A self-help model of development (1)
(They chop, let them chop)
(Ask not what your government can do for you;
think what you can do for yourselves)
Brace yourself, dear Reader, this ride is going to be symphonic in scope.
This article is addressed to “Thinkers of Nigeria”—those who are not interested in getting into politics, stealing money or getting rich by dishonest means.
The word out there is that “change” is just to “democratize the stealing.” Let others have their turn.
This is a call to those men and women who put the collective first and the individual second; who put above all other interests the progress of their nation and the welfare of their community because they recognize that the individual (and his/her family) cannot exist or thrive unless their nation and community exist and thrive.
Thinkers of Nigeria, wake up! Get together. Make a plan. Enough of groaning and belly-aching. Let go the “big picture” for now. Get into action. Help organize your little corner, your village, your community. Let others mind their little corner.
The idea is development from the grassroots.
Four years ago, at the 2011 elections, the nation cried out in anguish as dozens of young men and women serving in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) were slaughtered at polling booths across the land. They were “in the wrong place at the wrong time”: they had been assigned the simple (but, it turned out, deadly) task of manning polling stations to ensure that the casting and counting of votes was orderly and honest. A heavy load to place on the heads of fragile youth in a country where politics is a do-or-die affair, where every candidate is determined to win at all costs. Nigerian politics is a species of gang warfare. On election day, every polling station is a theatre of war. Those who must “win at all costs” will kill to capture the voting boxes.
Today another election looms.
In 2011 my cry of anguish issued in a two-part article, “Transforming NYSC” (BusinessDay, April 2011). I argued that the election violence which consumed the lives of these young men and women on national duty made it imperative that NYSC be re-conceptualized and re-organized or else dis-established. Corpers should never again be involved in the voting process. And corpers should never be posted to known trouble spots. The lives of corpers must be shielded from known dangers.
Better still, NYSC should be transformed into a powerful community development machine, with corpers serving in their home states. Corpers should be involved in developing the communities they come from. NYSC’s current one day a week of “community development” is a farce and a travesty: it consists mostly in standing in line in the sun and answering “present” when your name is called. No community development of any significance could be achieved from it.
I have put forward proposals for community development in several essays. What I will do now is to pull these proposals together into the beginnings of a grassroots, bottom-to-top development “blueprint.”
Nigeria is one of the most misgoverned nations on earth. Everyone knows it. Nigeria is a global embarrassment.
My working premise is that little or nothing can be expected from government—meaning Nigerian governments, whether federal or state. People in government are so busy feathering their own nests they cannot give serious or sustained attention to the crying need for reconstruction of our educational system, nor to industrialization of our agriculture, nor to manufacturing, nor to the job creation of enormous scope that would result.
The ambition of our political leaders is to achieve wealth for themselves and their families. For five decades they have paid eloquent lip service to industrialization and national development in numerous fancy speeches. Empty. Just look at the evidence. Nothing there.
Consider the 36 states. In virtually every state the governor is “doing very well” if he can manage to pay teachers, often months in arrears, and pensioners, years in arrears. Of course they have the funds to pay them, and on schedule; they just refuse to do so. Worse still, no authority compels them to do so—nor penalizes them for not doing so.
Take to a governor a project for internally generating revenue, skills training or job creation—does it involve investing even a kobo of the billions they receive from the Federation Account? Forget it. Not even their unused millions in “Security Vote” plus their monthly federal allocation can satisfy their greed. Last year they went to court to demand that the Excess Crude Account (oil revenue above the budget benchmark) be handed them to swallow (as had been the custom) rather than having it invested in the newly created Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) where it will earn interest and ultimately be invested in infrastructure and other development. They will tell you SWF is a fine idea—except that the 1999 Constitution says the money should be shared. That’s all. And they call themselves patriots committed to national progress.
For decades, the billions from Excess Crude were shared to the governors. No accounting was demanded, and none has ever been rendered. The governors did not invest the funds in revamping education, nor in skills training, job creation, nor any other development projects in their various states. They simply pocketed the funds.
- To be continued
Onwuchekwa Jemie