1. On Babatunde Fashola's Use of 78 Million Naira of Lagos State's Money in Building a Personal Website
2. On Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi's Expenditure of 82 Million Naira on a Birthday for Wole Soyinka
The latest word on this scandal comes from Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, who was Commissioner of Information under Amaechi and is now Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission.
"Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, acting managing director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has opened up on how the commission spent N82 million to host Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka.
Semenitari in a statement issued on Monday, January 11, by her special assistant on media, Bekee Anyalewechi, a copy obtained by The Herald; she explained that although N82 million was spent by Rivers State Government to host Soyinka, but the money was not to eat dinner alone."
Fashola admits this and justifies it
Fashola's Defense with Response by Nigerians at the Links
A.How I spent N78 million on website, mobile applications, others – Fashola
B. Must Read! Fashola Personally Responds to N78 Million Website Saga
My Response
First, the website is second or third class.
The site has little aesthetic value.
To suggest the significance of aesthetic value in a website, you could see almost any of the websites I have built
from the latest one
to earlier efforts
Those websites I created are not complete nor do they demonstrate the level of information on the Fashola website, but they demonstrate a sensitivity to the power of visual form in relation to verbal expression in website creation not evident on the Fashola site.
I am not a professional web site developer nor do I have any training in the field, information that places in context the comparison with the Fashola site in its second or third rate quality.
In order to observe the convergence of the effective management of space in relation to multimedia platforms presenting large amounts of information, one may see the following sites
Summation
Those websites I created cost nothing bcs I used the free option in the Wix platform.
It costs only a small amount to upscale to a paid option that provides a larger amount of information space.
I cant see any rationale for that cost for the Fashola website as all that is provided on his site can be got very cheaply.
Yet, this person who used 78 million naira of the state's money in building a personal website, in his own name, is a minister in the govt of Muhammadu Buhari, who claims he is an anti-corruption crusader.
2. On Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi's Expenditure of 82 Million Naira on a Birthday for Wole Soyinka
"Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, acting managing director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has opened up on how the commission spent N82 million to host Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka.
Semenitari in a statement issued on Monday, January 11, by her special assistant on media, Bekee Anyalewechi, a copy obtained by The Herald; she explained that although N82 million was spent by Rivers State Government to host Soyinka, but the money was not to eat dinner alone."
My Response
These attempts at justification are grimly laughable at best.
We have a state, which, like the rest of Nigeria, has no constant electricity and where the citizens are not sure of running water delivered from a central source into their homes.
These are basics of modern civilized existence.
Beyond such basics are the earning capacity of the citizenry, welfare programmes for the physically or otherwise handicapped, education at all levels, formal- schooling and informal- public libraries, the development of industry to enable the state move into becoming an industrial economy, all these indices of are development existing at a low scale in Rivers State, as in Nigeria as a whole.
Rivers State, as part of the Niger Delta, is also one of the central oil producing regions of Nigeria, and therefore suffers from the terrible environmental degradation created by the dehumanizing form of oil exploration practiced in Nigeria by oil companies.
Yet, in the midst of this pre-19th century and even dehumanising form of existence, 82 million naira is spent on a birthday for Wole Soyinka and the act is justified in the name of a literary festival.
Will Nigeria develop in 100 years in the face of such a culture?
Is this not similar to the attitude demonstrated by Buhari and his team in their 2016 budget of theft, which ranges in inanity from millions for rent for the Presidential residence owned by the fed govt, to millions for refurbishing of the same edifice, to millions for generators, to millions for books- along other platforms for massive institutionalized theft through that budget?
3. On the Jonathan Administration in Comparison With the Buhari Administration
Can someone point out to me what has been achieved by the Buhari administration?
The Jonathan Administration
The Jonathan Administration
Transport Network
The Jonathan administration may have done more than any other in developing Nigeria's transportation system, in its building and repair of roads, reconstruction of railways and building of bridges in various parts of Nigeria, along with the unprecedented act of commencing work on the 2nd Niger Bridge, a central connecting link btw the SE and the rest of Nigeria, which no administration in Nigeria's history has even considered commencing.
