By Bukar
Raheem
Those in search of irrational and disgraceful
justification of misconduct from Nigeria’s public officials should turn to
Ekiti state Governor Ayodele Fayose. His
vocabulary is always drenched in classic idiocy and lunatic ecstasy in support
of an unpopular cause.
Mid this year, Fayose would have wrestled to the
ground President Muhammedu Buhari, had he sighted him physically for having the
effrontery to place foreign travel restrictions on some Governors in Nigeria.
They were required to clear with the Department of State Security Service (DSS)
before embarking on foreign trips.
The directive incensed Fayose who uttered all manner
of horrendous condemnations of Buhari. He insisted by faulting such
restrictions as gross violations of the freedom of movement of Nigerians as
guaranteed in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria and referenced other laws Buhari
has contravened with the “obnoxious” directive.
He dared the President to apply such travel restrictions on him, as states
were not appendages of the Federal Government.
State Governors in Nigeria delight in
global-trotting. Since 1999, the trend has been ridiculously etched in the
psyche of state governors and their hordes of political appointees.
They feel incomplete without junketing to foreign
lands as soon as they assume office. In the last political dispensation, some
Governors, joined by a retinue of government appointees, acquire foreign
exchange and travel out to import specie of swine (pigs) or some kind of
grasses for animals in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (states).
That was when the economy was good and bubbling with
free money from the mini-oil boom. So, such extravagance, though painful, but
attracted less opposing noise. But Nigeria today is in dire economic crunch
which is causing sleepless nights to President Buhari.
But some
state governors, including those indebted to their workers over salary and
furiously borrowing loans have refused to discard this damaging idea. It has
kept gulping FOREX and draining the economy of their respective states.
The decent ones among them officially claim the
foreign trips are meant to source for foreign investors in sectors like power
energy, roads and water plants construction and acquire modern agricultural
techniques and equipment. But the world is in an age of ICT, where business
transactions involving billions of US Dollars can be sealed online within
hours, at no noticeable cost.
But also, some advance flimsy reasons for the
trips such as medical tourism, sight-seeing of Western countries when on annual
vacations; personal visits to family members
and friends or attending international conferences, but on themes which have no bearing whatsoever on
any development platform in their states.
It is this proclivity to baseless foreign trips that
compelled Plateau state Governor Simon Lalong
to mutate into a pastor to spend two-weeks in Brazil
to pray for Nigeria.
Presently, at least 13 incumbent Governors in
Nigeria have been identified as obsessed with global-trotting. And in some
cases, the Governors themselves fail to do as much as feigning an official or
unofficial reason for the foreign trips,
which are hugely funded with tax payers
money.
Governors Abdullahi
Ganduje of Kano state; the Owelle of Onitsha Rochas Okorocha of Imo
state; the unassuming Abdulaziz Yari
of Zamfara state; Ogun state’s Ibikunle
Amosun; Benue’s Samuel Ortom; Abubakar
Badaru of Jigawa state; Mallam Nasiru el-Rufai of Kaduna;
Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara; Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina ; Solomon
Lalong of Plateau; Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe; and
Nyesom Wike of Rivers have
leading irresistible attraction
to foreign trips.
Although, they are chief executives of different
states, the reasons often bandied to the public for such trips sometimes, rhyme
suspiciously and rarely do the reasons differ.
Peculiarly, almost all the Governors claim the
foreign trips are to woo or source for foreign investors. The unconvincing
tales also laughably speak of direct foreign investments in areas like Agro-business, automobiles,
industrial partnership, irrigation technology and farm equipment.
These Nigerian State Governors have favorite
destinations in Europe, Asia and African continents constantly on their menu of
countries to visit. Uppermost is the United States, China, Australia, United
Kingdom, South Africa, India, France, Israel, Canada, Lebanon, Singapore, Malaysia, Italy,
United Arab Emirate and Saudi
Arabia among others.
What is intriguing about the foreign trips is their
failure in virtually all the states, the Governors have refused to let go their
flair for global-trotting. Its nearly two years in the tenure of governors who
came on board in 2015 and despite their multiple foreign trips, none can
pinpoint to any foreign investor or any advantage the state has received from
such trips, outside lining their pockets with estacode allowances, catching fun
in foreign lands and shopping abroad.
When opponents in their states demand for dividends
of such trips, they only reply with words like “expecting it soon” and the
shamefaced ones simply prefer silence.
But these Governors cannot deceive Nigerians for
long. Anti-money laundering laws have
made it extremely difficult to launder stolen wealth, especially with the
agreements the Nigerian government has signed with foreign nations in the area
of co-operation. These trips provide them with diplomatic cover to ferry sleaze
money abroad, under the guise of sourcing for foreign investors and it is the
sole reason no public benefits have been derived from the visits.
But the state governors should not forget that the
spirit of their impoverished people, poorly developed states and rural
communities, coupled with the undeserved penury imposed on them would continue
to chokingly haunt them. Very many of the foreign expertise or technology they
claim to seek outside the shores of Nigeria can be obtained locally. What
irrigation scheme Governor Ibrahim Gaidam sought to create jobs for 40,000
youths that Agricultural Research Institutes in Nigeria cannot offer to him at
a modest cost that he went to acquire in China?
Nigerians cannot be taken for granted for a long
time and the level of consciousness of the people nowadays should induce
caution in leaders, rather than such reckless indulgence into official
profligacy. The time to have a re-think is now, before they are crushed by the
might of popular rejection by the masses.
Raheem writes
from Kaduna.
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