Bound by seedless corruptive emergencies, a group of today’s men and women seems to be on the defensive against the Nigerian people. They are perfect rulers with tinted immunity to correction. The outlandish scheming and circumscribing tactics of such vapid rulers on the political terrains in the country have so gained currency that any attempt by any well-meaning persons to seek clarity on questions on governance is usually greeted with mind-boggling opposition from the hotchpotch of yes men and women defending the blinding cause of their lascivious pay masters. In a sick country, all efforts aimed at curing its sickness is opposed by people who feed from its sickness. They are ever so suspicious, conformist and scornful.
We have on our hands such charlatans traipsing the corridors of power, puffing and huffing in habiliments reeking of ignominy, underdevelopment and stagnation. They obviously got so intoxicated with their own sense of nonsense they began to imagine themselves as the messiahs of our departing nation. As the apocalyptic rumbling intensifies, it is suicidal for these men and women to stay too long in the corridors of Aso Villa. Shorn of authority, they can only become authoritarian, swaggering about in an infertile display of violence and naked aggression against their own citizens. It is raining thunder and sulphuric acid. This is the reality of our animal kingdom and we have a bunch of hypocrites to deal with.
With no exception at all, they care less about Nigeria as a progressive nation but the corruptive leftovers that accrue from it. And so they will stop at nothing to discredit those they think are not as brainy as they imagine themselves to be. The Nigerian people have unfairly become the target of their intellectual kwashiorkor. In case you don’t know, we are talking about the hypocrisy of today’s men in Aso Rock.
With their stuttering tongues and wide mouths, they arbour deep-rooted hatred for the brainy among the electorates. Perhaps, it is a malady they inflicted on Nigerians. In the same advanced societies which today’s men and women hate to be measured with, public service is taken as a privilege. People are called upon to serve; they do so in humility and great commitment. The special adviser spends his time to perform his constitutional duties; the lawmaker makes his presence in the chamber productive, the minister discharges his duties with measured decorum no matter how wide his mouth is, the governor tells the truth about his health to his people, the president makes priority of his deliverables and makes himself accountable to the citizenry. As public citizens, they are not entitled to use the benefits of their positions to shield corruption, to cover up sickening First Lady. They speak up on matters of public importance not as a part-time job as in the case of today’s men and women in Nigeria.
*Haba Obajeun
What then, is the problem with our public governance? As part of our regression into nothingness, most people become elevated beyond their competence. With this, public service becomes private service. Then they easefully forget they are mere journalists and trade off their once writing activisms and get swamped up in the national corruptive emergencies. They become emperors and spit acid from their Olympian heights. They fly the shortest distance in jets to attend parties; they arrange international media conferences to lie to the world and to morph into self-appointed messiahs of the power sector of Nigeria. They sell Nigerian property to themselves in the name of privatization.
They are currently milking the country, lobbying to move from the less juicy ministry to the juicier one. They belong to the political party hosting the largest political gangsters in Africa. They keep quite on obvious conspiracy among themselves and write books to unveil the mystery once they are kicked out. They disregard their journalistic ethos and lash at their former constituency at the slightest opportunity. If that still doesn’t work, they open twitter handles for houseboys and instruct them to abuse the Nigerian taxpayer, with a jobless doctor who prefers to be called an ‘attack dog’. Power blinds them to the reality that they are all in corruption together and not with the unsuspecting and hardworking electorates.
Unsatisfied with the performance of their dogs and social media voltrons, they arrange and spend $60,000 to grant interview on CNN where they lie against the Nigerian people hoping to force themselves into the heart of Nigerians. They swiftly arrange soldiers to take on assignment in Mali in order to gain undeserved attention from the international community. Sadly enough, no one talks about the Nigerian soldiers in Mali, the praises from the Malians have been on the French soldiers. These characters suffer from creative delusions, claiming they brought facebook to Nigeria. The fact that they have dedicated employee who manages their social media accounts and the citizens often correct them for their misfires through these accounts since these accounts provide direct engagements, makes them feel uncomfortable.
