As said in part one of this write up the Nigerian rot has become
deeply entrenched due many years of its being and has become a culture. In
order words, illegalities have gone unchecked for so long that they have lost their
semblance of illegality. There are so many persons reaping bountifully from the
filthy practice and have constituted themselves into cabals to ensure they
fight anything that tries to stop them from enjoying what has made them first
class citizens over the decades; what has helped them to ensure their children
are born in Western hospitals thereby guaranteeing citizenship of those nations
for the newborns, what has helped them to raise those kids in those nations so
that when they return there is really nothing Nigerians about them. This, to
me, is the highest point of treason.
The first visible cabal is the Nigerian Senate. Today, the
Senate has proved that whatever is spent so sustain it actually goes down the
drain. It has failed in its role of checking the excesses of the Executive. As
a matter of fact they go hand-in-hand with the most notorious executive and
sabotage the aims of a popular executive.
The cabal (in Nigeria) are people who have defrauded the nation
so much or have so much political power
that they have become nations in themselves, deploying such wealth or powers
to fight anybody who tries to take what they have acquired or what they wish to
acquire.
The Senate, as everyone knows, has the constitutional
responsibility of legislating for the purpose of ensuring the prosperity of the
nation. The Buhari administration came at a time when oil revenues (the
backbone of the Nigerian economy) are the worst in so many decades. There is
the need to embark on austerity measures but the Senators of the Federal
Republic insisted on the purchase of 108 official SUV Toyota vehicles at the rate
of about N
36 million each. To add insult to injury, this price is actually two times
the actual price.
The governors of the 36 states are also among the powers in
the country that have chosen to abuse political power against people who stood
in the full glare of the sun to vote them. Currently, it is said that 26
of the 36 governors owe unpaid salaries, the least of which is four months.
This is despite the bailout given the states by the Buhari administration to
settle inherited salary arrears. Some governors
claim the crashing oil revenues are responsible for the accumulation. In the
last four years of the Jonathan administration there weren’t enough issues
bordering on poor oil revenues as to warrant the accumulation of the salaries.
This lends credence to the general truth that this habit of holding back salaries
is a tradition of the Nigeria governors which often the result of fraudulently
managed reserves.
While the governors point fingers at dwindling revenues as
the cause of their inability to pay salaries, the Governor of Edo State,
Comrade Adams Oshiomole, a former labor leader, on 2016 Workers’ Day, announced
a increase of the minimum wage in his state by 39%. This is despite the fact
that Edo State is one of the poorest in the Niger Delta. What about wealthier
states like Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Delta, etc?
States in Nigeria are places where corruption is conceived
and bred at an alarming rate. A larger number of the governors come from the
All Progressive Party, APC, which is a coalition of political parties that
brought Mr. President to power. It is expected that they should have a common
ideology and, hence, should be seen replicating the ideology of Mr. President. Sadly,
there is hardly any meaningful anticorruption at the state tiers of the government.
Could it be that corruption is nonexistent at the states? I don’t think so, and
a lot of Nigerians will agree with me.
It was obvious to politicians with the intention of becoming
governors that the bus conveying Mr. President seemed strong, with the promise
of taking the presidential aspirant to his political destination, beyond all
doubts. They took advantage of the opportunity, despite knowing that their intending
for the country and that of the presidential aspirant are divergent. The
governors are expected to share the burden of the nation with Mr. President as
he alone would not be able to carry it most favorably.
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