Corruption Wasn’t a Campaign Promise

Goodluck Jonathan courtesy www.Huewire.com

I hear that the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan wants to contest again in 2015. There are two reasons why he may not be President on May 29th, 2015. First, in the depth of their gluttony, politicians have failed to lay bare the self-restrain essential for a desired democratic stamina and as such democracy may not be with us by mid-2015. If you have the conviction that democracy is the desired political ideology, then you should not only use it but work to sustain it as well.

           

The most recent toast in Nigeria’s political space is the dust stirred by Air Vice Marshal Alex Badeh, Nigeria’s Chief of Defense Staff, when he tried to dispel rumors of a the prospect of a military takeover in Nigeria. There is no smoke without fire and the dire layback pose of the administration has created an ambiance where certain persons have started thinking that the seeming political power failure in Aso Rock has pushed too far that a forceful takeover may be looming.

The happy-go-lucky attitude of Nigerian politicians has always been the impetus behind the shortening of democratic regimes in the history of the country. The records are not hidden -the longest interlude of military tolerance of political recklessness in our history is the current spell (1999 -2014). Until now, the life span of a democratic regime in Nigeria has never been anything beyond five years. On January 15, 1966, a set of juvenile military officers of Ibo extraction revolted against Nigeria’s independent democracy as, according to them, it was unfavorably skewed against the Ibo tribe. During the Second Republic (1979 – 1983) politicians manifested lack of discipline and led an intellectually bankrupt democracy. The Nigerian edifice, built through the hard work and discipline of previous administrations crumbled exponentially as a result. Two gun-wielding soldiers, Mohammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon, “came to the rescue” on December 31, 1983.

The second reason why Jonathan may not be president in 2015 is if Nigerians decide that they have had enough of the use of Nigeria as a laboratory for the simulation of apocalypse.

No administration has ever been welcomed like the Jonathan administration in the history of Nigeria. The much talked about religious/regional dichotomy of the voting pattern was never perfect; there were many ordinary Muslims in the North who voted Jonathan, tired of the disappointments of series of northern leaders since independence. Internationally, there were powerful visitations to show support for Jonathan. I watched on the Nigerian Television Authority the visits by President Obama’s precursor, George Walker Bush who came in company of his Secretary of State while he was the President: Condoleezza Rice. There was also a visit by David Cameron and Angela Markel of Britain and Germany correspondingly. Later, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair showed he wasn’t going to be left out.  

The opinion here is that the Jonathan administration failed this breadth of supporters, starting from the voters at home to the world powers. In addition to its terrible habit of deferment of action needed to fix fraying ends until it is belated, the bane of the Jonathan administration is its anomalous tolerance of corruption.

The same foreign powers warned that corruption will be the bane of the war against Boko Haram in Nigeria. This, in my opinion, is the first show of support. Brazenly, however, the administration brushed aside the warnings and acted as though corruption was a campaign promise it made to Nigerians. The administration ensured corruption spanned across its sub-domains: oil and gas, pension, defense, aviation, presidency, the prisons, the police, etc. Perhaps Jonathan thought he would find continuous support from Nigerians by tolerating all manner of evil aspirations. This leadership style, where people’s support is won by the tolerance of all manner of wishes of the people, has been used in some states of the country. It seems that the Jonathan administration is making the first attempt to make it universal, failing to understand that the mentality of Nigerians actually vary from region to region.

If only the administration had taken, seriously, the warning that corruption will only feed Boko Haram, it would have known that the option would only lead to a sort of apocalypse for the nation, a situation in which we now find ourselves. We have heard stories of the military taking bribes to allow contrabands destined to Boko Haram enclaves. It explains why soldiers would fold their hands even after receiving warnings notifying them of an advancing army of Boko Haramists to a town.