Education
The Jonathan administration is unprecedented in its development of education in Nigeria through the number of new universities it founded, as well as its robust work on providing special purpose education in many centres in Northern Nigeria to address the educational, social, economic and security challenges of disenfranchised children left adrift by the Almajiri system of education, a form of Islamic education that has inspired a culture of begging as well as leaving its students ill equipped for employment and therefore ready foot soldiers for the recurrent deadly eruptions in that volatile region.
Security
War Against Boko Haram Islamic Terrorism
The Jonathan administration faced the second deadliest challenge in Nigerian history after the 1966 coup and pogroms crises and the ensuing civil war, in the escalation of Boko Haram Islamic terrorism after the 2011 inauguration of the govt, a terrorist movement that drew fuel from opposition to the govt in the Muslim North, a good no of the political elite and citizens of which not only opposed the govt but one of whom, Atiku Abubakar, threatened Nigeria with violent change of govt, a situation that created an enabling environment for Boko Haram's opening strategy in its first two years of escalation, in bombing churches and in murderous attacks on govt installations and representatives,the killing of informants agst Boko Haram enabled by information provided to the terrorists by moles in the security agencies, and calling for Christians to leave the North or face death, and demanding the President become a Muslim if they were to stop their atrocities.
In spite of the challenge represented by the amplification of this crisis by the outright support for Boko Haram by various Muslims, even a member of the ruling PDP, Bamanga Tukur, then PDP chairman, describing Boko Haram as freedom fighters, Rauf Aregbesola, Muslim governor of Osun state, describing Boko Haram as fighting for true federalism, Aliyu Tilde, prominent Northern Muslim blogger, urging Boko Haram to concentrate its attention on the govt, and citizens in the North being seduced by Boko Haram's image as Muslim warriors and cowed by the group's brutality, enabling the group to flourish in their midst, the govt was able to mobilize a military effort to flush out Boko Haram from within the civilian populace, an initiative that reached a climax with the declaration of a state of emergency in the centre of the insurrection in three Northern states, an initiative that pushed the group out of population centres to the outskirts of Borno state, thereby drastically reducing their attacks in population centres, an initiative carried out in spite of the opposition of the most prominent Northern Muslim politician, who eventually became President partly through his manipulation of the Boko Haram crisis, Muhammadu Buhari, who declared that war agst Boko Haram was war agst the North, of the Borno elders who opposed the efforts of the military, of prominent Sheikh Gumi who argued that the military should be withdrawn from the North since Boko Haram was at home with fellow Muslims in the North, of Murtala Nyako, Muslim governor of Adamawa state, who declared that the war agst Boko Haram constituted genocide agst the North, of Kassim Shettima, Muslim governor of Borno state, who, agst the orders of the fed govt to keep all schools in remote regions closed for security reasons, kept the Chibok school open, leading to the story of the abduction of students from that school by Boko Haram, a setback which the govt was able to bounce back from in spite of calumny from many quarters, in purchasing weapons from the international market in spite of the opposition described as mounted by the US and her allies, and eventually sending the terrorists on the run.
