BURNING POT BY DR. PRINCE CHARLES DICKSON

 

Real nonsense people 

pcdbooks@yahoo.com

 

"The overwhelming opinion of Nigerians was that to be able to police the country effectively, State Police was a necessity. Now the APC government has refused to implement the report of the committee it set up, which was headed by an APC Governor and comprised of only APC members. Isn't this hypocrisy? Isn't this public deception, giving the impression that it is doing something about an issue on which the public harangued it but it is in actual sense doing nothing about it"  Ray Ekpu

 

Real nonsense people everywhere...

 

The easiest and most attractive national pastime is buck passing, especially with the bunch of leaders that we have, that can hardly peel a banana nor wash an already white handkerchief. Not many of us want to take responsibility for anything, from personal, to family or national life. 

 

The blame is on the system. We do not need to create demons out of our leaders because they are already specimens of demons, so we hang our sins on them appropriately and inappropriately too. And unfortunately their behaviour has made it easy for the critic to descend on them.

 

We at most, talk, write and discuss the Nigerian myth with a sense of fatalism. If everyone thought as much as I did about justice and fairness, life would be better. I am a critic, but I am also the critics’ critic, the unrepentant believer that the best way to keep the government on its toes is to keep harping on their flaws so they can improve. 

 

Often I say I believe the things I write on, are important for our nation as they are for other nations, but when it appears to me Nigerians especially those in authority do not react to these issues as people in other lands do, I repeat them in new essays to remind old readers and recruit new ones to participate in the continuing dialogue.

 

So today I address the real nonsense people…citizens apologists and crooks called politicians in a Nigeria where nothing works and no one cares, when it works, it is because someone’s interest is about to be served or being served not the people’s interest. We talk about our institutions despairingly. Our leaders do not watch network news any longer except when their faces would be there on occasion of their sons/daughters’ wedding or such. They do not need the newspapers anymore because it is full of their lies, or paid adverts and the critics’ truth, bitter truth.

 

Government bashing is a national past time and every drinking joint, and any suya spot that is BH free has a sitting parliament with an expert on every and any issue but we forget that no matter the input if the politicians and actors in our national scene have questionable lives both on personal and domestic level, nothing will change, the best government policy cannot change the individual. It is because the policies are formulated on a bad foundation and by people with warped thinking. 

 

As part of a lack of confidence in our institutions, we have long replaced PHCN with generators even as the Aso Rock villa  do not trust the improved power supply jargon. NITEL, NIPOST, NPA, NMA, everything and anything that has an 'N' has been run down. Even Nigeria herself or is it himself is on that verge. 

 

We do not need the government to teach us to stop treating ourselves like animals. Do we need the government to teach us that we demand responsible leadership and representation? Certainly not, we should know that and act in a fashion that depicts that we demand more than what we are getting. 

 

So it was my friend that sent me a picture, a Nigerian governor abroad (those trips to bring Foreign Direct Investment that often than not drains the state and nation at large of the little we have), a whole governor of a Nigerian state was standing, he was standing like a bus conductor in the train, better he was hanging. At home he would have been in a convoy of more than a half a dozen cars as per a (humble) man. Real nonsense…

 

See the drama in Plateau state, first let me say it is good for our democracy, as it tests our knowledge of statistics, critical thinking, logic, foolishness and more. After all, the ruling party has more than 30 factional party chairmen as parallel congresses took place everywhere. It is no big deal for a state to have two speakers (no be today fowl yansh dey back). The opposition party almost had her convention scuttled as her erstwhile chairman was in court to stop the convention. 

 

Did you hear that some billions will be spent on a 14-bed hospital (my error, I am told it’s just a clinic, for a mere N21bn). A world class clinic; Abeg I am asking for my neighbor. Help me do the maths and confirm, divide 21,000,0000,000 by 14. I actually got N1,500,000,000 per bed. And mosquito nets were going to be purchased for some $200M, because it’s better treating malaria than working on prevention. And don’t mind I won’t check the naira value of that figure.

 

And talking of value, did you know that Nigeria’s currency is weaker than Afghanistan’s Afghani and Pakistan’s Rupee on the international market. Currently, one dollar equals N411 (Naira). 79.92 AFN (Afghani), and 174. 43 PKR (Pakistani rupee). 

 

These three countries are threatened by terrorism and insecurity, with Nigeria and Afghanistan taking the top two places on the global terrorism index and Pakistan is in the seventh position. 

 

The Senate has said that the Nigeria Budget Office paid N28 billion in excess from the 2015 budget to unnamed government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The claims came from the Senate Public Accounts Committee, which said the 2016 Auditor-General Report uncovered an excess payment of N28 billion to some MDAs in the country. And it is almost six years gone and counting, still unnamed like unknown gunmen…so much nonsense.

 

In the last week of October gunmen killed 30 in Sokoto market, some 10 soldiers, 21 others killed by gunmen across Nigeria. Gunmen continued their attacks in the Southeastern parts with another police station burnt in Ebonyi, with a cop killed. Nowhere seems safe, Nigerians cannot travel around, cannot stay at home either, are not allowed to look for food because of nonsense people.

 

The critic’s anthem would be my end to this essay, it is one that has always inspired me by H.G. Wells “we are going to write about it all. We are going to write about business and finance and politic and pretences and pretentiousness, and decorum and indecorum, until a thousand pretences and ten thousand impostor shrivel in the cold, ...we are going to write about wasted opportunities and latent beauties, until a thousand new ways of life open to men and women. We are going to appeal to the young, and the hopeful, and the curious against—the established, the dignified and the defensive..." 

 

I will write about the nonsense in my society, once in a while when I see good things I will write about them, but I will not let an opportunity pass to address the real nonsense people, so that they know that people are not happy, so that they come down from their hypocritical high horses, so they have the scales in their eyes removed; par adventure they can change, if only that we can have a true people's revolution to get rid of the nonsense in our society—Only time will tell.