Nigeria Content Online

Massive planting of
vegetation in any country will surely contribute to mitigating global
warming. However, it is an impaired perception of reality to believe
that once planted, trees will thrive on their own, even when surrounded
by poor and landless people.

No reforestation
project in any part of Nigeria has been successful in the long term.
Naturally, I would be delighted if any state or local government in the
country could make me eat my words by producing a post-project impact
evaluation to prove the contrary.

Tree-planting
campaigns for all the huge sums tossed in that direction, have been
more symbolic than substantive in Nigeria. We have seen it time and
again (a dignitary plants a seedling in a community, then washes his
hands like Pontius Pilate and disappears in a hurry. Goats later do
justice to the plant.

Maybe our
politicians know it, but perhaps they don’t). Trees need an
environment, not only of soil nutrients and good weather to grow, but
also of economic opportunities for people that live in the vicinity. I
often look at the drainage map of Nigeria, and wonder why vegetation
growth should be a problem. Even the supposedly semi-arid North is
blessed with enough rivers, lakes and wetlands to drive agriculture and
other livelihoods. Sadly, it appears the pre-occupation of politicians
in that part of the world is the search for oil in the Chad basin.

If trees provide
vital ecosystem services such as: Carbon sequestration and regulation
of climate to all humankind, why is it always the poor that are called
upon to do the planting? Do the rich breathe other gases? When will we
see a reversal or merging of roles (the rich planting trees, and the
poor constructing houses to live in)? What happened to that radio and
TV jingle: housing for all by the year 2000, that we all believed in
during the 1990s? Ten years into the millennium, and many Nigerians
still have nowhere to sleep. Out of curiosity it would not be a bad
idea to know how many Nigerians own a house, or can afford to pay for
rented accommodation, and what percentage of the adult population that
is.

But what does a
tree mean to a Nigerian? Once a plant is not a so-called “cash” or
“food” crop, or used as medicine, it is easily converted into firewood,
or simply destroyed for fear that “useless” thickets could harbour
snakes and scorpions, rodents and insects or assist destructive locust
and quelea birds.

Some ancient groves
in the south of our country are either left intact or destroyed out of
fear that “evil spirits” could be lurking in them. Why must spirits be
evil in much of our mythology? With so much crime in Nigerian cities,
it makes one wonder why these “evil spirits” have not migrated to urban
centres from rural forests.

The north of
Nigeria by contrast is facing a serious crisis of vegetation loss, and
the more I drive around this portion of our country the more I think I
have strayed into the Sahara desert. In the absence of trees, the sun
is practically baking humans in their huts, and drying out soil
moisture outside, leaving a dust bowl of disease that the winds
circulate at a rapid rate in the atmosphere. So much dehydration is the
result, and doctors here are reporting more and more cases of kidney
stones incidence.

You would not wish your worst enemy to suffer from the pain of kidney stones!

It is back to the
politics once again after the much welcome break of romance and love
the past week. I thought to myself, what do I want in Lagos come May
2011. Sometimes, it is better to go to the market with your list in
hand so that you will not be swayed away by the sweet words of our
brothers from the East who have got the patent on making you feel good
as you depart with your hard earned cash. So back to my list and
hopefully the politicians will be reading or at least their staff or
friends. Let me start with the big guns before moving to my personal
favourites.

1. Power

Solve this and we
are on a fast track to becoming a global force to reckon with. It is
not only because constant power will be a life jacket to many start ups
that spend so much money on generated power in addition to P.H.C.N. but
the side effects of constant power will go a long way in treating other
issues. We all know that green is high on the agenda whether it is
planting trees or discussing climate change; our governor is all about
protecting and preserving nature but all his efforts would eventually
be checkmated by all the pollution caused by the toxic fumes being
emitted by generators. Then there is also the issue of noise pollution
and little by little Lagosians are going deaf. Have you noticed how we
are always shouting at each other just to get ourselves heard above the
din?

2. Water

By water I mean
access to clean potable drinking water. I remember when I used to live
in Abuja and the water we fetched from the tap or bought from the
Meruwa was good enough for drinking. Water is so essential for life’s
activities not just consumption and many families have to pay so much
from the little they earn for just a pail of water. One thing I would
propose is drinking fountains in all government owned public facilities
as well as schools.

3. Housing

This is a real
issue in Lagos that needs to be seriously addressed. There needs to be
affordable housing for not just the high, rich and mighty. And more
importantly, flexi-payment options not just the usual two years in
advance that most landlords demand of their tenants. While billions of
naira is being pumped into the choice parts of Lagos such as Banana
Island and Eko Atlantic City, we should not forget the other areas in
Lagos that need to be invested in especially those that are more prone
to flooding and erosion and those on the fringes like the water
communities. It is not good enough for the government to constantly be
patching up things and compensating people. Prevention they say is
better than cure.