The obligation of building a prosperous nation rests, equally, on the shoulders of every Nigerian. While the leaders have a role to play, ordinary people, at the bottom, also have an indispensable role to play. When leaders fail to execute their own tasks fairly, common people ask why they should be the only ones discharging their portions of the obligations, honestly. Hence there are always protests from the bottom in the form of disregard to law and order. In the northeast, enrolment into Boko Haram (going by its history) represents a protest for the carefree attitude of administrations in Borno State and in Abuja. Elsewhere, the protest could take the form of sabotage to oil pipelines to steal its contents, scam, stealing of ballot boxes, “jungle justice” by citizens who have lost faith in a corrupt police force. The painful ripples of “jungle justice” come in the form of religious, tribal and communal clashes. In the end, the nation is ungovernable.

Each time one logs into Facebook and condemns the administration for building a stage for corruption rather than undermining it, our friends form the South-east and South-south will argue that corruption did not start during the administration of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. That is true! A lot of Nigerians, however, voted Jonathan believing he was going to fight corruption; they are conscious that corruption is behind the electric power shortages, poor quality of education, bad roads, hospitals with absence or inadequate doctors and drugs, the proliferation of bogus drugs, an ineffective police force, proliferation of firearms that undermine security, violation of human rights, etc

Nigerians have always known that the successions of leaders they have had in the past are unpatriotic; every action or inaction of theirs always find roots in covetousness. The Jonathan administration has demonstrated this more than all its ancestors. One thing that is obvious, however, is the fact that one has to place a limit to how much luxury he wishes to enjoy. Anything contrary will involve the constant search for means to support the endless desires and any effort to abstain from corruption becomes unsustainable. For a president who once paced barefoot, it should have been easy for him to teach Nigerians how to place limits on their love for luxuries.

The Under-Policing of the Nigeria Space

Image source: Th Nigerian Presidency

I search, online, the database of the Nigerian Population Commission, NPC, for the population figure of the town of Vom Vwang in Jos South of Plateau State, to no avail. Through other benchmarks however, one could give a picture of how big or small the town is. 

The town of Vom Vwang has eight secondary schools, each with an average population of about 250 students. In the same town, there is the Vom Christian Hospital which was founded by the Church of Christ in Nigeria in 1922.  The town also boasts of a College of Nursing and Midwifery. It is sad that a town of this magnitude has only four police personnel.

It is very easy to see the under-policing of Nigeria on the roads or highways. At a busy Junction, a female police officer directed traffic one evening. It was a T-junction. She grappled with traffic from the north, south and eastern ends. Some naughty boys down the road rode tricycles in the wrong direction, a situation that would lead to a traffic squeeze. She wished a colleague was around to handle the boys, but there was not. She couldn’t leave her primary assignment to walk down the road and deal with the boys. Eventually, the boys caused the stalemate she worked to avoid that evening. It rendered her effort of the evening a waste.

In Nigeria, it is a cliché to see vehicles making violations along the road. Vehicle owners drive across kerbs, along pedestrian paths in the wrong directions, causing inconveniences for pedestrians and panicking law-abiding road users. So long as the roads seem clear, some vehicle owners move on when traffic lights “say” stop. These are all caused by the hasty and intolerant culture of Nigerians and what is seen on the streets and highways is actually a microcosm of what one finds in the general fabric of the nation.

Years back, road users in Nigeria were scared of traffic violations, fearing the law would catch-up with them. The lawful usage of the roads started fizzling out however, when it became clear they could get away with their highway misdeeds, leading to a culture of road madness and the sour ripples always tied with it.

Road offenders get away with driving crimes because there aren’t enough police personnel along the roads or highways to discourage the illegalities. If under-policing means that crimes are not sufficiently fought, the forgotten plight of the force makes it even worse. The “I-don’t-give-a-damn” posture of the authorities has created an ambiance where taking bribes to turn a blind eye on criminal acts has become so entrenched that it is seen as an acceptable custom.

