NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT AND LEADERSHIP: THE NONCREATIVE, UNTHINKING CLASS AND THE LOOMING (NEW) GENERATION OF IDIOTS. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI
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| KEMKA S. IBEJI |
How else better can you think about Nigeria when you consider the following;
The Niger-Delta illegal refineries produce better quality of petrol for Nigerians and their consumption. This would have saved us (Nigeria) wastages and allow us create values by bringing them together under government control, training them further, issuing them licences and legalizing them to avoid the exchange rate embarrassments, create us more jobs, add value to our crude oil and much more.
What has the government done? Nothing! The government sells the crude oil as crude and unrefined products. They turn around to import refined products at very exorbitant and greatly higher cost such that its landing cost robs the country and her citizenry all the benefits accruable to us as oil producing country. The value chain is frittered away as the valuable byproducts are lost to export, jobs vanish through that laziness of the government, pressure of devaluation is mounted on the naira from balance of trade, international trade and other economic dynamics. Today, it was so ashamed to find out that little Ghana has currency (Ghana Cedis) that exchanges for approximately Sixty-eight Naira (#68). So just 500 Ghana cedis gives you about #34,000. Shame!
Nigeria has the capacity to produce cars. They keep frustrating frantic efforts of entrepreneurs who are ready to do that. Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing has through fires started but what is happening? Can it be sold to the world as Nigerian brand? Has the government resolved to drive on Nigerian wheels? What about others who are ready to do same? What encouragement do they have? What about assembly plants?
Let me assure you that Nigerian government will never think anything positive about this. They want to drive German, French, Chinese, Japanese, American, or even Korean cars. They will empty the national treasury to make sure that they import those cars here for the government - Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary without exception. They relish driving on imported wheels as hopeless slaves partying away in painful pleasure. Shame!
The government allows earthworms to grow into giant dragons and they push citizens to get to its feet for destruction. Boko Haram started like a joke and today they are growing into insurmountable horror. Even at the moment, those beasts that have murdered many good citizens are allowed back into the society with incentives. The armed bandits have received cheering treatments and today they are increasingly becoming popular for the death of common citizens. Even the small criminal called Dangote of yesterday has now grown to kill Nigerian soldiers in their numbers with reckless abandon. What a country? Kidnapping is enjoying state help and aid, if not sponsorship as both legislation, executive and judicial actions are untactically geared towards strengthening and urging them to do more. They either enjoy 10 years imprisonment or life sentence after killing thousands and maiming millions of citizens. You dare not kill kidnappers, armed bandits or Boko Haram terrorists; they are government children, so sacred and more valued than millions of National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) members. What a shame!
Appointment of kinsmen and women has taken over the general welfare of the entire citizens and good performance by government. Nobody talks about the provision of amenities, security of life and property, not about infrastructure - no roads, no water, no housing (shelter), poor education, poor health care and health system, etc. What matters now is that you, your brothers and sisters, uncles and aunties are appointed to bring home your portion of the national treasury loot. By the way, to their selfish pockets anyway. Every tribe now want their own thief in government. Whatever is the real essence of government has vanished with moral death and ignorance.
Now the government is sharing space with common criminals and negotiating with outlaws. Amnesty for the criminals is now outdated and when they take place at all, it is just to send the criminals, who were captured by the efforts of the citizens themselves and handed to the government, back to the society for reinforced torment of the common citizens. The government moves into the bushes where these beasts live to go and negotiate with them under the terms and conditions expressly issued by those animals. They ask them not to come with cameras, guns, and the likes. In fact, they disarm them such that they come so weak to the negotiation. Are you still not ashamed of this country Nigeria?
Nigeria, where Presidency and especially the Vice President goes about with billions of Naira (raw cash) sharing them to passers-by without data. I do not understand anymore what is the meaning of money laundering! These are just signs of blind, lazy and unthinking leadership without any tincture of creativity. So the government cannot take their graduates, artisans, craftsmen and women and aspiring entrepreneurs for trainings, enhancements and further skills acquisition and thereafter empower them with those stipends as either loans for returns or incentives to forge ahead having created various values in wealth creation, job creation, employment, empowerment and economic development? The only best thing to do by a whole president is to walk about markets, worship centres and crowded roads sharing money to her citizens like beggars and destitute. Shame of a country!
And the mothers and youths are given few cups of rice, pieces of soap, few hundreds of Naira and other valueless things as such to, not only vote for them again, again and again, but to also go about campaigning for them. They want to just answer party boys and girls or women. They cease to ask of quality education, good roads, drinkable water, workable, sustainable qualitative and affordable health care system. They live in squalor and come out each day to rain abuses on people who are asking for their welfare by putting the government to account or make them to be on accountable planes. Since they have been impoverished and deprived of good education and quality life in society, where infrastructure and good social amenities are provided by the government, they lack the sight to cast on societies where things are better for comparison and appropriation, and they resultantly have no inkling to do research. And through this inculturation and acculturation, I'll tutelages, wanton destruction of the value systems and the youth's moral bearings, the political class (leadership) end up creating a new generation of idiots. What a future to bequeath?
In the face of world emergency and especially the Covid-19 pandemic which has thrown the world out of balance both in science and technology, nations have been leveled by nature and the new opportunity has arisen for countries to strive and solve the problems. Most developing countries have reclined to themselves tickling their various domestic resources in health sciences and trying to solve their own problems first and that of the entire world by extension. When the pandemic started, it was the fashion prescribed by the western world through the World Health Organisation (WHO) to go on preventive measures. Such measures as washing your hands and using hand sanitizers, social distancing, lockdown of the entire country and all what not. In few weeks, it was obvious that the measures were not effective in preventing the spread of the virus. It was also clear to discerning minds that the authorities such as the WHO and the rest were on guess work as their stands keep shifting each other day. Today they will tell the world that the virus is spreading from human to human. Tomorrow they will say that there is possibility of the spread from animals and next tomorrow they will announce that it is no longer spread by animals. Now they will tell the world that it is airborne and in the next moment they will aver that the spread is from droplets. There is no other way to define the WHO and other prior health authorities than using the word - confused, guessing and uncertain.
The best thing any country with sane, creative and thinking leadership would have quickly started to do, and which we immediately began to tell Nigerian government to embark on, is to begin drive into home research for cure. This was so realistic as it was very obvious, even to the blind, that preventive measures have failed and the virus is already here with the people. The government was adamant, docile and dumb. They have kept locking the citizens indoors, shutting down all health facilities and increasing the crime rate while the security outfits are leading the pandemic in killing the citizens. Minor health issues have taken the opportunity of shutdown of medical facilities to kill the people as death toll rises tremendously from malaria, typhoid, heart attacks from blood pressure, palpitations and panic. The government has vehemently refused to think. No research, no attempt to better the health system even with glaring necessities and no move to help the citizens return to normal life except that the government is waiting for the colonialists, their slave masters, the whites and the failed World Health Organisation (WHO) to get the solution first and extend helping hand to us as father Christmas and by that means plunder further our commonwealth. This leadership in Nigeria in its typical form.
Where do we go from here? What manner of leadership do we have? What sort of future are we going to have as a country in a continent so blessed by God Almighty? Are these leaders any type of curse to the country or is there any sense of peace to expect? What are they already bequeathing to posterity? Only life in time shall tell...
I am,
KEMKA S. IBEJI
A Thinker
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