By Adeola Aderounmu. 

Quite understandably, Africa in general is not yet as developed as the so called Western Countries but to use this criterion or excuse is not adequate in explaining the quality or standard of life that we live in Nigeria. Sometimes when I think of how I am living now and how I’d lived before I left Nigeria, I just cannot help asking myself: who planned our lives in Nigeria?

 

Imagine if I’d bought a bicycle to ride to work in Nigeria. My celestial church would have organized a rigorous prayer and deliverance session for me. They would have emphasized two prayer points. The first is that God should give me another job instead of being a lifetime contract PTA teacher. The second would be that God should deliver me from the hands of my enemies especially those within my family and my work place of course.

 

But there is nothing wrong with driving to work in a car or taking the train or bus depending on what means of transportation that is convenient for you. Your choice may also depend on your consciousness of environmental issues. In the last two years, I have gone to work many times riding my bicycle. I do ride my bicycle with utmost delight even with my tie and suit on. There are bicycles tracks with clear signals to follow and I know how many kilometers I have ahead. I only have to tuck the ends of my pair of trousers inside my stockings. Off I go!

 

Really, how is life supposed to be? I know a popular Swedish expression that goes like this: “Livet gar aldrig i repris”. In English, this means “You cannot live your life over again”. Many people believe we can only live once. Others have hopes of another life that their religion brings to them. I would strongly think that the concept of living once guides the people who are living life as it should be, not only as individuals but also as a nation.

 

For instance, it is in perfect order if you can book your summer holiday six months in advance. You can do the same with your Christmas holiday. Your wife can stay at home for one year after the delivery of your child. The state welfare built on functional tax system ensures that she does not go hungry or over-depend on you. The family bond is further promoted by ensuring that as a father, based on the same welfare or insurance scheme, you can also take paternity leave if you don’t want to send your child to daycare so early. The interests and rights of a child are paramount.

 

As an employee or employer, you pay your taxes and you get a little refund annually from the tax office. Obviously, you know the consequences of tax evasion. You have never worried about power supply; instead you keep a store of electric light bulbs and fluorescent lamps. You have no stress to call the house caretaker if there are things you cannot fix yourself. You know well in advance that you may not have water for 2 hours on Wednesday of week 45 because of a major repair in your area. You have many choices when it comes to electric companies, TV companies, Internet Service Providers and Telephony.

 

You are not afraid to travel on the road knowing well that almost everyone on the road went to a driving school. Though accidents do occur, you have been instructed at the driving school to show understanding or adjust when others make mistakes on the road. There are rules but no one has rights on the road. You know when/how to drive. The signs are clear. The Atlas of road maps in your car is perfect. The streets and motorways are well laid out. You can drive whenever, wherever and at anytime. Your 24 hours is at your disposal. No restrictions! But you are afraid to exceed the speed limits because of Police routine checks or hidden cameras. Something by the road side could even flash at you: DU KOR FORT! (YOU DRIVE TOO FAST!)

 

You shop for food under hygienic conditions in supermarkets. You know and appreciate the importance of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet. You don’t buy expired food items as they are well labeled with production and expiry dates. Your rights as a consumer are well catered for and over pampered. You have never worried about your salary been delayed: it comes in on the 25th of every month. It has to be in your salary bank account on the 24th or 23rd if 25th is a Saturday or Sunday respectively. This will hardly change because you have also automatically instructed your bank (through secured internet banking) to pay your bills on that same day or the next day every month. Your employer is liable to the resulting debts if any delay in the payment of your salary affects the deadlines for your bills.

 

In General, you have a life that is well planned or organized. You balance work, family, play and exercise. However, you are aware that certain circumstances are going to be out of your control. But again, the system has regulatory mechanisms in place. Your fears are considerably lessened. You have confidence in almost everything around you including your personal and life insurance packages.

 

Is this how life should be? This is one constant question that keeps bugging me each time I take my usual walk under the shades of trees near where I live. Quite often as I approach the shopping complex, walking alone or sometimes pushing my little angel in her baby wagon, tears swell in my eyes. The images of Nigerian hustling, bustling and struggles are stuck to my cerebral hemispheres. The shame of April 2007 has not helped matters. Sometimes, I let go and the tears flow.

 

For the past six years, I have not been able to find the answer to the question: Who planned our lives in Nigeria? Instead of finding the answers, more questions and puzzles have since emerged. Would it be possible someday (or in the nearest future) for all Nigerians to live a well planned life especially with children, nature and the environment in view? Shall we have a system that is regulated (or even self-regulatory) and coordinated? What would it take? How long to reach there?

 

Where is the future even? Where is our hope considering the constant selfish attitudes of our leaders and politicians?  To this moment, their disappointing prime interest is the so called National Cake-how it can be looted. Too obviously, they are unbelievably corrupt and greedy. The masses and the environment are inconsequential to them. One day sha, the cake will start choking them.

