By Josef Omorotinmwan

MORE than 51 years after its nominal independence, Nigeria is still where it has always been. Do you want to ruin your appetite?

Then, why not attempt carrying Nigeria’s problems on your head? The wiser ones have long learned to leave Nigeria’s load at the shoulder level, so that if it got too heavy, they could just throw it away.

It is becoming increasingly easier to convince even the most patriotic that Nigeria is not worth dying for. Just kill one American anywhere in the world and see if Uncle Sam will not pursue you into the hole. But in Nigeria, the progressive pogrom where people die daily like poisoned rats does not mean a thing.

See all the needless deaths that we are bringing on ourselves in all parts of our country. The atrocities of the Boko Haram sect have even become sources of entertainment on television. We do not care any more about the massive corruption going on everywhere.

One good reason why people can no longer fight corruption is that everyone is engaged in it. It has become endemic and perhaps a good way of life. It could even be a blessing that nobody cares any more because all previous interventions have ended up aggravating the situation.

Some of us cried our voices hoarse when the so-called Constituency Projects were being initiated. Nobody listened. In the 2010 appropriations, when our President was perhaps yet sleeping, they went ahead to pump money into scattered projects across the country.

He woke up midstream, during the 2011 appropriations, to the awareness that those projects were no longer worth their salt. They must be discontinued! No one remembered that billions of Naira had been sunk into kick-starting the projects and they were all abandoned in the manner of the DFRRI enterprises of those years. Even where you have now come to the true realisation that those projects were not what you thought they were, having started them, would it not have been better to still put in some money to save your original investment?

This past week, two major entries came into our world of infamy: Our hard working Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, showed that he would be the candidate to beat in the race for the Emirship of Kano when the appropriate time arrives.

He hauled a whopping sum of N100 million to assist his kinsmen who have been victims of recent bomb blasts in that ancient metropolis.

Two, the senators are back on their beat. By the time we shall be reading this piece, they must have taken delivery of their N1.8 billion brand new jeeps.

As they say, the point at which people shout about corruption is before they see it. When people come face to face with corruption, they will probably embrace it. So at the level of the poor columnist, you can even go on the rooftops and shout corruption. Who cares?

If we may ask, from where did the CBN Governor get the N100 million, which he hauled to Kano? Are there no longer limits to how much single individuals can spend in government? Apparently, the Central Bank of Nigeria has become a bigger republic in the smaller Republic of Nigeria.

In that bigger republic, the entire Sections 80-82 of our 1999 Constitution, which deal essentially with Powers and Control over Public Funds, have been totally obviated. The role of the National Assembly in appropriating public funds is now nonsense.

Even granting that the CBN Governor has the power to turn himself to the Governor of our Emergency Relief Organisation, why is he starting from Kano, when it is not in any doubt that more people have died and more property destroyed in other places before now? And why is he giving them the paltry sum of N100 million, when he should have thrown N100 billion into that offering bag and the noise we are now making would not have been any louder? This is certainly another rumble in the jungle. Just do it and damn the consequences. That’s all!

A few years back, this same Governor single-handedly decided which banks were dead or alive and how much was needed to bail out the ailing ones. He then proceeded to print the billions he needed for that enterprise. As happened then, a few tongues will wag in the next few months and the rest will be swept under any available carpet.

Nigeria is increasingly looking like a con game, where all those who would have reported the crime are part of it. Who should now point our senators to order, when, in fact, they are the only ones who know what is happening at the Presidency? Before embarking on the escapade for the 2011 model Toyota Land Cruiser that will cost the tax payer just N1.8 billion, could it as well be that they are playing catch-up with their colleagues in the Executive branch? Why worry?

For all we know, progressive governments the world over no longer give official cars to legislators as handouts. As soon as you are coming in, they give you loan to buy any car of your choice and the loan must be fully repaid within your tenure.

Quite frankly, we would not recognise N1.8 billion if we met it walking on the street but in terms of functionality, we are aware that it can fix many of the bad roads in some parts of this country. And that’s what this nation now ruled by ad hoc committees is sending down the toilet in a single flush.