EDITORIAL

 

Editorial

Waste, Greed and a Dose of Indiscipline

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido recently revealed that 71,000 Nigerians studying in Ghana spends N155 billion annually.  That is just one nation, not even among the top five most frequented nations for higher education by Nigerians.  That amount spent in Ghana alone he lamented, is more than the N121 billion the Nigerian Government spend on all of the nation’s federal universities. While the amount surely causes the jaw to drop, every informed and observant Nigerian knows the nation has been bleeding profusely into other nations' treasuries, as millions of young Nigerians troop out to seek education abroad. That demonstrates a near total failure of Nigerian leadership, its commitment and effectiveness.

There is no doubt whatsoever that had similar statistics been released on what Nigerians spend on medical care abroad, that would have equated or probably beat the educational figure, because as everyone may probably figure out, illness knows no school age, it strikes every Nigerian young and old.  And as long as our hospitals continue to fail in providing that basic need, the country will continue to bleed heath-wise also.  In September for example, a US based non-profit organization that sponsored an orthopedic team to Nigeria, quoted in its news story the prevailing circumstances that led to the mission. It writes “Nigerians currently spend more than $900 million annually on healthcare abroad, further diminishing investment in local infrastructure and medical training programs.”

But the two, i.e. health and education are not the only two outstanding issues.  Many others exist such as the failure to maintain the lifeline of the nation’s cash cow, i.e. the Nigerian refineries.  Billions more in dollars are bled.  Our investigations reveal that various schemes feed into the efforts to sabotage any attempt to resuscitate the almost dormant refineries, some of which have either been shut down intermittently for years, or else producing at between 35-45% capacity when they do operate.  I bet you no one can give you a credible time frame when any one of those refineries ever operated at its full installed capacity.

In an effort to maintain the various schemes run by some of the nations’ most sophisticated oil sabotage schemers, the nation and its population continue to suffer needlessly.  Among the profiteers of the failure of refineries are the petroleum product importers of course.  They have milked, and continue to milk the country’s treasury dry by shamelessly importing what God Almighty has seen fit to provide the nation in abundance, as if to say thank you God, but actually we care less for ourselves, much less than Your care for us.  That figure of the loss to the nation and its potential development has recently been announced as $8 billion in less than a year.

Many others of course profit from the sabotage, including oil pilferers, and oil bunkerers.  The local leadership from the Delta region also get their illegal lion share, from the local government level to the state governments and other representatives.  That is in addition to a formula that gives them percentages more than other states of the federration.  Forget all the bickering that goes on in the press and internationally from such people, and even some of the groups called activist; that they are working for the benefit of their local population.  While the poor Delta Region population do not have anything to show for the oil within their midst, those in leadership smile all the way to the bank.  While it has been going on for a long time, just remember the Iboris and the Alamisieghas of recent, both jailed former governors of the Delta States.  Then there are those licensed to lift, distribute and sell.  At every stage you get a group that scheme to shortchange the national treasury, and further grill the ordinary Nigerian through smuggling the products out, hoarding it etc.  By this the ordinary Nigerian continues to lose not only through the failures of infrastructures that may educate his children or keep him and his family healthy, but further suffer at the pump when he needs to buy fuel or kerosene etc.

Well who can stop this insane self-inflicted poverty of a rich nation?  Please do not say the leaders, for they stand to gain by it.  And you better believe that they will fight whoever wants to genuinely help the country and its people free themselves from their schemes.  You may well take a lesson from a famous phrase uttered by the late Muslim American Civil Rights champion, Malcolm X, who said “you do not take your case to the criminal; you take the criminal to court.”  He was referring to the civil rights activists of his time, asking them to find another outlet [suggesting the League of Nations] but not the nation’s courts at that time, who were complicit in the plight of the discriminated African-American. 

And do not use the Nigerian Police Force either, who for years have been mainly sustained through the mercy of some of the citizens on the nation’s highway.  Well above ninety percent of Nigerians are  suffering within the same rocking boat, as you all are.  But something has to be done, and fast.  Time waits for no one. People better come together and save themselves, or go down together, as the people at the wheel of the Nigerian ship of state appear to be heading straight for an iceberg.

 

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