2023: Nigeria must never return to the past

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER  

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

I saw a piece written by an anonymous writer that caught my attention some days ago that propelled me to pick my pen again; the piece states “Adjacent to my house in Abuja stands one of the phantom projects of the GEJ administration. The CCTV camera that never worked for one day. The sum of $470 million was approved by GEJ’s FEC to install CCTV in Abuja and Lagos; over N1 trillion representing 20% mobilisation fee was advanced to ZTE, the Chinese company handling it. Till today, the CCTV camera project, just like the wick stove, cassava bread among other huge projects were used to fleece the country of our common patrimony. Yet the same PDP is rearing its head to return to power.”

Suddenly, another piece I had read somewhere sometime ago came to my mind; “it is only in Nigeria that looters will be gathering to loot again and the victims of their looting would be gathering to eulogise them.” In a saner system, PDP would presently be non-existence; the party itself was at a time aware of this and made a plan before the 2019 election to merge its structures into other parties with the resultant decision to drop the name PDP as a disguise to cover its many atrocities against the country and its people. That was when the party was so conscious of the impact of its mismanagement of the resources of Nigeria and had come to the conclusion that there is no way Nigerians could ever substantially support it to win any major election in the country.

Suddenly, PDP realised a simple fact about the section of the citizens that has represented it support base; if they would roll out drums to welcome and celebrate James Ibori, the ex-convict, threw party and sympathise with him over his incarceration for robbing his home state of Delta State of real development as the governor for eight years. If they would consider defending and according him a victim statue, and offer the same to Allisson Diezani, Sambo Dasuki, Madam Patience Jonathan and the list of the PDP bigwigs who were caught in the trap of stealing the resources meant for the entire Nigerians and Nigeria. If they would still take to the street to demand for a return of the devilish and insanely corrupt party and sing the slogan, “we prefer corruption” and “is it infrastructure we would eat?” then the party has no need to be worried about being re-accepted again. Those who still support them are careless about the corruption of the party as much as they are not bothered by the obvious evidence.  

Here we are today, PDP is feasting on the biases of a section of the country that would follow blindly, the course of tribal and religious affiliations; the block that would follow the party regardless of the damage it has done and is still capable of done; the bloc of the citizens that would follow the corruption infested clergies who have been regularly fed by the PDP corruption and wouldn’t care about morality or godliness when it comes to their support for PDP.

I am grossly worried today that Nigerians could forget the economic, security and social tragedies brought upon the country by the long years of rule and the deliberate and non-abated looting of the country by PDP’s successive administrations until 2015. That six years on, they would wish for a regime of sharing money at the expense of real development; that they would be content with a party that administered maladministration of the country’s purse and known for throwing crumbs to the street to silence everyone. An administration that literally and unrepentantly administers the death of thousands of businesses in the country; a party that already concluded that stealing is noble and is not corruption, and so the two should not be correlated.

I am more bothered that despite the revelation of the undeniable facts of ongoing developmental projects across the nooks and crannies of the country, some would still prefer the dark days of zero development. The beautiful rejuvenation of the country’s railway industry that is fast becoming a darling of everyone including the same critics who now abandon the road to enjoy the leisure and safety of Buhari’s trains, have not till today stirred their hearts to see the changes that have come upon the country. The almost completed Second Niger Bridge does not mean anything to them because it is being constructed by APC, a party they have sworn to hate; despite the fact that they have cried endlessly for the bridge since 1999 and got empty promises after empty promises from their darling party. Today, though the bridge is almost completed, little has been said about it in their circle.

Years back, we were all aware of the state of the Nigeria Airport; we were unable to meet up with the global aviation standards and our airports were gory sights compared with what were obtainable according to the international standards and what were seen elsewhere. Today, Nigeria airports, all of them, stand at par with airports anywhere else in the world. The transformation is legendary and unbelievable, but yet we are not satisfied and would not acknowledge nor recognise the government’s efforts.

In this country, we have not had it good with government social investment programs as is the case currently under the APC-led Muhammadu Buhari Administration. We still remember quite well the SURE-P program of the immediate past government, how it was utterly politicised and beneficiaries were purely allies and families of politicians. In contrast, we have seen Marketmoni, Tradermoni, N-Power; millions of Nigeria across tribal, religious and regional blocs and without undue interference in the government social programs.

Unlike in the past when we were told agricultural development policies and investment without commensurate results, for the first time we are seeing long desirable changes in the country’s food sufficiency stance as a direct implication of government policies. Just this morning I read about the nation’s food import bill dropping from $3.40 billion in 2014 to a mere $0.56 billion, a drop of approximately 80 percent. The rice revolution is redefining the nation’s food system but we would never want it to be a topic for discussion.

Rather, they want us to discuss insecurity; they want us to discuss the rising inflation; they want us to talk about the ENDSARS killings making politics out of it. They would never want to accept or remember the fact that before 2015, only two Northern states, Zamfara and Kebbi were free from Boko Haram invasions; that in those days, asides the entire states of the North, aside the two mentioned, the North Central, Abuja and even Lagos were not safe. For those of us in Abuja, the city became hell, public markets became no-go areas, government gatherings became unsafe, and government infrastructure became targets of bombings. Then, the sect, Boko Haram was the most lethal terror sect in the world with a death toll of about 15,000 in only 2014. While we would not ever dispute the fact that we have security challenges, we would always be quick to point to the fact that the country and its armed forces has hugely overpowered the insurgents and limit their operations to random attacks that are mostly repelled.

The insecurity PDP brought upon the country and which APC is leaving no stone unturned to address has found a way to disrupt the food supply chain in the country thereby imposing huge and biting inflation on the country and its people. No doubt, we are in pain of access to foods currently, but it is wrong to academically lay the blame at the feet of the current Administration that is working round the clock to revamp the country’s economy and other survival indices to the benefit of all and sundry. Eventually, the infrastructural drive of the Buhari government would get us the final change we desire.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGIRIA!