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NIGERIA, the
African giant with lofty problems, is taking another pacesetting
step in the naturally wealthy continent that is predominantly
inhabited by impoverished blacks. Unlike many other laudable
pacesetting steps of this giant of Africa, like the West African
peace keeping ECOMOG (Economic Community of West
African States {ECOWAS} Monitoring Group) which
spearheaded the prevailing truce in the erstwhile war torn
Liberia,
the current controversial computer project of Nigeria is a
puzzling task that leaves every logical mind wondering if our
leaders really know the needs of the community they are ruling
over.
Nigeria, despite the enviable numerous
natural and human resources, still remains one of the few
countries with such enormous potentials for success, but with
little achievements, on the globe. Despite the long list of
natural resources that the nature endowed this African nation
with, including petroleum products that have consistently recorded many mouth
watering and record-breaking prices in the global market for
close to half a decade now, Nigeria still, disheartening,
remains one of the few nations on the globe whose citizens are
languishing in abject poverty and lack of basic amenities in the
midst of abundance.
The bane of our predicaments as a people
had always been gross ineptitude in macro and micro economic
management of our abundant resources by our leaders resulting
from high level corruption that had become a second nature of an
average Nigerian leader by acts of omission, commission, or
combined.
The macro and micro economic reforms that
the administration of President Obasanjo seemed to be injecting
into our system looked very promising at a glance. An in-depth
analysis of the achievements and shortcomings of these reforms
over the last seven years however engenders a few questions that
deserve answers. One of these mind boggling questions is
concerning the well published controversial laptops' project
that the Obasanjo's team is getting involved in.
Our leaders travel all over the world but
fail to emulate positive attributes of the leaders of the
foreign nations they visit. Instead, they tend to copy negative
or useless ideas of their hosts as applicable to our own unique
community. Our leaders have been to various nations like Japan
which, by nature, have far less number of money fetching
resources than Nigeria and, yet, are far more developed than
Nigeria. Even our West African neighbor, Ghana, has recently
proved that something must be wrong with the way the Nigerian
leaders perceive and assimilate what they experience in
developed nations that they visit during their numerous, and
apparently wasteful, globetrotting. Ghana has shown our leaders
that uninterrupted electric power supply, as it is obtainable in
the so called developed nations like the United States of
America, Japan, Norway and so forth, is not an unattainable task
in the continent of Africa. Ironically, a small country like
Liberia, that incidentally is currently heavily dependent on
Nigeria, is another example of the nations within the African
continent that keep on reminding Nigerians that our leaders are
not really grasping the basic principle of the needs of
Nigerians.
During my last visit to Nigeria in May
2006, seven years after President Obasanjo had presided over the
affairs of Nigeria for the second time, my family nearly became
part of the statistics of numerous lives that are lost every
year on the death tracks that our leaders provide us with as
'roads'. Two third of my time was virtually spent in various
Lagos holdups due to various reasons - ranging from neglected
and poorly maintained road conditions to the undisciplined
driving attitudes of the commercial vehicle drivers, abetted by
deliberate neglect of these disruptive driving behaviors by the
corrupt law enforcement agents. The Nigerian Police and other
related agencies, instead of being part of the solution, decided
to become part of the problems by mounting money extorting
checkpoints at strategic locations where they were least likely
to encounter armed robbers. The law abiding citizens that were
supposed to be protected by these agents ended up being the
victims of the circumstances that were beyond their control
because they would either have to part with some money at these
numerous 'checkpoints' or risk the chance of being killed as
'suspected armed robbers'. The only reliable thing about the
electric power supply was the fact that an average Nigerian had
learnt to live without this basic amenity. Easily accessible
potable water was another thing that was considered a mirage by
an average Nigerian. The University Teaching Hospital we visited
after our motor vehicle accident did not have more than six
wooden couches in its Emergency Room to serve millions of people
in its catchment area. Even patients with potentially serious
injuries had to be contented with portions of the dirty
Emergency Room's floor as their assigned 'beds'. I visited my
High School Alma Mater. The sorry picture of the neglected,
maintenance-deprived falling buildings depicted just a tip of
the iceberg about the decadent nature of the education sector of
this so called giant of Africa, my motherland. Many of the
'functional' buildings of this otherwise glorious school did not
even have functional electric wiring, let alone functional
electric power supply. And of-course, the school's library was
crying for basic textbooks, and dreaming of having the cheapest
desktop computer with power supply was just like hoping for the
impossibility. I presumed that our leaders simply saw no use for
electric power supply in the Nigerian classrooms, though a
laptop for each pupil would not be a bad idea as far as they
could cogitate.
