Let me begin my conclusion by sharing with you some material I dug up about Detroit in Michigan State as typical of what can happen if we make good or bad choices. “In February 1802, Detroit became a chartered city, and four years later it was incorporated as a city in the Michigan territory. However, it was unincorporated in 1809, then reincorporated in 1815, at which time it had a population of 850. When, in 1827, Detroit adopted its motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We hope for better days; it shall rise from the ashes), no one knew just how good the years ahead would be, or that the city would once more experience bad times. The mid-80s witnessed the rise of Detroit’s fortune as a city, as Bernhard Stroh opened up Stroh Brewery Company and acquired several brands over the years. In 1896, history was made when Henry Ford took his first automobile on a test drive on the streets of Detroit. He went on to establish the Detroit Automobile Co. Although that company failed, several other automobile companies would be birthed in Detroit. Ransom E. Olds opened Detroit’s first auto manufacturing plant, Ford established his second car company, Henry Ford Co. Ford, which went on to become Cadillac Motor Co. Detroit. Detroit went on to become the automobile capital of the United States of America, with companies like General Motors, Chrysler Corp, Packard Motor Car Co. and others also being headquartered there in the 1900s. By 1950, with a population of 1.85 million, Detroit was responsible for 296,000 manufacturing jobs. And it was more than automobile. The famous Motown Records was founded in the city, and had great artists like the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson 5 signed onto it. Detroit was the modern day equivalent of Silicon Valley in the United States of America at the time. It was the place for innovation and for bringing ideas to life. It had a population of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States.” Trouble in Detroit “The first sign of big trouble came in the mid-90s as blacks moved into Detroit to work and live. Between 1945 and 1965, there were more than 200 violent racial incidents of whites attacking blacks in Detroit and almost all stemmed from the first or second black families moving into an all-white neighbourhood. In July 1967 when The Twelfth Street riot occurred, during which black residents were pitted against the police. In five days of rioting, 43 people were killed, 467 injured, and more than 7,200 arrested while 2,000 buildings were destroyed. As the years go by, such riots and the often near-state of anarchy in the city causes companies to begin relocating their factories and headquarters. It becomes cheaper for them to operate their manufacturing arm in other continents like Asia and this resulted in the downsizing and outsourcing of the auto industry. Because Detroit’s economy was heavily reliant on the auto industry, and it had a history of racial battles, things went downhill. Thomas Sugrue, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said of Detroit: “It’s been 60-plus years of steady disinvestment, depopulation and an intensive hostility between the city, the suburbs and the rest of the state.” Although the influx of blacks into Detroit helped it to achieve economic rise, it led to a mass exodus of white residents. Those who could moved out of the city, especially the white population. The population of the city also began to fall and in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Detroit’s population has fallen to 713,777, a 25 percent plummet from 2000 and the lowest level in 100 years. At the moment, about 83% of the city’s population is black. Because Detroit’s finances are premised on a minimum tax base of 750,000 people, the decline in population had economic repercussions. A new law, Public Act 4, that allows the state to intervene in financially troubled local governments takes effect. Another factor that contributed to the city’s downfall was its corrupt local government. Things got so bad that in 2013 one of its former mayors’ was sentenced to 28 years in prison for corrupt acts done while in office. A review board describes Detroit as being in “operational dysfunction” and “unable or unwilling to restructure its finances”. By July 2013, while other cities and states were crawling their way out of the economic recession, Detroit had hit rock bottom. The city had as much as $20 billion debt and so it filed a bankruptcy petition, becoming the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in history. Time Magazine, in 2009, posited that the fiscal disaster was inevitable “because the politicians in Detroit were always knocking the can forward, not confronting the issues, buying off public employees by increasing their pensions. They were always kind of confronting the impending crisis by trying to make it the next guy’s crisis.” Today, there are less than 27,000 jobs in Detroit. It also has about 78,000 homes abandoned by people who fled because of the high incidence of violence. The crime rate in the city is 5 times higher than the average in the United States.” Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, we must turn around from the road to Detroit. We cannot kick this can further down the road for another four years. The consequences will be grave, it will be global, and reverberating. Without any more doubt in my mind, the singular recommendation that I can make for ‘Rebuilding the Nation and using lessons from other lands’ is that we must renew our values. We must act now to rebuild our nation by choosing morality, high ethics and a value system that inspires. These are the lessons from other lands, as we seek to rebuild our nation. This conclusion was part of a long speech delivered by Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the Governor of Lagos State at the LEADERSHIP ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND 2013 AWARDS PRESENTATION ON TUESDAY OCTOBER 14, 2014 AT THISDAY DOME ABUJA. If we do nothing to control the unregulated migration of non-Yoruba into Yorubaland, our homeland is on the road to Detroit.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 05:51:34 +0000
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