What is wrong with Nigeria?

Let me start from the premise of basic social infrastructure and conclude with methods of selecting representations to various levels of government which in my view and in the view of several other people is the foundation and building block of the continued failures that Nigerians are facing at the level of leadership and by […]

Let me start from the premise of basic social infrastructure and conclude with methods of selecting representations to various levels of government which in my view and in the view of several other people is the foundation and building block of the continued failures that Nigerians are facing at the level of leadership and by implication the basic things of life.

The foundation of any modern society is power. Electricity is the facilitating condiment which keeps basic arts, craft and even small trades going on. Where it is available, the likelihood of constructive engagement in various forms of activities by the people becomes very high. Its absence on the other hand affects both the skills of the people and their wellbeing.

For very many years, especially in the last eleven years that we have had civil governments in place, the rectification of the nation’s power problem has always been the top item on the national agenda. At the same time, the sector has, maybe among a few others, been the major milking pot where those in power and their cronies have sucked the nation dry.

This is not hearsay; it has been clearly brought up to the domain of public opinion by those in power and authority themselves. The agony, however, is that the more monies being plunged into this national calamity, the more Nigerians sleep in darkness due to the declining state of electricity infrastructure.

Between 2003 and 2007, the government of General Obasanjo which ironically forced this very one down the throats of Nigerians promised through various programmes to generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity. Billions of dollars were voted and indeed spent, but as at December 2007, a few months after the government had left, not more than 2,000 megawatts of electricity had been generated at a cost which we later found out was at over $16 billion.

The tragedy is that the government of General Obasanjo did not meet the national generation capacity at zero level but inherited about 1,600 megawatts generating capacity. What that means is that the cost and value of the 400 megawatts that were added to the initial 1, 600 was $16 billion. The reader is invited to do the arithmetic and determine the cost per megawatt.

All that happened at a time when the nation was said to be vigorously fighting corruption where people like Nuhu Ribadu spoke passionately with their mouths foaming on the menace of corruption, its intensity in Nigeria and the resolve to deal with it. I am not sure if anybody was asked any question regarding these obnoxious deals.

The power sector scam only came to national limelight when the House of Representatives began a probe where these dirt, some beyond human comprehension, were exposed and the nation knew in graphic details what it had hitherto suspected was responsible for the failure of government to light the candle.

Since President Umaru Musa Yar’adua came to power in May 2007, he’d begun his 7-point agenda which has power as central. A few ugly incidences were recorded and a presidential committee comprising state governors and some ministers with the vice president as chairman was put in place. Their promise is that Nigeria will generate 6000 megawatts by the end of 2009. It is already mid-November, whether that will be realisable or not, we’ll wait to see.

I always remember what a facilitator told me while I was on an international visitor programme in Washington, DC sometime in 2005 on why she believed Nigeria is unable to do much to the chagrin of the international community. In her view, Nigeria suffers from ‘resource curse’. Whether one believes that or not, there is certainly a very deeply rooted crisis in the way government is run and how we Nigerians behave.

I am of the strong conviction that the mess we get in our government is a direct reflection of our realities. We are very dishonest and insincere. We have failed to abide by the simple doctrine of being our brothers’ keepers. That is why our officials will loot so much of our resources that they don’t even need. That is why we have the worst traffic situation in our cities than in any other major African city. The reason is that we are in a hurry all the time; our personal problems are placed on top of any others’ no matter what.

The result is the confusion that the country is in today; poor and failed infrastructures, weak moral values, low level educational infrastructures. Poor health services, poor political culture, perverted social relations where anti-social behaviours reign supreme; theft, robbery, abduction, prostitution, among many other vices while the economy continues to groan in bad shape.

It is this systemic failure that is making those in charge of our oil policies to see no other exit route than inflicting untold hardship on the common people of our country by raising the prices of refined products which have serious multiplier effects on every little thing that we do as a people. In their desire to attack those middlemen who incidentally are not just their own creations but basically serving their interests, every common person whether owning a car, motorbike or not will definitely be negatively affected by this very unpopular and draconian policy which many of us are saying is a direct by-product of the failure of people’s votes to count.

If the government was truly constituted by the Nigerian people, those who desire to introduce unpopular policies would definitely listen to and hear the voices of decency coming from every corner of the country and may tarry a while to remember that if ‘we fail to do what the people want, they may replace us in 2011’. What we see in this oil sector deregulation insistence is ‘don’t mind them, they didn’t bring us this far, they can do nothing’.

I think what we can all simply do is to ensure that we educate and mobilise one another. We can force all those who take us for a ride to either have a change of mind or force them to change by blocking all loopholes that facilitate the constitution of governments that are not our own making.

It is only when we sanctify our electoral process that we can hold our heads high and lay claim to civilisation and any form of leadership on the continent. Why Tandja Muhammadou decided to turn a deaf ear is simply because of his belief that Nigeria or specifically its leadership lacks the moral credentials to talk about democracy. That Nigeria cannot export to another country what it does not have at home.

If we want to have 100,000 megawatts of electricity by the year 2015, we must conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2011. We mustn’t wait for President Yar’adua to determine the content and context of electoral reform that we need, because with the kind of people around him and their antecedence on election matters, ‘nothing good can come out of Nazareth’.

When we elect our leaders, they will not appoint ministers that will disrespect us by talking to us anyhow. They will deregulate only after taking into cognizance our feelings and aspirations. Nigerians will continue to lose their sovereignty as long as they fail to evolve a transparent electoral system.

We must if we must live.