It is also the reason why the officers often transfer their traditional beliefs into the profession. Nigeria, a country of my birth and which I love so dearly, is a theater of, sometimes, deeply hilarious drama in which some police officers believe there could be crime scenes where the criminals are invisible and fire visible and deadly bullets.  At such instances, it is needless to engage the criminal. Instead, you go back and just wait for the month-end to receive a pay for crimes not fought. This represents an unquantifiable degree of under-policing.

The Nigerian Police and its affiliates are exclusive appendages of the Federal Government (FG). The FG recruits a handful of men and women into the force and disperses them to the thirty-six state and the Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) commands across the country. Often, the only things that follow are the regular entitlements of the recruited men, entitlements that often arrive famished due to the rough paths the benefits often pass through. Since there are always inadequacies of working resources for the men and women of the force, state governments often shoulder these responsibilities, mostly the provision of operational vehicles, despite this being the constitutional liability of the FG. The rationale behind this generosity is in the knowledge that such goodwill will only work to keep crime levels low in the donor states.

When Plateau State suffered a sequence of conflicts between polarized groups, the tragic events played up the need for state police in Nigeria. The Plateau State Governor, Jonah David Jang, observed that each time trouble started, police reinforcements were often required and since he hasn’t powers to mobilize a police contingent from other parts of the country, it was the reason why succor often came late. Furthermore, the police command in his Plateau State isn’t really answerable to him and where the President fails to promptly give an urgently needed directive, it leads to regrettable damages. He was motivated, by these realizations, to propose the idea of state police in Nigeria. Support to his proposal was divided; northern governors and legislators kicked against the proposal while their counterparts from the south supported the proposal. Since the FG was not in support of the proposal, it did not endure through the night to see the light of day.

Then the problem of Boko Haram surfaced and became a monster, messing up the Nigerian nation direly. At a point, Shettima Mustapha, the reigning Governor of Borno State, where Boko Haram is headquartered and largely operates, was ignorantly blamed for his inability to end the bloody chaos. His respond was that he hasn’t any control of the security apparatus in Nigeria: the police and the military are all organs of the FG. Also the Ombatse problem in Nassarawa State broke out and the Governor of Nassarawa State, Tanko Al-Makura was also berated for allowing the recurrence of the unrest. His respond rhymed with the respond of his counterpart from Borno State. Thus the true presence of a manpower vacuum in the force led colleagues, who initially opposed Governor Jang, to subconsciously gravitate to his position on the debate.

It is obvious that the FG’s refusal to support the idea of state police is founded purely on the pedestal of morbid interest as the force is often deployed to serve them, especially during elections when it is used to bully political challengers. The significance of humanity must, however, be stressed. The FG must see the damage the deficiency of manpower in the force causes the nation and recruit the thousands of men and women needed to close the manpower gap. On the reverse, it can legislate to allow states to own police forces to guarantee effective policing of Nigeria.

Review- Chicken -Efemia Chela

Caine Prize 2014 is here. The short listed authors have been announced. One of them is a 21-year old Efemia Chela whose story is titled, "Chicken".

"Chicken" is an emotional story of a young educated woman by the name of Kaba, daughter of a wealthy African family. Kaba’s got quality academic degree for which the African employment market is not ready for. Her parents insist she go back to campus for what they consider a better degree, in Law, especially since she is still young. She is not ready and takes up a job as an intern in a global firm, hoping to use it as a springboard to a paid job. All she comes up with is a business card, stolen from the pocket of a superior, made lame by drug addiction.

Life becomes extremely tough since her parents have become increasing unsupportive in terms of the stipend they have provided to help her pay rent and take care of other recurrent demands. The parents are using this as a weapon to get her to cave in to their demand that she have a professional switch. Eventually, the hard knock life pushes her to prostitution. But seeing that prostitution isn’t going to make things easier, she remembers the stolen business card and where it points to: an agency accepting the donation of female sex cells which are made available to needy couples.

In the end a baby results from her donation. Her experience teaches her that for every individual, life presents a spectrum of options: benign and otherwise. She is not mothering the result of her ovum donation but prays, so deeply, that life sways the destiny of the baby in a direction entirely opposite to her own bitter experiences. 