In spite of the challenge represented by the amplification of this crisis by the outright support for Boko Haram by various Muslims, even a member of the ruling PDP, Bamanga Tukur, then PDP chairman, describing Boko Haram as freedom fighters, Rauf Aregbesola, Muslim governor of Osun state, describing Boko Haram as fighting for true federalism, Aliyu Tilde, prominent Northern Muslim blogger, urging Boko Haram to concentrate its attention on the govt, and citizens in the North being seduced by Boko Haram's image as Muslim warriors and cowed by the group's brutality, enabling the group to flourish in their midst, the govt was able to mobilize a military effort to flush out Boko Haram from within the civilian populace, an initiative that reached a climax with the declaration of a state of emergency in the centre of the insurrection in three Northern states, an initiative that pushed the group out of population centres to the outskirts of Borno state, thereby drastically reducing their attacks in population centres, an initiative carried out in spite of the opposition of the most prominent Northern Muslim politician, who eventually became President partly through his manipulation of the Boko Haram crisis, Muhammadu Buhari, who declared that war agst Boko Haram was war agst the North, of the Borno elders who opposed the efforts of the military, of prominent Sheikh Gumi who argued that the military should be withdrawn from the North since Boko Haram was at home with fellow Muslims in the North, of Murtala Nyako, Muslim governor of Adamawa state, who declared that the war agst Boko Haram constituted genocide agst the North, of Kassim Shettima, Muslim governor of Borno state, who, agst the orders of the fed govt to keep all schools in remote regions closed for security reasons, kept the Chibok school open, leading to the story of the abduction of students from that school by Boko Haram, a setback which the govt was able to bounce back from in spite of calumny from many quarters, in purchasing weapons from the international market in spite of the opposition described as mounted by the US and her allies, and eventually sending the terrorists on the run.
National Integration
The Jonathan govt was a govt of national integration, in which both those regions that did not vote significantly for the President and those which did, were well represented in appointments as well as in development projects, along with building a formidable technocratic team to run the nation.
Jonathan worked hard to serve the Muslim North, which did not vote for him and which does not vote for non-Muslims, building schools and universities, , developing anti-desertification schemes, and working carefully to avoid civilian collateral damage in the war agst Boko Haram, Boko Haram being active in the North.
Jonathan worked hard to serve the Muslim North, which did not vote for him and which does not vote for non-Muslims, building schools and universities, , developing anti-desertification schemes, and working carefully to avoid civilian collateral damage in the war agst Boko Haram, Boko Haram being active in the North.
Fight Agst Corruption
The Jonathan govt demonstrated a pragmatic understanding of corruption in Nigeria as a systemic rather than individualistic problem, and developed regulatory safeguards agst corruption.
The govt did not use its agencies in hounding political opponents in the name of an anti-corruption struggle.
From that very brief summation of the achievements of the Jonathan administration, let us look at
Buhari's Administration
Transport Network
Buhari's Administration
Transport Network
All the achievements of the Buhari administration in this field consist in commissioning projects accomplished by the Jonathan administration.
Education
Education
The Buhari administration has commenced a process of destruction in Nigerian education.
How?
It has practically destroyed the independence of the new universities by the arbitrary sacking or non-renewal of appointments of all the vice- chancellors of these fledgling institutions, replacing them mainly with a group of people from a small section of the Muslim North.
The Buhari administration has therefore made it clear that the primary allegiance of the head of the university is to the person who can fire or hire at will, even agst the laws that run the university, that person being the Minister of Education and Buhari, the national ruler, both Northern Muslims actively promoting a Northern Muslim supremacist agenda in the Nigerian polity.
This question of the loyalty of the VC may be seen as one of the greatest challenges of Nigerian universities and feeds down to the faculty and departmental levels, in terms of a culture in which servitude and dobaleism, to coin a term from the Yoruba word for respectful prostration, is at times of more value than the struggle for self actualization in maximizing one's potential.
Buhari's govt has also stated there will be no foreign exchange available through official channels for university education abroad, but is using the same supposedly scarce forex in importing grass for feeding cows in a move to placate terrorist Fulani herdsmen after the climax of their culture of rapine represented by their decimation of entire human communities at Agatu rather than encourage the growing of grass within Nigeria, a tropical nation with fertile land.
The implication of this approach is to further divide the polity bcs the govt does not provide any comparable incentives to other business people, create division along lines of support for murderers according to ethnic and religious considerations, even as Buhari sanctions the massacres of peaceful pro Biafra protesters and of Muslims belonging to the Shite faction different from his own Sunni Muslim allegiance,
Nigerian education will therefore become further locked in its landlocked status, further cut off from a global networkl in which it has yet to create a definitive space for itself.
