My intention was tailored to drawing the attention of our national lawmakers to the absence of a clear Vision for our country and the desperate need for one, but after an in-depth thought and perusing through records of legislative performance with majority contributing nothing at debates or initiating bills and motions, I shelved off the idea for fear of wasting my time, misinterpretation, or even bashing and misunderstanding my mission by our ‘Distinguished and Honorable’ Lawmakers whose interest lies more into federal, state and local government contracts biddings than lawmaking. They seem to fancy the distribution of few grains to the hungry, tokunbo vehicles, motorcycles and China-made grinding, sewing and water pumping machines to sycophants confined in villages than robust lawmaking to transform the lives of those their people they have confined to chamber of sycophancy.
Instead of attracting domestic and foreign investors to their constituencies for investment opportunities that are abound, they prefer to enslave the people with crumbs to chain them to impoverishment and unbridled poverty while using compromised media to publish garbage and falsehood laced with deceit as achievements. But that serves the gullible right from my, understanding. They prefer deceit than reality. They subscribe to receipt of crumbs than demanding their rights. Time shall tell! I therefore settled for a better way of expressing my opinion than attempting to ‘disturb’ the peace of the lawmakers, elected from state and federal constituencies for a specific constitutional assignment that suffers neglect and abandonment for greed and ostentatious living styles that was an illusion to majority of them from wretched backgrounds. One of our major defects as mortals is the tendency to view time only from the prism of eternity. That essentially is a feature that distinguishes from the Creator in whose eyes the scripture says a thousand years is like one day. “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night”.
Man, on his part, tends to think that a year is enduring as a thousand years. That’s why we set a time frame within which we would accomplish a task or fulfill a promise, only for the time we promised to sneak in like a thief in the night. As it is with individuals, so also it is with nations. For example, in the heady days of the Babangida-led military government from 1985-1994, the government picked year 2000 as the year every good thing of life Nigerians desired would be available. Thus the government vowed that by Year 2000, there would be food for all, good health for all, sound education for all, good house for all, uninterrupted electricity supply for all, good roads for all and even good wives and good husbands for everyone interested. Lost on the administration was the fact that Year 2000 was barely a decade away at the time they were making the vows. Twenty years into the millennium, the country is still wallowing in Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature where life, according to the 16th Century British philosopher, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Two decades after the proposed Ed Dorado year, there are far more unhealthy Nigerians than there are healthy ones. Today, only a few of the citizens who can afford to jet out to overseas countries or other advanced countries mainly with funds looted from our common patrimony boast of access to good healthcare because our so-called hospitals are still nothing but mere consulting clinics. I know of several local governments that lack single standard hospital. Mine that was created in 1976 is inclusive because the Cottage Hospital provided the area since the Second Republic era, is hardly maintained. I was recently told that the exited local government management committee had renovated the structure for political commissioning.
That was a mere deceit on display characteristic of clueless politicians on the saddle of power!I was again informed of an ongoing effort of the state government to provide a befitting general hospital for the area but was abandoned. Not only that, the representative of the local government in the House of Representatives hurried pursued the establishment of a Federal Medical Centre for the area which has eventually materialized. The housing sector has not fared better either. In places like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu and few other cities that have flyover bridges, the underneath serves as homes to several people. A World Bank report in 2015 indicated that Nigeria with a population of about 174 million people was facing a national housing deficit of about 17 million units. The report put the country’s housing deficit in 1991 at seven million units, rising to 12 million in 2007 and 14 million in 2010 before it hit the 17 million mark. Four years after, the figures can only be more discomforting and frightening which encouraged Governor Bala Muhammed of Bauchi State to venture into constructing 2,500 housing units to bridge the widening gap. Power supply remains epileptic as the ministry and its agency saddled with the task of providing electricity has been busy dispensing darkness. Even the change of nomenclature from Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) – National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has done little to alter the pathetic situation. A few years ago, the federal government, in its bid to fully privatize the agency, unbundled it into the power generation companies (GENCOs) and the power distribution companies (DISCOs).
