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United We Stand, Divided We Fall by Abiodun Eunice.

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    It is not uncommon, nowadays, to hear Nigerians say, “Make person just get green card like this, na so I go comot from Niger”. Or even, “This country don tire person, make God just butter my bread, make I go abroad go enjoy”. In fact, there are memes that depict how Nigerians, not neglecting new born babies who although cannot speak for themselves, lament about their national identity. A perfect example is that of a new born baby that has refused to release the doctor’s coat because the doctor has performed an operation on the mother. Meanwhile, according to the meme, the baby had stayed back because he awaited being birthed in another country. This may sound funny, but truly, new born babies are not exempted from the difficult situation Nigeria is passing through now especially, if electricity, poor education, poverty and poor condition of living are to be considered. This, to some extent, depicts how Nigerians regret being a citizen of this country. Moreover, gone are the days when our currency and economic sector carried value; the economic sector was favourable and things were moderately fine. Then, people loved to migrate to Nigeria to establish a business they were sure would thrive. Although, it was not as if things were not difficult, they were, but not to the extent of wanting to travel out of the country by all means. Unfortunately, presently, reverse is the case. Nigerians want to migrate to other countries, especially the United States and the United kingdom, on the basis of looking for greener pastures, good condition of living and favourable economic sector. Furthermore, our leaders have contributed to the negative way we feel about our national identity and pride. Our leaders have decided to boast indirectly in other countries’ development by sending their children abroad to study, going for medical check-up abroad, saving and investing abroad and the worst of it all, traveling abroad to secure their lives and families when disaster looms over Nigeria. Meanwhile, the money that are being spent over the aforementioned could be use to improve our educational, economic and health sectors. Thus, making Nigeria a better place to be and discouraging citizens, especially the youths, from ridiculing the pride that should be accorded Nigeria. In addition, considering the aspect of our cultural dress and language, one could say that very few people hold these values in high esteem. Everyone wants to dress like an English man: shirt and trousers with a matched tie or scarf or hat. Also, parents are not helping in maintaining these national pride. For instance, most Nigerian parents want their children to speak English by all means. Meanwhile, their native language that should have been prioritised are  completely neglected or are not being taught. Yes, English language is our Lingua Franca, but it is not meant to rid us off of our cultural languages. Therefore, the world may be technologically developing, it does not warrant us losing our cultural and national identities. Despite all these, the unity among us still stands. Abraham Lincoln gracefully said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Though, it may look like we are disunited, however, when trouble comes or needs be, the unity appears. An example is the recent national protest against Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The protest brought together all ethnics and religions. This undivided unity led to a worldwide protest. Fortunately, the protest was successful as SARS was eventually dissolved on 11th October, 2020. Truly, it takes only a united country to draw the attention of the world to interfere and intervene in a national situation. Furthermore, one characteristic of a united society is the presence of religious tolerance.  Religious tolerance is the ability to appreciate spiritual values, beliefs and practices which are different from one another. It can also be related to unity in diversity. Abdu’l-Bahá, the head of the Baháʼí Faith from 1892 to 1921, explained this principle in terms of ‘oneness of humanity’. He said, “Humanity may be likened unto the vari-colored flowers of one garden. There is unity in diversity. Each sets off and enhances the other’s beauty”. The different religious values held by different ethnic groups enhances and beautify our national identity because some countries that allow only a religion still find it difficult to act as one. Which means that only an undivided nation would allow and accept different spiritual values and practices. In conclusion, as many Nigerians wish to be given birth in another country, due to the difficulties we are going through presently, the unity we share, which although seems to be hiding in us, cannot be underrated when needs be that we speak and act as one. Thus, united we stand, divided we fall. Abiodun Eunice Ihinrerekanmi is a student of English and Literature at the University of Ibadan. She is interested in writing short fictional stories and poems. She can be reached via euniceabiodun02@gmail.com

Blog, Essays, Monishots

The rising national distraction index.