Meanwhile, Buhari's daughter is described as studying in England, which, if true, underscores deep hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, Buhari's daughter is described as studying in England, which, if true, underscores deep hypocrisy.
Security
War Against Boko Haram Islamic Terrorism
All that the Buhari govt has achieved in this war is with the weapons bought by the Jonathan govt, since the Buhari govt is not known to have purchased any weapons, being at best being only able to acquire gifts of second hand equipment in need of repair from the US, in contrast to the sophisticated infantry, mechanized and air force militarily equipment bought by the Jonathan govt.
Yet, even with the decisive blows dealt to Boko Haram by the Jonathan administration and in the absence of the efforts to scuttle the war agst Boko Haram represented by the actions which Buhari, Nyako, Shettima and some other members of the Northern Muslim elite directed agst the efforts of the Jonathan govt, Buhari has so far proven unable to deal a conclusive blow to Boko Haram, in spite of his campaign promise that as a former military man he will make Boko Haram vanish shortly after his emergence as ruler of Nigeria.
Buhari is described as not even bothering to visit the sections of the war most badly affected by the crisis, but he was quick to start building a helipad in his village on assuming office.
Fulani Herdsmen/Militia Terrorism
The greatest security challenge in Nigeria at the moment is Fulani herdsmen/militia terrorism.
This group carries out its destructive activities almost across the entire nation, murdering, raping and destroying both human lives and property, and carrying out an ethnic pogrom in decimating entire communities in the North Central.
With the advent of Buhari, a fellow Fulani, this terrorist group has become bolder and more destructive than ever, continuing its campaign of massacre in the North Central, their response to the silence of the national ruler on their murderous activities and the ruler's later effort to present this campaign of dispossession through mass murder simply as a quarrel btw communities.
The Boko Haram threat has been severely crippled by the GEJ govt.
The pro-Biafra protesters whom Buhari's soldiers murdered in cold blood are not a threat but an opportunity for genuine leadership that understands the complexity of the nation.
I dont understand the Niger Delta militants as a serious problem bcs their demands are negotiable.
Yet, Buhari prefers to pamper the Fulani militia and attack peaceful pro-Biafra protesters, his army carrying out bombing and raids in the Niger Delta described as harming civilians in the region and as preparing to fight the Niger Delta militants.
Fight Agst Corruption
Buhari personifies corruption as demonstrated by the bare faced attempt at gross institutional theft represented by the millions on millions of spurious and inane allocations in the 21016 budget, focusing appointments on ethnic cronies, ironic bcs those same cronies could not get him the Presidency on earlier attempts, leaving him to rely on the SW to tip the scales in his favor for his eventual victory, using EFCC in settling political scores through largely media trials and press gossip, rather than through careful analysis of the allegations through an open court trial, refusal to grant bail even when bail is ordered by the courts, thereby weakening the judiciary, with Buhari arrogating to himself the role of accuser and judge, executive and judiciary, in publicly declaring Dasulki guilty even though the trial agst Dasuki had hardly commenced. .
National Integration
Buhari makes clear his unrepentant character as an ethnic/religious bigot who has no role in running even a local govt in the pluralistic demography represented by Nigeria, in stating that those who did not vote for him will not be treated like those who did, concentrating his appointments on his Northern Muslim cronies, justifying those appointments as a reward for loyalty,with the bulk of the nations budget going to his ally the SW, though the bulk of the countries revenue comes from the SS and SE.
Buhari is a clown.
A dangerous clown.
A relic of a barbaric past.
Thanks
toyin
On 6 March 2016 at 21:32, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
I am serious, Oluwatoyin. You should now lead us in evidence through the procedure in which the personal website of the then Governor of Lagos State was decided. What reasons did he, Fashola, give for his request to own personal website? Was the website built without budget appropriation? Personally, I think the amount of alleged money spent on the website, if it is true, could have been used for other things that would have benefited the people of Lagos State. Fashola might not have acted thrifty but his action in that wise was not criminal.
