Connect with us

Democracy & Governance

State of the Nation: Rodents in the Vaults! -By Richard Odusanya

Published

on

Richard Odusanya

I stumbled on a few words of E.B White of “The rat has no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctious, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything”.

His words stirred a concern in my heart about our dear nation Nigeria. The quotation got me thinking and caught my attention deeply that I couldn’t get my mind off the words therein.

As usual, I retired into my deep mood of sober reflection as messages keep ringing in my brain from this quotation. And in my deep moment of thoughts and further studies of rodents, I discovered that with the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate except Homo Sapiens habitually destroy members of their own species.

Advertisement

The characteristics of the Nigerian leadership from inception, October 1st 1960 precisely, symbolize the destructive tendency of the rodents. We have but political leaders with no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of kindness,no high feeling, no friendliness, and no nothing.

They are like a squirrel that not much goes on its mind than the thought of food, which is termed “the squirrel brain”. The average squirrel cognation goes something like “I wonder what there is to eat next”!.

From 1960 till date, we have got rodents in our seats of power except for less than around five percent (5%) that we could refer to as god-sent. The other ninety-five percent (95%) have been rodents, locusts and vagabonds in power.

Advertisement

History has been so kind to us to keep in the achieve a detailed account of our system of governance from the precolonial era till date.

I can categorically state here that our ancestors lived a meaningful life with the political system they put in place. With all honesty, the colonial era is even better than what the postcolonial era has taken us through.

The naira was introduced on 1st January, 1973 to replace the Nigeria pound at a rate of 2 naira to 1 pound. Today, the pound sterling exchanges for nothing less than NG540; all thanks to the rodents that we have had in power since 1960. A dollar to naira exchange rate was 65k to $1 in 1973.

Advertisement

Travelling abroad then was to acquire the white man’s education and not for survival and self induced slavery that our irresponsible leaders have conditioned us to now.

Since the rodents(our indigenous leaders) took over the affairs of governance in Nigeria, our condition, in all ramifications, has been a dive towards a bottomless ditch.

We were a proud host of a textile industry in Kaduna just immediately after independence in 1960, which employed about one million Nigerians with reasonable pay. In the 1970s, textiles were produced in Nigeria not only for our domestic consumption but also for export throughout West Africa. It was on record that 50% of the textile supply in West Africa in the 1970s was from Nigeria.

Advertisement

In the 1980s, the largest private employer in the country was the textile industry. In 1987, a report by the United Nations University (UNU) made it known that there were 37 textile firms in Nigeria operating 716,000 spindles and 17,541 looms.

Today, the textile industry is near extinction in the country with little or no relevance to the economy. Rodents and locusts do not show their hosts mercy; thanks to the rodents in power that have made Nigerians “professional bend down select class”.

Every year, nothing less than 60,000 vehicles are imported into Nigeria,and around 85% of these vehicles have passed their economic life span and are not meant to be used on the Nigerian roads as they relatively consume more fuels and emit harmful air pollutants.

Advertisement

Besides, Nigerians spend nothing less than $8bn (2.4tn) on cars importation annually; a leakage that could have been curbed and used to boost our economy if the rodents in power had conscience and high feelings for the people and the land.

During the oil boom in the 70s, developed countries through partnership with the Nigerian government and issuing of license of operation and control policy, established six (6) “Automobile assembly plants” namely Peugeot Automobile Nigeria Limited (PAN) in Kaduna in 1975, Volkswagen of Nigeria Limited ( VWON) in Lagos in 1978, Anambra Motor Manufacturing Limited (ANAMMCO) in, Emene, Enugu in1980, Steyr Nigeria Limited Bauchi, National Truck Manufacturers (NTM) in Kano Fiat Production and Leyland Nigeria Limited (LNL) in Ibadan between 1970 and 1980.

These six (6) plants brought development very fast into the country with expansive job opportunities. As I put my pen on paper at the moment, there is no trace of any of these car assembly plants in Nigeria. We cannot but thank the rodents in power since 1960 for killing every of these assets with their indecency and gluttonic attitude with which all our developmental assets have been destroyed.

Advertisement

The situation has so much degenerated that Nigerians hardly see new cars on the roads. And when they manage to buy second hand cars; economic liabilities, they find their ways to their religious centres for thanksgiving. We cannot thank the vagabond we have in power enough for subjecting us to ridicule and mental torture before the rest of the world. Why would the “trumpy Trump” not have the guts to call our land “a shit hole”?!

Agriculture has its place in the history of the nation, and this is the sole reason for which the green colour in our flag has been retained. At independence, the contribution of agriculture to the GDP of Nigeria was about 60%.