Efemia writes with an extremely covert chic, demanding that one reads with highly concentrated mental energy. The theme of her writing is, definitely, creative, demonstrating that besides those issues of poverty, corruption, war and crime that has preoccupied the minds of most African writers, there are other issues that have been little explored or never at all. Thus her story features the issue of same-sex relationships which Efemia appears to favor. She calls attention to the kaleidoscope, there is in African cuisines and not forgetting to cause a splurge on the struggle for the possession of the minds of Africans, between Africa and the West.

Young Efemia, in her writing also showed how permissive she can be when she writes: “it (the wind) pranked me in public, lifting my skirt. I got used to a flash of my thigh and untrimmed hedge creeping just past my briefs. I wasn’t having enough sex to be greatly concerned with my appearance down there.”

There is a little of that collision that plays up the fiction that the story is.  Such wealthy parents, especially in Africa, would hardly allow their children to go through such ordeals. They haven’t got that guts; they love the child plus they would not be able to shoulder the reputation crash that comes with such abandonment.

The Nigerian Security Apparatus and Boko Haram

When the Islamic Jihadist, Boko Haram, started in the town of Maiduguri, North-eastern Nigeria in 2007, many thought it was going to be a flash in the pan. Today, it has grown into a callous, mass-murdering monster, consuming in its way, many of its cynics and casting a blanket of uncertainty on the future of Nigeria. Thus Boko Haram has become the bitter toast of Nigerians and the true salt of the earth.

Also, the question on the same lips is the question of why it has become difficult to defeat this bunch of poor kids who are either uneducated, quasi-educated or miseducated. It is difficult for one to believe that the Nigerian security agents lack ideas to how to overcome the religious combatants. One can, however, presume that they have run out of ideas on how to end the deadly shootings, slaughtering, abductions and widespread subversions of the political errand boys turned terrorists.

Without doubt, Boko Haram is a descendant of International terror organizations with Al–Qaeda as the ultimate ancestor. Critically-minded Nigerians worried about the frequency of mass killings, are of the expectations that the Nigerian security organs should have studied their American counterparts to understand how Al-Qaeda was brought down and rendered slumberous, thereby making America and other target territories safe.

The defeat of Al-Qaeda was made possible by the fact that it is (or was) organogramic.  The Americans reasoned that if they can get at any member within the leadership ranks and covertly track his movements, it will lead them to the ultimate target, Osama Bin Laden, who was the founder and leader of Al-Qaeda. Getting to any of these leaders was possible since field combatants who take orders from the top were often arrested and many where in Guantanamo detention camp. That was how Bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed Al-kuwaiti’s name was mentioned to the American interrogators at Guantanamo. Since Bin Laden was said to have trusted Al-Kuwaiti so much, the Americans figured out that if the superior was alive, there was a good chance the two were together.  It worked and Bin Laden’s hideout was discovered through a phone call Al-Kuwaiti made from a house where the two lived with siblings, wives and children in a town called Abottabad in Pakistan.

Bin Laden had remained on the run for close to ten years because of the level of sophistication of the operations of Al-Qaeda. Boko Haram, on the other hand, lacks that level of advancement. It is made, largely, of ignorant and misguided youths whose desperate search of what to do made them easy targets of recruitment into Boko Haram.

The operations of Boko Haram can never be successful without an organizational structure too. Getting at the members of the leadership ranks should, hence, be relatively effortless. A lot its field combatants are already undergoing interrogations at various detention centers across the country. It is the reason why Nigerians wonder the sort of questions these detainees are being asked, given that the killings, mayhem, burnings and general sabotage have continued like normal daily routines. Nigerians are of the hope that detainees should be answering questions such as: who are the other leaders besides Abubakar Shekau? Where are your camps? How do you mobilize yourselves for major operations or atrocities? Where are the weapons coming from and how do you bring them into the country? … At this point too, the search for mobile phones numbers of the key leaders should have also become crucial in the effort towards undermining the leadership of the sect.

