Not only has the President Goodluck Jonathan administration continued to harp on the need to still eliminate fuel subsidy, its budget proposals for 2013 and the woeful performance of the 2012 budget bill portray a pathetic insensitivity to the conditions of the citizens. Its provision for meals, refreshments, furniture and a brand new banquet hall for the Presidential Villa runs into the billions.
Another priority item for the presidency is a new residence for the Vice President at the cost of over N14 billion. The president currently has ten aircraft in his fleet which gulp about N90 billion in annual maintenance. Meanwhile, thousands of residential and utility buildings including whole settlements and villages in Borno, Yobe and other states have been bombed or razed down in arson attacks since 2009. Mr. President clearly does not give a damn because he has been unable to visit the Boko Haram embattled states or even send his vice.
When a nation is truly ripe for revolution, the symptoms of its sickness become all too clear to be debatable. Nigeria is for all practical purposes now a failed state since even the president and his most powerful aides are not immune from fear of the unknown. For instance, the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan celebrated the nation’s 2011 Independence Anniversary inside the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, for fear of Boko Haram, was a clear case of capitulation.
Last month, it was the turn of the National Assembly to move a motion for more security measures when the largest detention centre for terror and armed robbery suspects in the nation’s capital was sacked like a junior Boys Scout camp and undisclosed number of detainees freed.
Similarly, increasing incidents of kidnap of especially high-profile personalities such as Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of the incumbent minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, send sound signals of a systemic collapse. In parts of the Northeast, security agencies are routinely sacked and agents chased underground, killed or forced into exile.
Surprisingly, it was former President Olusegun Obasanjo who had the guts recently to name what even a blind man should feel coming in this country. In the faraway safety of Dakar, Senegal, he told the world to watch out for a revolution or uprising in Nigeria largely on account of massive unemployment. He predicted its scale could easily surpass the Arab Spring.
Since it is sometimes prudent to take the message without considering the messenger, questions about Obasanjo’s serial failure to fully implement any annual budget bills, check corruption or even ensure energy sufficiency after reportedly spending billions on power plants during his eight-year tenure could be academic at this point.
The youth factor
Nigerian youth currently constitute over 70 per cent of the population. The country presently has the highest number of out-of-school-children (OOSC). The latest Mo Ibrahim Index indicates that Nigeria houses 37 per cent of all the OOSC in the world. In the North alone, there are between 13 and 15 million adolescent almajirai and millions of other beggars and destitute many crippled or maimed from preventable diseases such as polio, measles, malaria, malnutrition, leprosy and tuberculosis.
For those who are in the school system, there were 13 million applications for slightly over 3 million slots in the nations over 200 strike-infested universities and polytechnics. Classes (and hostels) are packed with hundreds of students at a time, making it impossible to really impart knowledge talk less of character. The wealthy and wise have since voted to educate their wards in the UK, Malaysia, Ghana and Togo. The near-collapse of the education system was the most predictable outcome of poor governance since Nigeria has consistently refused to adopt the benchmark of 26 per cent minimum budgetary allocation to education.
The swarming army of the jobless is swollen annually by thousands of poorly educated and therefore unemployable graduates. Since the devil always finds work for idle hands, majority of Nigerian youth constitute criminal gangs of all hues operating on a national and global scale. Any democratic path
Democracy in Nigeria today exists only in nomenclature. Since the end of military rule in 1999, elections have been progressively worse with some zones not even bothered with the semblance of balloting. Worse still, the old brigade of political leaders relinquishes office only at death.
Opposition have made nonsense of their existence by failing to unite each and every time it mattered to effect regime change. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is having a field-day even as major opposition parties such as the All Nigeria Peoples Party, Action Congress of Nigeria and the Congress for Progressive Change bicker over sanctimonious self-righteousness and outrageous personal ambitions.
One proof that the old brigade are not about to give way is the fact that the septuagenarians and octogenarians of the first and second republics are still firmly in grip of power.
Finally, food prices which have been on the upward swing since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme in 1986 are expected to soar to the skies by next year due to the devastating floods that swept away farms and produce during the last cropping system. Food insecurity could be the trigger of the spring, after all bread riots featured in the French and other revolutions. The masses would have no option than to rise for radical reforms in governance.
Way out
Between 1999 and date, innocent lives were lost in communal, political, religious and even clan and ethnic conflicts than at any other time in Nigeria’s almost 100 years history except the 1967-1970 Civil War. Thousands of others have been killed in armed robberies, kidnappings, ritual rampages and avoidable transport accidents.
Will fear not continue to paralyse people? Citizens will unite across all cleavages when they finally realize that they have nothing to lose but their suffering and loss of dignity.
NigeriaIntel
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