Good Year Badly Operated
By
Wada Nas
We
thank the Almighty Allah, the Lord of creation, for making it possible to see
another year of the Christian era. With His blessings, we are all living
witnesses to 2001. What we must do is to continue to glorify Him so as to please
Him again to show us more years ahead. With Him, and He alone all things are not
impossible.
Like any other year, the year 2000 was good, full of benefits of the Almighty. As we all know, He never discriminated in His creation. Only distinctions differ. All trees, for example, have the same form differing only in species. Human beings are the same all over, differing in physic and colour. There is hardly a distinction between air and wind. Like human beings, all animals have the same forms, except in the case of characteristics.
Thus, the Almighty has been consistent in His creations. And this is not different with years. All are equally endowed with the bounties of Allah but mismanaged by the human persons. Like all other years, therefore, the year 2000 was a good one but badly managed by our leaders. We can’t blame the year for this failure.
Indeed, the year gave us more than our share of earned resources. We hinged our budget on 22 dollars per barrel but the year was kind to keep it floating between 30-35dolars throughout the days. Thus, as a nation, the year 2000 was our best in terms of financial earnings. Unfortunately, what our leaders gave us in turn was nothing, practically nothing, at least at the federal level. We must feel the pain, inspite of the excellency the 2000 gave us, that while our president commissioned state projects in all the states, he visited, at lest 14 of them, according to him, he never commissioned one single federal project anywhere. Governor Orji Kalu of Abia state was frank and fearless in saying this. We must commend the young man for forthrightness here and condemn, in turn, those who believe that the truth about the utter failure of this administration must not be said. In the history of this country, we have never witnessed a situation where a federal administration failed to provide one single item to the people for a whole eighteen months, and worse, we recorded extra budgetary expenditure instead of surplus from unutilized money and extra earnings.
This
to me is very serious. About N400 billion was budgeted for capital expenditure,
and according to reports only 20% was released, yet the balance ran in extra
budgetary expenditure with 80% unutilized and with about 30% extra earning over
budget estimates. Only economists can comprehend such tricks but not laymen like
us.
Our
only understanding is that both the unutilized 80% and the 30% extra earnings
have gone with the winds. Indeed, we have not seen even the evidence of the 20%
said to have been utilized. Rather, what we witnessed was poor everything,
striding backwards, going from bad to worse as evidenced by the hopelessness of
NEPA and indeed everything, including weightless naira, now about N125 to the
dollar as against N82 in 1998
As a consequence of these monumental failures, a lot of factories have closed down. According to an official of the Kano state branch of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, of the 260 factories, in just a part of the state 140 have closed down. In another company, of its original workforce, of 1600 only 500 are still in employment. The story is certainly the same all over the country except Obasanjo Farms, which President Obasanjo was kind to tell us that it is now operating at 60% The only lucky one.
What are the consequences? Increase in unemployment, leading to more armed robbery, social deviation, prostitution, frustration and violence. The hopeless state, to which the economy was put in the year, is responsible for all these.
Worse still, with extra earning over budget estimates, states were finding it very difficult to pay the new salary scale. Thus, retrenchment of public sector workers become the vogue and the NLC leaders never bothered much about this except promoting the plot to diminish the National Assembly.
The year 2000, by the manner it was badly handled, gave us a bad leadership, bad economy, bad rising cases of unemployment, bad everything and hopeless security situation. It was an all round bad for us. The little we had, we lost and what we expected remained vanished hope. Which is to say that we became more hopeless than ever before. Even those who saw themselves more Obasanjo than the President, such as the Senator representing his constituency, came to grips with this reality: which is that Nigeria of yesterday was better than today’s Obasanjo Nigeria. Even Olabode George, the new Obasanjo man, cannot dispute this. After all, Afenifere was forced to admit the failure of their messiah, who must not be criticized.
What
good can we speak about the performance in the past year? For the first time
NAZISM was about reaching its peak when a whole people were massacred on account
of their places of origin. Genocide is the name of what happened to them. It is
silly saying that Northerners must not complain over the sponsored killings of
their own in Odudualand because of similar killings in the region. Throughout
our history, Northerners never come to deliberately attack the Yorubas, never,
except when the people of Kano were provoked by what happened in Shagamu. Even
in the Kano episode of 1953, the Yorubas, who provoked the matter were not the
victims but the Igbos who got messed up in the cross fire. The various communal
crises in the North, were Northerners against Northerners, and of course others
became victims in the cross fire. This was what happened during the two Kaduna
crises. Essentially it was Kaduna people against themselves and naturally others
became victims
In the South West it has been Yoruba deliberately killing Northerners through planned and well co-ordinated attacks which almost all top Yoruba leaders have been commending, all of them describing OPC as doing a good job; that job being the massive killing of Northerners. Of course, there was the unfortunate attack on the Igbos in 1966, but we all know what led to it. It was never from the blues. This has never been the case with the Yorubas in the North. Since the June 12 matter, there has been about six instances of massive Northern massacre in Odudualand, three in Ibadan, one in Shagamu and two in Lagos, the latter being the worst. Only the Shagamu massacre was violently reacted to. The others were calmly responded to. Northerners must be commended for this spirit of tolerance. It is an exemplary conduct worthy of emulation. Indeed, religion teaches us this much. We are taught, both as Muslims and Christians, not to visit the sins of a father on his sons. We are obliged to respect this verdict, but human tolerance is elastic and this was precisely what the Northern Governors warned against during the year under review. Tolerance could be a loose canon when mishandled. We can’t waste time disputing this nor could the problem be solved by insulting the governors and in particular Governor Abdullahi Adamu of Nasarawa state who merely read the text. Retaliation is certainly against the teaching of Allah but tolerance is also not limitless. This fact must be painfully understood.
