Chasing shadows and calling it politics

Two issues occurred on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, which exhibit what Nigerians are capable of accomplishing. On that working day, President Muhammadu Buhari was in Lagos to open the Dangote Fertilizer Plant. Said to be the biggest in Africa, that plant is an example of what we can accomplish in Nigeria.

With the right frame of mind, Nigerians can and have attained excellent things. With a small business-welcoming natural environment created and secured by federal government, there will be investments. With investments, the poverty index in Nigeria will be lessen, and the stage of insecurity much too.

From the fertilizer plant at Ibeju Lekki, the President went to open the new intercontinental terminal at the Lagos Airport. Travelling through Nigerian airports has become an embarrassing nightmare.

Will this new terminal make a distinction? North, south, east and west, Nigeria has prospective vacationer sights that can give thousands and thousands of work opportunities for our desperate and let down youths.

But who needs to visit a country whose dilapidated airports are like ovens, where by it can take up to a few hours to pass by means of immigration and retrieve your luggage? Who desires to be tourist in a place whose airports are not user-pleasant?

The reality that the airport terminal was made by the Chinese is also a place on which to mirror. Why is it that Nigeria are not able to construct an airport terminal without having the help of China?

We have architects. We have engineers. What stops us from creating and constructing an airport terminal? We stay in a local climate of theft of Nigeria’s wealth by some users of the ruling elite who stash the revenue absent in overseas lands, sites in which the airports on your own say good items about the persons.

Although the large fertilizer plant and the new airport terminal have been becoming commissioned by the President, there were and there nonetheless are pending matters.

We are beginning to really feel the results of months of insecurity in shortage of foodstuff. For a prolonged time, federal government simply just unsuccessful to safe the state. Where farmers can no for a longer time farm since of bandits, insurgents and kidnappers, it is only a make a difference of time ahead of famine sets in.

At the time a new worldwide airport terminal was getting opened, air fares for domestic flights have skyrocketed by above 100%. The aviation sector is badly afflicted by turbulence in the power industry.

Airways are not able to procure money to buy aviation gasoline. Flights are rescheduled, generally cancelled. There are tales of travellers who spent days at the airport with out flying, and who, in utter disappointment, experienced to journey by street. But the roads are negative, they are unsafe. Kidnappers are on the prowl, armed robbers on the rampage.

Energy supply carries on to be a significant headache in Nigeria. We believed we could use our standby generators. But now, value of diesel has gone beyond the potential of even banks.

Banks, radio and tv stations have experienced to reduce the amount of several hours they function. Telecom masts are, for the most part, run on diesel. The charge of diesel has influenced our skill to make phone calls. Motorists invest several hours queueing for gas, and there are occasions they have to spend ahead of they are permitted to sign up for the queue.

Training is the motor home of progress in any country. But here, Nigeria’s government-owned universities are on lockdown. Yet, they want to be rated among the very best in the world. To include to this negative news is additional terrible news in the education and learning sector.

On March 24, 2022, just two days immediately after the commissioning of the fertiliser plant and the intercontinental airport terminal, at the launch of the Nigerian Discovering System in Abuja, the United Nations Children’s Unexpected emergency Fund announced that 9.7 million Nigerian children operate the hazard of hardly ever returning to faculty. If the present is distressing, the long term appears to be bleak.

When these depressive indices stare us in the deal with, the eyes of Nigeria’s political elite are turned to the 2023 elections. All manners of meetings, open up and clandestine, are being held. Very soo station. But, will our politicians run developmental problems-driven campaigns, or will they indulge in frivolities and character assassination?

Their goal is not how to deal with developmental issues but how to achieve energy. They want to turn into President of a country they have assisted to damage. But will they rebuild?

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To attain their objective, baggage of rice will be shared, drums of cooking oil will be poured, bundles of greenback bills will be sprayed at marketing campaign venues, empty guarantees will be built to presumedly gullible voters, and, at the end of it all, credible and successful leaders will be scarce.

This state is shutting down fast. This is the actuality. Who will bail us out of it? But our politicians are just obsessed with electric power. There are very essential issues in have to have of urgent awareness. Still, these are staying ignored in the pursuit of electricity for the sake of energy, in politics with out morality.

The problem of a so-referred to as federal structure that legitimises the abduction of Nigeria and Nigerians by the political elite is a issue to be urgently addressed.

It is a moral obligation to make it an issue in the 2023 elections. To fall short to think this obligation is to expose ourselves and upcoming generations of Nigerians to endless bickering.

But rather than facial area this issue, what matters to our politicians are their get together conventions and presidential candidates. My coronary heart bleeds for Nigeria – in truth wither Nigeria?

Our beloved nation is bleeding to loss of life. The haemorrhage has been inflicted by Machiavellian politics, the pastime of numerous users of the elite.

This is the time to sit down and be sincere with ourselves and with a person an additional. This state is not going to boost with the egotism of our politicians.

The heat is getting more and more unbearable, and it would be foolish to run after shadows and call it politics. At the rate we are likely, this place could quickly develop into inhabitable for leaders and the led. Our young individuals are by now on the lookout for their escape routes.

These who simply cannot come across an escape route are resorting to criminal offense and violence. The place then will our politicians run when it becomes also very hot? And even if they operate, will they be in a position to cover? If they cover from human beings, can they conceal from the judgment of the Almighty?

His Eminence, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, wrote from Lagos