The macro and micro-economic reforms of the
President Obasanjo's administration, that catapulted Nigeria
from a nation of heavy indebtedness to a nation of huge external
reserve, were one of the significant reasons to give kudos to
the Obasanjo's economic team, including the ousted former
minister of finance,
Mrs.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The petroleum windfall that could partly
explain this astounding economic achievement of this
administration is not new to Nigeria history. The first Gulf war
allegedly fetched Nigeria a whopping over twelve billion dollars
budget surplus during the dictatorial era of the retired General
Ibraheem Babangida, though the fate of that alleged colossal
money still remains a mystery to average Nigerians more than a
decade after the said windfall. The fact that the Obasanjo's
administration decided not to tread the footmarks of its
predecessors, especially the IBB's, in managing our money is a
big reason for all Nigerians to rejoice and pat the current
administration on the back.
Just as recognizing positive steps taking
by our leaders is our civic responsibility, screaming out
against negative and disastrous gesture(s) of our policy makers
even before such becomes step(s) is equally an important civic
responsibility that we owe one another as a people. The money
that has been accumulated by the President Obasanjo's
administration is, importantly and undoubtedly, the money that
needs to be spent before the current administration vacates the
office for a possible looter(s) that may takeover the office in
May 2007. Despite the urgency in spending the huge money that
has been accumulated, our leaders seriously need to exercise
caution.
There are prudent and patriotic ways of
spending hard earned money just as there are numerous
unscrupulous and myopic ways of squandering the same fruit of
our collective toils. The currently debated hundred million
dollars laptops' project is an unpatriotic route of leaching our
money if Nigerian's opinion matters to our leaders. The
foregoing paragraphs enumerate numerous things that a hundred
million dollars can achieve in providing basic necessities of
life to Nigerian children and students.
The One Child One Laptop's project, a
brainchild of the
Maine Learning Technology Initiative State of Maine, United
States of America, was designed for adoption by citizens and
inhabitants of nations and communities where what to eat is no
more a general concern. The immediate expected targets of this
project, as envisioned by its initiators, are stable communities
like the United States of America where unexplained or impromptu
electric power supply disruption is not only considered as an
aberration but something that requires public investigation. It
is designed for the nations whose children's access to internet
and desktop computer is unlimited; but not for the nations whose
largest percentage of children do not even know how to read or
write, not to talk of typing. It is designed for such nations
where children do not have to go to schools with empty stomachs
for reasons beyond their control; and not for such nations where
hundred million dollars will save millions of childrenbs lives
from lethal starvations. It is designed for nations whose
leaders care so much that they are so proud of the school
systems they provide for their citizenries that they allow their
children to attend the same school systems which ordinary
citizens attend; not for such nation where the prime priority of
its leaders is looting as much as possible so that such leaders
can afford sending their children to countries like the United
States of America and the United Kingdom for basic education
they ought to have provided right in their own countries. It is
designed for such nations whose teachers do not have to
improvise stones as sitting chairs just because the leaders
never realize that teachers need chairs to sit in the
classrooms. It is designed for such nations where the
availability of basic textbooks is so basic that lack of such
can engender revolt that may unseat their national presidents.
It is designed for such nations whose leaders prefer having
their cardiac and brain surgeries performed right within the
health systems that ordinary citizens are being cared for; but
not for the nations whose leaders choose to travel thousands of
miles across the globe just to have annual medical checkups
because they do not trust the health systems they are providing
their citizens with well enough to vouch for the accuracy of
something as basic as checking their blood pressures or
screening them for colon or breast cancers.
Dear Mr. President and other stake-holders
in this adoption of the One Child One Laptop's Initiative,
Nigeria is not ready yet for this type of heroic emulation. I,
and I believe millions of the lovers of Nigeria all over the
world, strongly support the fact that the accumulated money must
be spent before a possible looter takes advantage of us come May
2007. Your current proposal of a hundred million laptop is
however not one of the prudent ways that we want to see you
spending our money. The billions of dollars that your
administration has accumulated should be channeled towards
ensuring provision of basic things like uninterrupted electric
power supply at every nook and cranny of Nigeria and to provide
computers in each school library and possibly classroom, but not
on purchasing laptops for one million selected privileged
'children' who may even be able to afford more powerful systems
on their own. I can assure you, if you make a mistake of
purchasing the controversial laptops, not only will these
laptops not reach the right targets, such efforts will remain
useless and wasteful one in the history of Nigerian leaders'
mistakes and will, forever, be remembered as another misplaced
priority.