The sum here is that except in 1966, the nation has never witnessed unwarranted cases of massive massacre as in 2000. It was indeed a bloody year brought about by the frustration of failure among others. The twins of this, armed robbery and highway robbery were also rampant worse than ever before. It was as if the administration came stained in human blood.
And of services. What could be said of NEPA? Zero minus, especially since Bello left the place. If someone thought that the Gambari man was the problem, now he knows better. System failure occurred several times after his departure. So NEPA has a minus zero score. And which of the services has a miserable pass of 40%? Hardly any. Almost all performed below 20% just like the administration. Vindictiveness and discrimination ruled the year of the administration. Take the case of the ‘Northern Seven’ vis-a-vis Faseun and the nonsense, that the police filed a no case against him. It took almost a year to investigate the cases of the ‘Northern Seven’ while it took the police less than one week and forced to take him to court without sufficient evidence. A bad case does not start in court but in the process of investigation. And this was exactly what happened. The police were forced to submit a bad case so as not to find evidence against him. The cover up started from the investigation.
Of the so-called dissimilarity of the cases, this also is false. The only evidence against the ‘Northern Seven’, for example, is that they allegedly directed certain actions. The case of Mohamad Abacha is more particular, in that he is linked with the issue that his driver drove those who allegedly committed the act. So, as the boss of the driver, therefore, they assumed him guilty but not Faseun, the boss of OPC. Besides, according to experts, the criminal law operating in Lagos says that once a member of a gang of the OPC type, acting in the name of the gang commits crime, all the leaders are subject to prosecution. So there are no differences in the cases except in the minds of some people. We are however happy that some true Odudua nationalists are distancing themselves from the OPC terrorists. Even if they are few, there are other silent many who cannot speak out openly because of the type of violent dictatorship in the area, which does not permit deviation from the main stream. You cannot have the Dangiwas, the Dan Suleimans, the Balarabe Musas talking against their own. Never. But surely things may change in future. This is our hope for a better Nigeria.
The core summary here is that the Obasanjo administration mercilessly wasted the year 2000 doing nothing but fighting the National Assembly, removing Okadigbo, discriminating against the people, practicing policy of divide and rule, mismanaging the economy thereby causing hardship, frustration and violence, gallivanting around the globe, violating the constitution at will, practicing tribalism in the open, visiting NAZISM on Northerners, securing an all round failure in sports, vandalizing the education system, destroying the services, refusing to implement the budget, causing more factory closures, selling Nigeria to foreign interests, making the country an American colony, visiting economic colonialism on the people, vanishing millions into thin air without traces, encouraging and engaging in massive retrenchment, promoting insecurity through faulty policies and such other social vandalisation. This is the core score card.
Some people believe that by pointing out the misdeeds of Obasanjo administration, Northerners are seeking to bring back the presidency to the North. Let me say it that the North has no problem with the presidency remaining in the South, but it has problem with those discriminating against its people and such others who cannot keep promises, plus those who believe that the region is now a conquered territory that must be subdued. What the North wants is fairness to all and not better treatment than others. The North does not seek to be treated better than the East or West, but wants to be treated equally. The North insists that if there are 30 posts to be shared, at least 15 must come to the region since it has more than half of the population. Fairness is our goal in the years ahead and not the presidency. Many Northerners will fight for the presidency to be retained in the South and the North strongly believe there are Southern minorities and Igbos who are no less Southerners. I will say more on this in due course. For now this is sufficient.
As
we enter the year 2001, let us hope for the best. Let our leaders have a better
vision of equality, fairness and good performance and respect for the rule of
law and rules of democracy. We must pray for them to succeed but not for their
failure. We want them to be more enterprising and honest in their dealings with
us. We want them to be visionary and dynamic in handling the affairs of state.
Above all, we pray for the good of our country.
Wada Nas
You can read more about my views in my webpage http://www.gamji.com/wada.htm
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