The initiative is yet to translate into regular power supply even though some may argue that there has been remarkable improvement. The network of roads linking most parts of the country are death traps helping the facilitation of the deadly operations of armed robbers, bandits, kidnappers, terrorists and other criminal elements who take advantage of the dilapidated conditions of the roads to attack, molest, harass and torment innocent commuters. We are in the 21st century but pipe-borne water remains a huge dream in most communities in a country touted as the Giant of Africa blessed with all it takes to comfort all.As it turned out, the touted good life for all was a mere political rhetoric employed by the dissembling Gen. Babangida administration to raise the hope of the hopeless while quietly plotting a dangerous bid to perpetuate himself in power. Unfortunately and fortunately for Nigerians, he boxed himself into a corner and had to vacate office with his tail between his legs after the wild protests that greeted his annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election result won by a renowned philanthropist of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawole Abiola aka MKO.
Motivated perhaps by the widespread disappointment that greeted the failed promise of good life for all, the civilian administration of the late Umaru Musa Yar Adua initiated the Vision 20 2020 agenda. The summary of the said vision was that by 2020, Nigeria would be one of the 20 largest economies in the world, able to consolidate its leadership role in Africa and establish itself as a significant player in the global economic and political arena.The idea was meant to leverage on the immense natural and human resources the country is endowed with as well as its coastal location for it to realize its huge economic potential. Buoyed by the seeming growth in the nation’s economy with its ranking among 11 countries identified with potential for attaining global competitiveness on the basis of their economic and demographic settings and the foundation they have already laid for reforms.
To this end, an institutional framework was established to help transform into reality the nation’s lofty dream of being numbered among the 20 largest economies in the world, not only was a secretariat dedicated to the course, the then sincere government of Yar Adu’a also constituted such bodies as the National Council on Vision 2020, National Steering Committee, National Technical Working Groups, Business Support Groups, Programme Coordination Office, Vision 2020 Stakeholder Development Committee, State Governments, MDAs and Special Interest Groups among others.Sadly, President Yar Adu’a died in office after a protracted illness that robbed Nigeria good and focused leadership, almost a decade before 2020 arrived. His deputy and successor, Goodluck Jonathan, was simply not interested in actualizing the vision project, hence it died naturally without Nigerians asking. But if dubious politicking of the Babangida junta aborted the vision of good life for all by Year 2000 and the death of Yar Adu’a robbed the nation the opportunity to be counted among the world’s 20 largest economies in 2020, they are no licence for successive administrations to run the country without a vision. The question must then be asked: what are, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his APC government’s vision for Nigeria if any?
Renewed Hope Agenda may be their Vision for Nigeria. We are then in another mess! Lastly, Plateau State Independent Electoral Commission (PLSIEC) has released guidelines and timetable for local government council elections to hold in October. The timetable appears to be perfect spiced with good intentions for the sustenance of democracy at the grassroots. But the contesting political parties seem to be caught unaware and not operating on same page with the Commission or are into planning to mess up the whole process. APC as the strongest opposition party in the state, seems to have already lost hope in any victory going by the series of press releases it issues on daily basis throwing uncalled and unsolicited challenges. While APC may have their reason for such outcries before October, next, is for the state governor to stand firm against injustice and other odds to make sure the desirables without godfathers and godmothers and close to the corridor of power with their needed capacity to serve the people fly the flag of leadership.
Governor Mutfwang as a true democrat and the electorates should borrow a leaf from Bauchi State by separating the desirables from the undesirables from tasting power. Still, the grapevine has it that there are those mapping out strategies against the governor’s political interests within the opposition APC and determined to plant their stooges by all means at the local governments. They now play it cool pretending to be low abiding at this stage of the coming local government elections. To understand the game plan better, let the governor dig deep down to know those his silent foes working assiduously to disconnect him from what he labored to build with passion. I rest my case!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
