3. POWER: I grew up to know of ECN. It even had a football club.
It did not have so many power generating stations but it provided steady power.
It had Afam. It also had Oji River Power Station. Then, great Nigerian with
foresight emerged and developed the Kanji Dams. I think later too, these were
further expanded to include Igbim and Sapele Stations and ECN became NEPA the
acronym for darkness. It would appear to me that while new stations were built,
old stations were left to rot. The turbines and other facilities at the Shiroro
and other dams were hardly serviced or maintained until NEPA metamorphosed into
an institution that withholds power. As we grew as a nation, no corresponding
growth was recorded in this direction. Our sense of maintenance of structures
leaves much to be desired. Today, numerous power stations are being built on
the pages of newspapers all over the nation. Only God knows when they will be
completed and made functional. Targets of Megawatts are continually being announced
and re-announced with nauseating regularity. Everywhere, there is darkness;
solid darkness despite the early foundations set up to avert this darkness.
Why?
4. EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES: Nigeria is one
of the most blessed countries in the world. We used to be the world’s leading
producers of Columbite. Jos is known as the City of Tin on account of the
volume of tin that was mined there for many years. Today, Jos is the city where
Nigerians kill themselves and bury in the evacuations that litter in the tin
city. We have gold, iron, and several other minerals. Enugu, where we are
today, stands on coal. Many of us here today are children of parents who made
their living working in different capacities in the coal industry. Australia,
China, England, as advanced as their economies are, and in spite of the fact
that they have numerous alternatives sources of energy, have not abandoned
their Coal Mines. Of course we have oil. There is nothing wrong in developing
our oil and gas industry. But a situation where other minerals should be added
to support our oil wealth to provide even development and vast employment
opportunities has been squandered. Even in the oil industry, after the
establishment of the Refineries at Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna and despite
the growth in our institutions that would use petroleum products, successive
governments have found it difficult to increase our refining capacity to meet
our ever growing local demands. In the past 20 years, none of our refineries
has worked at full capacity; turn – around maintenance has always been the
products from these refineries. For the past many years, Nigeria has been
importing fuel from countries that probably have no oil than we have. The
consequences are legion:
• We pay high prices for products that we
ourselves have.
• We grow the economy of those countries
from where we import oil.
• We leave our citizens who would have
gained employment in an expanding oil and gas company
roaming the streets, in hunger and anger,
unemployed.
• We have inadvertently developed a larger
number of restive youths who are targets of recruitment in the hands of the
enemies of our country who want to blow everybody up.
• Today Government is talking of removal
of fuel subsidy so that it can raise money and invest in other sectors of the
economy, an action which in the short run at least would weaken the earning
power of all Nigerians even is in the long run, subject to good husbandry of
funds, it could improve the economy.
What happened to the early foundations
which those who built our early refineries established in our extractive
industries? Why did we abandon the coal in Kogi, Benue and Enugu States? Is our
Columbite finished? Why is it that everywhere Government spends huge sums of
money, money that should have been productively invested, fighting illegal
miners all over the country? If Sarduna, Zik, Awolowo and Okpara were to visit
us today, they would shudder at the depth of our descent and the damage we have
done to the foundations that they laid.
5. THE NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE CORPS: In
1973, the government of General Gowon established the National Youth Service
Corps. Through the establishment of this institution, highly trained youths
were evenly distributed all over the country to affect the economy positively.
Schools at the Secondary level benefited and our children were better taught.
Young Nigerians who would never have travelled out of their communities of
origin were compelled to do so and their earlier held negative biases were
wiped off.
I first went up north as a Youth Corps
member and it was an experience I continue to recall with nostalgia. The youth
Corps members were symbols of National Unity who mixed freely with the natives
of their places of primary posting and who also sometimes got married and
integrated into those communities. Many of us here participated in this
programme and can recall the great receptions we received and the invaluable
contributions we made in places where we were posted.
Today the Corps member is a youth compelled
“to serve” outside his community by the Government but rejected and despised by
the people he is posted to serve. The Corps member today is a victim to be
kidnapped and humiliated by his host community so that at the end of the
service year he is so traumatized that his memories of the service year are
bitter and these build up in him a feeling of total horror of unimaginable
proportions. Early this year, for doing a thankless but expedient duty in our
electoral processes, the youth corps member was bombed to smithereens or burnt
into ashes by people who were supposed to protect him and for reasons which
defy understanding. Gowon who is alive today would be wondering where this
great institution, built on very sound foundation, began to experience this
crack which today is metamorphosing into a quake.
The NYSC Scheme is not the only foundation
that Gowon laid for Nigeria. He introduced the National Sports Festival which
brought the youths of the nation together in healthy competitions. From these competitions
great sports men were identified early and groomed into stardom. Today there
are hardly any honestly assembled youths for such competitions. Aged and over
recycled athletes aref continually assembled and school sports are killed
out-rightly so that Nigerians hardly make any impact in the international
sporting arena. A country that produced Hogan Bassey, Dick Tiger, Obisie Nwapa
cannot even make any presence in the boxing arena even at the ECOWAS level.
What a descent. What happened to these great foundations? Should we call back
General Gowon?
What I have said in these aspects of our
Economy manifests everywhere including agriculture. We cannot talk of
functional Water Boards any more in most parts of the country. Instead we must
go to India to treat minor medical cases which, had our medical experts been
given basic equipment, they would have handled them with palpable ease. Why
should our people pay high airfares to go India to do a mymectomy? Why? The
collapse of these great foundations is manifest everywhere but I want to paint
the exact picture of what it is in the educational sector in the South East of
Nigeria.
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