Courageous youths in the city of Maiduguri, who go by the name of Civilian Joint Task Force (Civilian JTF), have volunteered themselves to fortify the security apparatus towards overcoming the unconventional soldiers. This decision of the youths does not imply they are punks who do not value their own lives. Hence Nigerians feel that the Civilian JTF should have been used in a manner that minimizes the frequency of their deaths. There are people who feel that the Civilian JFT should have been used, covertly, to infiltrate the rebels of Boko Haram, bringing out useful information. This can lead to uncertainties within Boko Haram, a situation that will undermine their confidence.

There is the need for the Nigerian security apparatus to act fast and wisely. The extent of killings has reached an unbearable extent.

The Vile Face of Born-To-Rule

Nigerian Flag

Without a shadow of doubt, the uniqueness of Nigeria’s history worked to place power in the hands of a Nigerian with a northern root. There is nothing irrational about that. If our colonial ancestors must relay the baton of power to Nigeria, there had to be a Nigerian, who must come from one part of the nation, to inherit and become the indigenous successor of Lord Lugard, as it was at the time. What was unacceptable was the manner the inherited power was perceived and put to use. The power was perceived as belonging to the North and was used to ensure that it remained that way. This was a mistake because the implication was that the others will remain slaves.

For almost four decades, power remained, firmly, in the grips of the Northern political class. This was made possible through a string of military dictators with, occasionally, short spells of democratic regimes. Democracy which should have corrected this power lopsidedness was locked out and kept in the cold. Democracy would have given us that break with which to pick, as leaders, individuals with the extremism of desire for a nation we would have all been proud of, a nation Nigerians would stop at nothing to protect.  Democracy would have given us leaders with a strong precognition to see that the denial of sameness to all Nigerians would amount to building a castle in the air.

Four decades was a long enough period. It created a feeling of superiority and pride in the minds of the commoners of the north and a contrasting feeling of inferiority and despondency but also the art of patience in the minds of all deprived Nigerians. The long period created the notion that the North was born to rule the folks of the other regions, hence the offensive phrase,” Born-to-rule” that became common among reckless commentators of the North.

Ordinary people of the North find pride in Born-to-rule as it made them feel superior and so the backed it. The unpopular political ideology however had a restrictive benefit, benefiting just the political class of the North and their southern conspirators as it did very little to bring the desired progress across the nation, with the host region of Born-to-rule most awful.

The truth is that the oil wealth of Nigeria is largely the reason why Nigeria is among the richest nations. This oil prosperity comes form the Niger Delta. The stunning ravages of Born-to-rule was not just the denial of the region of the subterranean resources it possess but taking away basic resources for subsistence such as the nourishment of farmlands and the coziness of marine habitats, dealing a huge blow to the economic life in the creeks and the coastal areas and defiling drinking water, the most basic of all human needs. While the peasants of Olibiri and sister villages reel in dire need of the basics of life amidst the abundance of the land, the benefactors of Born-to-rule flaunt Nigeria’s oil riches in the best shopping streets in the world: Fifth Avenue, Bond Street, Rodeo Drive … The people of the Niger Delta see these and considers them a huge transgression against them.

To understate the fact, Born-to-rule created a melancholy in the heart of Nigerians but a psychological storm in the minds of Niger Deltans. This is manifested by the highest degree of defiance to constituted authority that one sees in the Niger Delta today. “We were often told that the things we have always asked for were in the pipelines, so we resorted to breaking the pipes to get them fast.” This has become a saying among some Niger Deltans trying to rationalize pipeline sabotage. Another Niger Deltan raved with furry when asked to comment about oil theft in the region thus: “the people of the Niger Delta do not see it as stealing when they go getting a resource that actually belongs to them.” When the Niger Deltans got fed up with Born-to-rule and its greedy traditions, they resorted to building unauthorized quasi-military groups for the emancipation of the region. In desperation for a splurge, they found solace in pipe-breaking and arm stockpiling with which to hold the nation at ransom.