Saying that the government of the day welcomes criticism and political activism is like saying it is possible to clap with one hand. The government’s readiness for criticism was murdered on arrival. During the build up to the 2011 elections, the president shunned a debate put together by an independent body, apparently running away from criticism of his rulership after Yar’Adua’s demise. In January 2012, the same administration sent its troops out to march protesting Nigerians on the streets gun to mouth. This administration is wobbling in lies, and the goons are running away from the issues, calling the brainy liars. The current administration has held and still holding the country to ransom. The goons in this administration have appropriated the right to determine what is best for the country. The drunkards in the corridors of power who have turned public service privilege into a life-long self corruptive aggrandizement must be told to work for their pay, hence they become jobless.
The current Ministers, current Special Advisers, Current Governors, Current DGs, and all sorts who have been busy defending their wastes and promoting goebellian propaganda must be reminded that the Jonathan administration is in fact trying to finish up the $67b foreign reserves left in 2007. The ball is in their court, but they don’t know how to play the game. They are refereeing their own game, they are the accused, they are the judge, they are the prosecuting lawyer, and they are the defense lawyer. They are playing God with Nigerians and what they don’t realize is that in the end, they will still come back to us.
When one of them argued that Port Harcourt airport was abandoned by a self acclaimed social critic and there was a sign of corruption noticed in the abandonment, he failed to tell us if there was a paid budget to execute the ‘renovation’. If there was, what happened to the money? Who was the budget custodian? Has the case been investigated by the Jonathan’s administration since it noticed the corruptive lines? Who has been brought to book? If there was nothing like this to show, then they should bury their rotten heads. It is not about pointing fingers alone, it is about being up in the logic of our reasoning. It is a shame that our primary school pupils are now rationalizing the logic of the crop of the PhDs we now in government. There is something to learn from Oby Ezekwesili, use facts, numbers to argue your case.
They said the rail lines are now working and when they wanted to cap it all, they said, very ‘soon’ more rail lines would start working. The word ‘soon’ will continue to haunt them. They are jealous because they could not think through crisis and come up with creative solutions. Somebody invented due process and opened the door of accountability, but they are scrambling to talk about railway lines that will ‘soon’ start working. We ask them that where the money in our foreign reserve is, they are saying that the money is not missing but they could not just find the money. They have declared emergency in the power sector, they have managed to move from 2000MW to 4200MW. Unfortunately, this is not reaching the bottom-line. And this is evident in their 2013 budget allocation for generator set. The 2013 budget provides that, to fuel generators in the State House alone, the Presidency will spend N72,510,832. Also, the Presidency in its entirety is to spend the sum of N654.02m on generators. The money also covers the amount set aside to replace some generators in the agencies under the Presidency. Also, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources plans to spend N22,525,507 for fuelling of generators and N25,036,676 to maintain the generators.
There is also another huge sum allocated to defray the cost of power supply from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, such as the sum of N148,105,373 to be expended by the State House alone to pay for electricity charges in 2013. MDAs include purchase of generators at very exorbitant prices and this appears year after year. For example, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency has a budgetary allocation of N23,515,181 for this purpose. The lifespan of every generator, even the one called “I pass my neighbour” exceeds a period of at least two years. So why is there the necessity for this request for the purchase of generators in the budget of some MDAs every year?
They are saying that we are complaining of bad roads. If illegal contracts were awarded to the tune of billions, what have they made of it? They said to the ‘tune of billions’, no figure. This is vague. We told them they lavished our $67bn, this is definite. Yet they claim to be PhDs. Has any court convicted the person who apportioned plots of land to his people? Was the apportioning illegal? What have they made of the case? If they really have a case, they should make the case with sense and come out to defend it. The summary is that they don’t care about the Nigerian taxpayer who has had to bear the brunt of their wastes and making a mess of our treasury.
We are not being hysterical for the sake of it. We are greatly appalled and disturbed by the grim social reality of our time. We are confounded by the savage existence of humanity. We are perturbed by the descent into bestial cruelty and the callous disregard for human life. We are aghast at man’s inhumanity to man. All we could do for now, is to laugh at grief.
Nigerians are wiser; they know who to follow and who not to follow. Today’s men and women are supercilious, and they are lost in their own ignorance. The power currently intoxicating them is transient. A time will come, they will be stripped naked of the power and they will need us to cover them. We will drag them on the street, and try them in people’s court and then, they will be remanded in their own solitude of quietness!
It is me, @Obajeun
Jonah Ayodele Obajeun blogs @www.obajeun.com. Reach him twitter via @Obajeun
