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Nigeria – the Paradox @ 51
By Comrade Abiodun Aremu
Newsdiaryonline Sun Oct 2,2011
Nigerians cherish a society that works. Its successive rulership
professes visions that articulate fantastic dreams and hopeless
hopes. Every October 1st, in particular, in the past three
decades has become a ritual for its rulers to want to be
associated with what they referred to as the “goals of the
founding fathers” but their very despicable conduct betrays the
very essence for which Nigeria was founded.
Nigeria @ zero (0) on October 1st 1960 was a product of
struggles and sacrifices that involved losses to life, career,
organizations, etc. Without the struggles by those earlier
generations of labour leaders, progressive politicians, radical
intellectuals, activist youth, valiant women, business
practitioners and professionals who had some modicum of
nationalism and commitment to the Nigeria pride; probably the
few measures of freedom we still manage to enjoy today would not
be.
The paradox on Nigeria is better appreciated when viewed from
deteriorating standards over the decades. The boom in
agricultural produce in the 50 – 60s, that of oil in the 70s
were channeled into Development Plans that produced standard
universities (ABU, OAU, UNN, and later, universities in every
state), local manufacturing industries, hydro-power stations,
the four oil refineries, airports, stadia, trade fair complexes,
durable roads and health infrastructure, etc; but most of these
national assets have been taken over as private property by
those in political power today and their cronies, and in some
cases, rendered obsolete; all in the guise of economic reform
agenda of privatization and deregulation.
As an undergraduate in the early 80s, my Industrial Training
Fund (ITF) @ N120 per month x 3 months (N360), which was
equivalent of US$720 could fetch me a return ticket to London.
Minimum wage was N125 ($260) in 1981 and had a purchasing value
that guaranteed one-bedroom low cost house to the least paid
worker with opportunity for mortgage facility of 25 – 30 years.
But N18,000 ($120) for the least paid worker in 2011, which the
slave driver employers (public and private) are resisting to pay
can never improve the lots of the workforce.
The degenerate state of the polity today is a reflection of our
dependence status politically and economically to the dictate of
US and its allies of imperial financial institutions and
agencies, whose prescriptions on almost every aspect of our
social life are swallowed by these “Uncle Toms” local rulers.
Nigeria @ 51 cannot really be celebrating “independence” when it
is the neo-liberal global order that is actually governing us.
From the first coming of Obasanjo as military Head of State; US,
UK, France and other imperial looters in the G-7/8 impostor
arrangement determine our policies and development objectives;
which explains why governance has been reduced merely to:
·
levying and collecting all manners of taxes (petroleum,
VAT, electricity tariffs, development levies, etc);
·
awarding contract to portfolio contractors;
·
taking kickbacks off and on front; and
·
Elevating looting, money laundering and extravagant lives
while the majority Nigerians live miserably as the goal of
government.
Nigeria @ 51 cannot talk of the rule of law and due process”
when the most basic essentials of life articulated as the
fundamental objectives and directive principles of state
policies in the 1999 Constitution – i.e. rights and access to
life, health, education, water, light, food, shelter,
employment, social security, and happiness - are denied the
people.
We can never free the country or any section of it nor achieve
true federalism or resource control (even assuming the ethnic
balkanization agenda succeeds) so long as we have a subservient
ruling elites who operate like touts (agberos) at the service of
the G-7/8 countries that want us to fight corruption in line
with their “democracy model”; yet have Nigeria’s stolen
trillions corruptly domiciled in their banks in Europe and
America?
Nigeria has wealth and abounds in limitless potentials, yet we
have over a million children who should be in schools hawking on
major Nigerian cities, and our youth with first and second
degrees roaming the streets without jobs, and national highways
have become death traps, full of valleys and potholes and almost
impassable.
Nigeria will not move forward because those profiting from the
present rots should not be expected to shun their luxuries
acquired through looted fund, while the rest resigned to
“suffering and smiling”, a la FELA. At 51, the few (Presidency,
Governors, parliamentarians, local government chairpersons,
political appointees, and their associates swim in serious money
that accrues from excess sales of crude oil and the devaluation
of the local currency, yet industries are closing
down,unemployment is growing and there is no social security to
the unemployed, aged and disabled.
To move Nigeria forward, every pro-people transformative measure
must be adopted to resolve the ever mounting and complex social
and political decadence. The people and their popular
organizations in the market, workplaces, schools, mosques,
churches, and among the women, farmers, artisans, and the
disabled, etc should be resolved to confront the neo-liberal
regime of privatization and deregulation in order to get back a
productive economy.
Nigeria @ 51 has led to the popular maxim by many daily calling
for a revolution as the answer. Even the middle class and local
manufacturers and owners of small scale enterprises whose
businesses have been ruined by the economic philosophy of
neo-liberal globalization have in the last few years also join
the chorus for revolution as the alternative to the present rot.
But Revolution is not something that is just merely parroted. It
requires great efforts and sacrifices and the willingness of the
mass of the people to bring it about. It is not enough for
people to daily agonise about their plights, hardships and
sufferings, but to appreciate the fact that all the failures of
governance are the result of the unjust system which they must
struggle to change without which starvation, unemployment,
privatization of collective wealth, hunger, food crisis,
preventable and curable diseases, will continue.
A Nigeria @ 51 that desires to work must have people-oriented
organizations and patriots (those who believe and ready to
sacrifice everything including their lives) to undertake the
task of National redemption. The task of redemption requires
being self-reliant, anti-imperialist and building a resistance
capacity and commitment to drive and enforce the spirit and
letters defined in the 1999 Constitution on the Economic
objectives of Government.
The first major challenge to confront is the necessity for every
Nigerian to acquire mental emancipation. I am more than
convinced from the benefit of our historical trajectory and the
social realities that a struggle for the TOTAL INDEPENDENCE of
the country has become inevitable, or less, year in and out
would remain a paradox.
Comrade ABIODUN AREMU
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