OPINION: They are burning down this house [2]

DEPENDING on who you ask,between threeand four million Nigerians accounted for internally displaced persons in this country as at the end of 2022. There are conflicts in many parts of the country ranging from sectarian and terrorists’ insurgencies in the north east region; terrorism on farmers by armed Fulani herders in the north central region which the All Progressives Congress [APC] regime of Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari [2015-2023] hoodwinked susceptible Nigerians and the uncriticalmass media to label as farmers-herders clashes; kidnapping for ransom in the north west region; self determinationand separatist agitations marked by state-sponsored violence and then Igbo-on-Igbo killing spree in the south east region; violent, deadly and bloody cult wars and incipient kidnappings in the relatively sane south west region, to the industrial scale, brazen and serial crude oil thefts in the south south region.

But in spite of the foregoing, Nigeria is not officially and formally at war. So it may not be out of place to say that Nigeria, despite the crises highlighted above has been at peace for well over 50 years since the end of the Biafra-Nigeria civil war in January 1970. Notwithstanding that we have been at peace for 50 years and counting, yet each and every ranking on human development index places our country side-by-side with war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC], Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria, among other such places. The ruling political elite with their collaborators [they do not qualify to be called elite by the way, have ensured that the Nigerian carnage remained a recurring decimal in national narratives. We have become inured to the issue of the about four million internally displaced persons [IDPs] so much so that we now merely treat them as statistics without any formal and structured plans with timelines onhow to return those traumatized citizens to their ancestral homes.

We remember IDPs during elections. Some of our politicians even visit some of the camps for the displaced persons and offer them material and monetary gifts. For some the visits provide backdrops for photo opportunities. The aspirants to elective offices make them lofty promises of resettlement once elected.Other politicians do not even bother. As far as those ones are concerned, the IDPs do not matter-they don’t exist. However, the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission [INEC] finds a way every election seasonto set up polling units and boothsin those camps. The IDPs are wooed to vote and when the winners emerge, the ‘refugees’ are forgotten. Not quite, really. They are not forgotten, they are only moved to the next column of their usefulness to the ruling elite. The IDPs become, without their knowledge, consent, approval and contribution, veritable lines and subheads in national budget proposals. Bureaucrats in the ministry of humanitarian affairs and disaster management insert billions of Naira for the welfare of the IDPs. The Presidency and other relevant ministries, departments and parastatals take the battle cry to international humanitarian and donor agencies for support. Usually these offshore agencies oblige in the believe that the IDPs will be the beneficiaries of their goodwill. Otu avu n’ezi. Not true.

Like insecurity, the IDP camps have become a huge and profitable industry for bureaucrats. As is the case with the security agencies including the armed forces, the bureaucrats in charge of the IDP camps do not bother that they are living off blood money. Officials of the international donor agencies are often just marginally better than their local counterpartsin their rapciousness. Studies have shown that about 60% of funds from donor agencies are expended to maintain the international staff deployed to superintend the application of donor funds. In the security arena, a ranking national securityofficial said recently in whispers that the Nigerian armed forces do not really know the location of Sambisa Forest in Borno state. This forest has been touted in the last 20 years of insurgency in the north east as the operational base of the Boko Haram, Isis, Ansaru, Iswap and other terrorist groups troubling Nigeria. Yet every year our defence budgets keep ballooning. The ruling elite are having a ball while the house burns. The greater blight of the wickedness of our rulers is in the area of education.

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About 20 million of our children of school age are reported to be out of school. Year on-year the figure keeps increasing and our conscience is not pricked. With minimal education as we have now our country is so troubled. So we can only imagine what will becomeof a country where a generation of her children will not have the benefit of any formal education. How will they cope in a world that would have fully transited from information, communication and technology [ICT]erato Artificial Intelligence [AI] with its attendant positives and negatives.

This has nothing to do with prayers or confessing negatively as our Christian brethren are wont to say. The truth is that Nigeria’s ruling elite are actively planting time bombs that will destroy whatever is left of the rubble of the house they are burning down today. It has been said that the best way to destroy a nation is to introduce virus into its educational system. The virus of out of school children is something we introduced ourselves. But that is not our only problem. UNICEF advocates for a budgetary allocation of not less than 20% for education for countries such as ours. In 24 years budget allocationto education at the federal level each year has averaged seven percent. It’s often worse in the states. And the result is starring us in the face. Teachers are grossly inadequately remunerated and motivated. Many go into teaching when everything else fails. Some teachers are hawkers at the same time to make ends meet. Viral videos abound on the dilapidated buildings passing off as schoolblocks in all parts of the country. Some pupils and students study under tree shades not because they are being taught nature studies. Some classroom blocks have blown off roofs; many are without desks and blackboards; while others grapple with waterlogged classrooms and flooded school compounds. In rare cases where the schools are functional, they are beset by other problems. For instance, in many parts of the south east since August 2021, Monday has been forfeited as the first day of the school week to sit-at-home compelled by the Indigenous People of Biafra [IPOB]. Last August schools resumed by 12 noon for some weeks when IPOB imposed a 6a.m-12noon curfew for three days of each week. It did not matter if the students had external examinations to sit for. In the north east and north west it was a different problem.

Parentsroutinely withdraw their children from schools in the wake of the abductions of pupils/students for ransom by kidnappers. Leah Sharibu has remained in captivity since February 2018 after she was plucked from the Government Girls Science and Technical School in Dapchi, Yobe state, along with 109 students. Others have since been freed. Many of the Chibok, Borno state school girls who were abducted on April 14, 2014 have remained unaccounted for, nine years on. The tragedy is that for the ruling elite it is business as usual. For them it is ‘nothing mega’ or no cause for alarm. They have continued to fund their hedonistic lifestyle at the expense of the citizens. They have no qualms borrowing offshore money to buy themselves foreign made Sport Utility Vehicles [SUVs] to the neglect of local manufacturers, remodel their officialand private mansions with billions of Naira, order for and take delivery of a presidential yacht without appropriation and earmark billions of Naira for the Presidency and the office of the first lady which is unknown to any laws of the land. All these and more absurdities in the midst of a huge national debt, cost of living crisis and Nigeria consolidating on it repugnant status as the poverty capital of the world. The ruling elite are hollowing out the country, and it may not be too long before something gives. Let’s hope and pray it will not be cataclysmic. And mark the end of Nigeria as we now know it. But prayers alone will no longer suffice. *Concluded.

AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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