CROOKS AS PARTRIOTIC ECONOMIC EXPERTS

There is worldwide economic recession at the moment.  This is a fact and repeating it will only be stating the obvious.  Most countries today are faced with one type of hardship or the other.  Most people the world over are struggling to feed themselves not caring for other comforts and luxuries.  The rate of migrations from other countries to Europe and the Americas is indicative of the desperate situation many people find themselves.  Interestingly, countries worst hit by the recession are those dependent on oil as a major foreign income earner.

Individual countries reacted to the recession in different ways.  Those that invested heavily in infrastructure and other revenue earning ventures during the boom years are less susceptible to the harshness of the meltdown than those countries unlucky to be ruled by visionless and kleptocratic leaders.  Nigeria among the latter group.  Even though investments were made in the power, oil and gas, transportation and other revenue yielding ventures, the accruals ended up in the pockets of a few and now all of us are paying the price.  Most infrastructures were established about forty years ago and over time they gradually atrophied because of the lack of vision of our leaders whose forte is to steal us blind without putting in anything into the maintenance of these infrastructures. 

Sadly because of this lack of vision, whenever we sail the country into turbulent waters, our reaction is all too well predictable and knee-jerk.  Sale our crown jewels assets.  It is of no significance to the proponents of the “sale campaign” that these assets were put up in the first place to generate income for the country by some foresighted men in the past.  It is not the fault of the assets that those who took over from those that built them are thieves.  I am yet to come across any suggestion that these assets that the Buhari government want to put on the block are not making money nor are they haemorrhaging the economy in any way.

If history is to be our guide, then recent history tells us that we have gone down this road before without anything to show for it.  Since the days of the TCPC, the number of government owned companies and enterprises sold by the government are well over 150.  The most recent daylight robbery perpetrated on Nigerians by the ruling class was the doling out of power sector assets to robber barons that strut our landscape as successful businessmen.  We have seen how a sector that got an investment of well over $25billion sold for less than $4billion dollars.  What happened to the proceeds?  We are yet to be told.

Mr president, I am of the strong believe that those who lost out in robbing our country blind in the scramble for our national assets like banks, power generating and distribution companies, telecommunication companies, etc. in the past, are those trying to bamboozle you into selling to them what little remains for 180million people.  They are not satisfied with buying fuel stations so they want to buy refineries, gas liquefaction plants and oilfields.  Check out and you will begin to understand those behind this new criminal enterprise.

Mr President, majority of Nigerians voted for you because of certain qualities which you possess.  Part of these qualities includes your firmness on issues you believe in.  We all know you don’t believe in selling our assets, or devaluing our currency or increase in the price of petroleum products.  We know because you have said this several times.  The summary of all these is that you always believe strongly in your convictions which led to your being labelled as rigid.  Your bending backwards to project a Buhari that is different from the one Nigerians trusted and voted for is giving us sleepless nights. 

In your desire to prove to crooks that you are not rigid, they succeeded in making you eat humble pie and in the process make you look uncertain and feeble.  Most of us who voted for you didn’t bargain for the policy summersaults we have been going through under your watch.  We were hoping to see a reversal of the privatisation of the power sector which didn’t happen.  And suddenly out of left field, we are presented with a proposal to sale the remaining assets.  Putin did it in Russia and heavens didn’t fall.  Yukos, one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world was sold for one rouble by the late Yeltsin to Mikhail Khodorkovsky in a drunken stupor.  Realising the importance of the company to the Russian economy, Putin did not hesitate to reverse this daylight robbery.

Nigerians were ripped-off by neo-oligarchs in the past and what we are seeing today is peer rivalry among this unscrupulous, vicious arm of the business class in collaboration with their comrades in government trying to go in for the kill.  Those who lost out in the past are the ones who are pushing you to auction the country to them.  They bought all government interests in oil marketing companies, banks, construction companies and manufacturing concerns.  The same reason was given – injecting the proceeds in to the economy.  If it were injected, will we have been where we are today?

Mr President, we are in recession not depression.  The only time in recent history that United States went into recession was in the 1930s.  Roosevelt, from his wheelchair pulled the country out of the meltdown without selling a single government asset.  He fought a war and even assisted in rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan.

Mr President, act like Roosevelt.  Be our Putin.

