“At the inception of this administration, we promised to drastically improve access to electricity by the end of 2009….Our target, which was modest, was set at generating 6,000 megawatts of electricity by year end….I regret to mention that for a number of unforeseen and unavoidable reasons, this target could not be met. Millions of Nigerians are therefore still without power. For this, I tender on behalf of government very sincere regrets” – Jonathan Goodluck, Nigeria’s Vice President.
Let us congratulate Jonathan Goodluck, Nigeria’s vice president, for a display of humility, at the beginning of the New Year, with the statement quoted at the head of this article. It was an unusual act of contriteness and leveling up with the Nigerian people. The regime of the day had promised to deliver 6,000 megawatts of electricity; billions of dollars of Nigeria’s money went into the sauce pot of electricity contracts (many of the boys would have become billionaires and millionaires, as usual); a propaganda onslaught was launched but at the end of the year, or just before it ended, it became clear that it was an elaborate charade, like most things in Nigeria since 1999. The media didn’t make it easy for the regime by instituting a countdown to year’s end, which caught a rudderless and incompetent regime in a self-inflicted crisis!
This was the background to Jonathan’s uncommon act of humility. The PDP regimes, from Obasanjo do not apologize; it is not in the character of a party which makes a habit of “capturing” our states and country in massively rigged elections to find the modesty to admit it either got a decision wrong or its projections fell flat on the face. It is in democratic societies that parties and their governments defer to the people because they are a product of the votes of that people on the basis of programs and a manifesto canvassed with the people. Well, the PDP could not be caught alive a living manifesto or having canvassed a program with the Nigerian people. It “captured” Nigeria that is all, and as an afterthought, some programs are instituted for their money-spinning potentials. In the states, all-knowing “OGAS” milk the purse with PPP projects that often have little relevance to the lives of their people but at least, huge sums of money can safely be stolen by “OGA” (Tunde Fatunde once wrote a play titled OGA NA TIEF MAN and the title remains incredibly apt).
Are we now to conclude that through Jonathan Goodluck, the PDP regime of the day has suddenly discovered humility as an essential ingredient of behavior or does the act in itself underline far deeper contradictions in our national political process? I think the latter is the far more plausible. Nigeria is in very deep rot and the regime is not better than a headless chicken at the moment. It was obviously beyond it to deliver on 6,000 megawatts of electricity; it was rather like asking a blind man to pilot a jet plane. Nigeria is now operating at the lowest common denominator and it is a situation which has no parallel in our history. We are saddled with an incompetent regime with a very corrupt, nepotistic core! Add to this the ill health of the president and its attendant controversy, and you will begin to get a true measure of Nigeria’s desperation! Goodluck Jonathan has shown some remorse (what was missing was to canvass for concerted prayers by Muslims and Christians to help us achieve the 6,000 megawatts target)!, but our situation remains very much like the tale of the witch in the African story who continues to give birth to girls, thus multiplying the tribe of witches! If we do not exorcise the monster ravaging our land, we will all go down with it. It is that simple!
OBASANJO THE FOREIGN INVESTOR
The story broke on the internet early this week, that Olusegun Obasanjo has procured thousands of hectares of land in the Debre Zeit area of Ethiopia to build a hotel and tourist resort. The story was similarly carried by DAILY TRUST, yesterday, Wednesday, January 6th, 2009. During his eight year disastrous rule of our country, the old despot spent years flying around the world in search of foreign investors and his style became the template for Nigerian governors. They systematically fleeced our country on the altar of search for investors. As we noted on this page two weeks ago, we now know better, that our thieving leaders are actually THE FOREIGN INVESTORS in different destinations around the world: Dubai, Singapore, the off-shore tax havens of the Caribbean, South Africa, just anywhere, and now Obasanjo has added Ethiopia!
In 2006, Kabiru Yusuf and I went to report from Darfur; we had stopped over at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for three days and one morning we hired a taxi to see sights outside of Addis and as it turned out, we were taken to the town of Debre Zeit, with its eight beautiful lakes. It was a fascinating site of potential tourist development. That is where a certain foreign investor called Olusegun Obasanjo, from Nigeria, is planning to sink millions of dollars to build a hotel and tourist resort. The question to ask is where the near-bankrupt ex-convict (before official pardon) of just over ten years ago get the money he is investing abroad? Why is the charity of Nigeria’s thieving rulers located abroad? Let us be clear about it, the capitalist system is historically a system of theft and banditry, but the capitalists of Europe and America stole and looted (they still do till today) the resources of other lands and brought the proceeds home to institute production, which in turn exploited the labour power of the working people (and continues to do so)! Our “Foreign Investors” leaders steal the resources of Nigeria to “invest” abroad. If you want capitalism why don’t you make the stolen productive here? There is no honour or patriotism amongst Nigeria’s thieving rulers and that is shameful!
WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO TRAVEL N2.7BILLION A YEAR LIKE OJO MADUEKWE
The direction-less, no-meaningful-results foreign policy junketing of Ojo Maduekwe, Nigeria’s joke Foreign Minister cost our people the little sum of N2.7billion ONLY in 2009. Long may Ojo travel! At least he is no longer clowning on a palm wine tapper’s bicycle as he did when minister of transport. Ojo Maduekwe, the unprincipled, anything-for-my-belle, politician who justified Abacha’s tenure elongation during the infamous one-million-man-march a few years ago, is now living it large in a “democracy” he did everything to ensure we did not achieve! Travel on Ojo! The more the clown has travelled the less visible our country has become. Nigeria’s rating as a global player is close to zero and on the continent, Nigeria is no longer reckoned with; even in our West African backyard, Mamadou Tandja of Niger told Ojo Maduekwe who took to Tandja a lesson note on democracy that Nigeria is not ruled by a democratically elected government. But travel on, Ojo! N2.7billion is chicken change! When I grow up, I will like to travel N2.7billion a year like Ojo Maduekwe!
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