BY REV. FR. GERALD NWAFOR
I am not disappointed with the verdict of the judiciary on the presidential election because the opposite could have been the greatest surprise of the 21st century. Imagine the judiciary saying that the election was massively rigged and should be re-conducted. Who will set up the reconducting machinery? Tinubu.
Who will do the rigging then? Tinubu. Who will announce the result? Tinubu, and it will be an easy knockout for the present government and cohorts. Therefore, let us take the pronouncement of the corrupt judiciary as we know them today because what they did now will come back to hunt them tomorrow.
On the other hand, imagine if they announced that the winner of the election was Atiku Abubakar of PDP. The southern Nigeria will go up in flames because of the dichotomy between the south and the west. Although we agreed that Tinubu is not doing well, I do not see the southeast, south south, and southwest supporting a northerner after eight years of Buhari.
It would be a hard pill to swallow for the Southerners. The third option would be to announce that Peter Obi won the election and should be sworn in immediately. This option would delight many Nigerians, even the author of this article, but we should also be reasonable and sincere to ourselves.
The ruling class, or the political class as we know them today, has not obeyed any court ruling since 2015. Do you think they would obey the court? Your guess is as good as mine. The country would be in the same situation as we were on June 12th, 1993, which was chaos and anarchy.Therefore, let us start from home. The local government chairperson of the eastern states should tell us how much they received from the government (state or federal). They should show us what project it was used for and where the money is used for “trader money”; we should be able to know who and who received it and know what type of business they are involved in.
If it is for agriculture, we can pin down what it was used for. Not unknown famers and unknown traders because this unknown can become unknown gunmen. We do not need the federal government to do most of these things we are clamoring for. The commissioners should enumerate on television what they do with the money assigned to their ministries. People should be able to go to the hospitals and see for themselves the structure and the equipment bought by the commissioner. When Peter Obi was the governor of Anambra State, Nigeria was not anything better than what it is now, but the people of Anambra were able to say that Peter was doing well because they were able to point to one or more projects done by the governor. Nobody knew Jonathan wasn’t that good because Peter was doing excellently well.
We wanted a taste of the presidency, but Nigeria is not good enough for a good man like Peter, so God said no this time, but we do not know what will come tomorrow. We should now look internally in our state to justify the use of the money we get from the government.The citizens of eastern Nigeria should do their part, too.
I would not like to discuss taxes because it is when you see the handiwork of the government that you would readily pay taxes to help. I would say that utility bills should be paid promptly, to help the government to supply power and water. The last time I saw piped water in my state was in 1983; that is 40 years ago in Onitsha.
I have not seen a government water supply since then. I have traveled around the current Anambra state since it was created from the old Anambra and Enugu in 1991, and I have not seen a government-funded water supply. Rather, it was boreholes by individuals in every nook and cranny of the state. The water bill we paid to the government in the 80s was not used by the government to sustain the system because of the massive corruption. You pay for the water, but the tap does not produce water. Is it not fraud? The painful aspect now is the electricity bill that would gulp the whole income of a civil servant, and still no light would show up.
No wonder some people in a town beat up the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) people who came to cut the wires on the electric pole in the name that they did not pay their electric bill. When you pay 30,000 Naira for electricity, and there is no light for the month, the NEPA people come to cut your electric wire in the name of punitive measures.
What do you call that? It is suicide. The villagers came out with knives, clubs, and machetes, ready to deal with the electric workers. Thanks to God that the workers have a career in sprinting, too. If not, the casualties would have been many. So let us start from our home first.Finally, I have read about the naming of Anambra Airport and all the complaints and commendations.
I would suggest that the government should build the infrastructure first and go away and allow the citizens to name the infrastructure. All these naming wahala distracts the government from the real work. The roads are being washed away by the rain, and people are fighting over whose name should be on the airport.
I have flown into many airports around the globe, and I did not remember the names of the people at the airport. Some of the names would be scrapped when just people came into power in Nigeria. Some of the names are people who committed genocide during the civil war in Nigeria, and some are known thieves and corrupt officials in the corridors of power, so we should not bother about the names for now. Let the government do the needful first by giving the easterners the dividend of democracy starting from the home front.
