire By Farouk Martins, Omo Aresa
If we had the choice between a great deal of money with trouble or poverty with a peace of mind, only God knows for sure what our pick would be because it may be too personal to disclose. Many of us who criticize the money bags in Nigeria will do exactly the same thing if accorded the opportunity to be one of the highest paid ministers or legislators in the world. Sleaze has turned Abuja into one of the world’s most expensive cities.
We have lost some of our dedicated lawyers turned Attorney Generals; some professors, socialists, religious champions and journalists to Abuja and local capitals who defended the actions of crude looters and shielded them from the gulag. Even though we pay politicians too much, they can not resist the temptation to steal. Yet, we somehow expect Ribadu and Aondoakaa who were always on opposite sides before now to work together.
So many people blamed the contract of the Speaker’s house on Olubunmi Etteh limited education, that David Mark did the same. What about my late brother, Okadigbo? Can anyone be better educated than that? Education had nothing to do with greed. They always forgive one another in the House and Senate anyway. While AG and EFCC compete for jurisdiction and due process, deals will be made to keep half of their loot.
If you are a struggling young man in your own small business thinking about making the next pay checks of your employees with their families and you suddenly got a call from Baba-Ke about helping him invest ten millions in a joint venture. How many people would jump and grab the opportunity? Some, but certainly not all the people we hear of today, made it that way. How did Adekeye, the Naval Chief make his money?
Indeed, Nigerians have a way of justifying such venture. They will tell you he could have invested it outside the country but decided to create jobs for Nigerians. During elections, millions were shared from those at the top to those below them, and told by those who hated the money bags to take the money and vote strategically, which was jeun soke/sile.
We also know of the new waves of Indians, Chinese and Lebanese who are looking for Nigerian partners that can front for them in order to get some contracts. Of course they will be adequately compensated once the contract survives. If you think these are only desperate and hungry Nigerians who fall for this scheme, you are wrong. You are aware of those who gained oil blocks only to turn around and sell it to foreigners.
Inflated contract is just one of several ways Nigerians flee the treasury. There are enough examples of that on the pages of the newspapers. Salary delay is another scheme which gained ground in the last several years. Before then, salary of workers was sacrosanct. But someone thought a month’s delay while he made his money was not bad, they took it to a couple or several months’ delay while the salary accrued interest in the bank.
We also found out that those retired police and army who camped at various Government areas waiting for pension were not alone, some of their dead and long forgotten comrades were also on the queue waiting for their salary. In many of those cases the dead ones were paid before those alive. While we all cry for the abject poverty most pensioners find themselves and urged the Government to pay them, their ghosts got paid first.
Are these Nigerians doing these to Nigerians or some colonialists in power? If you want to be a dirty millionaire, that is what it takes. There are no short cuts to making money. It takes time for investments to turn to good money but many of us can not wait. Actually, some of us are still waiting for our old age so that retirement can be comfortable. We work so hard sometimes, we die before we can even enjoy the money. There are some of us while paying mortgages in Europe or America, are also building houses in Nigeria and sending children to universities. Many we never heard of died working for both houses.
When these children saw the way their parents worked hard, they swore that nothing will make them work to death. If you want to make it worse, tell the children they have to work twice as hard as their friends. For them, the contradiction between that hard work and the way we make and spend money in Nigeria is too glaring. So if there is an easy way of making it and they see those who are making it, the temptation is too much to resist after all those years in colleges.
That is not what is conveyed to Nigerians when we step out of the plane. There are some young men and women who left Nigeria well after others and came back with the best cars anywhere in the world. Their suits and shoes make Nigerians want to jump into the planes, ships or anything that can get them to where they came from. Little do many know that only the very rich can afford those luxuries even over there. Sometimes, they wondered if those of you, so stingy, coming home without these luxuries actually passed through the airport or may have got into the plane at the stop-over in Kano.
Luckily, some of us still remember the days of hard work in the groundnuts, cocoa or yam farms with our parents. Even those of us who grew up in the cities who were not sure if yams were roots or from tree tops, must remember that pride of hard work. It pays? A friend from the US south hates to plant even flowers, not again! Today, we have oil farms and everything depends on that. Many of us still shiver when we hear militants demanding millions in payment for lost business from their brothers in crime, politicians.
Instead of crying for Nigeria, we must stand up and demand comparable salary and allowances for our politicians. It is difficult to understand why a politician in Nigeria is paid relative to politicians in America or Europe when their subjects in Nigeria are making less than the people in those countries. The only incentive for this preposterous salary is to attract looters amongst us, not those who are keen to give back to the society they serve. By the way could we vote in only those who are sworn to the woe of poverty?
Until we make examples out of our politicians, make those positions uncomfortable and probably part-time, vultures will continue to feed on us. This mentality that politicians must be at the echelon of our society is what we need to appoint a commission to find ways to deglamorize. If those our children look up to are as poor as old monks’ dedication to duty and devotion, will sanity return to our land, not cry for revolution. |