Benue State is no doubt one of the struggling federating units in the
entire body polity that is ravaged by mass poverty. But the State is
poor not necessarily because of lack trained manpower that could power
it to greater heights. No, Benue State carries a large baggage of bad
statistics in terms of development index essentially because of the
dearth of good leadership in its political space.
increasingly becoming clearer that Nigeria is under some kind of affliction or a vicious spell of leadership failures coupled with such a high percentage of gullible followers who knows next to nothing how to use their people’s power to obtain real change in the ways and manners that governance takes place.
Both at the macro and micro levels Nigeria’s brand of politics is abysmal. At the national level the newly sworn in President started on a very delicate and indeed unsatisfactory fashion by first and foremost depleting a quantum of cash paid as tax to the Nigerian federation by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company and these huge cash was redistributed to states which couldn’t pay salaries to their workforce for many months not due to lack of internally generated revenues or lack of federally redistributed revenues from the Federation Accounts to the federating units but due largely to grand corruption and theft of public cash by these state governors. Osun state for instance didn’t pay salaries for a year but the governor flies around in a jet purchased by that state. This is criminal misplacement of priority and one wonders why President Buhari would bailout these states whose governors have stolen their states blind. Still at the macro level, the President has made top level appointments into the sensitive defence sector but one region of the six dominated and that is the North from where the President comes. Nepotism has become a national pastime. At the micro level most states only exist to pay the overbloated but fraudulently inflated workforce salaries plus the high cost of running the offices of the state governors and their so called first ladies. The real program of manpower development and infrastructural transformation are no longer the immediate priority of these selfish and never-do-well governors. So sad!
Few days after the results of the governorship election became manifest and it happens that the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) defeated the incumbent Peoples Democratic Party in Benue State something of interest happened. The outgoing governor Mr. Gabriel Suswan announced to the media that he is ‘donating’ (note the word donation as if the money from which the vehicles were procured belongs to him) nearly one dozen assorted special utility vehicles to the then governor- elect (Mr Ortom) to in his word enable the transition team to run the less than a month programme of preparing handover notes to be properly anchored.
Some critics were alarmed that it was too early in the day for an incoming administration that professes change to capitulate to such bribery offer from an outgoing government it convinced the voters to punish electorally for its abysmal leadership failure in eight years. But these criticisms were rebuffed because both the giver of the different brands of vehicles and the recipient quickly rose to their defence of such a deceitful act of sharing state resources even before assuming office.
It was reported that the then governor elect said those vehicles reportedly ‘donated’ by Gabriel Suswan, the Governor (as he then was) were received because that is the tradition in every transition programme from an outgoing administration to the incoming one. Tried as they could, this explainable didn’t sell because clearly the entire scenarios appear apparently like some organised agenda to cheat the electorate of Benue State and to simply use some warped logic to confuse them.
But the newly inaugurated governor in Benue State has demonstrated his true colour as just one of those politicians who wouldn’t agree to change from being a set of self- seeking political office holders to the real servants of the people.
The very first action of borrowing hugely from the banks just to purchase vehicles again for his large cabinet and service their salaries and allowances and then salaries of less than 5 percent of the people who make up the workforce in the civil service again flies in the face of logic.
This atrocious and selfish act has indeed showed that in Nigeria it is Demoncrazy and not Democracy that we practice
Anyway, Benue’s political misfortune of possessing greater quantity of self -centred and greedy politicians is much the same with virtually the entire 36 States because it’s
increasingly becoming clearer that Nigeria is under some kind of affliction or a vicious spell of leadership failures coupled with such a high percentage of gullible followers who knows next to nothing how to use their people’s power to obtain real change in the ways and manners that governance takes place.
Both at the macro and micro levels Nigeria’s brand of politics is abysmal. At the national level the newly sworn in President started on a very delicate and indeed unsatisfactory fashion by first and foremost depleting a quantum of cash paid as tax to the Nigerian federation by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company and these huge cash was redistributed to states which couldn’t pay salaries to their workforce for many months not due to lack of internally generated revenues or lack of federally redistributed revenues from the Federation Accounts to the federating units but due largely to grand corruption and theft of public cash by these state governors. Osun state for instance didn’t pay salaries for a year but the governor flies around in a jet purchased by that state. This is criminal misplacement of priority and one wonders why President Buhari would bailout these states whose governors have stolen their states blind. Still at the macro level, the President has made top level appointments into the sensitive defence sector but one region of the six dominated and that is the North from where the President comes. Nepotism has become a national pastime. At the micro level most states only exist to pay the overbloated but fraudulently inflated workforce salaries plus the high cost of running the offices of the state governors and their so called first ladies. The real program of manpower development and infrastructural transformation are no longer the immediate priority of these selfish and never-do-well governors. So sad!
Few days after the results of the governorship election became manifest and it happens that the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) defeated the incumbent Peoples Democratic Party in Benue State something of interest happened. The outgoing governor Mr. Gabriel Suswan announced to the media that he is ‘donating’ (note the word donation as if the money from which the vehicles were procured belongs to him) nearly one dozen assorted special utility vehicles to the then governor- elect (Mr Ortom) to in his word enable the transition team to run the less than a month programme of preparing handover notes to be properly anchored.
Some critics were alarmed that it was too early in the day for an incoming administration that professes change to capitulate to such bribery offer from an outgoing government it convinced the voters to punish electorally for its abysmal leadership failure in eight years. But these criticisms were rebuffed because both the giver of the different brands of vehicles and the recipient quickly rose to their defence of such a deceitful act of sharing state resources even before assuming office.
It was reported that the then governor elect said those vehicles reportedly ‘donated’ by Gabriel Suswan, the Governor (as he then was) were received because that is the tradition in every transition programme from an outgoing administration to the incoming one. Tried as they could, this explainable didn’t sell because clearly the entire scenarios appear apparently like some organised agenda to cheat the electorate of Benue State and to simply use some warped logic to confuse them.
But the newly inaugurated governor in Benue State has demonstrated his true colour as just one of those politicians who wouldn’t agree to change from being a set of self- seeking political office holders to the real servants of the people.
The very first action of borrowing hugely from the banks just to purchase vehicles again for his large cabinet and service their salaries and allowances and then salaries of less than 5 percent of the people who make up the workforce in the civil service again flies in the face of logic.
This atrocious and selfish act has indeed showed that in Nigeria it is Demoncrazy and not Democracy that we practice
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