Our Girls; Adeyanju; AU; corruption; thugs

Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released.

Who is DejiAdeyanju? Google him. Is it true that he is held by an arm of the authorities for 50 days? Can this happen to a human rights activist in 2019 with elections this weekend?

Our research economists need to get to grips with the need to assess and publicise the cost of corruption in Nigeria. Have you ever thought about the road corruption in Nigeria and its cost in the loss of billions of hours and damage to millions of lives on a daily basis?

A very simple case study follows…. In 1976 the short-lived but at the time visionary Lagos-Ibadan Expressway brought Lagos closer to Ibadan, just one hour instead of the Sagamu nightmare or having to go through Abeokuta. But it did not last because the road was, through a moral and monetary corruption, allowed to quickly collapse structurally through criminally negligent and prosecutable zero maintenance practices even though huge sums were being raked in from tolls on the users of the deteriorating road.  All this conspired to force traffic jams and new increased time separation of Lagos from Ibadan to 3-12 agonising hours.

 It took five hours to get to Lagos last Sunday afternoon!!! Corruption driven roads collapse destroying the private and work lives of citizens. Hundreds of kilometres of road, initially corruptly poorly built and corruptly certified by consulting engineers under the thumb of thieving politicians believed to be demanding 30-70% of the contract sums for ‘party purposes’ as good have caused a nationwide collapse of the road network during the last 30 years. Every year we hear of budgets to redo these corruption-driven rubbish roads. No heads ever roll for signing off these badly constructed substandard roads. Just more billions down the drain. Shamefully Nigeria seems permanently retrogressive.

 The political class has largely led us backwards or in reverse.  The longest lasting roads are those built in the 50s and 60s. We had railways in the 50 and 60s. I was travelling from Ibadan to Zaria in 1969 for NUGA games by train and Lagos-Ibadan in 45minutes on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Not now. Those roads and railways built in the 70s and beyond just have not lasted because of political myopia, over centralisation, anti-democracy policies and base corruption of political heart and mind.  You know the Romans built roads adding to them annually and they have lasted 2000 years. Nigeria takes forever to build any small rubbish road and spends forever before rehabilitation of the same road just like with its refineries.  The cancer of corruption is in money, maintenance and execution of projects and policies. Meanwhile we rot on the Lagos-Ibadan road, not expressway so long overdue for delivery.  Google China- Pakistan Road to see real roads.

President Al Sissiof Egypt takes over the African Union chairmanship. This AU Summit seeks cooperation across the board in health care, economic development and progress. NEPAD is changing its name to African Union Development Agency along with other reforms. The AU Free Trade Agreement is moving forward without Nigeria. The AU is seeking increases in education and health budgets to meet UN guidelines of 15% for health and 26% for education to stem the tide of displacement, economic migration and lift millions out of poverty. Did Buhari or Osinbajo attend on behalf of Nigeria or were they on the campaign trail? Charity begins at home, I suppose.

If you kill someone directly or allow or encourage anyone under your control to kill someone, then you are a murderer and the sentence for murder is life in prison or death. If you kill someone to take political advantages or political power in your village, community or nationally, you are not only a murderer entitled to a death penalty or life imprisonment, but you are also a coup plotter. You are murdering to divert the course of democracy and change the government against the will of the people-a coup by any definition. The punishment for coup plotting is prison or death. Violence, intimidation and bribery are also part of punishable efforts to divert the course of the democratic process -a coup.  The crime of murder is not diluted because it is done in the name of politics. The dead remain dead. The injured remain injured. An orphan status is permanent and made easier because it is the result of political murder.

Many politicians have been seen with thugs and many citizens have already suffered at their hands. Thugs recruited to divert the course of democracy often become politicians themselves.  Any politician with thugs deserves to be disqualified in a modern ‘free and fair’ electoral process in Nigeria@2019.  Unfortunately idle youth have a job of begging at events and during the political cycle. If not given free money, which some politicians have to steal from the public purse to give to thugs and run campaigns, the thugs quickly resort to rowdiness and the destruction of nearby infrastructure and destabilise the democratic process.

A free and fair and violence free election is not a Nigerian impossibility but a political developmental necessity. It happened before. You must help. Do not encourage thugs, murder, violence, intimidation and please Vote ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES this Saturday February 16-SDG 16.