 May the glory of Nigeria come, soon! Adeola Aderounmuaderounmu@gmail.com 

By Adeola Aderounmu.

Before he left office in June 2007, the other day, we read in the news that Tony Blair was been questioned by the police in the UK. In the entire history of Nigeria, I have not seen or heard that the police have questioned any serving colonial master, president or dictator. The closest we have come to this is when selfish coup plotters turn the institutions of the states against some civilian looters to prove some silly points.

After a few days, they, the tropical gangsters called soldiers, start their own looting, and the cycle is repeated. I wondered why coup plotters are all not guilty of treasonable felony. They took over government by force and subdued democratic processes.

Shamefully too, we have not been able to develop to the extent of providing autonomy to the Police in Nigeria in order for them to be able to deal with corruption as an investigative aspect of their obligations. It took forever to have a body such as the EFCC and it took a short while to make it become a puppet. This is an arguable statement of course depending on how extensively you want to drive your objectivity on the partisanship and neutrality of a public regulatory body as EFCC.

It is true that we need something like the EFCC as a branch of the Police to investigate corruption and bring culprits to the reach of the arm of the law. Good point! But if anyone was schematically blind to the usage of the EFCC under the Obasanjo government, then I am sorry that I cannot help them. 

Summarily, the heat of the EFCC was turned on against all those who opposed Obasanjo’s third term secret and then open campaigns. The EFCC was used to sniff all the friends of another corrupt man called Atiku. He was the vice-president of Obasanjo and he was against the third term plan. The war between these two thoughtless adults brought governance in Nigeria to a permanent halt for more than a year. They provided Nigeria with the exclusive hidden details of how they emptied the national treasury. These 2 men then used the issue of corruption and betrayal to drive home their silly points on the 3rd term imbroglio.

If the EFCC or police wants to be taken seriously, they should please start by investigating the money that Nigeria made during the gulf war and give us a public report. Until everyone in Nigeria is subjected to the long arm of the law, then I will forever think that EFCC is a useless body, pursuing partial dreams and relishing less than quarter moon.

I think that we should leave the era behind where the President will give out orders that something should be investigated. It sounds really very annoying to read for instance that the president orders the probe…or the president orders the investigation….This is nonsense! Is that the job of the president? Silly!

The Police are there, they should not be told what their jobs are and they do not need orders from anyone. I am beginning to wonder if a day will come that someone like the Okiro (the police boss) will ask Obasanjo (ex-president) to report to the Police for questioning. Can Okiro ask Yar Adua to report to the Police for investigation into awards of contracts under his governorship in Katsina State?

I know that the presidency in Nigeria has a role to play on who becomes the Inspector General of Police but I don’t know if that is a global standard. I doubt. The police are an institution that should allow officers to move or rise through the ranks through hardwork, dedication and selfless service to people and country. If we continue to choose Inspectors because of their tribe and alliance, I am sorry that we are rolling deep into valleys.

Whichever way you look at it, Nigeria has a long way to go. First, we need to do a lot of work on our Police Force. We need to upgrade their mentality, mission and visions. We need to give them the environment to provide us with the security that the government always promises.

We need a police force with modern gadgets and functional patrol cars. We need to revert our police stations from their status as banks to a place where real investigations and research is going on. We need a police force that is well educated and tutored to meet the challenges of modern day world, not just Nigeria.

We need a police force that will earn far more than 10, 000 naira (this is less than 100USD) as the basic salary for its lowest paid officers. We need to take their eyes away from other people’s wallets or pockets. We need police-men and women who will have their lives and properties adequately insured. We need a police force that we can give due respect. Of course, we need that aspect for other professionals too, teachers especially.

We need an independent police force that will be the watchdog of our society in security issues and investigating crimes including assassinations. We will like to have Police officers who would investigate corruption and hand over thieves who called themselves politicians to the Judiciary. In Nigeria, if we don’t put thieves behind the bars, they will continue to multiply and disguise as our saviours.

These are my personal views and this is the way that I see it!

May the Glory of Nigeria come, soon!

Adeola Aderounmu.

Nigeria is my beloved country of birth. Every day I cannot stop to wonder why people live in poverty in Nigeria. This is a country that has what it takes to be the best place to live on planet earth. Unfortunately, the poorest people alive may be in Nigeria. Yet, day in day out, we deceive ourselves.

  

One of my friends cannot stop to be optimistic in declaring his belief in what he has called the Nigerian Project.  I don’t blame him: he has a good job and he can take a holiday in UK. What is the Nigerian Project for all the women and men at Oshodi market? What is the Nigerian project to a 10 years old boy selling clothes at Tejuosho market? What is the Nigerian project to these helpless people selling pure water under the heat of the sun? Where is the Nigerian project when some Nigerians are joining the desert caravan to reach Libya and Morocco for deadly onward transmission to Southern Europe?

