Let me get it right Mr. Fashola:  when we drive to the point where the roads are not motorable, we should be thankful and drive back home. Or is the government planning to provide air transport from the point where the roads are not motorable? I don’t understand.

Late Pius Adesanmi was right. The shower head will destroy Nigeria and to some point, it may become irreversible.

Fashola’s (Worrisome) Mentality

By Adeola Aderounmu

First when l saw the headline, l thought Fashola was on some hard drugs. The video that was later circulated made a clarity of what he said.

My mind went straight to late professor Pius Adesanmi’s Parable Of The Shower Head. If you haven’t watched the video, go and look for it especially if you think Fashola was on point. I won’t be your source and reference. The video is free and it is online.

Fashola wants Nigerians to be grateful for the percentage of Nigerian roads that are motorable, that they are even lucky enough to drive to the point where the road now becomes unmotorable. He called that balanced reporting/journalism.

Fashola was talking to a bunch of fools whose salaries and allowances can fix all the economic problems in Nigeria, and possibly Africa. He was up against a group of people who, along with him, have become the slave masters and whose destination in life are not worth more than prisons. But they live large and steal big, daily, courtesy of the useless political arrangements and a dead justice system.

Mr. Fashola has never failed to amuse me. When he was the governor of Lagos State, he hated inputs from Nigerians in diaspora. He told us that he was not the one who sent us abroad. His mentality did not get deformed today. He has a history.

Invariably, in his opinion, our opinions don’t count. It was not a surprise then to visit Lagos and see all sorts of unfinished and abandoned projects littering the entire state after he left office. The rail projects on over-estimated budgets are still fallow and worthless!

In view of his recent comments on Nigerian roads, Mr. Fashola fall short of the standards that one would expect from normal public officers. So, when we drive to the point where the roads are not motorable, we should be thankful and drive back home. Or is the government planning to provide air transport from the point where the roads are not motorable?

Why are our roads bad? There are some countries in the world with negligible number of bad roads. There are some countries in the world that set-in motion maintenance so that the roads never get the chance to become bad. Why do Nigerians roads get bad days, or weeks after they have been constructed? Why are there even so many places without roads despite the fact that people build houses nearby? Who is doing the urban and rural plannings? Are we less intelligent? I have been asking these questions over the years? What is wrong with us?

These are the discussions and arguments that should be going on. Contractors and governments should be made accountable. Heads should be rolling until the minister or the state governors get it right. Is that a mirage?

Indeed, Nigeria is what she is because some people think Fashola’s statement was on point. We have decided that no matter what comes from the shower head even in a 5-star hotel, we can have some water with it anyway. At all at all na im bad-the Nigerian mentality. The Fashola mentality.

The beauty of public opinion, sadly or happily, when evidence is available is the diversity of our interpretations.

As for me, it is very worrisome to have such a mentality.  No sane person should defend a useless federal government. No sane person should defend any useless state government.

This is just about the roads. It is the same mentality that has perforated all spheres of the Nigerian life. We have a long way to freedom. We have a very long way back to the heart of humanity.

No way l stop writing my articles without highlighting the need to revert this country back to a system that actually worked before the two useless coups of 1966. Under this useless unitary system of government, there is no hope for Nigeria.

Yes, no matter the system, we may still be the same people. But it won’t last long before our common sense begins to work again. Right now, our collective intelligence is melted into a national and international summation that does not depict who we are. And for your information, western Nigerian where my ancestors emerged was a trailblazer before those useless coups of 1966. A man of Fashola’s mentality would watch us grow and develop our regions when we re-emerge.

Finally, for this note, there is yet no difference between apc and pdp. Though Jonathan was right about the evil that Buhari has brought to Nigeria, it does not justify the calamities that pdp was also perpetrating. It is still all about the shower heads. Late Pius Adesanmi was right. The shower head will destroy Nigeria and to some point, it may become irreversible.

 

aderounmu@gmail.com