WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
This is an ambitious time for Nigeria. For the first time we see rays of hope of a new beginning. We are seeing a departure from what had become endemic to our systems of things so much that a great number of Nigerians cannot process what we are witnessing objectively; either because they are not used to it or because it beats their imaginations that in our time, we could see realities of change in leadership and accountability in our country.
So many things have gone wrong with this country all the way from the past, so much that hope of rejuvenation and re-discovery of the nation to many has become dim. Nothing seems to be working; we slept mostly in darkness because the available energy hardly serves us for six hours a day and businesses keep groaning under the heavy weight of high energy costs. The nation is lit with poverty, with close to 80 million Nigerians living below the poverty line. Corruption has become the order of the day; we all at different levels have become actors and admirers of corruption in a way consciously or subconsciously.
Coming into this dispensation, we have had and are having a conglomerate of the unpalatable, so much that myriads of events have reset our subconscious understanding and perception of our nation. We have subconsciously developed a somewhat new but pervasive Nigerian perspective of “nothing good can come out of this government” because we have grown through ages and governments who had abused our trusts and laid waste our nation.
We suddenly get to the point where we innately prefer to hear news of things that are not working; where we prefer to project bad news and would rather wish nothing good happens or ignore “the goods” because our subconscious had concluded and preferred nothing good comes out of our enclave and more directly from the government.
However, I cannot blame Nigerians for becoming like this. A people is always a product of their social enclave. All animals are affected by their “habitat” to evolve new traits and features in their overall physiology and anatomy. We are not different; cumulative mal-happenings in the country have evolved a new citizen-nation association and recognition for Nigeria and Nigerians over the decades since independence. And now, both the nation and its citizens have become victims.
In 1960, we celebrated with pompousness our independence from colonial domination. We legally and constitutionally became a self-governed entity blessed by God and nature. We were scripted to be great; blessed with rich and arable land assets across the country that support all forms of tropical crops; mineral resources, so much that there is hardly a mineral resource that is absent in Nigeria in commercial quantity. Theoretically, we are not just meant to be great by default but also to comfortably compete with the world’s greatest powers. And so, we came into independence with our forebears leading the pack and dictating the pace for the future of the newborn nation.
The truth be told is that at that time, we were good; the regions were doing wonderfully well until the oil money emerged and created unavoidable attraction at the center and breed corruption until it became what it is now. Then, from various ends of the pole, we started trolling to the center, not for the sake of the country but to grasp everything that could be grasped. The idea of corruption crept in; fighting for the oil money at the center led to disunity among the regions and tribal biases across the country. The oil money, easy money, became our undoing. Our leaders lost it, individualism and corruption became the concept; ethnicity and religious jingoism became the centroid.
In the past, the country’s total crude oil sales was $470 billion in all five years of the President Jonathan administration and $489 billion for all of Yaradua, Obasanjo, Abdulsalam and Abacha governments put together. When adjusted for inflation the figures read $488.8 billion and $594 billion respectively. Between 2015 and 2019, the first tenure of the President Buhari government, the nation realised $275 .7 billion from crude oil sales, representing about 56.4% of what the previous Jonathan government realized within the same period of time.
It was estimated that Nigeria needs N4.5 trillion annually to develop itself. In the last 59 years, spending approximately N266 trillion would have positioned this country among the world’s developed nations. Nigeria’s revenues from sales of oil and other oil related businesses during PDP’s 16 years is as given: 1999 to 2007 under Obasanjo, we realised N27 trillions; 2007 to 2010 under Yar’adua, we realised N9 trillion; and 2010 to 2015 under Jonathan, we realised N51 trillion. These figures give a total earnings from the industry in 16 years as N87 trillion. This therefore constitutes about 80% of the country’s revenue during the period, bringing total earnings during the period to N109 trillion. This figure is about 41% of what we need to have developed the country in 59 years. Do we have a development that tallies with 40%? No! We do not; but the country has always grown in GDP figures but not in real development.
This now takes me to the next issue: how do we identify development? What are the elements of development and citizens’ good living? It is not the responsibility of the government to feed the citizens but it is the responsibility of the government to provide infrastructure that improves the ease of doing business in the country. Good transportation systems, for instance, lead the pack in this consideration; the citizens need good roads, an efficient transport system mix for easy, affordable, and comfortable movement of persons, goods and services across the country.
Over the decades, huge allocations had been made to this sector without anything to show as tangible results. The national highways and federal roads were altogether dilapidated and became death-traps for users. A once blooming national railway was suddenly killed. The same way, the national carrier, the Nigeria Airway, was also liquidated until the transportation sector of the nation’s economy became a mess.
Then comes industrial development; this is the foundation of job creation. Nigeria was not in the early days left out in the plan for a robust national industrialisation. Not just the plan but there were a great number of industries spread across the nation as evidence of the nation’s drive towards full industrialisation. In the automobile industry category, the nation was boasting of Peugeot, located in Kaduna state with depots in virtually all corners of the country; Volkswagen; Anambra Motor Manufacturing; Steyr, Bedford and others. We had Michelin and Dunlop producing vehicle tyres commercially. Where are they now? All gone; across the sectors and regions of the country. That was the beginning of the era of mass unemployment in Nigeria. You do not build a manufacturing company or successfully lure one into the country overnight, but we successfully closed down the companies in a throng.
Since then, the nation Nigeria has become a grossly non-productive entity; a grossly consuming economy that literally imports everything it needs including toothpicks until a recent past, yet we complain of mass unemployment.
The situation was worse than could be captured in this piece but gradually we are coming out with rays of hope that we could be cleansed of the menace soon. While we have failed to accept the victories over the current ongoing onslaught against infrastructural backwardness and decay, physical testimonies of roads, bridges, railway lines and coaches, rejuvenated Airports and Airways among several others are enough to justify the efforts.
I have spent the last years tracking visible and invisible achievements of the present Administration nationwide for my consumption. It pleases me to accord all of us the opportunities to make our own decision and assessment of the Administration not on social media perception but on the strength of physical and undeniable performances of the Administration. To this end, I will present a synopsis of the collated achievements for your perusal next week.
Before I take my leave for the now, my humble plea to all delegates across party lines, who will in the next few days play the role of acting on behalf of two hundred millions Nigerians to elect party flag bearers for the position of the president of our country; the future of Nigeria hangs on you head. Go to bed every day from now, thinking, what part would my choice and decision at the primary ground, play in the emerging Nigeria in 2023.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria
