While man’s desires and aspirations stir; he cannot choose but err; yet, in his erring journey through the night; instinctively he travels towards the light.
Ordinarily, the article in this column today should have been entitled ‘Letter to Nigeria’s Future Generations’. But, having written several letters to Nigeria’s various sections and institutions including Parents, Legislators, Mr. President, NSCIA, Imams and others it becomes necessary to change the style if only to avoid labelling this column a letter page. Sermon is like a recurrent decimal. The more you preach, the more you get the urge to preach more. And that is because, there seems to be a permanent gap to be filled between the preacher and the audience.
In the introduction to his autobiography entitled ‘MY ODYSSEY’ and published in 1970, Nigeria’s first President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe opined as follows:
‘’Man comes into the world and while he lives, he embarks upon a series of activities absorbing experience which enables him to formulate a philosophy of life and to chart his courses of action. But then he dies. Nevertheless, his biography remains as a guide to those of the living who may need guidance either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as an encouragement or both’’.
Man’s life is a pilgrimage from the unknown to the unknown. No one knows whence he emanated or whither he is bound. If by sheer fortuity a wise man emerges as a leader in his peregrinations on earth, he should thank God and remember that fortuity is not natural. Through such fortuity, he should endeavour to learn by association with different peoples and by confrontation with certain realities of life and therefore attune himself to the popular hymns of the moment. The truth is that no one is naturally qualified to be a signpost to all sections of humanity. The ladder that lifts man to a height is capable of bringing him back to the canvas.
In an admonishing letter addressed to the late President YarÁdua by yours sincerely and published in this column shortly after his assumption of office in 2007, a reference was made to one Umar Bn Abdul Aziz who became a famous Caliph of the vast Islamic empire in the golden days of Umayyad Dynasty. His ingenuous style of governance especially his economic management was so unique that it became the heritage of the Western world which still thrives in it today albeit haphazardly. In the Caliphate at that time, the tradition, according to Islamic injunction was for the State to dispense Zakah to the poor among the citizenry from the much money made through the collection of Zakah. But when it was time to do that, it turned out that nobody, in the State was as poor as being a recipient of Zakah.
Thus, the huge amount earmarked for Zakah that year had to be returned to the State treasury for the ‘raining days’. By analogy, it becomes clear here that a State without poor is a State without beggars. Yet, Umar Bn Abdul Aziz who became so famous in history for such genius in economic administration ruled for only three years from 717 to 720 CE and even died at the age of 37. The secret of his success was in his sincere ability to identify two major areas of economic management in governance. One was to regulate the cost of governance by harmonizing the salaries and allowances of political appointees with those of the civil servants and the judiciary. This was to ensure that the populace was not short-changed in the name of governance. And there was an independent body responsible for the determination and regulation of public workers ’remunerations.
According to Caliph Umar Bn Abdul Aziz, ‘’fixing your own salaries and allowances without the consent of the populace just because you are in government is nothing but public theft by satanic audacity’’. He held that both the government and the resources of the State belong to the people and nothing was to be done to the lives of the people through any official policies without seeking their consents.
Umar’s second secret of ingenuous governance was his official recognition of the middle class as the greatest employer of labour. He knew that if only two million professionals and artisans could employ three staff each and the necessary facilities were provided by the government, the burden of gross unemployment would have been off the neck of the government because additional six million people would have been employed and that would have relieved the country of unnecessary burden of insecurity. What Umar did therefore was to use the resources of the State to encourage self-employment through professionalism and artisanship. He knew very well that whatever was officially spent on such a vital venture would return to the State treasury in many folds through taxation. Today, this ingenuous economic management adopted by the West would have continued to thrive gloriously if the West had encapsulated it in corruption.
In the first congratulatory and admonishing letter written to President Goodluck Ebele Jonatahn by this columnist and published in this column when he became substantive President, an allusion was made to the above references for him to learn a lesson from. But no one can forcefully enable a blind man to see the light of the sun. Like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria is an OPEC country. But unlike the citizens of that Middle East country, Nigerians are today a wretched people wallowing helplessly in abject penury despite the stupendous riches with which this country is endowed.
Today, Saudi Arabia has taken her wealth beyond oil and other mineral resources. The two gigantic industrial cities of Yambu’ and Jubail alone which she established in the early 1980s are enough to see her through the future in the absence of oil. And what is more, she does not depend on oil for survival any more despite her position as number one exporter of oil in OPEC. And she has by far gone beyond that great industrialization which the West once described as the 8th wonder of the world. Besides, there is no aspect of human development eluding Saudi Arabia today, including manufacturing, agriculture, shipping, aviation and tourism. And all of these are publicly owned. No dubious privatization, no ‘BLIND TRUST’ and no unidentified cabal. Since 1976 when yours sincerely first visited that country for Hajj and through the four years I spent there as a student there has been no single day that the citizens had problem with electricity or water even in their sky-scraping buildings. And, as a desert country, Saudi Arabia stands out as one of the world’s biggest producers of foods for internal consumption and for export.
