by Eze
Eluchie,
Some have
asked: why the Worst of Nigeria Awards?; Why not just stop at acknowledging the
goods? Why highlight the bad? The answer is quite obvious: as much as it is
important for societal advancement to showcase positives who contributed
towards moving society forward, it is also vital to identify the negatives
whose existence, actions and or inactions has kept our society in the
backwaters we now find ourselves.
Ideally, the
Justice sector of a territory will ensure that these negatives are identified
and adequately penalized. Where the Justice sector is compromised as in the
case of Nigeria and unable to play its role, alternate means of highlighting
negatives becomes imperative. Failure of any society to precisely pinpoint
these negatives may result in wrong role models being foisted on society with
the calamitous implications for society.
In the case
of Nigeria, a geographic entity abundantly endowed with natural and human
resources, these negatives have cumulatively caused the country to be the poverty
capital of the world, a significant drawback to the attainment of continental
and global benchmarks in human, economic and developmental sectors and a
debilitating burden to its citizens.
The
foregoing founds the necessity for the Worst of Nigeria Awards.
Worst Corporate Entity.
There can be
no worse brigandage unleashed on residents/citizens of any particular territory
than unregulated and unstructured capitalism. The people are left at the whims
and caprice of shylocks that are in no way different fro armed hoodlums.
From
Financial Services entities which give loans at double-digit rates that can
only be serviced if the recipient thereof is involved in illicit drugs and human
trafficking businesses or other like high return-on-Investment escapades; loans
which lead to the collapse and penury of any legit entrepreneur who dares
access the baits they dangle in the name of financial facilities; to contrived
conglomerates whose major source of income was, is and will always be
surreptitiously and or illicitly obtained ‘Import Duty Waivers’, Tax Concessions
and monopolies over essential goods – actions which cumulatively serve to
ensure the demise of genuine entrepreneurial spirit amongst the populace. The
Nigerian corporate sector is dominated by entities that in saner climes, would
have long exchanged designer suits for Government Issued jumpers used in
penitentiaries.
One
organization stood out in Year 2018 for its added efforts to make life miserable
for Nigerians. Having acquired monopolies over an essential service from a most
opaque ‘privatization’ process, these entities proceeded to increase tariffs at
will without any commensurate improvement in services; resorting often times to
the use of publicly-financed armed law enforcement personnel (usually the
Police Force) to recover what is basically private corporate ‘debts’.
Despite a
keen contest with the Dangote Group, the winner of the Year 2018 Worst Corporate Entity Award are the various Electricity Distribution
Companies (DISCOs), which operate under the aegis of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED).
The Worst State Governor/Agency
Exploring
glaring loopholes in the Nigerian Constitution, virtually all the Governors of
Nigeria’s 36 States have personalized governance in their respective States, making
it imperative to ascribe failures or successes recorded in all agencies of
State Government to the person and abilities of the State Governors. Having
successfully extinguished what ought to be the 3rd strata of
governance in Nigeria, the Local Government Councils’, these State Governors
proceeded to collapse all checks and balances and means of control of executive
excesses inbuilt in the Constitution. The State Houses of Assembly, and in some
instances even the Judiciary, became mere appendages of the Governor.
With State
Governors acquiring the status of demi-gods, using the entire finances of the
State as their personal piggy-banks, appointing and sacking whosoever at their
pleasure, the reality of a failed State manifests. The above unwholesome
situation is one of the root causes of why the Nigerian State is in the sorry
state it finds itself whilst the rest of the world keeps on forging ahead.
There
certainly were many nominees to choose from for this category of Awards. From
the Governor of Kano State, Mr. Abdulahi Ganduje, who was caught on video
pocketing hundreds of thousands of US Dollars in slush funds; to the character
in Akwa Ibom State, Emanuel Udom, who paid his personal Attorneys’ directly from
the State treasury for his personal legal issues; to Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna
State who had the temerity to tell the world that he had paid monies to
foreigners who were killing the citizens of his state to ‘prevent’ a
continuation of such killings – likely contenders were aplenty.
