Monday, October 26, 2009

The Reign Of Squander-maniacs

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

While hapless, helpless Nigerian students remain at home, for several weeks now, idling away precious time and wasting their lives due to the indefinite strike embarked upon by university teachers because of the Federal Government’s refusal to implement an agreement it had freely entered with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and patients are being snatched away every other hour, if not minute, by clearly avoidable deaths because of the ongoing strike by Nigerian health workers, President Umar Musa Yar’Adua thinks that the best use he could put Nigeria’s nearly N4 billion (N3.9 billion) to is to squander it on the furnishing of the corporate headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to impress African leaders converging in Nigeria next year for the African Union (AU) meeting. 

Now, that is not all. If by today, the Federal Government fails to meet their demand for better pay and improved conditions of service by adopting and implementing a Medical Service Scale (MSS) for doctors employed by the government, Nigerian doctors under the aegis of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) will commence their own indefinite strike. This can only compound an already very bad and horrible situation. Last Friday, patients, even those in very critical conditions, at the National Hospital, Abuja, were discharged en masse and asked to go and seek medical attention elsewhere. The same benumbing situation was replicated in almost all Federal Government health institutions across the country. And where else are they expected to seek medical help from after being sacked from the nation’s tertiary health institutions? Abroad? How many of them can afford overseas medical treatment?  

As we are all aware, only in vain can anyone hope that this sad state of affairs would move Yar’Adua and other members of the callous ruling elite. No doubt, their children cannot be found anywhere near a federal or state university. Nor would they allow any member of their families to be treated at any public hospital in Nigeria. Indeed, they have enough public funds at their disposals to treat even catarrh (common cold) in any part of the world. That is why they don’t care if the already rundown universities and health institutions remain closed till the conversion of the Jews

Government would want us to see employees who go on strike to press home their demand for better pay and improved conditions of service as unpatriotic and constituting themselves into a huge nuisance. While they keep appealing to workers to make more sacrifices “in the interest of the nation”, the ruling elite never fails to cart away for themselves huge sums of money every other month for contributing an insignificant little or nothing at all to the development and progress of the nation.

 What can anyone say our federal lawmakers have been able to achieve to make Nigerians appreciate them? Many Nigerians see them as grossly underweight, light-minded and purposeless; individuals who lack the capacity to appreciate the gravity of the assignment they are supposed to be performing in Abuja. Yet, a Senator’s basic salary is: N2, 484,242.50 per annum, while that of House of Reps Member is: N1, 985,212.50. Note that it was much higher than these before the recent reduction.

 But what they “lose” in the so-called salary cut, they triple with countless juicy allowances. Monthly, they cart away millions of naira as Furniture Allowance, Car Loan Allowance, Wardrobe Allowance, Accommodation Cost, Entertainment Allowance and all manner of perks that incredibly swell their bank accounts - just for grossly underperforming, or, as many would put it, achieving nearly nothing. Every quarter, each Senator gets N45 million (N15 million a month) while a House of Reps Member gets N39 million. This is to enable them operate their constituency offices. Yet, most of these constituency offices and staff exist only in the imagination of the lawmaker. And why should a lawmaker be executing constituency projects while there is a governor and council chairman where he comes from? This is one of the countless avenues created for the ruling elite to loot the nation pale.

 A report in The Guardian of last Sunday (July 12, 2009) entitled, “The Bleeding Of Nigeria - Huge Bills, Little Result” contains this stirring lamentation: “At a time when developed economies were looking for ways to cut down on recruitment bills, a new emolument was retroactively passed by the National Assembly earlier in the year, thus increasing the President’s take home pay to N10.899 million; that of the Secretary to the Federation and Ministers was jerked up to N5.907 million. The President/Governor lives in a Government House where they do not pay rent or utility bills. They live lavishly and stupendously. Yet they still collect allowances for services already paid for by the people.”