  

What is the meaning of the Nigerian project self? This country has crude oil BUT there are no refineries to turn it into usable products by its citizens. Nobody is telling us why after 47 years of independence, we cannot stop importing petrol for Nigerians to use.

  

I am very sure that some idiots are making billions of naira from this anomaly. All our past corrupt head of states and presidents know about the deal and they have sold us into perpetual slavery. I am very sure that all those who are in governance in Nigeria are thieves. I am very convinced that if they are not all thieves, one of them should have told the rest that we should stop importing petrol and make our refineries work.

  

No one has said anything concerning this grave sin against Nigerians and Nigerians themselves are always quiet. No one dares the government, no one takes risk. Instead, we worship people who steal our money to oppress us.

  

If our refinery does not work in the next 12 months or if new refineries are not built to start functioning at the earliest time possible, then Yar Adua will be the latest thief in power. He is already suffering from lack of legitimacy. No one can ask him to be accountable because he was smuggled in by one shameless Baba and another illiterate professor.

  

Belling the cat in Nigeria goes beyond the refinery question. It extends to Nigerians being able to sit down as soon as possible and define the purpose of the entity called Nigeria. Some people are enjoying beyond what is comprehensible, millions are suffering beyond imagination. This leaves a big question mark on resource allocation and what a functional state is.

Some thieves have billions piled away in foreign banks and some stupid Islands somewhere; Millions are hungry back home looking for 1 or 2 dollars a day. The poorest people are living where the crude oil comes from. I cannot help it! What madness is this?

  

How can we be so blessed only for a few to enjoy it and millions (over 70%) are hungry and cannot live a decent life? Is Nigeria the heart or the jungle of Africa?

  

Why are we fooling ourselves? Why is it impossible to prosecute all these thieves? We want back our money; we want to build Nigeria for our children and children’s children.

Give us functional refineries and appropriate petroleum price once and for all.

All Politicians in Nigeria are thieves. I said so!

There is no Governance in Nigeria. What we have is a group of beggars who collect money every month and transformed them into personal wealth at the detriment of the entire country and people.

When we have governance in Nigeria, the glory of Nigeria will come.

  

Adeola Aderounmu.

To me personally, This declaration of assets is meaningless.

First, this government lacks legitimacy. Accepting the mandate of a crazy selection is the HEIGHT of dishonesty.

Second, David Mark, a well known thief is his Senate President. What are we talking about?

Before we can wipe corruption, we need a legitimate government that would have power at its disposal to bring all the thieves in Nigeria to book. From Babangida, to Buhari, Shonekan, Obasanjo…and many others (from 1960 to 2007).

Being mindless of the past in the present will not help us to shape the future.

We must rights all wrongs.

A legitimate govt is needed to probe all the past governors, Ministers and the people that we know stole our money and put 75% of Nigerians below the poverty line. Let them bring back all our monies. We want to use them for posterity.

If we don’t bring justice to Nigeria, all these declarations are senseless.

There must be a point in the history of our country called Turning Point. If we don’t get there…the masses will continue to suffer.

This man Yar Adua will never have the courage to bring the change we seek. Someone will always remind him how he got to power, through the WORST ELECTION in the history of man!

This is already playing out in the so called Government of National Unity. He is asking the other parties to drop their petitions so that they can join his govt and loot as they usually do.

Let’s call a thief, a thief!

May the Glory of Nigeria come, soon!

Adeola Aderounmu.

Lagos is the former capital of Nigeria. Many uninformed foreigners still considered Lagos to be the capital of Nigeria. To this category of people, Abuja is relatively unknown. I have encountered many people and young students in Europe who expressed surprise that Lagos was no longer the capital of Nigeria.

It came to my mind recently to send an open letter to the governor of Lagos State and the Oba of Lagos. Among the rest of us, I am very convinced that these two important men are true Lagosians. In the letter which I’d not written, I would have asked them more than 21 questions. The most significant question would have been: Is this the Lagos of your dreams? An adept mind can quickly add, is this the Nigeria of our dreams?

In the letter, I would have pointed out to them many of the things that are wrong with Lagos and give them a few tips of how to work out the solutions. Have our politicians and leaders started listening to great ideas yet? In the content of the letter, I would have told them that the reason why Europeans preferred East African countries or even Gambia for their holidays is because they read and also think that Lagos is among the most dangerous cities in the world. This much is written in many Travel Guides to Africa that I have read myself. Sometimes in the bookshops, I read so much about Nigeria that I feared the shopkeepers could ask me to pay for the reading or buy a copy of those travel books. 

