Hurricane Ike has come and gone. For some of us in Houston that are closer to Galveston, this Hurricane brought some bad taste in our mouths because this storm also brought home some lessons African mothers teach their children that is, that one does not know what one has until one loses it. I am now more convinced here and now that there are still many Nigerians filled with human kindness because calls came from high and low places by people concerned with the destructive nature of hurricane Ike. So, there is still hope for Nigeria because hurricane Ike shows us that we have apparently sentient human beings in our midst.

While many of our neighbors rushed to buy generators, my family refused to succumb to the fad because, like the proverbial glutton for punishment, we wanted to experience life in the true rawness as experienced by many of our compatriots daily. We slept in the dark, the noise of generators of our neighbors on both sides kept us up late at night, we smelled the fumes from the generators, our land and cell phones were out of commission, our Internet was incognito, and our productive work stopped at six O’Clock each day for a week and half. My neighbor joked that we were all sent back to the stone age to which I responded, for me, life just begun because as an African, it is the life I live all day and all nights.  We were able to relearn what lack of electricity can do in the lives of a developing nation, that is, the effect of unproductive healthy citizens. Mr. President, energy is the engine that encourages industrial growth.

However badly the hurricane Ike situation was, it simply reminded me of the last election that brought Alhaji Yar ‘Adua into office. The hurricane that brought the president is called hurricane PDP cum OBJ. PDP elevated outworn ideas that got us to the problems we face today in Nigeria while our economy remain comatose, at least for now. But instead of looking at the glass half empty, I prefer seeing it as half full. Instead of being negative about the effects of hurricane Ike in our lives, we simply used the one and half week down time to pray for Mr. President and for Nigeria so that we can focus on our bubbling translational politics before the President’s time flies by. We hope that something can be attributed to president Yar ‘Adua’s presidency.  It is time for citizen of Nigeria to allow our politics to focus less on personality and more on who can redeem our nation and move us to the 21^st century. We need men and women that have history of performance, citizens with savvy political skills and moral clarity and men that realize that life is cyclic that one day, they may be in the same station that many poor Nigerians are now.

But maybe times are changing.  The whole world’s economy seems to be collapsing. Yet our leaders continue to transfer stolen funds into an economy that focuses on paying falling Wall Street managers leaving ordinary investors including our own kleptomaniacs holding the bag. May be after the collapse of the investment banks, collapse in the mortgage securities market and real estate market in the US, Nigerians will learn to trust their own financial market and invest for the future of their children. We are yet to diversity our economy from crude-oil-focus economy and it is sad. In times past, agriculture did Nigeria a lot of good. During that period, we built some infrastructures; and we were able to send many of our best and brightest to both local and foreign higher institutions on scholarship without much sweat. Mr. President, you may not have put us in this rot but we’ve been in the financial woods far too long and the nation needs a reprieve from your government. 

Once upon a time, PDP mocked the system it steals from and unfortunately, citizens/voters laughed along after being bribed with few Naira.  But who's chuckling now?  In our democracy, no one is responsible for paying tax even the wealthy keep most of their growing largesse. We need to shift the tax burden upward so that those rich people that have no source of income can at least help the most vulnerable amongst us to climb up a step by paying their fair share of tax that help improve infrastructures, deliver better healthcare to citizens, and provide reliable electricity service.  Citizens that refuse to pay tax or duck from paying tax are the ones that cry for lack of infrastructures and facilities befitting oil rich nations. Nigeria needs an ironclad tax code that is fair and progressive. Mr. President, we are in the woods for far too long and we need fair taxation leading to improved infrastructure.

What about our educational system? The irony is that we should ask, what educational system? There used to be a time when Nigerians had yawning for education but today, students just passed through the universities and there is nothing to show for their visits to the universities. Many students just go to the university so as to have an opportunity to attach BS or MS to their names before they seek the only job or game in town – politics. Politics is where young failing graduates can be transformed into billionaires within a matter of a year or few months. Mr. President, we have been in these woods for far too long and we need your leadership for the needed mid-term correction of our morality, of our education, of rebuilding our middle class, of our democracy to reflect government of the people, by the people and for the people.

What about our healthcare delivery system? Many of our physicians are no longer practicing Medicine because political jobs pay far better than medicine. What about spending some of the money that is being looted to build specialist hospitals in each state? In a sarcastic way, even when we are being mangled on death trapped roads, or attached by armed robbers that seem to control our lives, we can at least have the confidence that we have hospitals that can mend us for the next battle. We believe that building world class specialist hospital will benefit Nigerians, will attract clients from other African countries, will cause capital flights towards Nigeria and even benefit the politicians. It is believed that the investment will pay off big time. Mr. President, we have been killed far too many times, we need relieve from your administration.

How can we progress in business if we do not resuscitate our aviation industry? Improving our aviation transportation would relieve our roads from excessive usage and move goods and services efficiently. Are we such socially and technologically unresponsive nation that we allow our aviation industry become merely a procurement industry. We continue to seek foreign partners to help us without putting together formidable technologically savvy personnel that can interact with their foreign counterparts. Some of the so called expatriates are sometimes no better than our HSC students of the past years. Mr. President, we have been in the woods for far too long and we need a relief in our aviation industry and we surely your leadership.

Mr. President, we need you to move the nation forward in all facets of our daily lives and not allow the people surrounding you to make a mockery out of your presidency. Mr. OBJ presided over politicians shielded by immunity clause which protected politicians from criminality. Sir, think about the immunity clause hard and you will observe its senselessness to governance. The immunity clause is a license for criminality and you must support its removal.  You also need capable Ministers that can advice you so that Nigeria will be the envy of West Africa once again if not the envy of Africa. Because some of our ministers are chosen on Federal character bases, their shallowness of office leads to dynamic scoring with past OBJ administration, scapegoating and exhibiting incompetence of the present administration while exposing the inability of citizens’ to chose good advocates. It is time for Africa to move forward so as to cause global economic interchanges as well as stop capital flights.

While the world is coping with natural disaster, Nigeria continually has to deal with man-made disaster such as corruption, inability to grow food on fertile lands, artificial constraints on energy due to selfish generator and diesel merchants, unhealthy leaving due to inability to take care of the sick and the accident victims, and lack of human compassion for victims of gas explosions resulting from ineffective job growing policies. Isn’t it time for a president to be on the side of the citizens for the first time. There is obviously a difference between a failure which is a genuine attempt at making a difference and a fiasco which our man-made disaster, a disaster of mythic proportions. Mr. President, the window of opportunity for correction of our lackadaisical attitude towards corruption and marginal interest to develop our God-given talents is fast closing and we need to make today the first day forward. It is now or never.

Robot  # 1 | 24.09.2008 02:39

Hurricane Ike has come and gone.For some of us in Houston that are closer to Galveston, this Hurricane brought some bad taste in our mouths because this storm also brought home some lesson...Read the full article.