As for the alleged N82 million birthday party for Wole Soyinka, it was the current Commissioner of Propaganda in Rivers State, Tam-George, who in early January 2016 informed Nigerians that his predecessor in office under Amaechi's regime, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, had spent the said amount. He said further that his government was going to write to Wole Soyinka to ask him if he received money from the Rivers' State government in connection with the event. Mrs Semenitari categorically denied that N82 million was spent to host Wole Soyinka's birthday party and challenged Tam-George to publish the memo she wrote on the event that was in his possession. Tam-George did not respond and up till date nobody knows if N82 million was actually disbursed to host Wole Soyinka's birthday or not. The point which any average gifted person must understand is that neither ex-governor Amaechi nor ex-Commissioner of Information, Mrs Semenitari has immunity against prosecution. Thus, if the duo had criminally disbursed N82 million of the Rivers State government, the current government of the state could file a criminal case at Port Harcourt High Court against them without involving EFCC. As serious as you are, you should not join mudslingers because you don't like the persons they intend to stain.
S.Kadiri
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2016 14:13:11 +0000
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Osuntokun: Views on Economic Summit
From: oluwasrividya@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comYou are not serious, Salimonu.A person who used millions of the funds of the state in building a personal web site did not embezzle the state's funds to his personal use.A person who spent 82 million of the state's money on a birthday for a private citizen was not being corrupt.Please, bro, if you are serious about supporting thieves who are impoverishing your commonwealth while you, your children and most likely their children languish without electricity and drinking water, carry your efforts to where these thieves are to be found.When you begin to present yourself as a person with something serious to say and not simply one who is overeager to be counted as a supporter of the govt then we can have a conversation.thankstoyinOn 6 March 2016 at 13:15, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:Oluwatoyin Adepoju, if a tree is producing bad fruits, you don't rectify that anomaly by pruning some stems of the tree. You either nourish the roots (especially the taproot) or uproot the whole tree and plant new one. Nigeria is supposed to be a federating units but as you and me know it is a unitary government otherwise known as feeding bottle federalism because the central government is the financial feeder of states and local governments in Nigeria. While I am not disputing that states' and local governments in Nigeria are corrupt, I think their corruptions are equivalent to catapulted pebbles when compared to Federal government's atomic corruptions. I trust that you are wise enough not to equate the fatality of catapulted pebbles to the detonation of atomic weapon on a country!!
According to you, the former Governor of Lagos State, "Fashola has publicly admitted to using millions of Lagos state's money in building a personal website." You also stated that evidence has been tendered to the EFCC on the millions of money used in building Fashola's personal website. If there was such evidence, then the actual amount spent ought to have been specified. You claimed further that the former Governor of Rivers State, Amaechi, admitted using N82 million to host a birthday party for Wole Soyinka. In view of these two incidents you concluded, "Yet Fashola and Amaechi are ministers in a so called anti-corruption government." The implication of your conclusion is that Fashola and Amaechi are corrupt because they, respectively, spent their State's money on personal website and hosting birthday party. At best, Fashola and Amaechi might not have been thrifty in the way they spent the alleged millions of their state's resources, but that is not the same thing as being corrupt. They did not embezzle or steal the alleged funds for their personal use or for the use of their cronies and personal friends. Oluwatoyin Adepoju, you should not leave leprosy to chase ring- worm. If you wonder what I mean by that I will give you an example of stealing with impunity which is what has brought our country to its current economic catastrophe.While retiring on 30 July 2015, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Sabundo Badeh told Nigerians that the Armed Forces he led lacked equipment to fight terrorists!! Colonel Sambo Dasuki, the National Security Adviser to President Jonathan responded in August 2015 that the military equipment ordered by Jonathan's Administration had not arrived the country. I hope you have not been insulated from the news of how Dasuki had diverted the sum of $8 billion, meant for the procurement of arms for our soldiers fighting Boko Haram, to private use for himself and his friends in the PDP. On March 3, 2016, Ex-Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Sabundo Badeh, was charged to court by EFCC for stealing the sum of Three Billion, Nine-Hundred and Seventy-Four Million, Three-Hundred and Sixty-Two Thousand, Seven-Hundred and Thirty-Two Naira, Ninety-Four Kobo (N3,974,362,732. 