How can one sleep well with millions of Nigerians going to bed hungry and waking into another day without any hope of one meal? How can one keep a calm head with children roaming the streets begging for food?
How can one remain happy knowing that millions of children are out of school, becoming reserves for extremists, terrorists, cultists, and social vices across the nation? How can one, in all honesty, trust people in today’s government and the past administrations asking to be voted into higher offices with the types of sleaze going on around us, yet with so much poverty killing our people? I thought democracy should make people better.
How can one feel fulfilled seeing hundreds of under 16 children troop out in Sokoto State to destroy people’s wares to avenge the arrest of those who killed Debora Samuel? Meanwhile these are innocent children we abandoned as a society. Some of them must have been schooled in half truths. Some have no means of livelihood. Some of them want to vent the evil we have done to them. How can one sleep in that environment.
At a time, we preach that Nigeria is a poor and developing country with the federal and state governments owing local and international contractors, one man, amid the people’s misfortunes, is diverting N80bn for his family’s generational use.
At a time, the Civil Servants and pensioners are owed unpaid stipends; another N47bn of the people’s commonwealth has developed wings into the unknown from the coffers of another Government Agency. In 2017, the court granted the final forfeiture of N73,440bn (about $153.3mn equivalent) from a former Minister to the Federal Government.
Put the above sums togethet, one would get about N200bn. Yet, we need less than N20bn to put our public universities on a proper footing and motivate the workers. What a contradiction? Do these guys have a conscience at all?
For you understand me N200bn cornered by three persons will build the following structures at the minimum;
1. 160,000 boreholes to provide clean and safe drinking water in 160,000 rural settlements;
2. 80 kilometers of roads to assist farmers bring their produce to townships;
3. 84 kilometers of rail tracks to complement the current rail revolution;
4. 4,000 50 seaters mass transit buses;
5. 100 cottage health facilities that could reduce child and maternal fatalities;
6. 100 low-cost housing units to assist low income;
7. 200 model primary and secondary schools. to replace dilapidated school structures; etc.
When the uneducated children being used now to cause religious, tribal, and political mayhems shall wake up to know the truth, Rawlings Ghana will be a child’s play.
Rawlings used the military, but our albatross will be the rising of the children we did not care about, who would have become the kings of the roads and dark alleys, in not too far a time.
These children that are abound everywhere will literarily attack Landlords on street corners and car owners on the highways. Their belief would be that those of us using tokunbo cars diverted the money for their education and social safety nets for our selfish reasons. When we shall get to that bus stop, none of us will have a hiding place. For example, there is a viral video in circulation in which stick-wielding children attacked cars in broad daylight, somewhere in the precincts of the Federal Capital Territory. Tell me what would have happened if the action cascaded to the states and local governments.
Meanwhile those that led the country to this level go about in bullet proof cars, security convoys, 24/7 security coverage woven around them and their families. Think about it.
We are getting closer and closer. We are at the edge of the cliff. When shall we tip over? I do not know.
Is it all over? No! We need to work extra hard to reverse the trend NOW by ensuring that never again shall people steal our votes and commonwealth, and we hail them. But dead or alive, those reading this shall remember me for good.
Grace and peace