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The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information ~ Noam Chomsky Why are we fighting over trivial issues? Dissipating enormous amount of energy on the fringe stuff and often failing to resist the frequent lure of the red herrings that should be left in the obscure trail. Why do we love grappling with these distractions and outright diversions? On a week when one had expected the discourse to be dominated by the 10 billion naira fraud scandal exposed by Premium Times it wasn’t surprising that Nigerians found it more auspicious to rant about the silly but strategic media misrepresentation of the President’s comments about some illiterate youths who are unwilling to work. Notwithstanding the President’s mention of a planned investment of $15 billion by Shell in the same commentary, the chorus all through that week was #LazyYoots. We followed that up with the frenzy over #DinoGate and #AgegeInvasion even as the 2018 budget had been lying with our lawmakers for over six months. Few people including the media houses queried why our Senators preferred to compete with Nollywood rather than acting on a budget that affects the entire country. And all through last week we gleefully gyrated over a video clip of the IGP struggling to read a speech in Kano even as a meticulous viewing will reveal that it was doctored to exaggerate the man’s dyslexic miscue. It was #Transmission time. Not even the fact that little Leah Shabiru just spent her 15th birthday in Boko Haram captivity could douse our euphoria. The transmission gaffe was transmitted across the cyberspace like wildfire and received more coverage in the media than the various arrests and confiscation of weapons across the troubled middle belt by our security forces. Is it a coincidence that while we are debating many of these mundane and peripheral things, we lose focus on the core issues in governance? Perhaps the strategy of both the APC and PDP, aided and abetted by their media cohorts? If you don’t know that every government has a vested interest in keeping us misinformed and by extrapolation control how we think then you must be a learner. The legendary George Orwell put it thus: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.  While we erroneously believe that our politicians are lethargic a lot of them understand these age-long strategies they know that in this era of digital communication characterised by animated social media platforms our interned-addled minds are soft targets for any distraction campaign. This is why many of them are unwilling to engage you on any social media debate. It is also important to note that in Nigeria, it does not have to be coordinated by some nefarious non-state actors like in Russia or organized by government agents like in China. Here, it only requires a little effort and sometimes unintended. Say perhaps churning out the usual sound bites from the likes of Lai Mohammed or a goof from another government appointee like the IGP and you have our cursory media running to press with the largely fickle citizens cheering, savouring and sharing. And just like green plants are sure to wither away during the cold frosty winter these stories rarely last the week before they are overwhelmed by another. They fade into that infamous dustbin of history leaving behind only funny memes and catchy euphemisms like ‘oga at the top’, ‘lazy yoots’, ‘assurance’, ‘accolade’ and ‘transmission’ as mementos. It’s a shame that most of our political reporters are attracted to the ‘‘shiny stories’’, it is like a spell. But can you really blame them? Why shouldn’t the blame go round? While media bosses demand an endless flow of material, the consumers equally want it delivered quickly else they will scroll away to some other news site. What do you get? A cacophony of mostly fake and glib stories, a perfect combination for the photosynthesis of distraction. I remember when I started my blog and asked a Facebook friend why he hadn’t liked the page weeks after I invited him to do so. His response was somewhat apish, something you would expect from a facile mind. He said that I should leave politics and do celeb gossip if I want truly wanted to blog and attract traffic, he advised that I should emulate Linda Ikeji and co who copy and paste about anything from the grapevine without verification. Yet another friend who is much more cerebral had told me something similar in a discussion over ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ and the value it adds to the society. He said that a majority of us would rather not be bothered with issues that could involve critical thinking and possibly lead to stress. “Humanity”, he said, “is just wired like that”. He asked me to compare the number of tabloid media outfits with the broadsheet ones, the number of Kim Kardashian’s followers with that of Margaret Atwood. “Its just the way of the world”, he concluded. And guess what? they are both right. I often get more response when I do snippets on entertainment or lifestyle than when I post a concise and research-based essay on political issues. That truth doesn’t make the matter less problematic though. I always believed that if you really want to separate the chaff from the wheat then you have to understand why there are eight pawns and only two officers each in a game of chess. Whatsmore, the analytical mind must learn to appropriate more time to the more important things In any case, we can as well enjoy the fun but try as much as possible not to dwell on it. What harm could there possibly be in that? I mean it is just like eating your cake

Blog, Essays

To reduce the political manipulation of ‘lazy youths’.