It is sad that with the uncertain situation that Born-to-rule has engendered, northern political leaders have remained stiff-necked, upholding the old tradition by insisting that power must come back to the north. There are people who strongly feel that Boko Haram is an extension of the struggle to preserve Born-to-rule and that some of the northern political powers are actually financiers of the ferocious religious movement.

A this critical moment in the history of the nation, it is expected that the political class of the north must be having knowledge of the reality that the nation now stands on edge and can fall over with the slightest push.  Hence they should be working to return the nation to well being. They should insist on having a leader with a capacity to tow the nation to that position where all Nigerians can be certain that the future will be brilliant for posterity and hence sleep with all eyes closed.

The political class of the South-south must also understand that the responsibility of rebuilding faith in the minds of Nigerians is not just the onus of the northern political class but theirs as well. As a matter of fact, the burden rests more on them, given that the man who calls the shots in Nigeria at the present is one of them. Rather than designing the nation so that the South-south can keep on trucking, they must join hands with the wise from the rest of the country to find a successor with the wisdom and courage to reverse what seems a looming apocalypse to the state of Nigeria. The region a new leader comes from should not be criteria. What should be criteria is his quality.

The ordinary people of the north must understand that they have a role to play in the search for a nation of their dreams, that building a nation involves courage and sacrifice, that the nation is heterogeneous and fellow Nigerians elsewhere across the country have feelings as well and that they cannot truly love the nation without respecting the rights of other Nigerians.

 In a way, one could say that the ex-militants of the Niger Delta have become power brokers Nigeria. Despite the wrongdoings of Born-to-rule, not just to them but the state of Nigeria at large, they can channel the power they now wield towards a better nation, rather than looking at it as a tool of blackmail. It takes sacrifice and humility but the humble, as often said, shall inherit the earth.

Causes of Mathematics Failures in Secondary Schools

Writing Board

I search, online, for figures relating to mathematics performance in Nigerian external examination for secondary schools. The figures are contradictory. It is generally known, however, that the level of Mathematics failure for external examinations at ordinary levels, such as West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO) …,  is often high. The figures available for 2011/12 examination show that 80% of candidates failed Mathematics that year.

The phobia for mathematics in Nigeria has succeeded in creating the impression that the subject cannot be passed. Hence a lot of students don’t come with a doggedness to pass the subject. The few that come determined to pass the subject are frustrated by administrative failures that make the implementation of the curriculum bumpy.

If students must succeed in mathematics, there are steps and conditions that are inevitable. First, there must be an inclusive curriculum, covering all the key sections necessary for building up a student with a sound mathematical foundation. Secondly, the curriculum must be implemented by an experience teacher. A teacher must meticulously keep a record of what he has taught. This is important to enable a succeeding teacher understand the starting point in his new assignment. Where a child changes school, it is wise that the parent get a record of what the child has already learnt and what has not been learnt to enable the child reconcile issues with the destination school. Then there has to be the relevant book(s).

Mathematics has extremely sensitive topics that can be seen as the pillars of the subject. If the knowledge of these topics are lacking in a student, any mathematic knowledge a teacher attempts to build in a student collapses.  It is important that the teacher covers the curriculum comprehensively to ensure the sensitive topics are not left out. From my own experience, the sensitive topics include factorization; formulae and subject of formulae; standard form; handling of mathematical signs; handling of decimals in addition/subtraction, multiplication/division. Once a child gets a grip of these sensitive topics, he could become independent in mathematics and less reliant on the teacher as a result.

Teaching a mathematic topic successfully involves the initial stage of carefully working out examples by the teacher. Then the teacher gives out exercises to enable him understand individual student’s challenges and then carries out corrections with emphasis on the areas students find difficult as reflected by the exercises. 

