Nigeria We Hail Thee?

Not many citizens will hail the current state of affairs; not with the rising tension everywhere, not with the unabating growth in unemployment, not with the impending strike over fuel subsidy and the subsisting one by ASUU - our university teachers.

If you blame the aggrieved, I hear you. If you blame the miscreants/hoodlums (as the media joins leaders to call them), I hear you. If you blame *US* the citizens, I hear you. Blame not the politicians or their hirelings or their hangers-on or their naked and inordinate greed cum ambitions or their spiritual consultants who see no evil, speak no evil. Chide not our leaders or their ethics or their ineptitude or their tactical rather than strategic cast or their herd mentality or their budget-failure artistry or their mindless looting of our patrimony. They were not responsible, are not responsible, will not be responsible beyond the pot.

So, they get us on the queue to vote and claim the glory. We hail them, they nail us. We hail them, they jail our youths in the visible prison of poverty but tell us we are FREE! Judging by the spending spree of government at many levels, they clearly enjoy the glee.

As duty calls, dear compatriots, who hails NIGERIA?

Budgets: Is It Blockade or Bungle?

When we ritualized the annual budgets in Nigeria, disconnecting it from the development plan we set the nation up for disaster. And it started with the better-forgotten structural adjustment programme (SAP) - the horrid pill of the IMF/World Bank of yore. What the military regimes and their civilian collaborators didn't chop the SAP Monster sapped! And we reeked and reeled. The rest, as they say, is history - bitter history.

Thanks to President Olusegun Obasanjo's courage and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's commitment, we got out of our foreign debt crisis and regained our national pride. It was historic, even euphoric. But, alas, it was short-lived! (PDP, I'm looking at you).

Right from 1999, our political leaders and their collaborators - ably aided by bureaucrats and technocrats - have failed to faithfully and fully implement our annual budgets. Okay let's qualify that: they have selectively and unpatriotically implemented the budgets - routinely consuming all recurrent/overhead votes, ruinously sidelining all capital votes! We've done so year in year out, averaging 30 to 40% budget implementation. (Infrastructure, Education, Unemployment, Poverty, Security, Maternal & Infant Mortality, I'm checking your pulse)

Question: Do we also have a Budget Cabal -at all levels of government - in Nigeria?

Poser: Who is blocking Budget Implementation?

Query: Why are Nigerians not challenging, why are we condoning, this mindless Budget- Bungle?

Puzzle: Is anyone doing the Development Mathematics of these Wasted Trillions?

May 2012 be a bright beginning. Amen.

Nigerian Parliament Vs Nigerian People

It still baffles how politicians "miss it". They don’t "get it", do they? And this is a worldwide mystery. Recall the British parliamentarians? And other parliaments? Recall the US Congress? And other bi-camerals? These folks are constantly being punished by voters yet the new set (plus their retained co-conspirators) proceed to pummel the populace with arrogant intolerance! They leave why they are elected and leap into cloud cuckooland, on a fishing expedition! Nigerian lawmakers are a rare species: having connived with the military to ruin their nation, they find it discomfiting to serve her nationals. They see themselves as lords and masters, feeding fat on the public purse and concocting fairytales like the discredited military vampires we finally dislodged. Nigerians are so miffed that visiting and reading online comments/chatters on these folks will deeply depress you. The list of their “sins” is long, very long.

Our look today is the small matter of these "representatives" wanting to impose themselves on their political parties - by attempting to pass a law to make them automatic members of their respective national executive committees! Okay, maybe it’s not too bad to aspire; but with the instant and constant rejection and opposition to the move by all Nigerians, you would expect the bill to freeze and disappear. Oh no, not this national assembly (as our parliament is uniquely named!) that serves self and scorns nation! The more the opposition, the emboldened and disdainful they became. And the utterances! The arrogance! Irking.

Not for the first - and, we predict, not for the  last - time, they have been roundly humbled to drop the controversial bill. Wisely, the senate acted first after the governors threatened court action openly, and electoral castration privately. It buckled. We are not impressed. The time and resources wasted on this misadventure should have been invested in better and more urgent bills - the freedom of information bill, voting rights for Nigerians in the Diaspora, a social security/welfare/safety net bill, electoral offences tribunal, special anti-corruption courts, removal of immunity from criminal prosecution of all political office holders as long-proposed by late President Yar’Adua, to mention a few.

The good news: Nigeria is showing African brethren how to respect the people - We, The PEOPLE! May our brethren continent-wide start to do same, and may their politicians (especially their parliaments) start to listen.

In sum, kudos to Nigerians and half-nod to the Nigerian Parliament!