In contrast, Nigeria which deceptively keeps promising her citizens of becoming one the 20 greatest economic nations in the world in year 2020 is still floating on the ocean of uncertainty even as confusion and hopelessness remain the order of the day. No electricity despite the trillions of naira claimed to have been spent on it. No rail transportation system as the government is still planning to refurbish the one track of the 19th century antiquated railway which is fit only for cattle and herds. No employments for over 80% of the youthful men and women that dominate the Nigerian populace in their millions. No public water provided by government despite the ubiquity of rivers and streams in the land. No middle class to complement government efforts in boosting national economy and thus, no security.
Yet, one keeps hearing the monotonous voices of empty promise from the official quarters daily even as those voices continue to invite foreign investor to this unpredictable country where railway is ‘killed’ to enable private haulage to flourish; where the national airline is ‘killed’ to allow for private airlines, where national electric corporation is ‘killed’ to boost the business of power generators; where the National Communication outfit like NITEL is ‘killed’ for private ones to spring; where national Universities are killed that private ones can emerge and where stolen public funds is spent to import weapons to suppress political opponents and rig elections.
When the Arab revolutions began early last year, several warnings and admonitions were sounded in newspaper columns including ‘THE MESSAGE’ as well as on radio and television programmes. The alert that the likes of Arab revolutions might reach Nigeria was promptly dismissed with the wave of the hands by the country’s ‘lotus eaters’ who stupidly believe that with them in positions of authority the populace would remain in servitude forever. The recent fuel price increase for just one week has exposed their stupidity and shown them a signal that today’s world is no longer for slavery. That one week experience should serve as a good lesson for the wise. But will it?
Economic management is not by mere theory on how to generate income for government while sustaining penury in the land as a strategy for ruling the people by whim perpetually. The defunct Soviet Union toyed with all sorts of economic theories jumping from socialism to communism only to finally collapse into irredeemable pieces after 74 years of catastrophic experiments. Today, the major bane of Nigerian economy is not just the elimination of the Middle Class but also the extremely high cost of running the government at the expense of the masses. Even the West which purportedly serves as Nigeria’s economic model does not show one per cent of our government’s prodigality. For instance we know that American President earns $400,000 as salary per annum. That amounts to N60 million at the rate of N150 to one American Dollar. How much is the salary of Nigerian President? We also know that the United States has only about ten federal Ministers. What is Nigeria doing with about 49 Ministers? In the American President’s official convoy, there are usually about five cars at most and three in that of the Prime Minister of Britain. What is Nigerian President doing with about 27 cars in his convoy? And by the way, which section of our constitution authorises the office of the ‘FIRST LAYDY’ that has virtually become the second office in the country today? If an unconstitutional public office is not a bastion of corruption what else is corruption in Nigeria? How much are the allowances of the President, the Vice President, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Legislators, the Ministers, the myriad of special, senior and junior advisers to the President? How much of tax payers’ money is spent weekly or monthly to feed each of these if the President and his Deputy alone can spent about N1 billion to eat cassava bread and Ofada rice in one year?
One question that kept resurfacing while the protests were on last week was about the masquerade called cabal. The President and his so-called economic team blamed the massive corruption in the oil sector on that cabal but had no courage to unmask it. Rather, it was the already terribly impoverished masses that must pay the cost of the cabal’s corruption. If a government can identify a cabal as an economic pest but cannot unmask it then, who is the cabal? And now, with the reduction of the oil price and the already skyrocketing prices of consumable commodities that have further diminished the standard of living of an average Nigerian who loses, who gains?
To further take us through the track of deception with which we are well familiar, the Executive arm of government claimed to have accepted to reduce their salaries by 25% as a way of showing a good example of leadership in deliberately created austere times. This was long after the same Executives had forcefully reduced the allowances of the Legislators by about 40% while refusing to reduce theirs even by one per cent. If for the benefit of doubt, we concede any sincerity of reducing such salaries as claimed are we given the benefit of the monetary value of that reduction?
One person that deserved pity in the melee of the so-called subsidy removal palaver was Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the Minister of Finance who kept hammering the issue of trust. Perhaps she would not have raised such issue if she had asked herself these relevant questions: Why did the Executive arm of government (including herself) wait until the street protests began before rushing to reduce salaries? Why did it not unveil the corrupt cabal that it claimed to know before removing the non-existing subsidy? Why must the wretched ordinary Nigerians pay for the ineptitude of the federal government? Why was that removal action taken by the government before the commencement of the 2012 budget implementation when such removal was meant to be in the 2012 and not 2011 budget? Are Nigerians not short changed by that illegal action? And if a government is regularly known for telling blatant lies and for short-changing the citizens, does such a government deserve any public trust?
Nigerians have become wise enough not to continue to play fools in the hands of an inept, insincere government. This was a reality which the likes of Dr. Okonjo Iweala faced. The magic of using sentiment to play Nigerians against Nigerians with a view to subduing them has become impotent.
Poverty knows no religion or ethnicity. It knows no gender or age. Thus, those who rely on those factors to keep Nigerians divided for their own selfish benefit should start a rethink.
Revolution is quite possible here as it was possible in the Arab world. The only means of preventing it is good governance. These facts will form some chapters of history for the future generations to read that they may not find themselves in a similar quagmire as ours ‘When tomorrow comes’.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
