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Time to Reclaim Nigeria 2
By Chido Onumah
Newsdiaryonline Sun Oct 30,2011
Chido
Perhaps the most interesting – some would say most bizarre –
story out of Nigeria this past week was that involving some of
the country’s journalists in the capital city, Abuja. We have
had tales of inducement of journalists, and its impact on their
job in the past, so this aspect of the story was not
particularly enthralling.
I shall tell the other side of the story, which would have been
quite comical if not that it is tragic. According to reports,
the
Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala
Mohammed, made a cash “donation” of N500,000 to journalists
covering the State House in Abuja. The journalist who received
the money on behalf of his colleagues had declared N400, 000
instead of N500, 000, allegedly given to him, claiming he was
asked to keep N100, 000 for himself. Suspecting foul play, the
journalists under the aegis of the State House Press Corps,
after an emergency congress meeting held at the Banquet Hall of
the Presidential Villa, “constituted a three-man committee to
investigate corruption allegation leveled against” the erring
journalist.
The committee after days of investigation found their colleague
guilty of corruptly enriching himself at their expense. He was
asked to refund the money, and reprimanded. “Haven
(sic) returned the N100,000, (the erring journalist) should
however be warned to desist from collecting monies on behalf of
the Press Corps without the knowledge of the house since he is
not an executive member. If any member collects monies on behalf
of the Corps, deductions must not be made off front without the
conscent (sic) of those concerned if it is the case of an
assignment,” the report concluded.
This is the abysmal depth our journalists, the watchdog of the
society, have sunken to. While the government is shortchanging
the masses,
compromised journalists are shortchanging other journalists, and
busy investigating one another.
Any wonder then that you hardly see investigative stories or
thorough analysis of the problems facing the country in the
media? You only read about the sleaze and corruption going on
in the government from
online media based outside Nigeria. How can journalists do their
job effectively when they are busy chasing “donations” and
setting up committees to investigate themselves when they ought
to be raising critical issues about how the country is being
mismanaged?
Nigeria is in the mess it is in today because our journalists
have given up their role as watchdogs.
But if we focus only on the action of those journalists
referenced in the story above, we will be missing the point. The
demise of the journalism profession in Nigeria is emblematic of
the general malaise of the Nigerian society. Like other
Nigerians in various walks of life, Nigerian journalists are
poorly paid where they are paid at all.
All manner of charlatans – governors, ministers, and corrupt
politicians of every hue – set up media organizations to further
their personal and political interests, not because they are
interested in running a successful business, or expanding the
frontiers of public discourse. They recruit journalists who a
few months later will be begging to be paid. Nobody holds the
proprietors to account! Though there are standards as well as
rules and regulations, nobody adheres to them.
Even when the media houses are set up by professionals,
journalists do not fare better. Journalists in some media houses
have to contend with non-payment of salaries for months on end.
Those who die in the line of duty are easily forgotten.
Journalists compete with each for who will suppress or better
underreport the malfeasance in government. And they
compete with politicians in primitive accumulation. Every
journalist looks forward to the big pay day when he or she will
be made a commissioner for information or special adviser on
media.
So, it is understandable, though not excusable, if the
president has to be dragged to court to declare his asset, and
journalists do not question the president – no editorials, no
commentaries -- why he has refused to comply with a
constitutional provision.
There is an allegation of impropriety in a land buy back scam in
which the name of President Goodluck Jonathan, the AGF, Mohammed
Adoke, and the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, have featured prominently, yet the
mainstream media has not deemed it necessary to get to the
bottom of the case. Even though the CBN has come out to
acknowledge that it paid almost N20 billion for a piece of land,
originally owned by NITEL, to build “a world class conference
centre”, there are many issues arising. I am sure the public is
interested in knowing who effected this huge appropriation
and how the funds were transferred after payments were made.
The point I am trying to make here is that we shouldn’t blame
the journalists, even though they ought to be held responsible
because of the nature of their calling. To say Nigeria has
collapsed is a terrible understatement. The system is broken
completely. And the collapse of the journalism profession is a
reflection of the rot.
There is no establishment you go to in Nigeria where anybody
smiles at you or is willing to do a job without wanting
something in return. It is a rat race; the survival of the
fittest. The stress you have to go through to get anything done
in Nigeria is better imagined. Majority of working class
Nigerians are one pay cheque away from destitution.
It is difficult if not impossible to earn a decent living in
Nigeria; there is hardly anything you can get on merit. You need
a godfather to succeed. Married women will have to sleep with
oga in the office to be able to augment the ‘chop money’ from
their husbands or gain promotion.
Lecturers trade grades for sex. Parents traffic their children
and subject them to child labour in order to support the family.
Some of our best brains are outside the country doing menial
jobs. Yet, in the midst of this debilitating situation, we
pretend that all is well. We hope that one day we too will make
it!
Very much like the journalist’s,
is the story of the police. Only recently, I had the
misfortune of going to the police station to report an incident.
After keeping me for a while and taking my statement, I was made
to part with N1,000 for the cost of “a file” to document my
case. When I asked the police officer why he had to charge for a
file, he said that was the standard practice. When I asked him
how convenient it was for a citizen on N10,000 a month salary to
part with N1,000 just to report a case, he reminded me that the
minimum wage was N18,000.
That is the Nigerian dilemma. The police station that is
supposed to provide succor has been turned into a centre of
extortion. If you can pay the right price, you can use the
Nigeria police as your personal militia.
The police that claims
to be your friend, and is funded by our collective wealth to
protect us, has become the ubiquitous enemy. No day passes
without reports of extra-judicial killings by the police. Just
last week, Emmanuel Victor, a 20-year-old
boy
was reportedly gunned down in the presence of his mother by a
policeman in Yenagoa,
Bayelsa State for “condemning the policeman for
extorting money from motorists at a police checkpoint”.