Councilors earn better money than distinguished university professors. The salaries and allowances of these officers at the 774 local councils in the country for fours years add up to about N2.4 trillion. Many of these councilors may just be lay-abouts or thugs everyone knew in the village the other day who were doing dirty jobs for unscrupulous politicians. And now, having been rewarded with councillorship positions, they earn more money than professors. What of the lawmakers? What qualifies them for all the wealth being poured into their pockets for idling away at our expense in Abuja, while hardworking professionals are left to suffer deprivation because of poor salaries? Are these not the same light-minded lawmakers who confirmed a Central Bank Governor within three hours or suspended plenary to have lunch with a presidential aide?

The issue is that Nigerians are yet to rise with one voice to demand why a bunch of unprofitable citizens, less than five per cent of the population, who only know how to run the country down, should brazenly cart away huge sums of money monthly while hardworking professionals are paid peanuts and asked to tighten their belts. According to The Guardian on Sunday report, before the recent slash announced by RMAFC, salaries and allowances of those at the federal executive arm gulped over N170 billion annually.

Some readers may have been embarrassed by my insistence here last week that using N456 million to merely bring the president to Bayelsa State to “commission some projects” and lay the foundation for an airport project amounted to an unqualified waste. Many may have wondered why I was “making noise” because of such a “small change” spent on “a whole” presidential visit. And here am I again complaining that at this time of crippling crises in two critical sectors, health and education, someone outside a lunatic asylum thinks it is not obscene to furnish an ordinary office complex with nearly four billion naira! Please, pardon my obsession with “small matters.”

But wait: if this office would be furnished with N3.9 billion (about $33 million), what did it cost to build it? Nigerian leaders can spend anything to attract mere smiles from their foreign colleagues, who call them fools at the back. Indeed, if wasting all the money in the treasury would have made President Obama to visit Nigeria instead of Ghana, Yar’Adua, I am sure, would have been compelled to do it.

That is the tragedy of the nation - a nation where N6billion was recently removed from the budget for education and health, two very vital sectors, to build a ten lane road from the Abuja airport, so our rulers can impress foreign visitors with the beautiful, expensive road that leads into their country of benumbing insecurity, boundless corruption, countless starving people and millions of generators.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

 

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Nigeria: Very Rich, Very Irresponsibly Managed


By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

 

Last Wednesday, we had a very important and urgent need to be in Kumasi very early the next day. It was already midnight (Nigerian Time –11pm in Ghana), and we were still in the heart of Accra, surrounded by its brilliant lights, soothing serenity (there was not the faintest hint of any generator anywhere) and profound modesty, wondering what to do. But a Ghanaian who was with us did not seem to share our worries. He simply told us to hit the road, that in the next three hours, we should be in Kumasi.

I looked at him with surprise and disbelief. Who was sure nobody had hired him to lure the three of us into a well-laid ambush by violent robbers? When I expressed my concern about armed robbers, his answer was sharp, with a tinge of impatience.

“There are no armed robbers!”

When I repeated the concern much later, he said something he should not have said, but which Nigerians need to continue hearing no matter how painful we find it: “I have told you… no armed robbers! This is not Nige…!” He cut himself short. It occurred to him, a bit too late though, that he had gone too far in his bid to emphasize that point. Just like the way I felt when I shouted to some Nigerians at one place we had gone to in Accra some days later when the driver was about to run over a bag: “Remove that Ghana-Must-Go bag!”

When I called a Nigerian friend and he reassured me that the long journey from Accra to Kumasi was safe, we hit the road. At the one or two places where very friendly policemen had stopped us, they merely looked at the vehicle and waved us on with their torches, without the slightest hint that they wanted an ‘egunje.’ And so, after a long journey through lonely, lengthy stretches of the expressway, and vast quiet countryside, we embraced the warmth of the clean, well-lit streets of Kumasi early that cold morning, and found our way to the serene ambience of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

Ghana is a very poor country. Beyond the glitter of an efficient system is poverty that is real and palpable. But Ghana has been lucky with its leaders. What nation would not prosper under the watch of a visionary, patriotic leader who is not afraid of his people who had elected him in fairly free and fair elections, but lives among them (instead of hiding himself in an impregnable fortress like Aso Rock), and is able to inspire the citizenry to believe in him, and buy into his determination to put in place a workable system? It is only thieving, failed leaders that live in perpetual fear of their people.