94) from the Nigerian Air Force between January and December 2013. EFCC claimed that Air Marshal Alex Sabundo Badeh had spent the stolen money on acquisition, construction, renovation and furnishing of various properties, including a shopping mall and a mansion in Abuja. Ignorance can be a terrible disease but it is curable if the sufferer is ready to humble self by learning. There is nothing wrong in prioritising the prosecution of thieves that stole billions of Naira from the treasury before lesser thieves. My only concern is that the judicial process of recovering stolen monies from the national looters should not take more than three months from the lowest court to the highest.S.Kadiri
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 02:52:43 +0000
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Osuntokun: Views on Economic Summit
From: oluwasrividya@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comIbigbolade Aderibigbe
Not only has the evidence been tendered to the EFCC, Fashola has publicly admitted to using millions of Lagos state's money in building a personal website and justified that action.Amaechi jas admitted to using 82 million naira in hosting a birthday party for Wole Soyinka, who acted as little more than an APC mouthpiece during the elections, and Amaechi has justified his actions..Yet Fashola and Amaechi are ministerrs in a so called anti-corruption govt.Are you claiming to be unaware of these facts?toyinOn 4 March 2016 at 18:46, Ibigbolade Aderibigbe <gbolaade.aderibigbe@gmail.com> wrote:Again talk and talk. Let the states (Lagos and Rivers) where those Ouwatoyin wants to "hang" send their complaints with evidence to the EFCC. When that organization refuses to prosecute them as it is doing to those Adepju thinks are being discriminated against, then we will all cry "FOUL" or even storm the streets of Abuja or... wherever to protest.On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 6:47 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwasrividya@gmail.com> wrote:toyinWhen you invoke the idea of the ultimate punishment for members of the immediate past govt but conveniently leave out the corrupt antics recorded agst those in the curent govt, such calls become another form of politiking.Beautiful on resource management.But we must also remember those who used millions of the country's money in building personal websites, hosting birthdays and awarding boreholes.On 3 March 2016 at 22:06, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
There is a cacophony of voices asking president Muhammadu Buhari to convoke a summit on the economy presumably to find a solution to the foreign exchange scarcity and the impecunious state of several of the federating states of the Nigerian Union. It seems the president is predisposed to just doing that . But exactly what will those invited be talking about that the averagely educated Nigerian cannot guess . Economics is not rocket science . We know what is wrong . Because of the collapse of the price of hydrocarbons ,the export of which our economy depends on ,our country is not earning as much as it used to earn . The fact is that our income has gone down by about 70 percent. To complicate matters our export of agricultural produce has also been affected by the fall in global price for them . China which was the driving force behind the global economy has slowed down and India another demographic and possible economic juggernaut is a story for the future . We import virtually everything including things that we do not need. Apart from spare parts ,automobiles ,medical equipment,drugs chemicals and educational materials we can shut down our ports and force ourselves to produce what we need while whatever foreign exchange we have is devoted to providing necessary infrastructure for our present and future development. Mazi Mbonu Ojike ,one of our early nationalists used to say we should boycott the boycottable and use whatever we produce. Whether we harken to this call now or in the future is a moot point . At the end we have to look inward to move our country forward . If we had saved well against a rainy day we would not have found ourselves in this pitiable situation. The mindless looting of the public treasury in recent times has made things worse. The kind of looting we are being told ,happened is enough to depress any sane and patriotic Nigerian . The level of looting poses existential threat to this republic . In China some of what happened in the recent past would have attracted ultimate punishment .There is no doubt about it . Some of the stories sound like stories from Arabian night and Alibaba and the forty thieves . People walk into the office of the National Security Adviser ,sign a piece of paper ,and walk out with a mandate to go to the CBN or banks where government has money to go and collect billions for some spurious work for government or the ruling party or for no work at all! Nigerian oil was sold without the