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Unfinished business of this year

A time will never come when we will wake up in Nigeria and find that there are no problems to tackle. As far as I…

A time will never come when we will wake up in Nigeria and find that there are no problems to tackle. As far as I can see, our problems will end only when we wake up to a sudden nuclear Armageddon and all of us promptly leave the Earth at the same time. With no human being around, which problem again? Such a prospect once seemed distant but with two men of uncertain mental stability now in charge of nuke arsenals, the prospect isn’t so distant anymore. The only uncertainty is whether the big bully on the Potomac will beat the small bully on the edge of the China Sea at firing the first shot. But while we are still here, it is not very nice that the same national problems persist for years on end and we carry them over into the New Year like a serially failed university student. Many of the problems that bedevilled us this year were carry-overs from previous years and we look set to carry them into the New Year and beyond. 

Right now the most pressing national problem is fuel supply. I heard some people saying we should not complain because we have not had fuel scarcity in Nigeria for more than a year. In 1977 when there was sudden power failure in New York City, riots erupted in many neighbourhoods and thousands of shops were looted even though it was the city’s first power failure since 1933. I am not saying Nigerians should emulate New Yorkers but since the Presidency finally spoke up yesterday and said it is oil marketers that are trying to stampede it to increase fuel prices, I think there is a solution. NUPENG and PENGASSAN are also part of the plot because when they saw that fuel scarcity was easing last week, they said they were going on strike. They only called it off after everyone had rushed to the nearest fuel station and the queues already formed will last beyond Christmas. I therefore suggest to government that every December, it should lock up all fuel marketers, NUPENG and PENGASSAN officials and all DPR and NNPC monitors until the holiday season is over.

The second carry-over is that for the third time in a row the Presidency failed to submit budget estimates to the National Assembly before November. MPs may not pass this budget until March or April next year and the president may not sign it before June, as happened last year. Then only 20% of it may get implemented because, according to the Budget Minister, the money expected to fund it did not materialise. We also hear that a budget now lasts one year from the date it is signed. In that case, why don’t we simply change the financial year from January-December to June-May, with effect from next year? 

Hot on the heels of budget delay are the related problems of budget padding, arbitrary placement of budget priorities and non-implementation of budgets. I think a measure that will help to eliminate these problems is to restore the old system of National Development Plans. The plan should contain all the national priority projects together with the linked state and local projects, and no government at federal, state or local level can put projects in its budget other than those extracted from the National Development Plan. If you think about it, the president, governors, LG chairmen and all legislators will rest because when anyone comes lobbying for any project, all they have to do is to tell him that it is not in the National Development Plan and their hands are tied. 

Before fuel scarcity recently overtook it, kidnapping was the national problem that was most expected to mar this year’s Christmas. Hundreds of youths all over the country have taken up seasonal jobs as kidnappers. This potentially lucrative job obviates the need for schooling, employment or hard work. The only way to stop it is to prove to kidnappers that most of them will be apprehended and punished. The Achilles’ heel of kidnapping operations is the reliance on GSM phone networks to negotiate with victims’ families. Right now the Inspector General of Police’s Intelligence Response Team appears to have the right training and equipment to burst every high profile kidnap case, but there is only one such team. IG Idris, why can’t you have like 100 of such teams that will burst most, if not all kidnap cases? 

Another problem we are set to carry into next year is non-payment of salary by state and local governments, allegedly due to shortfalls in Federation Account receipts. I do not have an answer to this problem but I can suggest a path to the solution. If we lock up the Finance Minister, Budget Minister, Accountant General, CBN governor, all state governors and labour union leaders together with the Vice President in a Roman Catholic-like Conclave, reduce their food and water supplies and if necessary remove the roof of the Old Banquet Hall where they are meeting, they will quickly come up with a solution.

In all certainty, newspapers will continue to rail against “killer herdsmen” well into next year. Our newspapers have given Nigerians the impression that herdsmen kill for no reason at all and they are out to wipe out some communities. The truth is much more complicated than that. Herdsmen’s attacks are always ignited by a previous event, mostly cattle theft or killing of a herdsman. The problem is that their “reprisal” is brutal, indiscriminate, exceeds the original offence, and sometimes comes many years later so that the offending party has forgotten the offence it committed. It is time for the President to summon his full authority as the father of the nation and convene an All Nigeria Stakeholders’ Summit to adopt a 30-year plan with short, medium and long term aspects and adequate time frames to resettle all pastoralists once and for all. The short-term aspect is to end attacks and reprisal attacks.

Abandoned projects litter the Nigerian landscape and even more projects will be abandoned in years to come. In 1996 I attended a UNDP seminar in Bauchi which addressed this problem. The conclusion was that communities should be allowed to identify their project needs and to insist to any ruler that comes that this is the community’s priority. If politicians are assured that they will get the credit for completing a project, they will complete it. Right now they are reluctant to continue with projects started by their predecessors because the former ruler will get the credit. 

The problem of almajirai is still festering with no end in sight. It was said this year that there are ten million school-age Nigerian children out of school, the same figure as five years ago. I suggest that as soon as President Buhari finishes with the All Nigeria Summit on Pastoralism, he should convene an All Nigeria Stakeholders Summit To End Almajiranci once and for all. He is in the best position to do it, given his political standing in the North.

This year, the problem of wives attacking husbands shot into the front burner of national discussion with the shocking murder of Bilyaminu Bello Mohammed by his wife, Maryam Sanda. Since then there have been more cases of Nigerian wives attacking their husbands. I do not intend to trivialise this matter but it looks like the White people who recently invented the art of sologamy have these cases in mind. A sologamist arranges a spectacular ceremony where he marries himself or she marries herself. An huta. If you are married to yourself the issue of infidelity does not arise. The issue of lack of love does not arise because everybody loves himself or herself and the issue of quarrelling also does not arise because one cannot quarrel with himself or herself. Looks like sologamy is the final solution to family quarrels.

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