LAST March, in Ondo State, Governor Olusegun Mimiko declared that the state government would spend N300 million to establish an emergency medical service and trauma centre.
LAST March, in Ondo State, Governor Olusegun Mimiko declared that the state government would spend N300 million to establish an emergency medical service and trauma centre.
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The announcement followed a horrendous road accident in Ore where 40 pupils of Arisent Nursery and Primary School were killed as they tried to cross the highway.
The 40 kids and their families did not deserve their fate; they were the victims—and further proof—of the government irresponsibility that defines our nation. In 1990, during a stop in the same area in Ore, I had wondered how on earth those kids could be made to cross that road twice each day, and for how long they would be successful.
In 2010, the horror that had long been placed on the calendar by the state and federal government, as well as the Federal Road Safety authorities, destroying 40 families and an entire community in one afternoon.
As I observed here last March, an emergency medical service such as Governor Mimiko's is always welcome, but it is no substitute for good roads or a responsible medical care scheme. And there is always room for a people-sensitive government.
In any event, was Governor Mimiko even serious? If so, the public would like to hear his progress report. Speak up, Mr. Governor!
Eight months after that nightmare, five pupils of the so-called Model Primary School of the College of Education in Agbor, Delta State, were murdered last week when an overhead water tank collapsed on them. Many others children were injured.
I hope this incident has taught Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan the spelling of shame. In my book, no government is better than half.
Meanwhile, I congratulate Farida Waziri, the chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), for standing up to the People's Democratic Party and the government over the EFCC's electoral No-Go list.
I criticize Mrs. Waziri in this column for the haphazard and half-hearted approach of the Commission to fighting corruption, and for failing to publish the annual report of its activities that is required by law. That has not changed, but she deserves commendation for standing up to the powers-that-be, insisting that Nigerians with corruption questions hanging over their heads should not be permitted to contest the 2011 elections.
Sadly, Jonathan's government has criticized the publication of the list. The Minister of "Justice," Mr. Mohammed Adoke, described the gesture as "capable of embarrassing the government" and "heating up the polity."
That is absolute nonsense, Mr. Minister, and you can take a running jump. Didn't *President Jonathan himself say that if nothing changes, this nation will collapse?
Unless, of course, that was the other side of Mr. Jonathan's mouth. That may explain why you have not been fired.
Senate President David Mark last week called on the international community to support Nigeria's efforts to solidify its democratic institutions. He was speaking during visits to his office by Vice-President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka of Kenya, and members of the British parliament.
It is perhaps not funny that Mr. Mark would ask aliens to help Nigeria, when people like Mr. Mark himself refuse to support their country. Only last year, remember, Mr. Mark asked the PDP for automatic tickets for all of their 80 Senators for the 2011 elections. They were to be returned unopposed.
The Senators, who said they were making the case as a favour to Nigeria, not themselves, asked Mr. Mark to speak for them to their party. With no trace of irony, the Senate President said, "After every four years, after an election, people begin to clamour for their own local government to produce the next Senator...It should be the turn of the local governments [which] are represented here now to produce the same people in 2011."
And Mr. Mark now wants foreigners to be responsible for institutionalizing democracy in Nigeria! In Nairobi, they must be laughing into their ugali.
By the way, exactly what does *President Jonathan's "Presidential Project Monitoring Committee (PPAC) do, where does it do it, and how can it possibly avoid harming us?
Set up last March, the PPAC's three-month assignment was to examine all ongoing federal projects and provide necessary information on their implementation status.
Among the projects of great interest: billion-Naira dams in Katsina and Ekiti State, as well as agricultural projects in parts of the country. Also: the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), where the government wanted to determine what had happened to as much as N600 billion Naira in subsidies on petroleum products, and the Office of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), where the government wanted to know what had happened to billions of dollars, with Nigeria failing lamentably with the MDGs.
Last May, when the full report of the committee was due, *President Jonathan simply extended its assignment for a political lifetime. He told members they could stay on the job until May 2011, when the life of his administration itself expires. That basically means no accountability, either for the committee or for a government which had thought the PPAC's work was not just important, but urgent. As a result, there has been no report of any kind and no activity, except in connection with the troubled new runway of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, an intervention anybody could have undertaken during the lunch hour.
*President Jonathan had a wonderful idea at the beginning—in effect to bring down the cost of doing business in Nigeria and make an input into the quality of public projects— but he blew it when he gave the committee a blank cheque, saying that its final report would "be part of the handover note to the new administration (in 2011.)"
That converted the committee into another layer of bureaucracy, with no value-added. Gone now is the gbim-gbim in the heart that procurement personnel and who categories of looters felt when they had first heard about the coming of the committee. In the federal cabinet, the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, Jonathan was declaring Happy Hour with round after round of free drinks. Everyone knows that by May 2011, all the traces and tracks would have been papered and painted over.
And the PPAC's report, if any, would just be another end-of-year report. Think about it: some of the people it might have helped put in jail, starting last May, may by next May have helped to put Jonathan and themselves in power, and beyond reach. We have seen it all before.
Speaking of traces and tracks, it is also many, many months since Mr. Ojo Maduekwe bowed out of office as Foreign Minister. In his final address, he identified an alarming level of financial recklessness and lack of transparency in the Ministry.
Mr. Maduekwe specifically drew attention to five of Nigeria's foreign missions which, he said, had been so badly mismanaged he wanted them investigated by the EFCC.
But the EFCC has no such enquiry in place, eight months on, and our current Foreign Minister, Mr. Odein Ajumogbia, seems to be looking the other way. What is going on?
And will Umaru Yar'Adua get a Presidential Library? We all know he was never exactly voted into office by the people of Nigeria. But then, neither was Olusegun Obasanjo, exactly.
Of greater importance is that a library is an investment that, no matter its origin, is capable of benefitting students, researchers and the country forever. Even African art looted from this continent through the ages continues to benefit many people wherever they are.
Neither the rigged election that gave Yar'Adua the keys to Abuja nor his abominable performance in office ought, therefore, to be the issue. There should be a presidential library in his name, and hopefully, the government of Mr. Jonathan, in collaboration with Yar'Adua's family and friends, will cooperate in setting up one in Katsina.
It takes deep courage to remember a man when he is dead.
Finally, what about Rebrand Nigeria? Did we start? If so, did we finish? Are we going to have to rebrand the Rebrand Nigeria policy? If we neither started nor finished, where is the money branded for Rebrand Nigeria?
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