Sometimes, one gets tired of being sad and despondent. This week, I feel this way and I have therefore refused to get into any of the many things that hold us down in Nigeria. I will just try to breathe and live and pretend that all is well. I have decided to temporarily overlook the acts of our peaty government in a beleaguered country. Sometimes, the laughter by the lunatic is not just out of the sickness; he also gets amused. So, this week, I refuse to be sad and despondent about Nigeria.
That is why I will not bother myself with the Delta State/James Onanefe Ibori money controversy. Let the Federal Government as represented by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN) deal with the matter. After all, the needless controversy was said to have been conceived, nurtured and delivered by our AGF (SAN). To many people in the country who have been arguing back and forth, I have nothing to say other than to submit that Malami, the Federal Government and Delta State government are like the robin which they say draws the rain oblivious that it has no shelter.
Please, also let me stay away from the current petrol pricing confusion. Petrol pump price is the newest celebrity in town which has taken over the stage, and taken the sail off the cruise of I-Money (Ibori Money). I-loot is not even as popular as Ojota on Twitter by Friday morning. I will not write anything because I am just as tired and confused as the Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources. I remember we have a substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources. Nigeria also has a Minister of State for Petroleum Resources. I will not talk until either of the ministers addresses the issues and put the agencies under the ministry, such as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) in their right places. And to think that we thought our Minister of Petroleum should have been more powerful than or, at least as powerful as Dr Rilwanu Lukman…
After the kidnap of students in Kagara, Niger State, we cried insecurity! Then the response we got was a sequel to Kagara in Jangebe, Zamfara State. Jangebe was a girls’ school and the outcry, even from bodies like UNICEF, led to the assurance we got from no less a personality than President Muhammadu Buhari that Jangebe would be the last. But now we have had Kaduna to add to the list. Thus, the promise and assurance that Jangebe would be the last has quickly gone the way of other promises of this government – up in smoke, like diffusion. Like I said, I don’t want to get worried, it’s just that I have children who would like to go to school like those that were kidnapped by bandits who are intractable to the government but hobnob with a religious leader. Right now, Niger State has closed all public secondary schools. I cannot shout!
Let me also not enter into a controversy I do not really understand because of my instincts, which are telling me that the reports that tend to pit the COVID-19 vaccine by Astra Zeneca with others is a game which referee is dollars and pounds. I don’t want to say naira and kobo because the negative news about the AstraZeneca vaccine came from Europe and Australia and not Nigeria. However, I only hope and pray that there are no fears in our high places and altars about the doses already administered, because of those on which they were administered. Let me mind my business because those who received shots of the vaccine in England, on Friday, claimed that contrary to the reports, there was nothing to worry about and that if you have allergies, you should simply tell your physician before you get the jab. But efforts of AstraZeneca are on the way to a quandary.
There is nothing to say about the daily deceitful inventions and novel ways to keep Nigerians’ eyes and thoughts from the many worrying assaults on the foundation of the country. The insecurity that dangerously gnaws at Nigeria’s unity and the arrogance with which it is being handled are worrisome, but there are some things to look at with hope. Somehow, there is a silver lining in a bill before the House of Representatives, brought by the member representing Irepo/Oorelope/Olorunsogo Federal Constituency of Oyo State, Mr. Olumide Abiodun Ojerinde. The bill for a law to establish Federal Medical Centre, Igboho, is such that, when passed and facility built, it would fill a yawning gap in the all-important health sector of Oyo State.
One of the disturbing signs of a neglected past is the fact that about 13 local government areas in Oyo State do not have what the people of the areas refer to as ‘any kind of federal presence’. The long years of yearning by the people for a change in this have been ignored. Olumide Ojerinde’s efforts would, therefore, sincerely bridge a huge gap because there is no such health facility in the entire Oke Ogun area of Oyo State. Oyo North district, the second largest in Nigeria, would have been a cynosure if the Federal Government had followed through with the Okere Gorge Dam project. Nigerians know that the Ajaokuta Steel Works in now Kogi State and the Okere Gorge Dam in Oyo State are two of the country’s most notable white elephants. Sadly enough, we as a people are not worried about such monumental statistics in wastage.
It is hoped that with a Federal Medical Centre in Igboho, headquarters of Oorelope Local Government Area of Oyo State, a geographical entity that connects the entire 13 local governments within Oyo North senatorial district, a real problem of the people would be addressed beyond the rhetoric Nigerians have been fooled by for so long.
But, again, I have plugged myself into the siddon look mode which Chief Bola Ige activated and energised when he got tired of everything Nigeria. If people like Chief Ige were still around today, and with the kind of news Nigerians are receiving from the country’s very seat of power, he might have changed his siddon look attitude to something that suits the current misnormer.
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