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Yar’adua:
Progress of the well-digger |
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By: Salisu Suleiman
Sat. May 23, 2009
newsdiaryonline.com |
Digging a well is a difficult and
dangerous activity. By extension,
professional well-digging is a hazardous
profession. One has to dig a tubular
canal straight into the earth. Air is
scant, breathing difficult and sunlight
dim. Sometimes you have to dig through
hard rocks. At other times, the soil is
either too loose or too muddy. People on
the surface cannot see what you are
doing nor appreciate your difficulties.
Yet in the midst of all these, you have
to continue to dig down, in the belief
that you will strike water.
In a sense, that is exactly the
conundrum President Yar’adua is caught
in. Yar’adua believes (or seems to
think) that he is digging a well from
which the milk and honey of national
development would flow. But after two
years of waiting patiently, Nigerians
are tired. When, in the aftermath of the
most rigged election in the history of
democracy, Umaru Musa Yar’adua was
sworn-in as President of Nigeria, it was
a resigned nation that watched the
charade as it unfolded. However, the
very fact that the nation was getting
rid of the despotic and much despised
Olusegun Obasanjo meant that we were
ready to give the new president a
chance.
In his inaugural address, the new
president promised a multitude of things
including a pledge to do away with the
culture of impunity that characterized
the Obasanjo era. He promised to declare
a state of emergency in the power
sector, he promised to improve
education, agriculture and
transportation. He promised to tackle
corruption. He publicly declared his
assets. As politicians come, especially
within the ranks of the PDP, Nigerians
believed Yar’adua was a lesser evil. So
against our better judgment, we gave him
a chance.
Well, after two years in office, the
cautious optimism with which Nigerians
received President Yar’adua has given
way to despair, and a state of
resignation. What Nigerians see today is
the picture of a president that is
shattered and defeated. His much taunted
performance as Katsina governor and
stand against corruption, presumably the
reasons OBJ and his cohorts dragged him
(was he really dragged?) to the
Presidency have wilted in the face of
real challenges. If he is a ‘performer’,
he is yet to get his acts together. If
he is against corruption, he is yet to
look in-house. Deep in-house. It is said
that charity begins at home.
After two years of this administration,
the impression one gets is that this
well-digger has been overwhelmed by the
task at hand. Accepted, he came in with
a deeply provincial outlook. Accepted,
his health is even at the best of times,
fragile. Accepted, he was staggered by
the enormity of power at his disposal.
Accepted, he was haunted by the crises
of legitimacy over his election.
Accepted also, that he is besieged by a
retinue of former ex- governors who
foisted him on us. But we must also
accept that he was not forced to accept
the job! We are yet to see water from
the well he is digging. He has dug so
deep that we cannot see him anymore, or
even hear him. A huge quantity of debris
has been thrown up. Billions of dollars
have been thrown down. But we are yet to
see a drop of water.
Today, despite his election pledge, the
power situation has never been worse.
Buying, selling and servicing of
generators is big business. Today, the
long queues of vehicles at petrol
stations throws one back to the
contrived scarcity of the Abacha years.
Two years after, education is not better
off, despite the hopes of many that the
former teacher would understand the
challenges of the sector. There have
been no meaningful developments in
agriculture. Remember the fertilizer
fiasco? Rather, 200 billion naira is
being ‘loaned’ to ‘big time’ farmers. In
what ways would this create employment
for the millions of jobless Nigerians?
It does not require a genius to surmise
that these so-called big farmers are
retired generals and former public
officials who want another bite of the
cherry.
Today, it is business as usual in
Nigeria. The hope and anticipation have
faded. The pogroms and subsequent
unconstitutional deportation of
Nigerians from Plateau state is
indicative that human life is cheaper
than ever. In the name of the rule of
law, we have returned to the impunity
that was a permanent feature of the last
government. While hundreds of Nigerians
die everyday on roads like the Abuja –
Lokoja highway, the same ‘fox’ who
refused to ‘fix’ our roads has been sent
to ‘fix’ our ports. Our refineries are
still comatose. NITEL is still a major
public embarrassment. Is its sale to be
or not to be? (Even Hamlet would have
decided by now!).
On the international scene, the decision
of President Obama to visit Ghana in
July is a clear indication that our
pariah status is back again. (Not that
we were really accepted, anyway, in
spite of Obasanjo’s illusions of
statesmanship) . Ghana has had four
presidential elections, with the party
in office loosing power twice without
loss of lives and property. Conversely,
elections in Ekiti, one of Nigeria’s
smallest states were an unmitigated
disaster. Every day in the news, it is
the story of one corrupt practice or
another. The economy is drifting without
direction. The public sector is as usual
clueless, except when it comes to
devising novel ways of diverting public
resources. The stock market has well and
truly collapsed. The banking industry is
all about an insatiable drive for
deposits and nothing else. Moral
authority is fundamentally fractured.
Indeed, even the so-called vision 2020
is a comedy. Not the type that makes you
laugh, though. This would make you weep.
Regardless of all these, our Well-Digger
in Chief wants us to believe that all is
well. It is akin to former Republican
presidential candidate John McCain
saying the fundamentals of the US
economy were strong when everything
around the country was collapsing!
President Yar’adua has been at this task
for two years. And it has taken all of
that time to use the media centre at the
Villa for the first time. And his
message? To assure Nigerians that we
were making progress. But it is not the
amount of debris that a well-digger
churns out that measures his success. It
is how quickly he strikes water.
Nigerians have been waiting for two
years for the shout ‘ahoy, water’! But
we are also beginning to get that
sickening feeling again that in our
country, the more things change, the
more they remain the same.
Suleiman is a student at A.B.U, Zaria. (ssuleiman@gmail.
com)
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