LET US TALK ABOUT NIGERIA. Nigeria is a very big country in terms of population, size and resources. The country is situated in the right hand corner of West Africa. It has a population well above 180 million people. The country has 250 ethnic groups ten of which are capable of standing on their own as countries when compared with some surrounding countries. The giant majority ethic groups include Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, Fulani, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Igala, Nupe. Idoma and Ijaw and they are distinct language based tribes. There are three major ones Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. They are the main problematic tribes in the nation and they constitute the main north-south ethnoreligious divergent dichotomous prodigals disturbing the peace of the nation. While the South appears to be very tolerant in terms of religion and focused on Western education and business, the North left the concise life supporting programmes, not opposed by Islam, it should have done right from the early 70s, for the growing population of young people, too late in the day to prevent their being exploited and used by some political and religious leaders. . Now, Nigerias population is growing so fast to the point that services, if provided at all, cannot cope. Lack of foresight on the part of past leaders, military intervention. greed, uncontrolled corruption and impunity has torn the fabrics of the society into shreds making governance difficult which the suffering masses can see. The almighty capital system has not helped either as Nigerians continue to groan under the burden of state debts and high handed open corruption. The State, we know, cannot print money so it borrows from the capitalist controlled businesses and the banks at exorbitant interest rates over long periods. The loans have to be paid by the people. In one word, the peoples well being is thus mortgaged and tied down to long term repayment and frustrating recovering plans such as SAP which then eliminate whatever benefits the people were supposed to have from the original loans such as the creation of employment and services Leaders come and go. Nigerians remained the same. Poor,.malnourished, unemployed, uneducated, oppressed, battered, ignorant, suppressed, depressed, used and abused with bags of rice by the leaders in order to vote for them. INEC is controlled by the government in power. WE need to change its name from Independent National Electoral Commission to Governments National Electoral Commission Housing Millions of Nigerians live in ram shackled houses with no water, toilets, kitchen, bathroom, gas or electricity supply. There is no social housing for the poor and even for middle class workers in most states. Out of the nearly 180 million Nigerians about 60 millions are living in structures that resembled houses in the real sense of the word while majority lives in makeshifts in villages and even in some cities. Proper drainage is none existent. House are built on top of open drainage filled with sewage and open breeding mosquito. You can see thousands of mosquitoes flying in the afternoon in large broods in some streets in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State and in some areas of Lagos. People put planks, covered with tents and rags, on top of such dirty stinking sewage path and sleep on them, cook and live with their children in them. Markets are dirty and badly organised. Where housing estates are built at all, they are built and sold to civil servants at exorbitant prices. Over the years, the estates become wretched and dilapidated due to non maintenance. Most cities environment are so bad, dirty and unorganised. No reserves and play parks etc. The land of the reserves and parks we used to have in Ibadan in those days have been shared by the politicians and their stooges. Energy. Blessed with massive amount of resources that can be harnessed for power supply, the nations leaders are clueless and bereft of knowledge. Bible says a people perish for lack of knowledge. Nigerians leaders, in some years past, joined some other clueless African leaders to demand for technology transfer!! What a shame. Which nation do you think would be so dumb to transfer her technological know how and expertise to a nation of people who cannot think. You either steal technology or innovate. I still wonder why our leaders cannot sit down and look inward and try to apply the vast resources God gave that nation. Today, electricity supply is very erratic. All we are hearing are promises upon promises of efficient power supply year in year out. How can a nation develop without power supply for industries, schools and universities, hospitals, banks, telecommunication, public safety and order, agriculture, research and development, homes engineering, the army, the police, construction, aviation, rail and road transport? How can such a nation develop? . It means that the government is just there in name to roll our budget for the boys every year till its tenure ends. No plan can be implemented without power supply. Agriculture Nigeria is blessed with vast arable land especially in the North. Unfortunately, since the advent of democracy in 1979, agriculture was abandoned for politics are the people began to receive money from their leaders and everyone began to see politics as a means for making easy money. I remembered that we used to bag a bag of rice in the 60s for £3 back in Ibadan and olomolanke will help my mother to bring it and other bags of foodstuff back home all for £25. The bags then were the size of cocoa bags. With the advent of mass education and industrial development in some cities, many farmers left the villages to look for paid work in such cities like Ibadan, Lagos etc leading to serious decline in agricultural production especially in the South. Palm Oil, Rubber, Rice and even Yam supply began to decline. So what was supposed to be the role of government? Are they supposed to have ministers and commissioners for agriculture in name only? To be continued........
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 22:42:09 +0000
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