Nigeria is located in the West African sub-region, with an estimated population of 200 million people. Prior to 1914, the state was divided into several regions, before the colonial masters merged it into a single state. The country got herself free from the grip of its colonial masters on October I, 1960, and became a republic in 1963.
Nigeria witnessed a civil war that consumed the lives of thousands of its citizens. The war was fought by the agigators of a Biafran nation from the extraction of Igbo rank and file of the state military institution and its tribesmen.
The country witnessed the rise and fall of successive leaders that emerged through democratic setting and rulers from military junta. Some were overthrown, while some answered the call of their creator while in office.
Despite all the odds, the country witnessed a lot of developments that weren’t in existence prior to independence. Among the prominent developments was the workers movement of Hassan Sunmonu, the first indigenous president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in 1978. Prior to that, there was no standard national minimum wage in the country, but that indigenous workers union struggle led to adoption of N125 as the minimum wage by the Shehu Shagari administration in 1981.
A decade later, another round of negotiation in 1989/90 took place, then the NLC President was the late Pascal Bafyau. Negotiations with the government were held with Comrade Adams Oshiomhole who happened to be late Bafyau’s deputy as the head of NLC negotiation team. The discussions resulted in minimum wage rise to N250 per month. Increment of workers’ minimum wage continued periodically with successive labour leaders, until it reached N18,000 and presently, N30,000.
In the education sector, most of the country’s universities and other tertiary institutions were established after independence. These institutions gave rise to western intellectuals in various fields; today, they are occupying all the levers of governance.
Therefore, as there are a lot to cry for the present under-development of the country, there are a lot to celebrate which came after the independence.
A question on the minds of many citizens is that, what are the causes of the underdevelopment, is it a continuous poor leadership or unsupportive/ungrateful proletariats?
Answers to this question require a lot of time and space to explain, but this short article will summarise them without being biased.
In European and other developed countries, leadership is a burden and leaders are elected to serve the masses, but in our case, leadership is a privilege and a means to live above the law. And also, leaders are elected to enslave the citizens.
Leaders use the national wealth (cake) to enrich themselves, their families and their cronies, leaving the overall majority of citizens in abject poverty and lacking in basic amenities of life.
These leaders mostly send their children abroad for elementary and tertiary education to acquire qualitative education. Even the tiny fraction of these leaders’ children that are studying here at home, are studying in high cost private schools that are either owned by the leaders themselves, their elitist friends or foreign affiliated schools.Corruption, nepotism and lack of patriotism are the major ills of the Nigerian leaders.
In a country where masses normalized selling their votes to elected leaders during elections for a meagre amount due to the abject poverty they are forced to live with, how does one expect leaders to think about making a positive impact in transforming the country to a great and prosperous one?
Capitalism is all about profit maximization and by their nature, most of our leaders lean towards capitalism. Therefore, they use the little they give in order to have the opportunity to attain power, to get access to public coffers in order to enrich themselves and to recover what they spent during their political journey to power at the expense of their subjects and the helpless state.
However, if the masses had rejected this bad governance and sincerely demand for good governance, reject that meagre amount of vote-for-cash incentive and hold their leaders accountable for their stewardship, surely, our politicians would be mindful of their corrupt practices and change for the better.
In a country where the number of out of school children and dropouts is outrageously alarming, youths are abandoning their educational pursuit in droves to engage in all sort of crimes and terrorism to make a living, how can such a nation move decently to a prosperity?
Lately, during his national broadcast to mark Nigeria’s 60th independence anniversary, President Muhammadu Buhari, in the course of defending his government’s recent decision to remove petrol subsidy, made a comparison between some African and non-African states petrol pump prices.
To some extent, the president was right to make a pump price comparison between oil exporting countries, but his script writing team was either too out of touch with reality or ill-informed about such index: standard of living, infant mortality rate, death rate, GDP and per capita income of these compared nations, which in no way can they be compared to Nigeria due to a wide disparity!
Saudi Arabia, which is an oil producing country (the biggest) and also a member of the world 20 states with the biggest economies/industries, G-20 as an example, has a per capita income of 20, 542.20 US dollars, as at 2019. Their current infant mortality rate is 5.901 deaths per 1000 life births and a GDP of USD 792.97 billion in 2019.At same time, its inflation rate as at August 2020 is 6.2%.Unfortunately, the president compared Saudi’s pump price with that of Nigeria, not mindful of the fact that the former’s standard of living is by far more than that of Nigeria!
It is ironic, how can a country with such a high development index be compared with a country ravaged by daily banditry, kidnappings, terrorism, daily road accidents on bad roads, epileptic power supply, daily national strike by university lecturers, high rate of unemployment, high inflation rate, etc? It is only in Nigeria whereby an incumbent governor’s (state’s number one chief security officer) convoy can be attacked twice within a space of a week by terrorists. How does one expect this state to be on the same level with a county that is security-secured and an economic hub?
That presidential pump price comparison was a goof, insensitive to this period of national economic plight which is deeply squeezing the majority of the Nigerian population and is an anniversary spoiler. Nigeria is our fatherland, we have no nation other than her We must all work together to solve her problems and make it a better country for all.
Happy 60th Anniversary Long live the Federal Republic of NigeriaLong live Nigerians.
Mohammed Sagir,Bauchi[email protected]