4. Healthcare

I am really
getting tired and disillusioned with the whole doctors’ strike. It is
fast becoming the latest scarcity in town after petrol. Enough of the
dialogue, things need to be fixed as a matter of urgency as it is human
lives that are on the line here. How can we expect to become a mega
city if our human capital is dying off like flies because of inadequate
health care facilities and resources? My advice to the government, see
health care as a long term investment; if people are constantly sick,
how would they work and pay their taxes?

5. Transport

I want to see the
trains and I want to see them now. I want more work to be done on the
waterways. Traffic is another thing killing Lagosians slowly but
steadily. While we are working on improving existing infrastructure,
work needs to begin on developing newer and more technologically
advanced alternatives. I want to be able to go to the Island in one
piece and in peace without plotting a graph of my movement hours and
days in advance.

For the eighteen
days that the revolution in Egypt lasted before achieving its core
objective of ousting President Hosni Mubarak, Nigerians like the rest
of the world were glued to satellite television and the Internet to
monitor history unfold.

The traffic of
information from chat rooms of social media, media websites, and
Tweeter twits guided what satellite television aired and has been
acknowledged as contributing its fair share to the ousting of the
Mubarak administration. Many have solely credited this alliance with
Mubarak’s fall. Wael Ghonim, Google executive in Egypt, who was
detained during the uprising, lavishly proclaimed after: “If you want
to liberate a government, give them the Internet”.

While the jury is
still out debating the forces at play in the overthrow of the ancien
regime, we hold that the new media alliance helped to define the
struggle, but the courage to defy, confront, and resist provocative
acts of intimidation belongs to the Egyptian people. Put another way,
the Internet did not bring down Mubarak but it served as catalyst for
change.

The people of
Egypt, who employed social media tools to coordinate their resistance
and mobilise others, worked for the change. The existing conditions in
the polity, ranging from youth unemployment, to high cost of food, lack
of say in the affairs of their country, insensitivity of the privileged
class, and absence of hope in the near future were necessary
ingredients for the uprising.

Mubarak may have
been acclaimed in the West as the bastion of stability in the Middle
East, the dependable ally in the fight against international terrorism
and the containment of radical Islam, but domestically his policies
were not putting food on the table. The little that was available was
too expensive. His family and leading figures in his government
radiated opulence in the face of biting poverty. Faced with a future
that was anything but inspiring, the people snapped, propelled no doubt
by news of happenings in their part of the world, especially
neighbouring Tunisia.

Technology per se
does not cause uprisings; the drivers of the uprising and the contexts
in which they operate shape them and are in turn shaped by the
uprising. Over time the Egyptian media’s loss of credibility among the
people through its slavish support for the state had forced the youths
to rely more on mobile telephones and the Internet as alternate means
of sharing information on issues concerning their welfare. In its panic
response to the protest by shutting down the Internet, disabling sms on
mobile telephones, Mubarak’s regime only succeeded in strengthening a
bond that already existed.

Having succeeded in
occupying Tahrir Square as the fort of resistance the people were
unintentionally herded into a conspiracy of underground messaging and
rededication to their cause to overthrow Mubarak. This development also
gave the new media expanded influence.

The collaboration
by Google and Twitter in launching Speak to Tweet at this juncture
restored Egypt to cyberspace by allowing voice mails in Arabic to be
shared. That in turn propelled an outfit, Small World News to create a
site, Alive in Egypt, which translated the posts to English, thus
allowing further internationalisation of the resistance.

Every move the
Mubarak government then made was too little, too late: the xenophobic
card of blaming the protests on foreign interests; his agents’
molestation of journalists and protesters; the offer that neither he
nor his son, Gamal, touted as his heir apparent, would run for office
in September when his term was to end; his appointment of spy chief,
Omar Suleiman, as his first vice president in thirty years; the
increase of civil servants’ wages, and mandate to Suleiman to open
negotiations with the opposition.

The Egypt uprising
offers some lessons for Nigeria. It advertises the need for good
governance as the perfect insurance for stability. It tells that if we
can overcome our artificial divisions the people can make a lot of
difference to their fortunes. It informs us that a cohesive army
appeared to side with the people even as it gave its own a safe landing.

It also reminds us
that in our growing reliance on the new media our perspectives on the
Egypt crisis were shaped in the main from outside. Missing was the
decidedly Nigerian voice articulating Nigeria’s viewpoints in the
crisis. Except for the reportage of the commendable initiative of the
federal government in ferrying out of Egypt a thousand Nigerians out of
the 200, 000 resident there during the crisis, and an editorial in
NEXT, neither the federal government nor the mainstream media openly
brought a Nigerian perspective to bear on the crisis in the first
eighteen days.

