Desperation

We do not need to do the math to appreciate that the nation we claim to love is ailing and we do nothing about it.  Without this realization, no healing process can commence. A recent report by a UK-based think tank, Chatham House, indicates the extent to which Nigeria is being raped of its crude oil resources. The crude oil stolen is estimated at 100,000 barrels per day. That is approximately 5% of total output, enough to fund education. The report states: “Proceeds are laundered through world financial centers and used to buy assets in and outside Nigeria, polluting markets and financial institutions overseas, and creating reputational, political and legal hazards. It could also compromise parts of the legitimate oil business.”

Societal ills and deviant behavior can only be corrected by the inhabitants of that society. We need to be able to make sacrifices either of our time or resources to effect a change that will bring about a corrective administration. We are more often inclined to take the easy option of either ignoring or electing to emigrate. We retort with pride that we are NOT politicians, as if the consequences of the actions of those who occupy our political space will not affect us. If we are not contesting for political positions, we must at least be interested in those who do. It CANNOT be a passive interest, otherwise why should others who take an active interest not dictate and appropriate our collective wealth for themselves?

When we look around at other countries, almost every country in the world have people making sacrifices to fine-tune accountability, transparency and democracy in order to enable the evolution of a more stable, safer, supportive polity. We need to all collectively take ownership of our country. There is no other country in which those of us who are privileged have the opportunity to do this. God has put us all here for a reason. Let us use our diverse talents and gifts to collectively make a difference. We cannot abandon our space to charlatans and walk away. The destruction will affect us. We will be taken over by warlords and the cost to our children and us will not be quantifiable. Above all, God will not forgive us.

The report continues: “Nigeria's dynamic, overcrowded political economy drives competition for looted resources. Poor governance has encouraged violent opportunism around oil and opened doors for organized crime. Because Nigeria is the world's 13th largest oil producer – exports often topped two million barrels per day in 2012 – high rents are up for grabs.”  

We live in beautiful homes costing millions to construct, whilst over 80% of our graduates roam the streets unemployed.  Of the nearly 400,000 churned out yearly, strike willing, about 40,000 secure some form of employment. With no industries to keep our youths engaged, their desperation and ours will continue unabated and will turn them against us. Already, there are kidnappers, oil thieves, militants and terrorists amongst us. The frustrated but law-abiding still outnumber those who have gone to the dark side, but each day we fail to provide for them we increase their desperation and reduce their choices. We also do not trust each other and have started to point fingers. Our unity crumbles – the first steps to the destruction of our own making.

Fake NYSC members have flooded our organizations because it is the only way to secure the closest thing to employment and survival. They are young people forging certificates and NYSC call-up letters. The NYSC now carries out regular raids to premises where NYSC graduates have been employed to check that they are genuine corpers. If the imposters are caught they are arrested for impersonation. But what is their crime, doing whatever it takes to get a job?  Desperation drives parents to pay for job application forms and touts forge CVs.  Then again who are these people that infiltrate our offices? Are they the kidnappers or the advance fee fraudsters who seem to have intimate details of our lives and contacts? I speak with authority having just discovered that 3 of the 4 corpers sent to my organization were imposters. Before we had a chance to question them, having verified their status from the NYSC, they had vanished; another inside job like the bunkered oil that leaves our shores.

We need to break free from this. The future of our children is at stake. Our future is uncertain. It is enlightened self-interest for us all to invest in a process that will bring sanity into the polity. As similarly envisioned by John Dalberg-Acton, this liberty will in turn abolish the reign of tribe over tribe, of faith over faith and of class over class. It is not the realization of a political ideal but the discharge of a moral obligation. Let’s get involved.   

DAYLIGHT ROBBERY

This morning, I saw a column in Leadership newspaper written by Kunle Somorin. Part of the article read:  “Problem started when the company demanded clarification on certain issues, such as: How did AMAC and its so-called technical partners arrive at the N300, 000 fee? Why was the notice not duly signed by either AMAC or its partners, as signatory was unidentified? Why did AMAC/Micro Vision Ltd indicate the said amount with a pen by filling in a blank space if the amount was legitimate? According to the Local Government Laws 1986 (as amended in 1989 and 1991) referred to in the notice, local government only reserves the right to so tax shops, kiosks and other small businesses. How come a registered manufacturing company with over 200 staff is levied under this arrangement and referred to as a ‘shop’?” 

Being the principal of the concern in question, I cannot but thank the columnist for bringing this to public notice. I am yet to come to terms with the strong-arm tactics displayed by the state with the use of the police force to force a tax-paying, employment-generating company into coughing up the funds for a suspicious levy. I was personally threatened by the three heavily armed policemen who called me “a tax evader” and said that I should go to court if I had any problem.” Na wah oh! “Police is your friend”, they are here to serve and protect and, oh, are also available for hire! My taxpayer’s money!! Meanwhile, the plant is sealed because I refused to be intimidated. I did not pay, and I want to get to the bottom of the matter. 