Who comes to Lagos or not may not be important to the Oba or to the governor. But I am sure that the economic fortune of Gambia is enhanced by the number of visitors she receives annually from abroad. With important towns like Badagry, Ikorodu, Epe and Lagos Island itself, I can imagine what Lagos state stands to gain supposing it chooses to be a tourist attraction center. There are several tourist hotspots wasting away in Lagos. The problem of security of lives is important to visitors from outside.

  

Apart from foreign workers who have no choice but to adapt to our system, it is difficult to imagine why other foreigners may come to Lagos. I found the answer to that puzzle recently. One more reason why some foreigners actually come to Lagos is to verify what they have read or heard about Lagos. They are curious and are in search of the real situation-the truth. I actually felt Lagos in the air when the sounds of Lagos came on recently on a radio programme here in Stockholm. Instantly, I visualized market and traffic scenes at Oshodi, Mushin, Yaba, Palmgroove, Onipanu, CMS, Bariga, Okokomaiko, Mile 2, Iyana Iba and Ojuelegba among other busy places in Lagos.

  

Some reporters from Sweden came to Lagos to see things for themselves and to interview a number of people. I think this is called investigative journalism. One man who was interviewed thanked God for saving his life in the several okada accidents that he had been involved in the last 5 years. He talked about many who have died and others who are still lying in the hospitals as a result of okada and other types of road accidents. Is anyone taking records of the souls that are lost daily in Lagos due to reckless driving with rickety molues, danfo buses, kabukabus and okadas as our undignified means of transportation?

  

In the radio report which as mentioned earlier is a corroboration of what I have read in travel books about Africa, Lagos was confirmed as the most dangerous city in the world. Visiting Lagos was part of the experiments that the reporters had to do. They must have been to other places before in their life time. Now, I may not be in a position to give a non-bias response to this assertion. I lived in Lagos all of my life time in Nigeria. I refused to study outside Lagos and I almost succeeded in serving in Lagos but I landed in nearby Ibadan for my youth service in 1995/96.

  

Trying not to be bias, in my own view, Lagos is indeed a dangerous city but I don’t know if it is the most dangerous in the world. People who have travelled round the world to seek the truth, like these reporters from Sweden, may probably have a fair opinion.  Afterall, what will reporters from Sweden benefit if they described Lagos as the most dangerous city even though we don’t have gun shops like New York? We have cult activities but they are yet to be described as massacres.

  

Indeed we don’t have gun shops, but has anyone read the descriptions of the guns and weapons that are used daily by armed robbers across Lagos? Some of the guns can be used under water! To what end will a common armed robber acquire such a sophisticated weapon? Are there treasuries or gold to be carted away from under the Lagos lagoon or bar beach?

  

In a recent article published in the Guardian Luke Onyekakeyah had written that “Lagos is the most disorderly city in the world” (LASG: Ban one way traffic in Lagos, The Guardian June 19 2007). That statement may be correct because in that article Luke who has visited more than 30 cities worldwide wrote extensively on the comparisons between Lagos and other cities in Africa and elsewhere.

  

I have not visited 30 cities yet but I have never in my life seen where people run to catch a danfo kind of bus and run to get off it. Once, a Ghanaian friend told me he landed in Lagos and was terrified to find out that there was a war going on in Nigeria. He was wrong, there was no war for real but he didn’t wait too long before he returned to his home country. Apparently, those were the days that Ghanaians have to visit some Nordic embassies in Lagos to get visas. This guy should not come to Lagos again; he could die of shock this time. Things have gone from bad to worse since that time.

  

In how many ways do we want to qualify dangerous before we can determine if truly Lagos is the most dangerous city in the world or not. Indeed, apart from deadly armed robberies which is present all over the country, Lagos transport is an accident on its own.

  

My dear Swedish reporters were dazed that Lagos has more than 11 million people when the entire Sweden, as big as it is, has only about 9 million people. The population of Lagos has outstripped the available dilapidating facilities even at the time that Lagos was still the capital of Nigeria. Urban town planners were definitely out of the picture as most parts of Lagos degenerated into absolute jungles.

In the name and spirit of patriotism, some of us will try to defend Lagos but we must not forget that we need to tell the truth so that policy makers can begin to see the need to do things the right way and take steps that will improve not just our international image, but the quality of the type of lives that we lead.  

Lagos is a nice place to live. I love Lagos and it is a city that I am proud of. But it would not be asking too much if we can make it a more organised and safer place.When I finally write my letter, it will be nice to see what the new governor of Lagos and the Oba can do about the embarrassing status of their common domain, our dearest Lagos.  

May the Glory of Nigeria come, soon! 

aderounmu@gmail.com