Mariam Mariam
The Nigerian ruling class must be the world leader in the perfection of scam, fraud and gimmick. Some of these underhand acts of fraud have been necessary national diversions to make the people believe the ruling class genuinely cares for the common weal; yet others are a laughable train of amateurish scams, that no self-respecting local conman in a motro park will endeavour to pull through, because it will devalue the act of the conman! In an earlier incarnation, when money wasn’t the problem, but how to spend it, they promised us heaven on earth:’HOUSING FOR ALL BY THE YEAR 2000’; ‘EDUCATION FOR ALL’; FOOD FOR ALL’; they build bridges where there was no river and stole the country blind! These promise were kept only in the breach.
Of course, the people’s plight worsened and despair set inl the people began to vote with their feet by abandoning the country. By the mid-1980s, the state began a systematic abandonment of welfare and social policies:we must commercialise and privatise everything, while building an uncaring society. Where the state vacated non state actors took over, leading to an increase in criminal activities; preyin on state instutions; worldwide criminal ventures which tarnished the image of the country, all in the context of military dictatorship. Just to ensure that the gimmick of all motion and no movement was maintained, they came with Vision 2010, which the disgraced despot, Olusegun Obasanjo promptly abandoned, just to get one on his nemiesis, General Sani Abacha.
The eight years regime of OBASANJO was the most eleaborate fraud in Nigeria’s history. Governance became an avenue of fraud, theft, a brazen privatization of national assets and the consolidation of a ruthlessly inhuman form of bandit capitalism. In order to profit from the all pervasive scam, some operative of the regime instituted what they called the HEART OF AFRICA project. One of the more comical asides, was a short documentary which had a most impersonable Obasanjo croaking like a toad: “WELCOME TO NIGERIA”! of course, no serios person can be endeared to a nation such a man was advertising! But that was beside the point; the issues was that millions of naira was available to play around with!
A few days ago, the Yar’adua regime finally abandoned the ‘HEART OF AFRICA’ project; it had gulped so much money but left us in a heart of darkness. Dora Akunyili, the Minister of information and Communications, who became the undertaker of the HEART OF AFRICA charade, announced frankly that “Heart of Africa could not fly for many reasons… (it) was first launched overseas (didn’t Obasanjo’s charity use to begin abroad?) And that automatically disconnected the ordinary Nigerian from this project”. Well if that was a pithy critique of a wasteful project, the Yar’adua government is also embarking on its own “branding project that will be home grown”, according to Akunyili. She went further that “this re-branding is about our collective interest, our image as a country and as a people in the present and the future”.
Well, our dear Minister doesen’t have to waste her time, becase the “re-branding” will end in the dust-in of history, just like its predecessor, Heart of Africa! Why? The problem is not in our stars, Dear Minister! Nigerians are no fools and will not be taken in by gimmick. They know when there is sincerity of purpose and always respond accordingly. Did we need a ‘re-branding’ campaign during the Murtala Muhammed period or under the Buhari/Idiagbon regime? If the ruling elite works for the Nigeiran people and develops the nation’s productive forces in a patriotic endeavour to make the nation work for its people, then people will defend the values of the country; they will be the ambassadors of the country; will forsake a fraudulent reputation of 419 and sundry crimes and they will show love to the country. They will not need a “re-branding” initiative that is only tongue-in-check, and never meant to be taken seriously by those proclaiming it and certainly won’t fook the people!
Related to the “re-branding” initiative is a Vision 2020 delusion. This week, at the inauguration of a Business Support Group for Vision 2020. President Yar’adua set a 300% growth rate target for Nigeria. How on earth does he think this can evr be achieved, when “more people experienced poverty in 2004 than 1996 because the total number of people in poverty increased from 67.7million in 1991 to 86.7 million in 2004”, according to a lecture given at the Usman Dan Fodio University, by Alj. M.K, Ahmed, the DG of the National Pension Commission. He added further that “Nigerian epidemiological environment is dominated by the prevalence of malaria, which accounts for an average of 300,000 deaths annually”.
We can add to that depressing statistic, the chronic underfunding of public education; absence of research funding or near total lack of linkage between research and industry or a structured relationship between agriculture and industry; the de-industrialisation occasioned by new-liberal capitalist policies and the massive corruption that has turned the Nigerian state into a shell! This is the blurred or impaied vision that informs the “visioning” procedure of a ruling elite that lurches from one crisis to the other. Ours is a lumpen ruling class that is paralyzed in its lack of originality and is cut adrift, far away from the people, beholden to imperialism and therefore lacking in the patriotic vision to lead the change wihich Nigeria urgently desires! “Re-branding” will not wash off the spots from the leopard of Ngieria ruling class corruption and Vision 2020 will not achieve any of the pious declarations made by the ruling elite; I am not pessimistic but the prevailing reality is tantamount to building road which leads nowhere!