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This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.~ Robert Kennedy. Recently many of us were outraged because President Muhammadu Buhari said that a lot of Nigerian youths are illiterate and unwilling to work. The outpouring of emotion that followed the news was typical, Buhari is this and that, we must vote him out in 2019, and so on and so forth. It was so intense that some respected and usually decorous people I know were inflamed enough in that spontaneous paroxysm to invoke the ultimate prize upon the president. What a shame! Did the President lie? Of course not, we know the truth, we discuss it daily but some will always find a fault with it once Buhari says so. I have heard valid arguments about the statement being inauspicious given the platform. A President is supposed to market his citizens at any given opportunity, especially on the international stage. I am a hundred percent in agreement with this school of thought but I also find it disturbing that the President’s mention of a planned $15 billion investment by Shell in the country was completely submerged by the screaming headlines which precipitated the viral catchphrase of ‘lazy Nigerian youths’. We have become accustomed to lying politicians who say black in a way that it appears like white, we are used to men and women that dish out well-rehearsed sound bites that avoid the core issues. So when a straight talker says the truth as it is we struggle with it. A friend succinctly put it this way: “we are a nation of hypocrites and we also say this daily, we agree it is true but not a few will still quarrel with it when Buhari says it”. However, this piece is not to defend the President, I ‘ll rather focus on why we must continue to dissect the mindset of politicians intuitively in order to better understand the motive behind their often exploitative proclamations and how government can lift the youth from laziness. For this essay, the following two examples will suffice in illustrating the manipulation of the masses by Nigerian politicians. On March 23, 2000, an unfortunate man named Baba Bello Karegarka Jangedi became the first victim of Sharia law in an otherwise secular democratic nation when he was amputated in Zamfara State for stealing a cow. Before then Sharia was not new in Northern Nigeria, as a matter of fact since Dan Fodio Jihadists militarily conquered large parts of the North in the early 19th century, the spread of Islamic religion included the tenets of Sharia law which though widely imbibed remained a passive penal system. However, the difference this time was that the propagator, a certain Sani Yerima, had an agenda of pushing through religious legitimacy to achieve his political ambition. Prior to this, he had a limited history of religious activity and none of extremism. His ambition to govern Zamfara state was on the platform of the All Peoples Party (APP) a secular political party. But having identified the disenchantment among a largely uneducated and unemployed populace who were fed up with the failure of the political elite he knew he could exploit the opportunity to his advantage. As it were, against the massive federal arsenal at the disposal of the then National Security Adviser General Aliyu Mohammed, little known Ahmed Sani Yerima was elected as the governor of Zamfara state. He went on to fulfill his campaign promise and at the Sharia declaration ceremony in a packed square in the state capital of Gusau Yerima declared that “Without sharia, Islamic faith is valueless,” as thousands of people cheered on the streets. Today, Yerima is a serving Senator representing Zamfara west and the Deputy Minority Leader in the Senate. Since he left Gusau for Abuja he has been dogged by several controversies ranging from corruption to pedophilia. His son reportedly spent thousands of dollars in a lavish wedding and while he will never subject himself to trial in the Sharia court he set up, Baba Bello Karegarka will be one-armed for the rest of his life. Here is a second example. In March 2013, as the build-up to the 2015 general elections was gathering momentum, a certain Senator alleged that 83% of indigenous oil blocks in Nigeria are owned by Northerners, insinuating therein that the rising opposition against President Goodluck Jonathan then could somewhat be traced to this assertion as OPLs and OMLs were due for renewal soon after the elections. He had stated thus: “The oil is produced in the Niger Delta yet it is the people of the North East and the North West and a little of the North Central, almost nothing of the South West and the South East, that are the persons owning and controlling these oil blocks. Almost nothing for the South South, Niger Delta oil-producing areas”. It was not a new allegation, over the years that had been the common hysterical and tendentious narrative designed to mislead the public, particularly the Niger Delta youths who perceive Nigeria’s oil wealth as their sole property of which they have been deprived of the benefits over the years. Again, the difference this time around was that a serving Senator boldly made the claim, and in the hallowed red chamber for that matter. The gullible swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. They went to town again shouting EXTRA! EXTRA!! read all about it and in the usual manner of sharing without caring the story spread like wildfire consuming pedestrians with shallow knowledge and deepening the existing ethnic animosity further. However, the bubble burst when a thorough investigative report by Olusegun Adeniyi exposed the Senator’s devious lie as his list did not only leave out numerous oil blocks awarded over the years to indigenous companies but it also excluded