treasury being credited with the proceeds. People have come out to say their accounts were credited with huge amount of money without their knowledge or without having performed any assignments for government .Billions if not trillions were shared among party bigwigs as if people were playing the game of monopoly with the nation's money .Government 's decision to bring the guilty parties to book had better been hastened and speeded up before people lose their patience. Money taken from these economic saboteurs had better be deployed to pay the millions of Nigerian miserably awaiting the payment of their salaries and pensions . The TSA must not be used to delay payment of salaries and pensions . The present situation of scarcity not only of foreign exchange but also scarcity of the Naira must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely. Instead of succumbing to the call for an economic summit government must continuously engage the public to apprise it of the situation. The president should broadcast to the nation about the dire state of the economy and what he is going to do about it . Nigerians are not fools . They know the president did not cause the present economic collapse and paralysis.People need to be told this to blunt the ridiculous allegation of the opposition that they did better while in officeWhat I expect government to do is to declare economic emergency and austerity by radically reducing the cost of governance. I know that there may be constitutional impediments to doing this but we just can not continue to do nothing . This will involve drastic cut in executive and legislative expenditure and even reduction of diplomatic missions abroad and merging of parastatals and universities and polytechnics at home .we may have to merge local governments and make parliament across board part time instead of the wasteful practice of the present Naira guzzling legislative houses at the Centre ,states and local governments .If we do this ,it will send a message to all and sundry that these are unusual times requiring unusual measures and solutions. All these can be achieved through a declaration of economic emergency and economic siege.There must exist in the law books legal devices to make this happen. Some may argue that this can still be done through the economic pow-wow being suggested. Then it behooves government to put before the summit a well crafted agenda instead of allowing the Nigerian mania of a useless talkfest to go on .This reminds me of the Bismarckian approach on national issues of not leaving the fate of the nation to verbal display and debates. What we need to do is clear . Cut down all the jargon ,cut down all frivolous importation of luxury goods , wines, champagne,rice, wheat,and All kinds of imported confectionaries . Let us eat for starters the much ballyhooed cassava bread. There is also nothing wrong in eating yams and other local staples.. While doing this we can then begin to produce all we need at home . Necessity is the mother of invention. The Chinese that we all admire today went through the same trajectory. For the sake of all black peoples at home and in diaspora let us try and prove that the black man is not all talk and no action . Let us prove to the world that we can endure some pain in order to get the gain of sustainable development. A philosophy of providing what we need rather than what we want ought to be our new credo from this time onwards . If we do not take this route least travelled we will all end in the broad way leading to national ruin.We must remind ourselves that our situation is not the worst of all possible worlds . We are neither Venezuela nor Libya!There is no need to panic . The problem we have is a global problem . We mustn't lose sight of that fact . Thank God we still have a second chance to get things right . Indeed in adversity we must have hope . This is not the hope of religious sermon but the hope that we can come out of the economic woods in which through our past action have put ourselves .if we are determined and if we are prepared to work hard , we can get out of this economic doldrums . Perhaps we can begin by looking at the 2020 economic plan put together as a blue print to make Nigeria one of the biggest twenty economies in the world . We can also look at other economic blue prints put together by previous governments instead of reinventing the wheel. If the civil servants cannot do this then government must look for willing and competent people in industry and the universities. We must go back to agriculture as well as mechanize our mode of production . We need not put all hope on solid or hard minerals alone as some are wont to suggest . Of course we must diversify our economy to tap all sources of revenue . But our priority must be agriculture and industrialization.All this can go Pari passu with the current economic diplomacy embarked upon by the president, . But in all this, charity must begin at home .
Regards,
Regards,
Akinjde Osuntokun, Ph.D OON FNAL FHSNProfessor Emeritus of History and International RelationsBapitan of Oyo
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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