The next rung is the student practice, which is synonymous to rehearsal. At this stage a student must carry out as much examples of exercises as possible to enable him build a photo, of the procedures for solving the problem, in his mind. For a new topic, this can be achieved in a matter of hours, perhaps three at most. This is where the text book becomes very important as the exercises are taken from the text book with answers at a specified page of the book, for self appraisal. There is often no adequate time in the school’s time table for this. This is why it has to be done independently by the student at home or in the dormitory. At this point, the role of parents or teacher on duty, as the case may be, becomes very crucial.

When a teacher is working out examples, it is important that he touches different angles of a topic at different lessons with a week spent in handling each angle. If for instance a teacher is teaching the topic, “Changing the Subject of a Formula,” using the equation shown above, he must address making a term in the numerator a subject of the formula in one lesson and then address making a term in the denominator the subject, at a letter lesson. The one-week gap between the two lesions is to give adequate time for the practice of exercises in the class but also at home or dormitory.

The fact that results in mathematics have perennially been poor in Nigeria is an indication that these conditions are not been fulfilled. The bedrock challenge is the verity that the school appendage of the Nigerian nation has been forgotten continually. As a result there are always inadequate teachers who work mostly without supervision; teachers are always on the move in search of greener pasture, greater days within the session are lost as a result of teachers sharing their time between their jobs and sources of residual incomes elsewhere, the best brains are not always in the profession plus the neglect has given the basis for subversive actions. The result is that it is impossible to implement the delicate stages of teaching a subject that should be taught with extreme caution.

To an encouraging decree however, the conditions necessary for successes in mathematics are fulfilled in private schools. This explains why the result is often good for private schools but also why the fiscally capable prefer to educate their kids in private schools. Since bulk of parent population cannot afford private school tuitions that are constantly on the rise the results are generally poor for consecutive sessions creating a nation with a culture of mathematics phobia. 

An Open Letter to the Plateau State Commissioner of Culture and Tourism, Yiljap Abraham

Since the MTN Call Centre drama of August 2012, I have lost the most direct channel of communication that once existed between your honorable self and I. This followed the protest by members of the Jonah Jang administration that includes you, to express it disapproval of MTN’s decision to move the call center out of the state.

As a citizen of the state, I have nonetheless continued to keep tract of your ever active role in the administration. In view of the storms and turbulence that often characterized political administrations in Nigeria, I must extol you for remaining part of an inner caucus of such an organization for a very long time.  It is a reflection of the quality of what you bring into the Plateau project. In view of the hard work of the administration, one can say that you have imbibed that culture of hard work and you could continue to be of benefit to the Plateau people for a long time to come.

Sir, I want to believe that your switchover from Information to Tourism and Culture comes from the skies as it coincided with a period when I had just had a revelation in the area of tourism and culture and wanted to share it to whoever calls the short in the culture and tourism portfolio in the state. This revelation followed my attendance of the New Year Day celebration in the town of Miango on January 1, 2014.

It may interest you to know that as far back as 1958, the colonial administration in Nigeria marked out the first day of every year as a day of cultural dance exhibition in Rigwe land, precisely in the towns of Miango and Kwall in Bassa Local Area of our state.  Over more than half of a century, the Rigwe New Year Day celebration turned out to be very successful because of the appeal of not just the primary events of drumming and dancing but other attractions tied to them as well. In Miango, for instance, these attractions include the horse race that often follows the dance parade, the multitude of people pouring out onto the main road and axis of the town. In addition to this number of people that often exceed sand on the seashore, the spectrum of dress style of every individual, from my own point of view, is also an attraction I often looked forward to, every year. As one jostles through the crowd, there are often clowns here and there, adding another dimension to the array of attractions.  Each time there is a social gathering of any sort in Miango or Kwall, there are people from the surrounding hamlets who leave their homes hoping to boost their “fame” by fighting. Such street fights have also grown to become another attraction of the New Year Day. Bordering the axis of Miango on either sides, are scores of recreational circles that have formed the backbone of the economy of the town. If one has friends in different parts of the country that he could not meet throughout the outgoing year, the New Year Day affords him/her the opportunity to meet with such friends. Another attraction is the sight of foreigners taking pictures of nearly all these variety of events.  All these are indicative of the tourist capacity of the carnival and it has indeed served as a destination for pleasure seekers from across the country in the last 56 years since it was started.