Blog, Essays

The ban on importation of vehicles by The Guardian

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  The Guardian examines the proposed ban on importation of vehicles by the government for official use in this editorial of 9th April 2018..Read on ———————————————————————————————————————————– The move by the National Assembly (NASS) to stop the importation of vehicles for official use is a step in the right direction and should be supported in the national interest. Nigeria’s insatiable appetite for importation has made the country a dumping ground for all kinds of industrial materials including disused ones. Nigeria is the ultimate loser so long as the country is hooked on importation craze unlike in the past when vehicles that were assembled in Nigeria were mandatorily used by government officials. The Olusegun Obasanjo regime, in the 70s, enforced this patriotic policy that positively boosted local auto components development. Peugeot cars were the official vehicles then. That enabled the Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria (PAN) to source over 40 per cent of components locally, apparently, in readiness for full local manufacturing in the country. But all that is now history. Successive administrations backed out of the policy in favour of imported vehicles that are detrimental to Nigeria’s economy. Today, government officials parade assorted brands of foreign cars. Besides, most of the cars on Nigerian road are foreign brands and yet there is no assembly plant of those brands in Nigeria. There is need for a policy shift to promote indigenous automobile industrial development and also create employment. For instance, Nigeria has the Innoson vehicle manufacturing company in Nnewi, Anambra State, which has made appreciable progress but is, unfortunately, neglected by the government. The Innoson brand of vehicles could be improved upon to meet desired international standard as Nigerian roads locally made cars to burnish the country’s image and make it less dependent on importation. Nothing can be more unpatriotic and harmful to the economy than for government at all levels, to be spending billions annually in scarce foreign exchange to import vehicles while locally produced ones are left unpatronised. It smacks of paying lip service to industrialisation and job creation in the country. Rather than patronise the budding local auto industry and create jobs for the millions of roaming unemployed youth, government, in a stark display of un-patriotism and greed, prefers foreign vehicles and thereby boosts the foreign auto assembly lines while at the same time kills local industrial development. The effort by the lawmakers is critical to revamping the auto industry. The lawmakers should see to it that the motion is adopted to stop the importation of vehicles. And of course, the action should not be abandoned halfway but pursued to its logical conclusion. The House of Representatives had by a unanimous vote, the other day, at a plenary, adopted a motion to stop the importation of official vehicles for use in Nigeria. The motion, titled “Need to Prioritise the Procurement of Cars Manufactured or Assembled in Nigeria by Government Ministries, Departments and Agemcies MDAs,” was sponsored by Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama (PDP, Edo State). Ihama in the motion expressed worry that Nigeria had become a dumping ground for automobiles manufactured on foreign soil unlike in the past when car manufacturing countries existed in the country. He said the development had stripped Nigeria of the benefits of having technology transfer, employment for Nigerians, revenue generation through taxes, reduction in balance of trade deficit, increased GDP and safety specifications. Consequently, he prayed for a deliberate policy of government to correct the anomaly. In a show of patriotism, the House concurred and urged the Federal Government to develop a policy and provide a timeline to make it compulsory for MDAs to restrict procurement of cars to those manufactured or assembled in Nigeria. The House, further, mandated its committee to investigate why the automobile companies in Nigeria collapsed and proffer solutions. Not long ago, there were automobile manufacturing companies such as Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz and Peugeot, not to mention the heavy duty auto companies like Leyland, Steyr and ANAMCO, among others. One after the other, these companies folded up. It needs to be emphasised, just as the House noted, that the automobile market is a multi-billion naira business in Nigeria given the large population and high reliance on road transportation. Besides, it is a fact that governments at all levels are the biggest spender and major buyer of automobiles in Nigeria. Over 95 per cent of the automobiles procured by government MDAs are neither manufactured nor assembled in Nigeria. The nation’s industrialisation policy should include automobile manufacturing. The national automotive policy which was drafted as far back as 1990 received presidential approval in December 1992 and later endorsed by the transitional council on August 10, 1993. Thereafter, the policy document was formally launched the same month. The document provided for the establishment of the National Automotive Council as a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Industry. Act No. 84 of August 25, 1993 backed up the establishment of the council. The thrust of the national automotive policy is to ensure the survival, growth of the Nigerian automotive industry using local, human and material resources with a view to enhancing the industry’s contribution to the national economy, especially in the areas of transportation of people and goods. Ever since then, little or nothing has been done to realise this noble objective. The Goodluck Jonathan administration attempted to resuscitate the policy but without any action towards implementation. Clearly, the policy was not deep enough. It failed to take into consideration critical issues such as the epileptic power supply and the comatose Ajaokuta Steel Plant as well as other affiliated institutions that should serve as the main source of raw material. Government should make the automotive industry a thriving business with private sector participation. There is no doubt that the automobile business is good business. The only problem is the need to avoid policy somersault.

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