PRESIDENT YAR’ADUA HELP, NIGERIANS ARE DYING
By Emmanuel Onwubiko
These are interesting times in Nigeria. Interesting, not because of any positive change in the general living condition of Nigerians which has been in a speedy decline since 1999 and increased with intensity since 2007.
Not at all! These times in Nigeria are interesting because those who claimed that Nigerian voters elected them into their current political offices seem to have literarily gone blank regarding how to implement far-reaching economic measures to turn around Nigeria’s poor economy.
The political rulers [not leaders] that populate the political space in Nigeria in this twenty first century are doing everything possible to keep the majority of Nigerians in perpetual economic slavery and are working round the clock to sustain Nigeria’s current ‘Mai Ruwa’ (water hawker) economy that relies on ad-hoc economic measures and policies which they wrongly called “turn around strategies”. The class of artisans called ‘Mai Ruwa’ [Water Hawkers] usually appear on the streets of major Nigerian cities in times of scarcity of pipe -borne water and disappear as soon as the first rain falls. In other word, the work of the water hawkers is short term and not sustainable.
Writing in the book “BUSINESS: THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE” New Edition, Sir John Harvey-Jones clearly conveyed to his readers what he considers the best way to implement result-oriented turn around strategies to revive an economy like that of Nigeria that has gone comatose.
Harvey-Jones observed that; “if you find yourself managing a turn around, the first two points on which you have to concentrate are your diagnosis of the problem and endeavouring to ensure that you have a reasonable time gap in which to carry out your chosen solution”.
He told his readers that; “for the diagnosis, you need every scrap of information, opinion, and statistical analysis you can lay your hands on. The views and openness of those on the shop floor are as important or in some cases, more important-than those at the top. Individuals in these situations are astonishingly honest with themselves, and it is from this apparently inchoate mass of opinion and fact that a first ‘rough cut’ analysis will appear. The strategy has to be concise and simple, for it is essential that everyone inside or outside the company should understand the aims. The details are best left to those who will have to deliver it”.
Now, what are we talking about when we relate the above scenario created by Harvey-Jones to the Nigerian situation? Researchers, Political Scholars, Economists, Market Women and Traders including Motor park touts in Nigeria have come to accept the hard fact that Nigeria’s Economy is in a deep mess and that the troubling economic, political and social situation afflicting Nigeria were occasioned by the prolonged period of bad governance characterized by the exhibition by our political rulers of the most primitive and wicked avarice, greed and corrupt tendencies so much so that nearly seventy five percent of the entire foreign exchange Nigeria gained from the sale of our rich crude oil and other natural resources can not be accounted for because the funds have been vandalized, stolen and stashed away in the foreign accounts of past and current political office holders. Nearly eighty percent of our people are existing on the extreme poverty line and therefore cannot afford one decent square meal per day currently even when our politicians are attending social functions where expensive wines and meals are served them at the expense of the tax payers.
President Umaru Musa Yar’adua came to power after the controversial and disputed 2007 elections and promised Nigerians that he will confront the Monster called corruption, but he has not kept this solemn promise because corruption among political office holders under his nose has assumed frightening dimension and the high level of hunger in the land is better imagined.
President Yar’adua promised to declare a state of emergency on electricity power –a sector the immediate past regime monumentally failed to achieve much inspite of the so-called spending of over sixteen billion United States Dollars.
Almost two years into his administration’s first tenure, President Umaru Musa Yar’adua has reneged on his solemn promise and the power situation has gone from bad to worst. Majority of businesses in the formal and informal sectors of Nigeria’s economy are running on generators with the attendant environmental hazards and pollution.
The level of carbon monoxide and other air pollutants that are regularly emitted by the generators has reached critical alarming stage. Not done yet, the Federal Government in the 2009 budget has appropriated a whooping #2 billion to buy generators to power government official activities therefore increasing the collective threat level that Nigerians have been going through over the years. Nigerians are like a defeated population sentenced to instalmental and systematic death; God forbid!
The President and his team of experts must find lasting solution to the epileptic electric power supply situation in Nigeria.
Luckily for the rest of us, good citizens of Nigeria, “the registered trustees of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and Lateef Olawale Yusuf (a Nigerian tax payer and one affected by the subject matter of the suit) have asked the Federal High Court in Lagos to stop President Umaru Musa Yar’adua from spending #2 billion on generators as alternative source of electricity to government offices, saying that “the dependence on generators severely limits the Federal Government’s ability to resolve the problem of poor electricity services in the country”.
In the suit number FHC/L/CS/42/09 dated 16 th January 2009, and filed by SERAP’s Lawyer, Adetokunbo Mumuni, the Plaintiffs stated that; “unless the court hears this case and grants the reliefs requested, millions of Nigerians will continue to have their economic and social rights violated and the government will take no concrete action to address the problems in the power sector.
Joined as Defendants in the suit are: President Yar’adua; Minister of Interior; the Power Holding Company of Nigeria; Minister of Petroleum, Gas and Power; and the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. The Plaintiffs are asking the Court for among others the prayers of;
- A declaration that the plan by the Defendants to spend #2 billion on power generating sets in 2009 to supply electricity to government offices while millions of Nigerians not employed by the Defendants remain without access regular electricity supply is discriminatory as it violates Nigeria’s international human rights obligations to ensure equal treatment of all citizens, and freedom from discrimination, including under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement Act, contained in the Laws of Federation of Nigeria 1990); and
- A declaration that the plan by the Defendants to spend #2 billion on power generating sets in 2009 to supply electricity to government offices with the excessive noise and pollution that would arise from the use of the generating sets, and the inhaling by millions of Nigerians of carbon monoxide from the smoke belched by generators as unlawful as it violates the right to the best attainable state of physical and mental health; and right of people to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development, guaranteed under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement Act, contained in the Laws of Federation of Nigeria 1990).
Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, fervently prays that God will give the presiding Judge in the above strategic case, the wisdom to give judgment that will serve the common good of the greatest percentage of Nigerians because a government policy that fails to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest percentage of the citizenry should be consigned to the dust bin of history, period.
Emmanuel Onwubiko heads the Human Rights
Writers’ Association of Nigeria.
