“There is no ‘light’. There is no fuel. There is no water. Workers are on strike because states can’t afford to pay them. So, the workers pretend to work and their governors pretend to pay them. Going to Abuja has become painful trips because the commissioners of finance come back with half empty begging bowls……… How did we, who once rode on thoroughbred horses, become shoeless?” These are the words of that brain and beauty, Funke Egbemode in her piece titled: “Once upon a prosperous nation” published in her Sunday column on March 13 in The Sun. In that piece, she told a story where she compared Nigeria at the moment with a village she called Agbeko which was once prosperous but due to injustice and mismanagement of its affairs went into extinct. She warned Nigeria to retrace its steps before it is too late so as not to end up like the Agbeko village.
If the truth must be told, everyone who can discern and cares about Nigeria knows that this is not the best of time for the most populous black nation on earth. From allegations of corruption and sleaze being leveled against powerful men of yesterday, the arrest and trial of people who called the shots in the yester-regime, but which many Nigerians consider as being one-sidedly done, to rampant kidnappings and the other vices, there is definitely no pillow for our nation to lay its head at the moment. The painful part of it is that those who reduced Nigeria to what it is now all know that they are the nation’s undoing but they continue to enjoy their actions since their children will never go hungry. The concrete solution to Nigeria’s problem is being side-stepped while the political leaders preoccupy themselves propounding meaningless theories upon theories. Those conferences of theories are bridges to nowhere since they would not offer anything tangible when the main respite to Nigeria’s problem is not being attended to.
Like some of us, those who truly love Nigeria have on occasions hit the nail on the head. In March, the present Emir of Kano, at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, reminded Nigerian leaders and the rest of us that there will be no meaningful development for Nigeria as a country under the present political and geographical structure. He said: “You sometimes wonder if anyone needs to tell any group of people that if you are a poor country, you do not need 36 governors, 36 deputy governors, with members of house of assembly, commissioners and advisers, special assistants, a president, a vice-president, 36 ministers, special advisers, federal legislature and so on. Simple arithmetic will tell you that if you have that structure, you are first of all doomed to spending 80 or 90 per cent of everything you earn maintaining public officers. It is really common sense but it seems to be a problem for us to understand it,”
Preparatory to the 2014 National Conference, the former secretary to Commonwealth of nations, Chief Emeka Anyaoku tried to press the need to restructure Nigeria and plant its seed in the mind of the conferees before the confab took off, when, under a header, “the imperatives of restructuring Nigeria,” he said: “Learning from the experience of other successful federations of diverse peoples around the world, Nigeria should be restructured into a federation of six regions based on the existing six geopolitical zones with substantial parts of the powers now exercised by the Centre devolved to the regions to enable each region to develop at its own pace. The leadership of the Centre should be made less powerful and less attractive as it was at the beginning of our independence when after the elections, the leader of the majority party, Sir Ahmadu Bello, chose to remain the regional Premier of Northern Nigeria and instead sent his lieutenant, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to Lagos to serve as the Federal Prime Minister.”
It does not require a rocket science to know that even Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with all his managerial acumen, will find it very difficult to achieve anything under the present political structure. The Western Region that Chief Awolowo governed in the 50s has been balkanized principally into seven states – Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Edo and Delta states. Substantial part of the present Lagos state was also in the Western Region then. He governed the region with only 14 ministers appointed from the legislative members of the Western Region House of Assembly. This means those 14 Ministers doubled as lawmakers and as Ministers at the same time. There were no senior special advisers and special assistants in his cabinet while there were few Permanent Secretaries and Judges then. He was able to use accruable income for the development of the Region in the areas of Free Education, Health, Agriculture (Farm Settlements), Industries (Ikeja Industrial Estate) and the other developments like the WNBC/WNTV, Liberty Stadium, Cocoa house, Western House and what was and is still known as Odua Investment. Chief Awolowo achieved all that without oil revenue but majorly from agriculture, taxes and industries.
Our major problem in Nigeria is the tiny political elite. It is a clique of kleptocrats who have held Nigeria in the jugular since the 1966 military incursion into Nigerian political arena up till today. As tiny as they are, they have had a grip and absolute control of our commonwealth using same to slap the rest of us in the face. They are not up to 1% of the Nigerian population yet they have been enjoying between 80 and 90 % of Nigeria’s total income. This is even legitimate earning – salaries and allowances. These people will not be contented with that, they are the one pilfering our wealth through money laundering and untold corruption. They are the one stealing our money and hiding it either in water reservoir or soak away system. They are the one using our money to buy personal properties in billions of naira in Dubai, United States, United Kingdom and in the Caribbean.
Before he became the Emir of Kano, the former Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi called this clique ‘vested interest’. At a TEDx event in 2013, he identified them as the Nigeria’s major problem and thought the rest of us should be able to confront and overcome them. He particularly gave the duty of overcoming the clique to the Nigerian youth. It has been difficult to confront the ‘vested interest’ because oil revenue will not let us pursue goals anymore. Added to this is the division that ethnicity and religion have caused among Nigerians. The divide that has been enjoying the oil benefit more than the rest wants the status quo to remain. Monthly, accruing revenue from oil is shared among three tiers of government in Nigeria, – Federal, States and Local governments. Monetary allocation to Local governments has benefited the north far more than the south. For instance, Kano and Kaduna which have less population than Lagos have been receiving more money than Lagos through allocation to local governments. The north wants this to continue.
Yinka Odumakin, in one of his essays in 2014 said: “between 2009 and 2012, four years, when you look at the revenue that accrued to this country and how it was shared, you will see that in those four years the South-South gave the federation account an average of 68 per cent; the South-West contributed 23 per cent and South-East, eight per cent. The average for the North is zero per cent in those four years. When you go to local government allocation, the North took 54 per cent. The South that produced 100 per cent of the revenue got 46 per cent.” He concluded that fair ought to be fair. This is a major reason why the hoi polloi in Nigeria cannot find unity to speak with one voice, act with one purpose to dislodge the main enemy of Nigeria, the political elite called “vested interest” from the corridors of power.
Now that 27 out of the 36 states in Nigeria can no longer pay salaries of their workers as and when they become due, we do not need anybody to tell us that the present political structure cannot work. How can a country be borrowing money to pay its workers’ salaries? Can’t we use Senegal as a reference point? Senegal dislodged its Senate just to save $15,000 annually and to use the same for development and for the benefit of its people. What type of human beings are we Nigerians with our untold love for money and the ephemeral material things? Membership of the “vested interest” does not know north and south, ethnicity and religion. They always work in unison, putting their hands in the till, to the detriment of the rest of us. Can’t we as Nigerian people – Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Buhari, Osinbajo, etc come together in unity to say enough is enough, getting our country back and returning same to a regional system?
Please watch and enjoy below, the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s address to the youth at the 2013 TEDx event (Credit: TEDx Youth, SLS, YouTube)