THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE 2

By promising substantial attention to Food Security and Agriculture as the second point on his agenda, the president had made many Nigerians who had hitherto been calling for the diversification of the economy to think that a saviour had finally come to heed their demands but two years into his four-year tenure, the president is yet to really show he meant what he said.
The placement of Wealth Creation and Employment in the seven point agenda must indeed have been a ray of hope for the citizens of a country where more than 80% of her population are said to be living on less than a dollar a day, a pointer to chronic poverty. A nation where the population of unemployed people far exceeds the whole population of some other countries would no doubt consider such a policy good news that calls for celebration, if only the people can even afford that under circumstances where people are not sure of where their next meal would come from. In his words, President Yar’Adua said that the reform is “focused on wealth creation through diversified production especially in the agricultural and solid mineral sector” but how much of that has been implemented is a question that begs answers.
Other points such as mass transportation and land reform must have been added to fill up the papers in the reckoning of many for the administration has neither evolved a blueprint on them or even casually stated how such reforms were expected to be implemented. A synonymous phenomenon with the usual common-place promises of the provision of water, road and power bellowed by votes-seeking politicians.
Another sore point in the nation that made it to the president’s seven point agenda. However, aside the Niger-Delta problem which has lingered for long, other security ills simply gained more momentum in the last two years. A rise in the spate of kidnappings nationwide, bank robberies, sectarian violence, religious crises and planned murders among others simply showed nothing was being done about the security state of the nation. To make the matter painfully ridiculous, the recent comments of the Inspector General of Police about his non-awareness of the visit of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the former EFCC boss to the country to condole with the family of late frontline lawyer and human rights activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, really says much about the degeneration of intelligence gathering and alertness in the police force. An enemy capable of inflicting a collateral damage on the country could have slipped in, perpetrated evil and slip away again without our security agencies even catching just a glance of him. It was such level of incompetence that allowed the recent Jos crisis and the more recent Boko Haram crisis to be planned and executed without the police and other security outfits nipping it in the bud. It’s sad to say but true, that life in the nation is now struggling for value with such commodities like cotton buds and matches.
Perhaps more critical at the moment will be the last point on the agenda, Qualitative and Functional Education. You are probably giggling by now because thousands of university students will be celebrating the independence at home not because of the public holiday but because for more than three months now, there schools have been under locks due to the industrial actions of the three major unions in the universities. Likewise, several primary and secondary school students have not been able to resume after the summer holidays because their teachers have downed their ‘chalks and dusters’ over the non-implementation of a new salary scale for the teachers in nineteen states of the Federation which has been approved almost nineteen years ago, in 1991 to be precise. Perhaps, it would be good to have a peep into the President’s intents on education as at the time of his inauguration even if we cannot categorically state his current plans for the sector expected to produce Nigeria’s future leaders!
In his seven point seven agenda, the President stated on education that “The two-fold reforms in the educational sector will ensure firstly the minimum acceptable international standards of education for all. With that achieved, a strategic education development plan will ensure excellence in both the tutoring and skills in science and technology by students who will be seen as the future investors and industrialists of Nigeria. This reform will be achieved through massive injection into the education sector.”
Two years since the agenda was read out to the hearing of jubilant optimistic Nigerians, no one can clearly state what steps have been taken to attain the promised minimum international standards of education for all not to dream of the strategic development plan expected to follow. It’s also worthy of mention that it’s the debate over increased funding for the education sector that forced the university unions to all embark on indefinite strikes. Perhaps, it won’t be false to state what to expect are not future investors, industrialists and leaders from the Nigerian education sector as the reform promised but future followers! The children of the current leaders will most likely one day return from developed nations where they have been better trained and come to take over from wherever their fathers left off, except something critical is done. It could even be argued that the placing of education as the last on the agenda is not a mere coincidence, it’s probably the last thing the president will worry about or include in his travelling-stuffed schedule!
Since the seven point agenda does not seem to presently hold much hope for the people, it would suffice to look at other promises this administration has made. Though they do not feature in the major policy framework, the seven point agenda but they have been major features in the president’s speeches during the last two independent celebrations and at other for a where he has had the opportunity to talk about the progress of his administration. Such promises include electoral reforms, constitutional amendment, anti-corruption battle, enforcement of human rights and the popular rule of law upon which he claims his administration is founded upon.
