The public has to pay, even for non-performance. Many of the governors who refused to pay workers and pensioners cooked up pension schemes for themselves. It shows how selfish and parasitic the politicians are. Do they meet the qualifications for pension to deserve such? I think the lawyers must help us in this case.
I came across the saying of the wise man, Chief Obafemi Awolowo of blessed memory; the President Nigeria never had, according to Odumegwu Ojukwu, also of blessed memory. Awolowo was quoted in a speech on May 16, 1970 as the Vice Chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Federal Commissioner for Finance to have said, “We have won the civil war. Yes, indeed. But to win the war for peace, we must recognise the real enemies. Otherwise, all our efforts would be totally misdirected and dissipated. As far as I can understand, the aggressors against peace and stability in Nigeria are abject poverty, hunger, disease, squalor, and ignorance. They are more devastating in their ravages, more insidious, more thorough and more resistant in their operations than armed rebellion. They are the enemies which must now be crushed, and crushed ruthlessly.” These were identified as early as the civil war ended in January 1970 and here we are still battling with all these enemies more than five decades after!
Chief Awolowo was not the kind of politician that anybody can tag as garrulous. There was concrete evidence that he was a man of his words. He was totally different from the bunch of street politicians we have had over the years that have put us into shame among the comity of nations.
As the Premier of the Western region at that time, he virtually eradicated ignorance with the free and compulsory education programme; solved hunger with agricultural projects such as the establishment of farm settlements in many parts of the region; reduced poverty and squalor through policies on employment generation via the establishment of industrial estates and creation of Odu’a Group of Companies as the Western Region economic hub that exists till today; and finally, he introduced primary health care centres in many localities to tackle diseases that could be managed at the local government level.
The Western region has its regional development plan and attendant blueprints. The Western region model, which was anchored on a national development plan, was what Chief Awolowo was trying to recommend to the Federal Executive Council in that speech, because immediately after that speech, the process for the Second National Development Plan was set in motion. And, in tandem with that speech, the objectives or goals of the plan were to establish a just and egalitarian society; a land of bright opportunities for its citizens; a great and dynamic economy; a free and democratic society; and finally, a just and self-reliant nation. However, before the conclusion and launching of the plan, Chief Awolowo had resigned from the government and Professor Adebayo Adedeji had to shoulder the task.
Notwithstanding the fact that Chief Awolowo was not there to implement the plan, a summary of its achievements, as documented, included the fact that most manufacturing establishments were fully reactivated. That included the reactivation and expansion of the Calabar and Nkalagu cement factories; the implementation of the second oil refinery at Warri and establishment of the National Oil Corporation. Also is the super phosphate fertiliser project at Kaduna, the Volkswagen and Peugeot assembly plants in Lagos and Kaduna respectively; and two salt refineries initiated for Ijoko and Sapele
In the educational sector, enrolment in the primary school increased by over one million students within three years, while enrolment in the secondary schools almost doubled from 343,300 in 1970/71 to approximately 649,990 in 1973/74. The government, under General Yakubu Gowon, took advantage of the increase in oil output and oil price to achieve that remarkable economic growth.
That was the time Nigerian leaders were working for Nigeria and Nigerians. There were clear efforts at banishing poverty and hunger from the country by using the nation’s natural resources for the benefit of the economy based on ordered development plans and commitment to have an egalitarian society. By 1979, a reversal of the development trajectory was becoming apparent and despite the temporary halt to the decay between 1984 and 1985, the precarious situation continued to deteriorate.
It is true that the same Awolowo model and modus operandi was adopted with some modifications in the years of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) between 1979 and 1983 as the scope of operation was limited to what used to be referred to as LOOBO States in the South-West and Bendel states. The extended actions further strengthened the development of the South-West to what we noticed today despite the activities of the retrogressive elements that have joined the same elements in other parts of the country to unleash poverty, hunger, ignorance and squalor on the rest of us through organised, deliberate and unrepentant personal enrichment over national development.
The governments in the South-West states in recent time have virtually destroyed their state’s educational system as many of them derive joy in establishing institutions without provision for funding. Most of the buildings we see in primary and secondary schools were built during the Awolowo Western region or under the UPN. The few additions can easily be recognised by their shoddy nature and glitzy paints. Buildings in the recently established tertiary institutions are dominated by TETFund support, which indicates that without such support, the institutions would have presented pictures of glorified secondary schools. The agricultural farm settlements have become moribund instead of modernized, and the Odu’a Group of companies, the economic hub, is always in recovery mode. Infrastructures in industrial estates are in a sorry state. Economic planning has been jettisoned and replaced with planless growth, except for Oyo State that just reintroduced planning and Lagos State that is known for its long-term state plan.
The fact that the South-West region has the least poverty rate in Nigeria is due to its past developmental efforts. A research report based on 2017 figures from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics shows that North-West (71.4%) has the highest poverty level in the six geo-political zones, followed by the North-East (69.1%), while South-West has the least (49.8%). But, is the 49.8% poverty rate a good figure? No. It means that half of the people occupying the zone are poor. It can be concluded that there is no zone that has less than half of its population poor. Further research shows that the poverty rate in Nigeria in 1970, immediately after the civil war, was 13% and 27.2% in 1980, but rose to 69.0% in 2010. Presently, Nigeria is regarded as the second poorest country in the world, having been overtaken recently by India.
Over the decades since the quadrupling of oil prices in 1974 from $4 per barrel to $12 in that year, Nigeria has been blessed multiple times with oil boom periods to solve the identified enemies namely; abject poverty, hunger, disease, squalor, and ignorance. But these enemies are growing stronger by the year. No thanks to unabashed corruption, incompetence in governance, ruthlessness in political maneuvering, selfishness and proclivity for debt accumulation. Maybe that was why they cancelled history in the school curriculum so that they can hide the truth from generations coming thereafter. The more money we make from trade and international transactions the greater the depth of poverty and hunger in the land. What manner of governance is that?
The public has to pay, even for non-performance. Many of the governors who refused to pay workers and pensioners cooked up pension schemes for themselves. It shows how selfish and parasitic the politicians are. Do they meet the qualifications for pension to deserve such? I think the lawyers must help us in this case. Is there no minimum years of service to be entitled to pension? Is the service by election or by appointment? Since those who are occupying political positions by election are not expected to resign before contesting elections, should they be entitled to pension? This is not to say that political appointees like the ministers, commissioners and others alike deserve pensions. More appropriately however, I need the assistance of the learned ones for proper interpretation on who is entitled to pension. The politicians cannot continue to take us for granted.
Sheriffdeen Tella
