SIR: The greatest problem confronting Nigeria is the leaders’ wrong perception of life, and failure to learn from what becomes of others after death. Almost all Nigeria’s leaders believe so much in primitive accumulation of wealth without ever realising that life is vanity.
Because of such wrong perception, Nigeria leaders embezzle billions meant to develop the country and due to this common practice, billions of dollars belonging to the country but siphoned and kept abroad by rapacious Nigeria’s leaders are continually lost to the western world as soon as their owners die sometimes suddenly.
For instance, a former governor of Balyesa State was said to have diverted millions of dollars belonging to his state abroad and was almost jailed for it if not that he cunningly escaped to Nigeria disguised as a woman.
The question now is whether since his death, those funds have been repatriated to his state or are still hanging abroad. His case is even just a tip of the iceberg as far as Nigeria’s money stacked abroad is concerned. Yet these are the same funds that are supposed to be deployed to building rapid infrastructure and build industries that can generate massive employment for the teeming unemployed youths who continually relocate to countries where they face so much hardship.
Nigeria’s leaders frequent foreign countries and see with their eyes how organised everything is but back home, they continually refuse to take the right steps by keeping both the education and health sectors in shambles because of their lip service and non-readiness to vote the required funds needed to ensure their smooth running while at the same time, they engage in frivolous spending on purely unnecessary and white elephant projects.
For instance, while the soldiers and police are without adequate and necessary equipment and weapons to tackle insecurity, massive funds are voted for renovations of buildings which hardly need such attention.
Again, while medical doctors and lecturers are continually on strikes owing to government’s repeated failure to respond to urgent requests, the government would rather increase its fleet of presidential jets and conduct elections that would not last more than a week or census that cannot last more than two weeks. Hundreds of billions of naira are voted, an amount that far exceed the funds that went to both education and health sectors in more than ten years!
Nigeria’s leaders never ever realise that the billions of funds appropriated to themselves would never serve their interest in the long run but would revert to someone else after a while and it is, therefore, better to use such funds for the country so that everyone can benefit from it. There are many people who are everywhere because of their stupendous wealth but after their demise, both their assets and names will go into oblivion.
If only Nigeria’s leaders would realise the incontrovertible fact that genuine service to humanity is the only enduring legacy any leader can leave behind. The current vice of embezzling funds meant for public development will never ever happen.
Jide Oyewusi is the coordinator of Ethics Watch International Nigeria.