In my last two commentaries on this platform, I emphasised the need for us as a country to do the right thing if we want others to treat us with respect. What I witnessed on Monday was akin to a mafia operation and a display of the strong arm tactics used in the protection racket. Not one but 3 armed policemen, when kidnappers are having a field day all over the country and innocent people are being killed in Nassarawa. I have mentioned before how increasingly difficult it is for Nigerian businessmen to do business abroad. What I did not mention is that it is even more difficult for Nigerians to do business in Nigeria. Government agencies are deliberately killing legitimate businesses, especially in manufacturing, with multiple taxation and no services, whilst dubious businessmen are flying in with briefcases and no investment and walking away with billions.

At Idu Industrial Area, there are no communication masts and the roads are in a poor state.  Transportation and communication are a nightmare to both the clients and industries located here. To function, diesel generators have to power operations, because there is no electricity in a so-called industrial park. Irrespective of this, we still struggle to ensure that something is at least produced in the FCT. We are employers of labour, pay tax and contribute to the economic development of the city and Nigeria in general. Yet, what we get are all sorts of frivolous and duplicated levies from “task forces” claiming to have the backing of various government agencies. As I write, a group is stationed at the entrance of the industrial estate extorting a new levy from lorries and other articulated vehicles, even though they have paid all the local levies. They claim to be a federal body and have a policeman to enforce the stop and demand.  

As an entrepreneur, I share the fear of that visitor to our factory. Revenue generation is crucial to local government viability and ability to dispense its constitutional role. But such drive should be within the ambience of the law and not at the arbitrary prerogative of any government official or department. They use the state’s might to perpetrate illegality in the guise of revenue generation. This is not the right signal to send to potential partners, both at home and abroad. Countries that genuinely want economic growth and development treat local investors and industries as stakeholders. They encourage them to grow their businesses further through various stimulus measures because it is when they grow that more employment can be generated and more families financially empowered.

I understand the importance of revenue generation. I am not so sure that some of these government agencies understand what the requirement of paying taxes for this purpose is. We are supposed to get something back! My investigations lead me to ascertain that there was no levy higher than N2,000 in the AMAC guidelines. Where did this fee come from and who is AMAC VISION MICRO LTD? The whole thing stinks. I beg the FCT Minister and the IG of Police to look into this matter and come to the aid of co-investors in the FCT.       

PERCEPTION

“Men judge generally more by the eye than the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.” Niccolo Machiavelli

Our world has become a global village where nothing is hidden anymore, whether in communist North Korea or the espionage-loving ‘free world’ of the United States.  So when we do our shameful socio-political dance thinking that it is our internal headache, we are blissfully unaware, like a Big Brother episode, that we show ourselves in a bad light in the full glare of the entire world.

The worst thing that we can do is to think that the rest of the village do not matter or are stuck with us and cannot do anything about our internal situation.  We talk everyday about attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). By 2020, we dream of attracting $600 billion worth of FDI. How can this be realised when the minute any new business is set up, all the government agencies descend on it to extort illegal taxes and levies one after the other, oftentimes duplicated? They come along to our premises to enforce their illegality with armed policemen and are ready to seal off legitimate premises at a whim because they can! How can any developed country want to invest in our country when they see how we do things?

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Nigerian businessmen to do business abroad. We suffer to secure visas to industrial countries, even though we are going to spend our hard-earned money. The fact is that foreigners do not believe that there are Nigerians who earn legitimate money. They say to our faces that we have underdeveloped and mismanaged our resources. We are not trustworthy and have no decorum.

Nigerians are being enslaved and colonised afresh, this time with our full consent. We are illegal immigrants doing menial jobs or perpetrating criminal acts around the world. A tour guide recently humiliated a friend on vacation in Dubai when he asked whom amongst the tourists in his bus came from the “rich-poor” Nigeria. Nigerians are destroying their country and sought to pollute them.  We had a hand in 80% of the crimes committed in Dubai, including theft and prostitution tourism. Yet the Nigerian government had just ordered 53 gold plated iPads to celebrate their independence at a cost of $4,000,000. What a sad state of affairs, especially when we know that the allegations are true! The smear taints all of us.  

The world is aware of our insincerity and corruption. All are aware of the outrageous contract scams and waste in government. It is normal to compromise in Nigeria, so why not pay us in our own coin, the Nigerian standard? When we arrive anywhere, they immediately want to sell us rubbish or cheat us because, in fact, we are treated worse in broad daylight in Nigeria!     

