BY BABAFEMI A. BADEJO
ON 11 June at about 5pm, I was at my friends, Professor Femi Onabajo’s office to listen to Al Jazeera, as well as charge my phone, before returning to my apartment in Abeokuta for the usual dark nights and of late, there has been no water. There was no water, not because the Ogun State government or the local government authority responsible for my place of abode had a temporary delivery problem. The two levels of governance eagerly collect taxes, share federal allocations meant to care for all of us, but never provide one of the reasons why people pay taxes and revenues are shared in other climes.
As a kid, I joined my parents in dancing all over the streets when the self-government authorities provided pipe borne water and electricity in Ijebu-Ode, where I grew up. But all that has become history, at least in Lagos, Abeokuta and Ijebu-Ode – places I am familiar with. State and local government authorities do not provide water anymore. Hence, there is a cholera outbreak with many deaths in a Nigerian state claiming to be the seventh richest political space, when compared with countries in Africa.
It is very fortunate to have a very good friend, retired Justice S. Abidoye Olugbemi, who insisted that I must have electricity in Abeokuta. I decided not to bring my stand-by generator from Lagos or buy another one. He went ahead to lend me his stand-by generator. I had concluded against setting up another personal mini-local government in Abeokuta, as I run in Lagos. There, I supply my water, since no one in most areas of Lagos receive water supply from any central arrangement, as was once the case. With an inverter and a generator fuelled by impossibly expensive diesel fuel, in comparison with Nigerian earnings, I meet my energy needs, in Lagos. In Abeokuta, the borrowed petrol fuelled generator has never been easy for me to manipulate, so I hardly use it. On rare occasions, I call on a friend to come over and help crank the generator to save my food stuffs.
Professor Onabajo and I have come a long way. We did not just meet at Chrisland University, where he serves as the Head of the Mass Communication Department, as I do the same for Political Science. We both were two of the many Nigerians who were dribbled by our own fake Maradona, aka Evil Genius, who asked Nigerians if they wanted the IMF loan with its conditionalities or not. With me serving as a Consultant to the Nigerian Television Authority, Channel 7 at Tejuosho, Femi Onabajo, and other staff members of media houses, criss-crossed the heights, valleys, rivers and swamps that made up the entire Lagos State. We sought the views of the people of Lagos State as others did in other states and local governments to give the accurate expression of the will of Nigerians.
The people overwhelmingly rejected the IMF loan and its conditionalities. I compiled the report of our consultations, which was in line with responses from all over Nigeria. However, Maradona, like our so-called traditional rulers of yore, under indirect rule, knew he could not go against the IMF as his people wanted. He knew he came to power by supplanting Buhari/Idiagbon in a coup that received the support of MKO Abiola, then arguably the richest African, alongside external support. It was in their interests to execute the will of the IMF that had insisted on the devaluation of the national currency, with N1 then being equivalent to $1, which Generals Buhari and Idiagbon had resisted, and instead chose trade by barter, having been blacklisted by the West. So, supported by Chief Olu Falae and others, Maradona deceived us that we were going to have home-grown answers to our economic problems. He devalued the naira, even more than the initial demands of the IMF without the soft loans. We all acquiesced, for want of a better word. As Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, his will held sway. Many of our people, especially from the academia, joined the gravy train that he laid out. Those of us who countered him either got driven into exile or rendered irrelevant, as Nigeria continued its ignominious decline.
As I was glued to the television on the latest situation in Gaza and whatever else, Ms Taiwo Gbadegesin, Professor Onabajo’s assistant, came in at the end of the work day at Chrisland University, Abeokuta, and wished us a great holiday on the following day. We were shocked, asking which holiday again, since the Eid holidays would come in the following week. She quipped that it would be 12 June. Oh!, we responded in unison. I pondered on the fact that it would be another day in the list of Nigeria’s governance deceptions.
Another deception is that of celebrating independence day, as we pretend to be independent in a world of Western indirect rule and control over much, if not all, of Africa through the Bretton Woods institutions. How can a country be sovereign in a world in which you cannot feed your people? Of course, we collect visa fees at border posts but our value has declined radically over time, as the external environment dictated. Recently and precisely a year ago, it was announced by a president, who in 2012 had boldly written clearly against the economic policy plans of the then President Goodluck Jonathan, who was then forced to abort the so-called fuel subsidy removal (another thieving design), as well as allowing the naira to “find its level” under the grand deception of market forces, that we have been brainwashed into believing it is a natural law of human existence.
In Nigeria, Democracy Day, formerly designated as 29 May, and now 12 June, has been officially set aside to remember and celebrate the return to civilian rule. However, the level of commitment to true democratic principles in the last 25 years raises a lot of doubts. This is why many, including myself, have continued to maintain that, saying Nigeria is democratic on the grounds of the holding of elections, normally, characterised by shambolic periodic voting, is a major deception. As such, any day set aside to celebrate this deception of grandeur, is nothing but a “Deception Day.”
I have taken this position, being aware of the usual widespread soft-spots that make some Nigerians quip that Nigeria’s democracy is a work in progress, in spite of the disillusionment with the political system and the persistent challenges undermining the possibility of democratic governance in Nigeria.
TO BE CONTINUED…