Throughout my stay in Ghana, I never dialled any number twice with my Ghana MTN line, no matter the country I called! But in Nigeria, if you dial a number saved in your phone, what you would probably hear is: “This number does not exist on the MTN network.”

Then you try again: “The number you have dialled is incorrect.”

And you dial the third time: “The number you have dialled is switched off.”

Fourth time: “The number you have dialled is unavailable.”

And if you have the patience to try the fifth time, it may then go through! What a country! Ghana Telecom Service Providers are effectively monitored and regulated, unlike what Ernest Ndukwe claims he is doing for us here. The begulatory body ensures that no service provider sells lines more than it has the capacity to manage. It once, reportedly, called MTN to order, when it attempted to roll out lines like it does in this our lawless jungle.

Each time I recharged my line with 2Ghana Cedis (N230), I would make several calls both to Nigeria and within Ghana, and would still have much credit remaining. But here, the thing finishes with incredible speed.

It offends me each time anyone attempts comparing Nigeria with Europe or America. From Swaziland, Botswana to Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia to Uganda, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast to the Gambia, Nigeria is, perhaps, the only country in the whole of Africa that is yet to achieve stability in its energy supply. We are here still grappling with pitch darkness and watching our pitiably blank and hare brained leaders telling embarrassing, infantile stories about their inexplicable failure and insufferable incompetence, while very poor countries we can easily buy up have since left us behind on this issue of power supply and provision of other social amenities.

In most of these countries, one can conveniently walk to any public tap and drink water, but whoever tries that here any time some liquid manages to trickle from any public tap would be guilty of attempting suicide.

At Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Americans, Britishers, Chinese and people from diverse nations of the world are proudly enrolled as students. In 1993, I met an America Professor of Economics who proudly announced to me that while he studied for his Masters Degree at the University College, Ibadan, (UCI) in 1958, he stayed at Kuti Hall. I wonder if he can advise any American child today to get near that same Kuti Hall he spoke so glowingly about, or encourage the child of his worst enemy to attend a Nigerian University.

 

While a friend and I took a walk around midnight on Saturday, we felt so safe, despite the several trees in the well landscaped and beautified compounded that lend the school its serenity, but which could provide cover for any cultists to strike. As we stood on a walkway, about eight American youths hopped across, chattering, laughing and feeling so much at home. I am told that children of countless Nigerian government officials are enrolled in the school, generating huge funds to Ghana with which it now offers divers scholarships to its own citizens. Yes, Nigerians would prefer paying all the money to Ghana than improving and making our own schools safe so that youths from several parts of the world can also come here (as used to be the case) to study. Indeed, the KNUST faculty Guest Houses can comfortably diminish some things that pass for “big” hotels in Nigerias.

Ghanaians do not have the drive and innovativeness of Nigerians. Under sincere and honest leaders who are not mere common criminals whose eyes and hearts are only focused on the treasury, what would stop Nigeria from becoming one of the greatest countries in the world?

But what do we get here: the Babangidas, the Abachas, the Obasanjos: rulers who derive peculiar animation from prospering by marketing the nation’s entrails.

Obasanjo’s only noticeable achievement while in office was to join the emergency Billionaires’ Club with such fanfare and brazenness that sent all the others scampering for safety . But while leaving office, he left us in the hands of an Umoru Yar’Adua whose only understanding of leadership seems to be to perennially grope for direction.

So, while our leanly endowed neighbours like Ghana are gradually laying solid foundation for greater tomorrow, Nigeria is decaying and sinking into unimaginable depths. Laden with insufferably inept legislator, and an odious character like Maurice Iwu as INEC Chairman, what options are left for a country so immensely rich, but so irresponsibly managed? What a tragedy.


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