The latest fashion, the latest catchphrase is biometrics. Everywhere else in the world, your biometrics are captured for your security and the security of the nation. The difference is that abroad once one agency like the immigration service has it, they share it with all other relevant agencies. Here in Nigeria the whole process has been commercialised to extort money again from unsuspecting Nigerians. We have done census, national identity card, passport, driver’s licence, number plates and vehicle registration. Every time we are inconvenienced and have “paid” extortionate amounts. Why do we have to do it yet again (worse still within a short deadline) as if we have committed some crime? Indeed, these things are necessary, but it is a worrisome situation when it becomes just a money-making venture for individual government agencies.

All over the country, there are now fake licences and number plates and we are being fleeced. These fakes are being sold at VIO and FRSC premises and we have no way of knowing that we are being cheated. They also force us to pay for third party insurance when we have insurance already. How can this be? I should be sure of the requirements and it should be convenient for me to get this service. I AM PAYING FOR IT!

I urge the authorities to dig deep, to think about the perception and the realities that exist on ground. The judiciary should take up our cause and rule against government agencies when they are performing illegalities. We need to say NO, as the stigma attaches to all of us and we are met with suspicion and discrimination wherever we go.    

 

 

SERVICE DELIVERY

“Man’s fortunes are according to his pains. If little labour, little are our gains.” – Robert Herrick, Hesperides.

No pain no gain. When it comes to working for or exercising our rights, we are the number one at failure. We do not play our part, neither do we take responsibility. There is always a reaction, a consequence to any given situation and we are living the results. We have to make service providers keep the promises they openly and solemnly make to us. Our culture of impunity has reached epidemic proportions and we are imploding.        

The biggest swindlers are our political leaders and our civil service. Unfortunately, they are we; we make up this political class! Empty promises, those are all we give and get.  Look into the content of these promises, they are hollow. We elect or allow incompetence to take seats. They are simply reacting to what they have seen played out time after time. Get into government anyway possible, that way all our problems will be solved. The purpose of getting into government is to become rich, to be a big man. So when a budding young politician is making promises, it is mere rhetoric. He says what he believes he needs to say to gain favour. We are not fooled but feel that he is our boy or of our tribe, our local government or are distantly related to us and choose him for that reason and that reason only. We may be lucky and participate in the chopping.

Meanwhile, around the world, the best man to do the job is head hunted. The governor of the Bank of England is from Canada. He was the best man for the job. A Nigerian is the mayor of Guangzhou in China. He is the best man for the job. Obama’s father was from Kenya. He is the best man for the job.

We are always proud to hear of Nigerians in the diaspora doing well in every field. We have settled all around the world and yet we are still talking of indigene and settler here at home.

We were promised “a breath of fresh air” and massive infrastructural development after subsidy removal in January 2012. We were promised that the money realised from the oil subsidy removal would be ploughed into healthcare, education, electricity generation, transportation and employment. Billions of naira and some 18 months after, our leaders are fighting in Eagle Square. They are jockeying for positions and forcefully removing any perceived threat to their 2015 bid.

We fluctuate between 3,200 and 3,800 MW of electricity in 2013!!! We are told that government is going to generate 10,000 MW by 2015 and 40,000MW by 2020. Last week, we just lost 400MW of our 3,000-plusMW. Such are the promises we get in other sectors too.  We queue for visas and fly to India, South Africa, UK, USA, Egypt, Cuba and the UAE for medical and academic tourism, no thanks to a breakdown in our health and education sectors. Ironically, 77% of members of the Association of Black Doctors in the US are Nigerians.  

The education sector would attract direct investment, so we were promised. Our universities and polytechnics are shut due to strike action by ASUU over failed promises. Our youth roam the streets and kidnapping and oil bunkering are the order of the day. The FRSC corps marshal, Osita Chidoka, has warned that if something radical is not done to rectify the bad state of our roads, accidents, which have claimed 1.3m lives and made over 5 million persons disabled, will increase by 65% between 2015 and 2020. Many death traps which were to be fixed before last Christmas remain, less than four months to another Christmas when all Nigerians take to the roads to visit their ancestral homes. The Benin-Ore Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Kaduna-Zaria and Abuja-Lokoja roads add danger and sorrow to the lives of Nigerian families.    

We have left the polity to the dregs of our society; to hoodlums who have failed us for too long. What does that make us? Lazy shallow souls who do not have the stomach to labour for what should be dear to us. We look only for instant gratification. We need to look around for role models – people who keep their promises – and urge them to deliver our dear country by taking responsibility.

This is a job of work and will include labour pains. We cannot shy away from this if we want to leave something behind that we can all be proud of.