Chasing shadows and calling it politics

Two points took place on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, which display what Nigerians are able of carrying out. On that day, President Muhammadu Buhari was in Lagos to open the Dangote Fertilizer Plant. Stated to be the greatest in Africa, that plant is an case in point of what we can execute in Nigeria.

With the ideal angle, Nigerians can and have completed great points. With a business enterprise-pleasant natural environment produced and secured by authorities, there will be investments. With investments, the poverty index in Nigeria will be reduced, and the stage of insecurity far too.

From the fertilizer plant at Ibeju Lekki, the President went to open the new international terminal at the Lagos Airport. Travelling as a result of Nigerian airports has develop into an embarrassing nightmare.

Will this new terminal make a variance? North, south, east and west, Nigeria has probable tourist attractions that can offer thousands and thousands of positions for our desperate and unhappy youths.

But who needs to take a look at a state whose dilapidated airports are like ovens, wherever it normally takes up to a few several hours to go by way of immigration and retrieve your luggage? Who would like to be vacationer in a nation whose airports are not consumer-helpful?

The truth that the airport terminal was made by the Chinese is also a level on which to replicate. Why is it that Nigeria can’t build an airport terminal with no the aid of China?

We have architects. We have engineers. What stops us from planning and developing an airport terminal? We stay in a climate of theft of Nigeria’s prosperity by some members of the ruling elite who stash the money away in international lands, places the place the airports alone say constructive items about the folks.

When the huge fertilizer plant and the new airport terminal have been getting commissioned by the President, there ended up and there even now are pending issues.

We are starting to experience the effects of months of insecurity in scarcity of foodstuff. For a lengthy time, govt merely failed to protected the region. The place farmers can no more time farm for the reason that of bandits, insurgents and kidnappers, it is only a make a difference of time prior to famine sets in.

At the time a new global airport terminal was becoming opened, air fares for domestic flights have skyrocketed by more than 100%. The aviation sector is poorly affected by turbulence in the energy industry.

Airlines are not able to procure cash to get aviation fuel. Flights are rescheduled, typically cancelled. There are stories of travellers who invested times at the airport with out traveling, and who, in utter disappointment, experienced to vacation by road. But the streets are lousy, they are unsafe. Kidnappers are on the prowl, armed robbers on the rampage.

Electrical power provide carries on to be a key headache in Nigeria. We imagined we could use our standby generators. But now, expense of diesel has long gone past the potential of even financial institutions.

Banking institutions, radio and television stations have had to reduce the selection of hours they run. Telecom masts are, for the most element, run on diesel. The value of diesel has afflicted our capacity to make phone calls. Motorists commit hrs queueing for gasoline, and there are situations they need to pay prior to they are authorized to be a part of the queue.

Education and learning is the engine home of advancement in any country. But here, Nigeria’s federal government-owned universities are on lockdown. But, they want to be ranked amongst the very best in the environment. To insert to this lousy news is additional undesirable news in the training sector.

On March 24, 2022, just two times following the commissioning of the fertiliser plant and the worldwide airport terminal, at the launch of the Nigerian Studying Platform in Abuja, the United Nations Children’s Crisis Fund declared that 9.7 million Nigerian kids operate the threat of under no circumstances returning to faculty. If the existing is distressing, the upcoming would seem to be bleak.

When these depressive indices stare us in the face, the eyes of Nigeria’s political elite are turned to the 2023 elections. All manners of conferences, open and clandestine, are getting held. Quite soo station. But, will our politicians run developmental difficulties-driven campaigns, or will they indulge in frivolities and character assassination?

Their aim is not how to tackle developmental problems but how to attain ability. They want to turn into President of a nation they have aided to destroy. But will they rebuild?

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To attain their objective, bags of rice will be shared, drums of cooking oil will be poured, bundles of dollar charges will be sprayed at marketing campaign venues, empty guarantees will be designed to presumedly gullible voters, and, at the close of it all, credible and effective leaders will be scarce.

This nation is shutting down rapidly. This is the simple fact. Who will bail us out of it? But our politicians are merely obsessed with electrical power. There are quite vital challenges in have to have of urgent focus. Nonetheless, these are being overlooked in the pursuit of power for the sake of ability, in politics with out morality.

The concern of a so-identified as federal constitution that legitimises the abduction of Nigeria and Nigerians by the political elite is a make a difference to be urgently addressed.

It is a moral obligation to make it an challenge in the 2023 elections. To are unsuccessful to assume this obligation is to expose ourselves and potential generations of Nigerians to never-ending bickering.

But relatively than experience this concern, what matters to our politicians are their bash conventions and presidential candidates. My heart bleeds for Nigeria – indeed wither Nigeria?

Our beloved country is bleeding to death. The haemorrhage has been inflicted by Machiavellian politics, the pastime of many users of the elite.

This is the time to sit down and be sincere with ourselves and with a person another. This place is not likely to boost with the egotism of our politicians.

The heat is turning into significantly unbearable, and it would be foolish to run soon after shadows and connect with it politics. At the rate we are heading, this nation may possibly before long turn into inhabitable for leaders and the led. Our young people are now looking for their escape routes.

Those who simply cannot obtain an escape route are resorting to crime and violence. The place then will our politicians operate when it will become way too warm? And even if they operate, will they be ready to cover? If they disguise from human beings, can they disguise from the judgment of the Almighty?

His Eminence, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, wrote from Lagos