Sir, I have attended Rigwe New Year Day ceremony since the seventies and it has all been splendid until  the 2014 edition that turned out to be a sad revelation, a revelation that the event was about to collapse, prompting me to write this letter. Across the river, in the town of Kwall, it could be said that the New Year festivity has already collapsed.  That day, Kwall was a gloomy town of depression and despondency. This happened for first time in more than half a century.

If our cultural exceptionality in the state is the strength of our tourism, then one can say that the huge contribution that Rigwe land brings is about to become extinct. Sir, I think that we are supposed to build on what the colonial administration left us. When that happens, we can say that we are making progress in the line of tourism in Rigwe land.

Why is this happening? In 1958 when the Rigwe New Year Day celebration started, people had no education and the pride it brings. They came with their native mindsets and held their dance tradition, which involved drumming and dancing barefoot in the dust, in high esteem. Today education has changed the mindsets of the people, giving them the pride that often repelled some learned folks from their own native cultures. Thus young people, who are the strength of these cultural events, wouldn’t want to dance barefoot in the dust after all the education. Though not all have become educated but the uneducated youths have seen the scorn with which people hold them when they dance in the dust without shoes. They have also seen that when they spend their time rehearsing their drumming and dancing, they don’t earn a living out of it. Hence participating in these activities has come to be perceived as sheer waste of time and energy.  Everyone is thus shifting his/her focus to activities that will sustain his/her life, enabling him/her to live fairly decently, at least. It means that for the past 56 years since the introduction of the New Year Day celebration in Rigwe land, nothing has been added to what the Europeans started.

Sir, I wouldn’t want to deceive myself, believing that this challenge is peculiar Rigwe land. It is all across Plateau State from Bassa to Langtang South and from Bokkos to Wase.

Sir we know the qualities that have placed the potentials of tourism in our hands: our diversity, geography and the hospitality of our people. We have to work hard to ensure that these resources work for us. Tourism has to move from the status of impending to reality.

There are two faces of tourism: local and international. I am afraid that the state of insecurity across Nigeria has dealt a huge blow on international tourism but at the same time the avenue for local tourism has remained. One sees the hunger for local tourism when he visits recreational centers on Sallah, Christmas, Easter, New Year, and weekend days. What has held down the momentum for local tourism is the modesty of the facilities due to the long years of administrations exhibiting laissez-faire attitudes. People often visit these facilities and come out saddened than they were prior to the visits. Thus one has to commend the administration for its eagle eyes that led to the decision to overhaul the Jos Wild Life Park.

Sir, I am sure you are aware that a fully developed tourism industry goes beyond the renovation of game reserves. A fully developed tourism domain should have a limitless catalog of resources that provides options to pleasure-seekers and gives the impression of a truly existing industry. Along this line, our cultural diversity provides a lifeline. Thus the modernization of the industry could go beyond the Wild Life Park to include the building of Modern cultural arenas in the different cultural localities across the state so that we don’t dance in the dust anymore. Modernization could also involve collaborating with experts to bring refinement to our cultural costumes so that we can wear them with pride and feel at ease. Introducing financial rewards to the best drummer, best dance groups, best young dancer … could also change the apocalyptic trend of events and re-awaken interest.

Sir, I know the pertinent question in your mind after reading this is “where would the money to build and maintain such cultural edifices and reward the dance groups come from?” My suggestion is firstly, we could legislate for a tourism restoration tax that mandates every adult residing in the state to pay an agreed amount annually. Secondly, people cannot enjoy tourism without paying for it. Thirdly, budgetary rations of the state could experience a re-adjustment to favor the sector if we consider its enhancement as crucial.

Sir, I would love to conclude by saying that the things we desperately desire have always been with us and where there is a will, there is always a way.