Naija and the perpetual state of being broke

So, it is now official. Over half of Naija’s 36 states are so broke they cannot pay salaries. Most of them have not paid salaries for upwards of six months. Now that the workers have threatened to down tools, they are reminded of the no work no pay rule. Wouldn’t they wish they were members […]

So, it is now official. Over half of Naija’s 36 states are so broke they cannot pay salaries. Most of them have not paid salaries for upwards of six months. Now that the workers have threatened to down tools, they are reminded of the no work no pay rule. Wouldn’t they wish they were members of the national legislathief arm? They campaign hard, get the mandate, are sworn in; subsequently, they show up when its time to get their allowances and in-between attend to their businesses.
The states have cajoled Sai Baba to bail them out – again! The jury is still out on who was bailed out the last time, because, while we are politicking, we would never adopt the Okonjo-Iweala style of publishing who got what when it mattered most. Whenever we find something good in the old order, we downplay it. So it is a known fallacy that President Jones spent six years in office doing absolutely nothing but positioning locusts on the rampage.  Yet, Rotimi Amaechi would be commissioning some rail networks soon and I bet there would be no sentence acknowledging that President Jones initiated that project.
I put it to wailers that such an acknowledgement would have reduced the number of foreign junkets President Jones has made in search of credible awards but ending up with ones akin to what NUJ state chapters give to the politricians who ruin their professional integrity with kwa, their welfare with looting and their own country with mismanagement. Imagine how much Naija forex has gone to President Jones’ junkets for international recognition. Yet, the laurels he’s got so far would never rival Dora Akunyili’s plaques at NAFDAC. If we have eulogized the saviour of wailers,
Naija Delta Avengers would have received the uncommon, common sense to realize much earlier that bombs and blowouts of pipes do more damage to their own ecosystem than it hurts Sai Baba’s London vacation. Give it to the locusts, they sold out our energy source and resources but Raji Fashola has endorsed their action and earned the unenviable sobriquet of superminister of darkness.
Now that Naija is officially broke, the managers of our nation’s economy have returned to the Okonjo-Iweala blueprint of letting the ailing Naira float or sink against healthier currencies. If only we had acknowledged that as the poor woman celebrated her birthday recently. Instead, we went into starving the economy of the needed forex, starving parents who still have the capacity to send their children to truancy abroad and then returned as they say in Kano, to gidan jiya or the road not taken! As my friends say on social media – why are we like this?
There is no shame admitting that Naija is broke. It has been broke since the British lowered their union joke and hoisted the jack of nothingness. Being broke is the reason why politics is a do or die for the ruling class. It is the reason a governor who was fed three square meals a day for four years, housed free, never having to buy fuel for the car he was given and being built a house in his state capital, Abuja, Lagos or elsewhere still wants to be a sinnator.
Yes, states cannot pay salaries but go to Kebbi and calculate how much it cost to feed people who are fasting. Check out Abiola Ajimobi’s convoy or Rauf Aregbesola’s. As long as there is any cash left anywhere, a governor’s lifestyle is never reduced. When they are done, their mouth-watering severance packages are sure and certain – ask Bukola Saraki and his fellow ex-governors in the Red Chamber. Ask Modu Sheriff why he wants to die in Wahala Plaza – the fear of being broke, like the states they governed.
How much did it cost the taxpayer for Sai Baba to take his ten-day London leave? Abuja public hospitals are locked down with doctors’ strike, but Sai Baba saw two ENT specialists who advised him to proceed to London. Compare that to my colleague, Chuks Ehirim who died on his 50th birthday because he contracted a lung infection. He was too poor to provide the N30,000 required by the management of the Garki Hospital. Yet, somewhere under the foundations of that hospital is Ehirim’s tax on a block, bag of cement or a stone. The locusts sold it to the highest bidder; Ehirim got nothing or service for his taxes or loyalty to his country. He may have lived to be a hundred in other climes. Every second as long as the strike lasts, more Ehirims would be harvested by death. We, the living dead would shrug our shoulders and put it on God’s time until our own time comes.
That Naija is broke is not the news. When things break, you fix them or recycle them. We have recycled cluelessness for 50 years. I am sorry to say that those who would fix Naija are not yet born. Let’s hope there would still be a nation when they are.