Again, if we fixate on the Nigeria police, we miss the big
picture. Everywhere you turn, there is mind boggling reports of
corruption. We have just been told by the Chairman of the House
Committee on Finance, Abdulmumuni Jibrin that “the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is conniving with crude
oil lifters to defraud the nation to the tune of $50 billion”.
Those who run the government do not believe in the country, so
they steal as much as they can, pending when the country will
implode. We have no shared values or ideals of nationhood. The
minister of education does not believe enough in our public
schools to send her children there; our health minister does not
trust our health system enough to visit our hospitals.
Government agencies rather than building their own permanent
structures are content renting private buildings which are owned
by top government officials and prominent politicians. Earlier
in the week, the
Head of Service of the Federation, Alhaji Isa Bello Sali, made a
revelation that did not come as a surprise. He said the Federal
Government had uncovered 71,135 ghost workers on its payroll
which cost the country N28bn annually. There must be people,
Nigerians, behind this scam; yet, nobody is going to be put on
trial, much less imprisoned for this monumental fraud.
Our law makers are not left out. When they are not busy
increasing their salaries and allowances (as one Dimeji Bankole,
former speaker of the House of Representatives, who is standing
trial for sundry criminal activities once did when in complete
disregard for existing laws he
increased the quarterly constituency allowance of members of the
House of Representatives from N28 million to N43 million), they
are pushing sinister legislations.
And now, an “honourable member”, Bassey Ewa, is trying to bury
an already comatose institution, the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC), with his bill seeking to amend the
EFCC Act. Mr. Ewa, from Cross River State, wants a retired
Justice of the Supreme Court or Court of Appeal to head the
anti-corruption agency, as if the profession of who heads the
agency really matters. If Mr. Ewa does not have a retired judge
in mind for the job, then he should know that his bill which is
swiftly moving through the House of Representatives like a knife
through butter is not in the public interest.
Are we talking about the same judiciary that is mired in
corruption? Fighting corruption requires serious political will
which is lacking in Nigeria. But the interesting aspect of Ewa’s
bill which the media ignored completely, was the section calling
for the abrogation of the anonymity clause, which protects
whistle blowers. The EFCC relies mainly on petitioners to carry
out its job. Imagine what will happen when whistleblowers are
not protected.
We have been cursed with leaders who never aspired to lead in
order to serve the public, therefore, there is little or no
preparation for what to do when they get to power. The president
is busy junketing around the world when there are pressing
national issues. Nobody knows how much his recent visit to
Australia cost taxpayers. With a delegation of 120, you would
think that the government of Nigeria had abdicated its 5-month
old mandate to “Occupy Australia”.
Our leaders are so overwhelmed by oil money they have become
unimaginative, unproductive, and numb to the suffering of
citizens. On Friday, October 28, 2011, Daily Trust newspaper
reported that the Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi,
chairman of the Governors’ Fourm and the lead antagonist of
paying N18,000 minimum wage was planning to buy a helicopter at
the cost of N5 billion naira ($30 million)
According to the paper,
Amaechi, whose plan was
greeted with loud murmurs of protests from dozens of youths,
said the helicopter is specially equipped with a camera which
will be used for aerial security surveillance to fight armed
robbers across the state. “The helicopter has a camera and it
will be flying round for security surveillance. When there
are armed robbers, the camera will focus on them and even if
they enter into any house the helicopter’s camera will capture
the house and will be trailing the armed robbers until security
men track them down,” the governor said.
In the same story, the newspaper reported that
the Plateau State Government had signed a N4.4billion contract
with Eagle Construction Limited for the construction of a new
government house in Jos. The Secretary to the State Government
(SSG) Professor Shedrack Best who signed the contract said the
project was in “consonance with the ten point agenda of the
administration.” According to Professor Best, “the project will
serve as an edifice that the people in the state will look at
with pride because ‘it will be second to none in the country’”.
“The new government house will encompass the governor’s
residence, first lady’s office, a banquette hall, series of
government offices and auditorium, among other features. The SSG
described the project as ‘a peoples project’ and urged people in
the state to treat it as their own and visit the site of the
construction whenever they feel like,” the paper reported. For
those who care to remember, Plateau State is the violence
capital of Nigeria. And I am told all the higher institutions of
learning owned by the state are under lock and key while primary
school teachers are owed five months salary.
Nigeria is a country where the only meaningful job is putting
oneself in the service of the government of the day. That is the
only reason a first class mind like Reuben Abati, lawyer and
doctorate degree holder, who has had a long and glorious career
as a journalist, columnist, chairman of the editorial board of
Nigeria’s flagship newspaper, the Guardian, and a long time
critic of governments in Nigeria, including the present, will
jump at the job of a presidential
spokesman.
It is for the same reason that Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, President
of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is drumming up
support for the proposed removal of oil subsidy. “I am not for
or against the proposal for the removal of oil subsidy and
therefore I will not be able to take a stand on the issue,
Pastor Oritsejafor said. As one writer put it, our religious
leaders are “no longer concerned about God and His people, but
rather concerned about government and their pocket”.
Some people are calling for blood to flow to wash away the
injustice in the land and water our freedom. It may well get to
that stage. Our big men ride in big cars, and live in mansions
that are the envy of Arabian kings. And this is solely because
they have unrestricted access to the national treasury, so they
don’t feel what a writer has described as “miscellaneous
miseries”, which is the unenviable state of majority of
Nigerians. The common people who bear the brunt of the
inefficiency and profligacy, are the only ones who can change
this situation.
We may decide as usual, to pray through our problems, fold our
arms, wish them away, or do something to alter the rot. The
choice is ours.
conumah@hotmail.com
Related
Time to Reclaim
Nigeria
By
Chido Onumah
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