What govt did not expect
So many Nigerians were scoffing and sneering at his remarks that Minister of Youths and Sports Solomon Dalung was forced to recant them but I am not one of those critics. What Dalung said on Thursday was a very good explanation. The Super Falcons team that won the African Women’s Cup of Nations [AWCON] trophy […]
So many Nigerians were scoffing and sneering at his remarks that Minister of Youths and Sports Solomon Dalung was forced to recant them but I am not one of those critics. What Dalung said on Thursday was a very good explanation. The Super Falcons team that won the African Women’s Cup of Nations [AWCON] trophy in Cameroon Saturday last week embarrassed the government by staging a strike at their hotel, saying they had not been paid N238 million in match bonuses even after bringing glory to Nigeria by winning the cup for a record eighth time.
Officials of the Nigeria Football Federation [NFF] and Sports Ministry had pleaded with them to be patient, saying the allowances will ultimately be paid, that there is no money to pay them at the moment because the national economy is in deep recession, but they refused to listen. That is why the Minister came out and told the truth that no one else was willing to say, that no provision was made for paying these bonuses because no one expected the Falcons to win the cup.
What is the minister’s fault there? Are we saying that our society is so far gone that it no longer values telling the truth? All the newspapers and social media in Nigeria were saying that Nigeria’s preparations for all sporting tournaments were ramshackle, that there is too much corruption in sports administration, that there is too high turnover of coaches, that the sportsmen and women themselves are not serious, that the supporters’ clubs are just rackets, that many of the continental trophies we are vying for are not worth it. I tend to agree with the latter because if this African Cup is so valuable, how come the Super Falcons won it eight times? There are 55 countries in Africa; what were all the others doing that Nigeria will be lifting the trophy year after year?
Minister Solomon Dalung knows that neither his ministry nor NFF put in any serious effort to win the cup, and yet we won it. That the Super Falcons won the cup cannot therefore be a credit to Nigeria’s effort. It is only proof that other African countries put in even less effort than we did. Back in 1995 Malam Adamu Ciroma attended the inauguration of the New Nigerian Newspapers’ NUJ Chapel in Kaduna, and he said so many people are not doing their work in Nigeria that it takes only a little effort for one to excel. Apparently what he said applies to the whole of Africa, not just Nigeria.
When Malam Adamu Ciroma said those words, it reminded me of 1977 when I submitted an entry for the Sokoto State All Secondary Schools and Teachers’ Colleges Essay Competition. I was still in bed, having read all night for the Mock WASC when our English teacher Mr. Tombs rustled me out and hurried me off to a classroom. I found 20 other students assembled to write an essay on “What I plan to do in the future.” The notice was so short that I neither had breakfast nor had my bath. I hurriedly scribbled an essay about wanting to become a politician or an airline pilot. To my great surprise I heard my name on the radio a month later as the winner of the N200 prize.
When the latest edition of the Abuja Carnival ended last week, Kogi State’s contingent was declared as the winner. I am sure that Kogi State officials did not expect it. After all, newspapers were awash with stories in the past month that Kogi State had shut down because Governor Yahaya Bello travelled out of the country without telling anybody, that work virtually stopped in the state’s civil service, that there were many months’ unpaid salaries etc. How can a state like that win a national festival? Who was it in Kogi State that had the presence of mind or the resources to organise its entry? Their contingent’s victory is not so much proof of Kogi State’s preparation as it was proof that 35 other states and FCT prepared even less. I will not be surprised if the contingent returns to Lokoja and the state government says it did not set aside any reward for them because it did not expect them to win.
In Nigeria, too many things happen that the government did not believe will happen, yet people turn around and blame it for not preparing for them. For example, the large number of kids in public primary and secondary schools that sit on the floor, especially in the Northern States. Is it not because our newspapers made us to believe that parents in the North do not like Western education and do not send their children to school, preferring them to be almajirai? Government believed this story and never built enough classrooms. When the kids suddenly turned up at the schools, government was not expecting them.
Former Minister of Education Malam Ibrahim Shekarau told me an interesting story earlier this year. He said when he was Governor of Kano State, his Education Commissioner asked him to launch a program urging all parents to send their children to school. Shekarau told the commissioner that he will do it only because he knew that the parents will not listen. I asked him why that was so and he said, “If I make the appeal and all the parents respond tomorrow and bring their wards to school, where will the commissioner put them?”
Those newspaper and television reporters who are complaining in their stories that public school students sit on the floor, they create the impression that government cannot buy furniture. That is not true. Malam Shekarau told me another story. He said when he was a school principal in Kano, the Ministry of Education told him that it was bringing newly bought furniture to his school but he told them not to bring it. I again asked why and he said, “Each class had an average 100 students sitting on the floor. If you bring furniture, the class will only accommodate 30 students. Where do you want me to put the rest?”
What it means is that despite all the allegation that Northern parents do not like education, they brought more kids to school than the government was expecting. You cannot blame a person for not being prepared when he was not expecting what happened. It is not only in sports or carnivals. Nigerians like to blame the government for the state of public hospitals, that the queues to see doctors are too long, that beds are too few and their pharmacies have no free drugs to dispense. Did the government know that so many of us were going to come to the hospitals? If you see the way Nigerians patronise herbalists and spiritualists, you must be forgiven to think that they have no use for modern medicine. You see a person with a clear need to see a doctor but he will tell you that “hospital cannot treat this disease. I am going to the village instead.”
The complaints that Nigerians make about the state of our roads, is it not because too many things are happening on them that government is not expecting? Two years ago INEC National Commissioner Hajiya Amina Zakari phoned me while she was on the road to Jigawa. She was very upset that most of the bridges she crossed from Abuja to Kano had no railings. I urged her to be patient. Government actually placed railings when those bridges were built but it did not know that some motorists will drive through them into the river below. Which railing in this world can stop a 100 tonne Dangote Cement truck if it decides to ram through? Nobody gives government any notice before he has an accident so how do you expect it to be prepared?