For one, the corruption battle does seem like a mere play around the park as several of the president’s former governor colleagues who were once indicted for corruption by the EFCC today roam the streets, nay, stride in exquisite palaces and occupy the hallowed chambers of our legislative houses after failed attempts to bring them to justice. The trial of people like James Onanefe Ibori, former Delta state governor, have been stalled due to alleged frustrations from higher places, one of them being the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation with the occupant, Michael Aondoakaa, an alleged Ibori faithful. Several mind-boggling revelations of malfeasance such as the Halliburton scandal, the Bode George/NPA scandal, the Siemens bribe scandal among others have also graced the pages of papers only to be swept under the carpet after undue setting up of panels that have turned up reports without the federal government doing anything to ensure the suspects were properly tried. All those cases since to have been gone with the wind and would only probably get a mention in the papers when another of such revelations surfaces.
On electoral reforms, the president had given the people hope when after his inauguration, he had admitted the process that brought him to power was faulty and had promised to carry out a reform but since then nothing has been done. The amendment of the 2007 Electoral Code that was much talked about at the time has now been pushed aside and nothing else is being said on how the nation hopes to have credible elections in 2011. Likewise, plans for constitutional amendment have dragged on without any hope of the definite time serious deliberations will begin. Squabbles over committees on the matter have since thrown a spanner in the wheels of the process in the National Assembly. On the enforcement of human rights, it will be good to mention the non-passage of the Freedom of Information Bill which could have boosted freedom of information and to a larger extent promote the fundamental human rights of Nigerians through the promotion of transparency in governance as a result of free access to government information. Several attempts to re-introduce the bill at the National Assembly have suffered serious frustrations by the opposes of the bill who hide under the lame excuse of protection of vital information for security purposes. Yet, the president has said and done nothing in influencing the matter in the favour of the vast majority of the masses who are clamouring for the passage of the bill and whom he claims to want to guarantee access to fundamental human rights. The open assault on civilians by the powerful have also gone unchecked right under the nose of the president, the latest being the case of House of Reps member, Hon.(?) Chinyere Igwe slapping a security officer at the National Assembly for daring to ask him to identify himself since his dressing passed more for a street tout than a legislator. More interesting is his case because he is actually the chairman of the House of Reps committee on Human Rights, painfully laughable really. Yet, the presidency by their action and inaction ensured the man has not been made to pay for his sins, least of all tender a public apology as the leaders of other nations would have demanded of him. Thus, has the rule of law not been reduced to a mere mantra without intent in its every pronunciation?
It is such disturbing facts as these that makes one ask questions about the nation’s independence worth truly worth celebrating when daily life for the common man has become a battle for survival. In Prof. Wole Soyinka’s speech, ‘The Precursors of Boko Haram’ recently delivered at the centenary celebrations of Kings College in Lagos, he succinctly describes the common man’s battles thus: “The Nigerian is a conscript, forced to fight not just one, but several wars. The citizen is conscripted to fight the war of darkness, the deprivation of elementary electric power that is crucial to development and basic existence in a modern society. He or she is conscripted to fight the wars of disease, while the new imperators jet off to Europe and Saudi Arabia for their own treatment. He is conscripted to fight the wars of exposure for lack of affordable shelter, to battle ignorance for lack of functional educational facilities that have been run aground, deliberately by one neo-colonial fascist after another, be he in uniform or mufti.”
It is thus clear that though while the white colonialists granted the nation independence 49 years ago, the Nigerian is back under colonialism, this time under black imperialists who he labours under. He laces their pockets with tax and gets nothing in return but bruises to his physical and mental self. He has no reason to celebrate independence, at least not yet! He must rather join the necessitous battle to free himself and the millions of other Nigerians living under harsh conditions similar to his. In the words of Prof. Soyinka, “The report is out, the demands of the electorate are clear. We know where the battlefront is - the seat of governance…My conviction - once again - is that a people’s gathering is long overdue. It should take place in that right on that battlefront, that space where anti-people conspiracies are hatched and executed.”
Finally, it’s clear there is a need not to celebrate but to act and the best time to act is now! Let me leave you with the words of the erudite Professor Wole Soyinka himself, “It’s time to send in the conscripts- you and I.”


This piece was originally written before independence.