“Go to the ants, you lazy one; Observe its ways and become wise. Although it has no commander, officer or ruler, it prepares its food in the summer, and it gathers its food supplies in the harvest.”
Those words were written some 3,000 years ago by the wise King Solomon of ancient Israel. He wrote under divine inspiration. Nigeria did not exist when the words found in the book of Proverbs 6:6-8 were written. Ironically, they sound like King Solomon had the rulers of Nigeria in mind when he was inspired to write them.
Nigeria is cursed with inept rulers. From the local government to the federal level, Nigerian rulers have persistently proved that they cannot learn anything from the ants described by King Solomon in the above narrative. The brain of an ant is about the size of a pin point.
Yet, they intelligently store their foods in the summer and in harvest time. Nigerian rulers with magnificent brains senselessly waste what they harvest and spend recklessly in times of devastating famine.
Bello Mohammed Matawalle, the governor of Zamfara State has no respect for the timeless counsel recorded in the book of Proverbs. The ants described by the wise King Solomon as having no commander or ruler have therefore proved to be better managers of scarce resources than the governor.
Zamfara State is particularly cursed with inept rulers. About 15 years ago, a former governor of the impoverished state indecently lavished close to $200,000 (N114 million at current parallel market rate) in his marriage with an Egyptian minor.
Abdulaziz Yari, the immediate past governor of the state spent hundreds of millions of naira building mosques in a state that has no potable water. Many did not live to worship in the grandiose mosques because they were killed by water borne disease.
When a calamitous cholera outbreak killed hundreds of people in the state due to deplorable water supply, Yari deviously blamed the outbreak on God’s anger against an immoral people.
Cholera is not HIV-AIDS that could be traced to immorality. It is caused by the consumption of contaminated water which is the only thing available everywhere in Zamfara State.
Yari, not God’s anger was the cause of the cholera outbreak that killed hundreds of the people who gave him the mandate to rule them. Through his warped alignment of priorities he failed to provide them with potable water and diverted resources to selfish and irrelevant projects.
Yari left office in May 29, 2019 with a mountain of pension arrears while he paid himself hundreds of millions of naira in severance package.
Matawalle inherited pension arrears of N10 billion from Yari who curiously signed into law, a bill that assigned him N10 million monthly as overhead cost, along with other juicy pension perks.
Matawalle has not deviated from the jaundiced alignment of priorities he inherited from his predecessors. Two weeks ago, he shocked the world with an absolutely irrelevant gift to traditional rulers already being pampered by the state at the expense of millions of impoverished people.
The governor distributed 260 Cadillac limousines to emirs and district heads in a senseless gesture that ignores the abject poverty in the state. One source put the street value of each of the Cadillac limousines at $95,000 (N54.6 million at current parallel market exchange rate of the naira).
If that assessment is correct, Matawalle would have spent N31.3 billion on 260 people who are already stingingly enriched by the state at the expense of nine million impoverished people.
The 260 traditional rulers and the millions battling poverty in Zamfara State cut the picture of Maroko and Victoria Island of the 1980s in Lagos. Maroko was a deplorable slum sitting next to the intimidating affluence and opulence of Victoria Island.
The 260 traditional rulers who were allocated the posh limousines are islands of opulence in a sea of abject poverty known as Zamfara State.
The state is one of the poorest in Nigeria. With a population of 9,278,378, it has just 200 secondary schools. That is less than the number of secondary schools in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo state.
That explains why 80 per cent of the population of Zamfara State has no secondary school education. It also explains why Zamfara comes last in the performance rating of candidates sitting for the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) schools certificate exams.
On September 21, 2017, Isaac Adewole, the then minister of health, lamented that Zamfara State had 23 doctors in its 24 hospitals.
In some inaccessible rural communities, the nearest hospital is some 30 kilometers away. Women in labour pains are 2sometimes ferried to the nearest maternity on the back of donkeys. Some pass away during the tenuous journey to the nearest maternity.
When the World Bank and other global economy watchers describe Nigeria as the country with the highest number of people below poverty line, they are inadvertently pointing to Zamfara and neighbouring Sokoto states. These are the inglorious headquarters of Nigeria’s poverty.
About 60 per cent Zamfara’s population eke out a living below poverty line. Matawalle has worsened an already debilitating poverty rate by sheepishly spending N31 billion of the state’s scarce resources on 260 super rich people.
Bandits in the state are watching Matawalle’s weird income distribution formula with keen interest. They will almost certainly demand their own share of the mismanaged resources.
Ironically, they cannot reach the super rich who are heavily fortified against any attack. They will pounce on the defenceless and withering middle class and end up pushing more below poverty line.
Besides, each of the 260 traditional rulers blessed with the ill-allocated Cadillac limousines would need a minimum of five policemen in his escort to enter the road with the intimidating limousine.
That again will worsen Nigeria’s dangerously low police-to-population ratio where less than 300, 000 policemen secure 211 million people. The traditional rulers will take more from the little left to protect the poor.
Matawalle would have created thousands of jobs that would reduce the population of bandits in the state if he had used the billions used to buy the limousines for the super rich in establishing rice farms and a mill that would process the proceeds of the farms.
He would have ended up creating jobs and producing food for the millions starving on the throes of malnutrition. No one would need the services of 1,200 policemen to protect workers of the rice farms. We need more than that to enable the traditional rulers ride their limousines without risking the ire of bandits.
