Despite these abnormalities, absurdities, and mal-administrations undeserving of a so-called giant of Africa, what is of real importance to emphasize here is the careless manner of land reconstruction otherwise known as encroachment, which has been ongoing for some time now...
My recent visit to Nigeria spanning a period of two months was not just to see families and friends, it also provided good opportunity to see what has really changed in a country that I left 5-years ago in pursuit of qualitative education and greener pastures devoid of nationally, institutionalized, systemic rots overstressed by endemic corruptions, incessant union strikes, rising unemployment and failing infrastructures.
My tours started from Lagos State with the arrival at the MM airport on December 1, 2015; thereafter, we travelled by public transport to Ile-Ife in Osun State. We also spent some days in Ekiti State and then travelled to Owo, passed Akure in Ondo State and finally arrived Ekpoma in Edo State before ending back to Lagos. Safe for the States’ capitals that looked slightly impressive, it was the same red eye-sour that would have pushed or pulled a sane thinker to wonder what tangible developments occurred under the 16-years of the PDP led-government that culminated with the administration of the former president, Goodluck Jonathan. So imperceptible were their performances that an outsider with genuine love for his/her country would have asked how come we deserved all the fabulous global ratings that the ex-president’s spokesmen were fond of branding and re-branding while their tangential angled more on winning elections than on winning the hearts of the masses.
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In general, the south-west federal and state, not to even mention the local government areas, were in debilitated state of repairs and infrastructure deficits—the markets, houses, roads– just as same can be said about other regions within our nation’s space. Equally perplexing is the poor sanitation across the cities that an alien will assume that Nigeria is where the inhabitants finish using a restroom without doing thorough cleanups. In fact, the regular habits of waste clearance and recycling seem to have departed Nigerians so long ago.
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Despite these abnormalities, absurdities, and mal-administrations undeserving of a so-called giant of Africa, what is of real importance to emphasize here is the careless manner of land reconstruction otherwise known as encroachment, which has been ongoing for some time now. It can be described as the opening up of new land areas, having little or no cultivation, for housing purposes or industrial plants leading to deforestation or making it impossible to use such lands for agricultural purposes. In Nigeria, such building activities are fast becoming a new normal that if left unchecked through the enforcement of relevant land-use laws will create congested landmasses not useful for farming and habitations for forest animals like antelopes, baboons, kangaroos, squirrels to mention a few; as well as other viable land-use for tourism and recreational parks.
To address these problems, first, emphasis should be towards demolishing existing archaic houses in the metropolitan areas in order to pave way for modern houses and beautifications. To avoid conflicts, owners of demolished homes should be duly compensated in a manner commensurate with their losses. Also, real estate agents should be engaged to build residential and office mansions for low and medium-income earners with mortgage payback periods, a good example being the gigantic Tejuosho shopping and Shopprite mall in Lagos. In addition, adequate measures should be put in place to prevent churches, mosques and other religious establishments and entities such as owners of fuel stations from indiscriminately embarking on building projects as currently the case. Ignoring this particular recommendation might lead us into much more costly spending and other reconstructive complications in the near future. Furthermore, government should encourage planting of trees and cash crops by collaborating with the local communities and agricultural extension workers to create jobs under aggressive mechanized farming and well-plan irrigation schemes. Such projects must benefit the community youth who are either roaming the streets in idleness or who survive daily on businesses like okada motorcycling and street trading. Within a year or two, if well-implemented, such transformative policies will engender cleaner cities with less pollutions-causing climate change, and free of miscreants and terrorists who relish unkempt environments. Still on sanitation, the Ministry of Environment at the Federal and State should implement a sanitation rating system, SRS, at the State and Local government levels respectively. Such quarterly appraisals should be done with the top dirtiest and cleanest States published in the local newspapers and broadcast stations and with rewards and punitive measures assign accordingly. Same measure should be accorded by each States to their local governments. Finally, more cargo and passenger railways should be built to connect each State to reduce traffic congestions, road accidents and frequent damages on roads due to overuse. In fact, building modern high speed train to connect neighbouring states should be of high priorities than state-owned local airports that some State Governors are eager to implement without regard for the cost implications, maintenance and the amount of land use.
So, back to my domicile in Montreal, Canada, my worries shifted back to the high tuition palaver for international students, and the fact that Nigeria still stands among backward nations like Gambia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe that care so less about their citizens when compared to other oil rich nations like Canada, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar. It is not funny that outside the shores of our abundantly blessed country one finds high probability of 4 in 10 young and old Nigerians tending toward illicit vices. The nearest example is boko-haram in Sabisa forest and their black flags in our neighboring north-eastern borders with Cameroon, Chad, and Niger—so much gratitude to our Military and Civilian Joint Task Force for their unrelenting efforts to end the blood-thirsty insurgences. It is worth appealing to the good men and women of our beloved nation to continue to generously donate clean clothes, funds and raw-foods to various IDP collation centers in each of the State and Local Governments of the Federation, if they already exist. Also, in faraway countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, not once has promising young Nigerians been sent to their early grave over illicit drug trafficking. In future, and if time and chance permit, I shall riposte on what an up-to-date citizens’ data records can do to help our country men and women living in and outside of the country, and what reforming our consulates can do to better help Nigeria students studying abroad obtain scholarships and in particular for Nigeria nationalities to benefit from 24-7 email and phone call and response assistances as well as free to subsidized legal counsel that Nigerians abroad can turn to when major issues arise as being practiced by most, if not all, of the aforementioned oil-rich nations.
We hope 4 years from now we can talk of ‘clear tangible’ change under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari flying on the wings of the broom touting , All Progressive Congress Party, as we continue to pray God to rescue us from us.
Taiwo Adetiloye is a currently a PhD student of Information and Systems Engineering at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
Twitter:@toadetiloye
Blog: http://www.tman-optimization.com
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