We get the country we deserve
Later bodies started popping out of the woodwork. The so-called ‘southern’ bankers had committed heinous crimes for which they should bag long stretches in jail. Still, some are sticking to their guns, insisting on sinister agendas and evil intentions. When the man mentioned Islamic Banking, they screamed ‘that is it, they want to Islamise Nigeria’. […]
Later bodies started popping out of the woodwork. The so-called ‘southern’ bankers had committed heinous crimes for which they should bag long stretches in jail. Still, some are sticking to their guns, insisting on sinister agendas and evil intentions. When the man mentioned Islamic Banking, they screamed ‘that is it, they want to Islamise Nigeria’. Even idol-worshippers like the OPC man, made strong opinions known. Islamic Banking, practiced in the whitest of countries, have become a pariah in holier-than-thou Nigeria. When they broached the subject of bringing foreigners to buy the banks, people threw their arms in the air ‘ha, they want to sell family patrimony to their foreign friends’. Scoundrels.
When the government started reforms in the civil service, some alleged that it was a ‘southern agenda’. It didn’t matter that the idea was to get badly-needed new ideas into the service, of which everybody complains. Laws were exhumed to prove that the service should remain where it was, and some ‘big men’ should sit at their tables, sometimes for twenty years. I asked anyone I saw ‘who is the president?’ They told me it was still Umaru Musa Yar’adua. ‘So how come we are talking of southern agenda?’ I agonised. It couldn’t be easy, or funny to be a leader.
Perhaps the on-going petroleum reform bill is a ‘middle-belt agenda’. It has to be some region’s agenda or the other. Definitely, the oil majors are kicking against more responsibility. They had been party to the plunder of the Niger Delta for many decades. They just want to continue along that line, while they mount their high horses and accuse Nigerians of ‘corruption’. Nobody knows how much crude oil is being tapped from Nigeria’s bowels on a daily basis. It’s been a free-for-all for as long as memory permits. The Chinese have come to offer us a fantastic deal there and all you hear from these complicit big oil companies is how the Chinese will cheat us. Have they not cheated us themselves for too long? If anything we should seek to start afresh, and we should encourage competition, transparency. Some Nigerians join up to truncate government’s effort at reforming the petroleum sector. The oil majors were alleged to have taken some Senators to Ghana sometime back, and bribed them to kill the Petroleum Industry Bill. Scoundrels.
Every time Bode George went to court, he manages to charter a large crowd of sympathisers who sing his praises on end. It didn’t matter if his case was bad. They wear ‘Aso-ebi’ (traditional uniforms), tie huge headgear and totally ridicule themselves in front of the world. The man believed he had everyone in his pocket – at least enough Abuja big-wigs to subvert justice. Then the man was jailed, much to the shame of his supporters. And what did we hear. ‘They have victimised Bode George’. ‘Yar’adua is punishing him because he is Obasanjo’s man, a Southerner’. ‘Is he the only corrupt person, what about Ibori, how come all the corrupt people have not been jailed?’ The best comments were ‘Why give him such a few months in jail? For all the money he stole?’
Nkem Owoh, alias Osuofia, sang a chart-topping song titled ‘I go chop your Dollar’, eulogising the practice of 419 to high heavens. As the highest paid actor in ‘their’ Nollywood, his song must have made a huge impression on Nigeria’s many brainless youngsters (who actually get enthralled by the rubbish being churned out in the name of movies). Then Osuofia gets kidnapped, and people turn around to blame ‘government’ for insecurity. By singing such a song and praising 419, Nkem ought to have known that he is contributing to a society built on desperation.
As I carry my message of hope around, trying to infuse Nigerians with a renewed sense that things will better, and that we need to stay on the positive, most people tell me I’m wasting my time, that government people are still busy stealing so much money. They use this thinking to justify why they do must do devious things to get their own loot from Nigeria. When I criticise estate developers for pricing houses out of reach of people, they say ‘people are still making a lot of money from government’. In other words, they price those buildings in anticipation that some people will steal the commonwealth from Abuja and the state capitals, and come and buy by the dozens. We then turn around and complain about how bad the country is, when we had actively encouraged our own people to divert monies meant for repairing the roads that everybody passes on, to come and buy our inflated goods?
Every landlord raises their rent and care less about how tenants get the funds to pay. Two-bedroom flats in Wuye suburb of Abuja now go for N1.5 million per annum. Anybody who accedes to those high rents will have themselves to blame, for rent, and property prices in this country, are still coming down to a level that reflects the state of our economy. The real estate sector will still go through what the banks are going through. I pride myself that my 6 one-bed flats in Mararaba have not seen any rent increases since five years when they were completed. Why would I increase people’s burden?
Nigerians should begin to know, that where government stops, is where the people begin. If government does 10 percent of the job, we should be ready to run the remaining 90 percent of the way, by just being positive. I am not preaching rebranding. I don’t sell the patriotism of the scoundrel, but I know that cynicism destroys people and makes a society become hell on earth. I’ve realised the truth in the saying, that a people get the leaders they deserve. Say, a people get the country they deserve.