Monday, February 11, 2013

President Jonathan and Co! How do you guys sleep at night amidst the Crumbling infrastructures?

Africans overseas normally get irate when images of poverty stricken rural areas, animals, and woods (aka jungles) are used to portray all of Africa. These are standard images in the western media with the classic been the pictures of poor starving African children with flies on their faces and white “saviors” asking for a dime per day to feed them.  In the middle of our indignations we wonder why these so-called saviors do not show either the vicinities of the airports they landed at and/or the luxury resorts they stay in in-between TV shoots. But our desires to have Africa put its best foot out, belies the reality that we have a bunch of impotent, uncaring, and greedy rulers at the helms of governments throughout Africa, who are content to do little for the privileged few while the masses wither away.

Our grievances are misplaced and ignorance becomes bliss whereas we long for a day or setting to show the world the same playgrounds of the wealthy and scant middle income folks on the African continent. We ignore the life line of our countries such as our dilapidated basic amenities and infrastructures. For example, visitors to the local wing of the Murtala Mohamed Lagos Airport would be highly impressed with the edifice and international standards within, when the Port-Harcourt-Aba federal government express road remains a deathtrap of human making and/or neglect. Some get excited about the state of aviation that is used by less than 10% of Nigerians and Africans while our highways and railways the key to affordable transportation for 95% of individuals, businesses, and goods are eyesores.

President Jonathan of Nigeria and his band of yes-men have no qualms in seeking second terms and hedging their power when all the matrix indicate that poverty is on the rise and the benefits of economic growth is centered on the select few in our upper classes. Current Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday Orubebe is in the middle of a heated argument with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State about performance with government allocations. It should be noted that wiser men have built interstates, railroads, and engineered decades of economic development with lesser monies than Mr. Orubebe and Amaechi have in our public but unaccountable coffers. As they quibble we have young people who have graduated from universities and polytechnics with specialized degrees but are not employed because they lack 3-5years of working experiences and are part of the African underclass.

At least the governor and minister are challenging each other to stop the siphoning and theft of petroleum generated public revenues which are handed to them with insufficient oversights. In Abia State the people are forced to exist in what could best be described as series of manmade disasters. The Abia people have been subjected to inept leadership for close to a decade courtesy of Mr. T. A. Orji and Mr. Orji Kalu. In Port-Harcourt the problem is congestion and pollution but in Aba (Enyimba land) we are presented with a dump for a city. Refuse adorns the Abia axis of the Aba Port-Harcourt express road. In fact motorists have to switch to the opposite sides of the road with oncoming traffic, a situation that compounds those deathtraps that we call roads. This is done numerous times to seek a modicum of drivable freeways.

Irrespective of how our rulers are able to sleep through these glaring problems whether of their free will or through chemical dependency substances, we the people need to brainstorm and implement concrete solutions instead of getting distracted, bamboozled, and mislead by staged optics. Diaspora progressives like this writer take issue with the messages behind aid to Africa such as the Lawrence O’Donnell’s and UNICEF’s  K.I.N.D. program in Malawi and other NGO paradigms which reinforces the African dependency narratives, when we have the richest continent that attracts home based and outside exploiters. We would like for shows like MSNBC’s The Last Word, to investigate and find out why the Malawian President Joyce Banda and her cohorts who are multi-millionaires by all standards, cannot provide basic necessities like classroom chairs and desks for African children.

But the reality is that western media establishments do not owe us any favors.  We have to be the ones responsible for demanding the changes that have eluded us since the days of our independence. As Diasporan Africans we have to ask the critical questions about rulers like President Jonathan that have become dismal failures and his stooges such as Governor Amaechi and Minister Orubebe whose budgets are more than those of many African countries? We need to realize that our organizing and support of the Occupy Movements from abroad can only go so far. Changes can only come about in Africa when we are ready to move back and put our lives on the line. Alternatively, collective economic developmental changes would come about when our sisters and brothers in the continent actually get sick and tired of the status quo to the point of standing up for the fixing.           
     
References and Related Articles on Infrastructures

http://www.zimbio.com/Nigeria/articles/g0vyMBtph-A/2015+Fight+Between+Minister+Niger+Delta+Governor
http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/nvnews/90993/1/southern-nigerian-guidelines-sng.html
http://www.pointblanknews.com/Articles/artopn3657.html
                                 

Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist