| ‘A few good men’ [Nigerian Trip Notes part 1] |
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| Written by Levi Obijiofor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 04 September 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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‘A few good men’ By Levi Obijiofor Friday, 5 September 2008 I have just returned from a four-week trip to Nigeria during which I attended a conference of the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) hosted by the Delta State University, Abraka. I also conducted two research studies relating to the perceptions and use of email and Internet technologies by two segments of the population -- Nigerian journalists and university undergraduate students. Based on my experiences, there is so much to report on. There is also so much to reflect on. I traveled through a number of states by road and by air. I found that social and economic development is taking place in various parts of the country at an uneven pace. In some states you get the impression that the governors have forgotten why they were voted into office but they are also keen to remember why their parties rigged them into office. In this group of states, no one is talking about providing basic infrastructure for the people or improving their impoverished economic conditions. In some other states, you feel impressed by the capital projects the governors are undertaking. My initial conclusion is that Nigeria is a nation of two entities – the developing and the underdeveloped (or backward) states. After observing the uneven levels of development, my mind searched for answers. Questions rose and fell inside my head. Why are some governors working productively with the funds allocated to their states while other governors have either gone to sleep or cleverly diverted the funds to their personal accounts? To what extent are state governors accountable to the people they are supposed to govern? To what extent do state legislators have the power to monitor or scrutinise how governors are spending budget funds? State governors might feel they have the executive power to do as they like but state legislators also have the power to keep an eye on how the budget approved by the legislators is being spent or indeed how the money stated in the budget is being used. When you compare the level of development and underdevelopment across the states, you wonder why some states that receive almost the same amount of money from the federation account and have similar problems use their allocations differently. Some governors use the funds prudently while some others do nothing but engage public relations assistants to spread information about non-existent achievements which no one can identify. It is an experience that continues to baffle. It is true that some states have more problems, more people and receive more federal funds than the others but it is equally troubling in some sense, for example, to note that some non-oil producing states which receive lesser funds from the federal government are actually making more progress than some oil-producing states which receive more money. In Enugu, I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of roads being constructed by Governor Sullivan Chime. In Enugu, there is evidence that the governor has taken on road construction and rehabilitation as his major challenge. It is not the mere construction of roads that has earned the man public praise but also the quality of the roads. You will find in the roads being constructed in Enugu high quality layers and layers of asphalt or bitumen. The roads have, believe it or not, pedestrian walkways (which are rare in Nigeria’s highways), as well as side gutters. Even Sullivan Chime’s political enemies acknowledge the high quality of the roads. They are not the kind of roads that would crumble in the next five years or so. The roads are being constructed with the future in mind. I have used Sullivan Chime’s impressive road projects as an example to show that there are some governors who are genuinely determined to make a difference and to leave lasting footprints of their tenure. During his combative term, Chris Ngige of Anambra State used road construction as a weapon to win the hearts and minds of the people in the state despite years of consistent gunfights and exchange of abuses with his arch-enemy and former political godfather -- Chris Uba – in concert with Olusegun Obasanjo’s iniquitous plans to sow instability in Anambra State. We are so used to stories of political corruption and abuse of office by political office holders that, when we hear or see a few politicians who are working in the interests of the public, we feel it is unreal and improper. Sullivan Chime is one such example. For clarity, I don’t know Sullivan Chime by any means. I have never met the man. To the best of my knowledge, I know no one in his government who I could refer to as a friend or classmate or associate. I have never communicated officially or unofficially with anyone who works in Chime’s government. I have never visited Government House, Enugu, since the man became the state governor. These clarifications are necessary in order to disabuse the minds of people who might feel that this article was commissioned as a public relations job to project Sullivan Chime in a positive light. I don’t undertake such unethical jobs. Despite a few examples of state governors working hard for their people, many political office holders in Nigeria are perceived as inordinately corrupt and greedy. There is some truth in this public perception of political office holders. Although a relatively few high profile politicians have been convicted of corruption in a court of competent jurisdiction in spite of the anti-corruption campaign by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), many people believe they don’t need a court verdict before they can proclaim some political office holders as corrupt. And political office holders have, by their own conduct and lifestyle, sustained that public assessment of their moral character. The public is entitled to be offended by the unrestrained display of financial vulgarity by political office holders. The situation is so bad that political office is now regarded as the quickest route to affluence. And that’s why many politicians perceive elections as “do-or-die” contests (apology to Olusegun Obasanjo). It is perhaps only in Nigeria and a few other developing countries that corrupt political office holders flaunt their ill-acquired wealth and advertise their membership of the billionaires’ club. In a culture in which wealth is strength, in which people are judged by the level of their financial fortunes rather than by their moral and financial integrity, many people aspire for political office with the sole objective of raiding the public treasury as soon as they have been sworn into office. Within the Nigerian political environment, the public believes there is sufficient evidence to show that many high profile political office holders are financial predators. They have a voracious appetite for self-aggrandisement and they are used to a life of plundering the public treasury. While this assessment of political office holders may be a bit exaggerated, it does contain some grain of truth. Some political aspirants are in so much of a hurry they don’t even wait for voters’ mandate in order to legitimize their position. They hijack the votes first and, with the connivance of the criminal elements within the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), they impose themselves on the people as the duly elected candidates. These politicians are probably right by the way they seek to attain their political dreams. What cannot be achieved by fair rules can also be appropriated by other means. From past and recent experiences, it is perhaps best for political aspirants to rig themselves into office and wait for the election petitions’ tribunals to resolve election disputes. Once declared a winner, the victor stands a greater chance of retaining his conquest, even if the election tribunals nullify that election and order fresh election. The philosophy, long established in the political terrain, is based on weight of evidence. Our political system imposes a burden on defeated political candidates to prove that they deserved to win. But we must keep in mind that election tribunals make judgments not on which of the contestants deserved to win but on the strength of evidence provided by the defeated candidates to show that they ought to win. Next week, my air travel experiences in Nigeria, including the Arik Air pilot who overslept.
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Posted by Robot| 04.09.2008 23:43