By Mideno Bayagbon
(mideno@thenewsguru.ng)
I had wanted to write about the perfidy represented by the trio of the disgraceful Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele’s conduct; the unbelievable mumu-ishness of former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan; and the shamelessness of Minister of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige. But a late night discussion with a friend, whose medical condition kept him in the United Kingdom for almost one year, and hundreds of thousand of Pound Sterling later, changed all that. He had just returned with barely the skin of his life. God, and not medical science, has kept him alive. He is back and is immediately thrown into the abyss we have descended as nation. A symptom of which is darkness generated by 3000 megawatts of power shared by 200 million people.
Our discussion; no, lamentation, stole my peace of mind, gave me a sleepless night. I tossed and tossed and wished in vain for sleep. My brain just couldn’t find enough rest to fall asleep. A resort to self help pills failed abysmally. A sense of shame, which is our collective lot, enveloped me. The comedic political nuisance sprouting all over Nigeria, ensured that sleep went on an uninvited sabbatical. How I wished, over and over again, that I didn’t have that discussion about Nigeria. But too late.
My mind, on its own will went on an excavation of our history. It dived deep and was relentless. The mission being to find out where the rain started beating us. Where we fell into the cesspit. How far we have sunk. What, if anything, can be done to dig ourselves out of the deep morass. Questions kept popping up as I struggled with facts and history: where did we get it all wrong, who were the major actors? How could we not sustain the golden Yakubu GowonYakubu Gowon era in which all the major infrastructure, we have now destroyed or are pillaging, were conceived and built?
Yes, the military misadventure into politics is the progenitor. It spurned the catastrophic civil war, it brought near-nitwits into power. It destroyed the foundation every developing nation relies on: its civil service and recruitment of quality manpower to man its leadership positions. It brought the brash but zealous Murtala Mohammed who destroyed a significant level of the nation’s development by destroying the civil service. He brought to an end the era of the Super Permanent Secretaries and well crafted and executed development plans which saw the Gowon regime transforming the economy and positioning it for massive development.
The General Olusegun Obasanjo regime built major infrastructure by following the vision to make Nigeria a shining light in Africa and the world. This was a vision encapsulated in the already in-place development plan. The successive regimes that overthrew the civilian government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari put the final nail on the nation’s coffin. Surprisingly, the man at the helms of affairs in Aso Rock today, General Muhammadu Buhari, was a major player in the downward slope into the abyss. It is hardly a surprise that the leopard has not changed its skin. His current seven year tenure, as a civilian president, so far, has been an unmitigated disaster. He has taken the nation so far back that the average Nigerian life was better off in 1970 when the civil war ended than it is today. His is an incompetent, divisive and anachronistic government.
The little modicum of quality civil service ethics left has since been thrown into the garbage dump by President Buhari’s clannish and fundamentalist adherence to religion and region. The only qualification needed under his government is not competence and top range education but what the Igbos describe as mma-madu! You have to be related somehow to Buhari, come from a certain section of Nigeria and practice a particular strand of his religion; and or be affiliated to one of his minions. That is all that qualifies you. There is no department or ministry today where competence, quality, experience and right education have not been sacrificed.
In 62 years of unbelievable wealth thrown on our lap by God, we are today not just the poverty capital of the world, we are the laughing stock to our poor neighbouring countries and indeed the entire world. Take for example, Ghana and Benin Republic. Today, they are ranked far higher than Nigeria in the human capital development index. They are more stable, more secure and rated higher on the world development scale than richly blessed Nigeria. Ghanaians indeed mock Nigerians as a stupid set of people, a failed state. Small Ghana with GDP less than Lagos, Rivers and maybe a few other states. They laugh at our stupidity, at our self-inflicted power situation where probably hundreds of billions of dollars have been sunk into darkness. They laugh at our destroyed educational sector. The laugh at the fact that poor to middle level Nigerians, who cannot afford to pay the higher fees in Europe, Canada and the Americas, now flood Ghana and Benin Republic mushroom universities. They laugh at the trash piece that is now our Naira.
And it is not their fault. Like everything else, we have destroyed the outstanding educational system, which till about the middle of the 1980s, was among the best worldwide. Yet, a failed Labour Minister, Chris Ngige, whose seven years tenure has seen to the total destruction of all that is left of our tertiary education wants to be president. All public universities since the Buhari regime started have spent most of the years on shut down. Yet, Ngige was bold enough to fork out N100 million to buy the expression of interest and nomination forms of the All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential forms. He too, unbelievably wanted to be president of Nigeria. A man who has failed so spectacularly in the assignment he was given wants to be the Lord of the manor.
From being a nation which enjoyed medical tourism from other nations, whose universities competed with the best in the world; from being a nation which produced the Chinua Achebes, the Wole Soyinkas, Cyprian Ekwensis and the legion of literary scholars, a nation which produced the Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Ahmadu Bello, Sarduana Sokoto, we have become a nation of beggarly Lilliputians. We have become a nation where the worst of us rides roughshod over the best of us. We have become a nation whose best brain drains or get sentenced to stew in poverty, unrecognised and unappreciated. We have become a nation where a professor earns less than a local government councillor in real terms. Hence it is no surprise that most of our best brains, in every field, have fled and are fleeing the nation to go to other nations where they are valued and appreciated.
Today, following the bad example set by President Muhammadu Buhari, who has failed in almost every area of governance, all who can afford it, not wanting to take the risk of getting treated in a Nigerian hospital, are all flooding Europe, India and America for treatment for illnesses and diseases which were easily handled by our doctors even as far back as 50 years ago.
What kept me awake all night is the fact that we are a nation that likes living in denial. Like the ostrich, instead of confronting the myriad of problems confronting the nation and Nigerians, we bury our heads in the sands of self deluding politics, ethnicity and religion. We are engrossed in the feverish pitch of 2023 elections as if that is a be all ultimate solution to all our problems. And taking their clue, a sleuth of no good politicians are flooding the land wanting to replace the incompetence of the Buhari regime with a more confounding incompetence. That accounts for the lack of vision, the lack of detailed plans by any of the aspirants on how to tackle the devilish evils roaming naked around the country.
It is clear that until the nation lines behind a shared vision, until our best brains are allowed to take over the reins, until we return excellency to our civil service and governance, until we decide to place the education of our youths on the top cylinder and rejig our health system, hoping that the 2023 presidential and other elections will somehow, by some fluke, produce the leaders who will drag us back from the precipice of the looming implosion will just be another pipe dream, a mirage never held in pursuit.