No on the spot
reporting from any Nigerian news medium, yet Nigeria, Egypt, and South
Africa are the power bases in Africa. For a country that prides Africa
as the cornerstone of her foreign policy the reporting of the Egypt
uprising was a humbling reminder that ours is still a mute voice in
critical matters of international significance.

Former Australian
Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd recently told the Financial Times: “I
believe in politics for the two questions it asks of us. One is: ‘What
do you stand for and why?’ And the second is: ‘Do you know what you are
talking about?”

These are excellent questions to carry over into the Nigerian situation.

Think of Nuhu
Ribadu. What comes to mind is a man who came into public reckoning on
the strength of his fearlessness, and determination to rid Nigeria of
financial crime. Think Fola Adeola and Pat Utomi, and their impressive
resumes speak for them, evidence of a consistently-manifested genius
for visionary thinking, and for the management of people and resources.
Tunde Bakare brings “conviction”, “fearlessness” and “integrity” to
mind.

I think of Dele
Momodu and of a certain drive and eclectic ambition; a man who, once he
sets his eyes on a goal, will work to make it happen. Muhamadu Buhari
evokes frugality and (to borrow from Wole Soyinka) “dis’plin” –
qualities sorely needed in a country ravaged by lawlessness and
recklessness.

Now think of
Goodluck Jonathan, and what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s time to confess
my confusion. Has Mr. President done a great job of letting us know
what exactly he stands for, and to what extent he knows what he’s
talking about. I honestly can’t say for sure.

Maybe it’s simply a
personality issue. Mr. Jonathan does seem to be an introvert, which in
itself is not a bad thing. But I fear that he is not doing a good
enough job of asserting himself in the office he occupies. (Now, sadly,
this is one of those lines that I fear someone in one of the
anti-Jonathan camps will seize and proclaim on Facebook, for campaign
purposes).

Nigeria’s
challenges demand presidents with a certain verve, an awareness both of
the intimidating challenges they face, and the intimidating power they
wield to bring transformation.

Ribadu, Buhari,
Bakare, Adeola, Utomi, Momodu have all clearly demonstrated that verve,
that ambition, in one way or the other, even if it has sometimes played
out in flawed ways. I suspect that there are quite a number of
Nigerians frustrated by President Jonathan’s ten months thus far in
office – for one who came to the presidential palace by way of a most
unusual path, as an ‘outsider’ in a system dominated by complicated
tribal and cabal ties, there is too much same-old-same-old in this
presidency.

Come April we will
know if he’ll get a second chance or not. What is most important for
now is for him to realise that, unlike in 2007, or 2003, Nigerians now
have the kinds of alternatives we’ve dreamed about for long.

I think Nigerians
deserve to celebrate the fact that in theory Nigeria has perhaps never
had it this good in terms of choice of presidential palace material.
That Nuhu Ribadu, Fola Adeola, Tunde Bakare, Dele Momodu, and even Mr.
Jonathan himself (in the face of the tribal challenge by the so-called
‘Northern Elite’) can seriously aspire to be President or Vice
President, is a sign of how far we’ve come from, say, 1998, when Sani
Abacha was the only man “whom the cap fit.”

I think – or should
that be ‘hope’ – events of this election season, that have thrown up
this impressive array of candidates – constitute strong evidence that
Nigerians are ready to sing ‘Nunc Dimittis’ to our long-cherished
tradition of ‘anything goes’ in our political space. Everyone who
remembers how an ailing, uninterested Yar’Adua was arrogantly foisted
upon us in 2007 ought to weep again and again for this country.

It appears (alas
for now one can only say ‘appears’) to be dawning on Nigerians that
there is a connection between the ‘quality’ of those who roll around
town in lengthy, noisy convoys, and the ‘quality’ of life lived in the
country.

For too long, our
matches have been played by ball boys, whilst the ‘first eleven’ remain
seated on the bench, watching helplessly, sometimes even cheerleading.
Now, hopefully, a revolution beckons.

But I still have
one fear: that after the dust has settled, and April’s spoils of
victory have been shared, everyone who is not a winner will immediately
go to sleep beneath a “Wake me up in 2015” banner.

Surely no country
that is serious about its destiny treats its politics like a ‘Leap
Year’. In sensible countries, every day counts. Politicians are judged
not by the last-minute promises they manufacture, but by how they have
conducted themselves, in and out of power, since the last elections. In
Nigeria however, politicians – winners and losers alike – go to sleep
as soon as election results are out.

In the event that
the Ribadus and Adeolas and Bakares and Shekaraus and Momodus and
Utomis do not win come April, I do not expect them to return to
“personal life.” And if they do, Nigerians should not take them
seriously next time. Ribadu for example has a strong youth movement
that should seek, whether its candidate wins or not, to blossom into a
force as significant in Nigeria as the Tea Party is in America.

Hopefully no one thinks it’s too early to start talking about 2015.