As a result of the oil boom of the 70s, agriculture took a downward trend, and the situation now is so terrible that we cannot feed ourselves as a nation let alone export to other countries. In fact, we now depend on countries with soil and climatic conditions not as good as ours for food. What a life! Rodents do not think of tomorrow; whatever they touch or hold a grip of gets destroyed.

Advertisement

It is difficult protecting assets against rodents. No matter how safe you think you are or how much precaution you take, rodents would always find a way in. The rodents in charge of our affairs have destroyed all the assets that made our nation a giant in the leagues of nations. As typical of rodents, they keep destroying and rendering the nation useless before the rest of the world by the day.

The new trend is now “borrow to embezzle”; an act which is designed to subject the nation to perpetual penury and slavery. The mansions built for rodents in the Nigerian vault is appalling.

Nigeria’s total public debt stock rose continuously from NG 8.32tn in September, 2013 to NG 22.7tn in March, 2017. As at September 2020, the Nigerian debt has hit NG 31tn under the “Chief Rodent” with a debt service of NG 1.2tn in the first half of 2020.The high debt made the World Bank (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned the country of the economic consequences of such huge debt.

Advertisement

The Nigerian “Debt Management office” also warned that Nigeria’s high debt service to revenue ratio could trigger debt crisis. Our “Madam Kemi”, the then Finance Minister described the situation as “emotive issue” and made a strong and persuasive case for more foreign loans to ramp up the country’s stock of infrastructure. Today, “madam” is back to the UK.

In January 2016, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, cautioned Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to refrain from portraying herself as a patriot of this nation. To him, it was an erroneous impression that she rendered a selfless service to Nigeria since her salaries and allowances were paid in dollars; someone that was employed to make our naira stronger and more valuable did not even believe that the “naira” would be of any use internationally, despite the judgement of the court of appeal declaring the payment illegal and unconstitutional.

Under her watch, $20bn dollars grew wings and flew into individual’s pockets instead of the federation’s account. The then CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, that blew the alarm was forced out of the office through conspiracy of the power that be.

Advertisement

Today, “Madam Okonjo-Iweala” is a citizen of United States of America; a country she rendered our naira useless against her dollar. No wonder she was rewarded with world bank’s chief executive officer. One thing that can be so sure about rodents is that they flee when collapse is imminent.

Rodents lack morals and are shameless. If not, how would a country that owns ten(10) presidential jets publicly declare her intention to borrow from a country with two(2) presidential jets?!

They borrow into the Nigerian vaults where they reside with their gluttonic appetite to consume all borrowed funds.

Advertisement

The Obasanjo regime led this country into the sales of her assets to their allies. Nigerians groan under a monthly crazy estimated electricity bills without anyone to the rescue of the helpless masses.

The NIN on which Nigerians are being subjected to unnecessary stress, now, gulped nothing less than $40bn from the nation’s account. The “National Identity Card” that was cancelled was awarded to Sagem and a local contractor in the first quarter of 2001 at the cost of $214m with additional local content of NG 30bn; Rodents are guillotines -They do not stop until all is consumed and destroyed.

The resources that have been wasted in Nigeria in the last two decades transformed “Dubai” into a haven and placed her in the category of respectable countries in the world. No wonder a Dubai prince once said that Nigeria had all that they did not have but that they had good “leadership” that Nigeria lacked.

Advertisement

The nonsense the rodents, we have here, could show for the huge wealth that has accrued into the coffers of the nation in the past years are $16bn fraudulent power project, $1.2bn fraudulent Paris club debt payments, NG 6bn cassava bread scam, wasted billions of dollars on their disgraceful refurbished railway project among others.

A land flowing with milk and honey is now a laughing stock at the international level, both in the face of the weak and the strong; what a heartbreaking situation created by the rodentious leaders in charge of our political, economic and religious affairs.

Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution; import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked! Mongooses did kill the rats. But, mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cat , dogs and small children.

Advertisement

There have been report of mongooses attacking motor bikes, power lawn, mowers, golf carts, and James Michener.

In Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there were rats.Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. However, Hawaii determined that such would never happen again.

In the case of Nigeria, there was no trading but transformation. Our political rodents have grown so big that they are now transforming into mongooses right inside the vaults housing our treasure. If we do not tackle them seriously with “rodenticide” now, they would consume us all in no distant time.

Advertisement

“THERE CANNOT BE A BETTER TIME THAN NOW TO WIPE OFF ALL THE POLITICAL RODENTS FROM OUR SYSTEM!” MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA!!

Odusanya is the convener of AFRICA COVENANT RESCUE INITIATIVE ACRI

 

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Facebook

Trending Articles