The winner
in this dubious category combines all the negatives imaginable: Fraud, Financial
recklessness and profligacy, criminal conversion of public and private
chattels, disrespect and outright disobedience of the Judiciary and Court
Orders, and adds novel negatives such as: clownishness, and perhaps a tint of mental
instability (in his very own words). A serial winner in this category, having
won it for the past three consecutive years, one can only but imagine the pain
of the peoples who have suffered under the rulership of this character have had
to endure. To spice up the pain, the Worst Governor for 2018 desperately sought
to, and is still expending State resources thereon, to impose his neophyte
son-in-law as his successor. Mr. Rochas
Okorocha, Governor of Imo State in South East Nigeria, retains the odious
title of the Worst Governor for Year 2018.
The Worst Federal Minister/Agency.
Ranging from
a Science and Technology minister who, s incredibly as it sounds, had upon
assumption of duty in 2015 set for himself and his ministry the dense target of
‘manufacturing Pencils’ (yes, ere pencils, the stuff kids in kindergarten write
with) – a target which he yet failed to attain; to a Minister of Defence who is
presiding over the worst routing of a conventional army by a gang of renegade
terrorists in modern history; to a Minister of Information and Culture who seem
to have obtained an international patent of Lies and Deception; to a Minister of
Power, Works and Housing who has neither provided Power, Works nor Houses for
Nigeria’s teeming population; the current dispensation in Nigeria does not lack
unfit and improper characters to bequeath the Award as the Worst Minister for 2018.
There are however
agencies of the Federal Government, who by virtue of the responsibilities
bestowed upon and actions expected of them, and their woeful inability to
deliver have served to ensure Nigeria’s unenviable position as the ‘Poverty
Capital’ of the world and a most investor unfriendly destination. Two of these
agencies stand out: Firstly, the Central Bank of Nigeria with its voodoo style
of Monetary and Fiscal regulations of the financial services sector, a corrupt
system of multiple foreign currency exchange rates (which creates spurious
wealth for cronies of government, ONLY), and continuing failure to rein in
brigands masquerading as Bankers who daily cause the ruination of legitimate
entrepreneurs – directly leading to deepening unemployment and rise in crime
rates. And, secondly, the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), gifted to one of the
ring leaders in the BringBackOurGirls gang {a pedestal through which the
current regime came into office}. The NPA in the course of the past one year,
by the vile failure to open up alternate ports to the ones in the Lagos area,
has elevated itself into a gigantean bottleneck in the Nigerian economy,
causing massive and globally unprecedented gridlocks in the life-wire of the
Nigerian State, in the process short changing and impoverishing the State and
its population.
A close
context amongst failures, by reason of its ore direct and devious negative impact
on the State, the Central Bank of
Nigeria is the winner of the 2018
Worst Federal Minister/Agency Awards.
The Worst Nigerian
Officially a
Federation of constituent States, Nigeria is in reality a unitary contraption
where the Federal Government is by means of its enormous powers typified by its
absolute control of the Law Enforcement, Revenue Generation, mineral Resources,
Internal and External Security and Rail and Air transportation mechanisms, the
sole authority over all and sundry in Nigeria.
By the
defects in its structure, the posterity, stability and economic viability of
Nigeria swings with the persona of the person occupying the office of President
of the Federal Republic. Where the occupant of this exalted Office has wisdom,
the dependence on the individual nuances is minimized and the semblance of a modern
State is projected. Where however, as in the present instance, the Office is
occupied by an intellectually challenged, constitutionally unqualified, ex-military
dictator who has over the years exhibited traits of ethno-religious bigotry,
the worst can indeed be expected – and the worst has anifested.
The Nigerian
President has seized any and every opportunity he has had in his foreign
junkets to de-market Nigeria. From referring to Nigerian youths as ‘Lazy’ – an untruth
that serves as a disincentive to foreign investors; to affirming that Nigerians
are fantastically corrupt – equally an untruth when placed in the global context
and compared with other havens of corruption such as the United Kingdom (where
the unfortunate comments were made), Switzerland, et al; and his recent comments
in Poland where he directly raised the question whether Nigeria was being ruled
by an impostor.
A whooping
failure in his self-enumerated focal areas of security and tackling corruption,
retired general Muhammadu Buhari,
the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, retains the award of the
Worst Nigeria for 2018.
Picture: The Worst of
Nigeria Awards Trophy