OF ORNAMENTS AND BEAUTY

 

The Adamawa State governor is a man after my heart.  He is a flashy dresser, appears urbane and consciously cultivates the cosmopolitan look.  He dresses like a peacock and to all intents and purposes seems to be a smooth operator.  He has also been lucky in his short time in politics.  When he sought to be elected a Senator, he easily defeated an ex-governor and he won the election to the gubernatorial office at his first time of asking.  Very lucky guy.

I pray that the glitzy dressing style is not a camouflage for a mind of a village head.  His circle of advisers is made up of men with a tunnel vision whose foresight is limited by the vista of their horizon.  The bespectacled governor’s idea of development may not necessarily be the same as mine, but I believe there is a universally accepted standard of development.  His notion of development may be judged by driving around Yola, the state capital.  Coming from the airport, one is confronted with billboards and banners featuring the governor in different poses with different attires.  At first glance I mistook the billboards as advertisements for those Kano dramas and then on second look, I thought the governor was modeling for some tailors or watchmakers.  Here is hoping that the reported N47billion debt incurred by the government in the last one year (according to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics) did not go into buying these braided livery displayed to the man struggling for a plate of food.

Before I am pilloried, I will like to point out that politicians and their followers always have their reasons for saying you hate them, particularly when you question their motives.  Truth is, they will hate you for asking them to look in the mirror.  They won’t say they hate you.  They will say that you hate them.  Asking a politician to look in the mirror may be about the worst thing you will ask him to do.  This is the primary function of the critic.

I have hesitated for long to comment on the government and happenings in my native Adamawa.  Such hesitation is requisite when some of the audience may say my intervention as an anomaly, taking into account certain factors and variables.  Our governor seemed to have succumbed to the superstition of beauty and ornament well before he became a governor.  I therefore wonder how his excellency find the time to subordinate himself to the demands of his office seeing how besotted he is to his ornaments and beauty.

Governance, in my view, demands unadulterated simplicity – like the honesty of the unspoiled common man.  In his Excellency’s desire to dress and look good in our modern day braided livery, citizens like me are left to wonder where the next meal is going to come from.  Less I be misunderstood, I am not trying to be a killjoy, particularly to those who exert a lot of labour in erecting the governor’s billboards.

I know I have read a lot of rave reviews from both the discerning and praise singers about the good works the governor is doing in rehabilitating atrophied infrastructure hitherto abandoned by past governments, particularly roads.  It is a laudable and welcome development, which shall be encouraged by all and sundry.  Our state capital wears the look of a place coming out of war, which suffered aerial bombardments, so rehabilitating infrastructures in the state capital is to be lauded.

Being the skeptic that I am, coupled with the fact that my idea of development and that of the governor differs as I pointed out earlier, I have my suspicions on the over concentration of physical development to the detriment of other areas of development.  An example here is accountability, which in my book is the bedrock of any development that will propel our dear state to higher heights.  Developments that by their nature are based on the award of contracts to me are a negation of the concept itself.  Contract awards are susceptible to abuse, and over time our politicians have perfected the art of over invoicing, fictitious awards and such other nihilistic practices to line their pockets.  Areas and sectors that do not require heavy financial investments and whose results can easily be measured and verified are neglected.  Sectors such as healthcare delivery and education are reduced to merely cosmetic renovations of hospital wards and classrooms.  Equipment and teachers/ healthcare workers welfare are not profitable and so are deliberately neglected.

There is no wealth anywhere in the world that surpasses manpower therefore manpower development is crucial to any concept of development.  Leadership is a burden placed on the shoulders of leaders by the Almighty.  They are obliged to lead the led in a just an egalitarian manner.  It doesn’t matter whether the leader hate some and like others.  They become leaders only because the people made them.  They must overcome the aversion for opponents and critics and rather work with and for them.  It is the best guarantee for success in service delivery.

Our politics, and indeed politics everywhere, is in such a way that no one man is any one thing which anybody else can’t be.  If you believe in the doctrine of equalitarian rotation, then you will know what I mean.  A lot of people have been governors in the past.  Some are dead while others are alive.  None among them is remembered by how flashy they dress or how much time they devote to pampering their skin.  They are chiefly remembered by the impact they made on the lives of the ordinary man.

Your excellency, I beseech you not to allow yourself to be deluded into believing that you are the best thing to ever happen to the state.  The men around you told Atiku and Nyako the same thing and look where the duo is today.  To them, you are all interchangeable, but the yes men and praise singers remain.