By Josef Omorotionmwan
WE may really not have opted for the type of liberal knowledge that we all now possess. It is quite healthy that virtually every Nigerian is now an economist, an electrical engineer, a borehole expert, and so on – all in default, because those who are paid to provide services are not doing so.

We left these coasts for “greener pastures”, in the early 1970s and returned after a short sojourn of some ten years. On our return, it was right from the airport that some new vocabulary started flying into our ears: Jerry-can, generator, mosquito coil, and in latter years, borehole and mega watts dominated them all.

In other climes, some of these things are taken for granted. For some time we resorted to moving about with the dictionary to be able to relate to our people. And incidentally, the new words were properly entrenched in the dictionary. Jerry-can is defined as a large metal or plastic container used for carrying petrol/gas or water. The generator is defined as a machine for producing electricity….

In any part of Europe or the Americas, what business would anyone have for a jerry-can or a generator when water and electricity supplies are constant as a matter of right? In their life time, citizens there may never come across any of those words in theory and in practice.

If on a constant basis, you get home from work, at the touch of a button, light goes on and at the touch of that same button, light goes off, why would you need the dangerous and smelling machine called generator? The same goes for water and the jerry-can as well as electricity and mega watts.

In a mosquito free atmosphere, who needs the mosquito coil? And see how we are busy defacing and destabilising the beautiful earth surface with the so-called boreholes of every description. Every household has now become a water corporation unto itself.

And this scenario carries through every aspect of our daily lives. The greatest tragedy of them all is when the market woman is required to come and debate whether or not the Federal Government should go and steal abroad in the name of external borrowing. Ordinarily, certain facts remain constant: most viable projects elsewhere are based on borrowed money. Because of natural inflationary trend, it makes economic sense to borrow now and pay later. For instance, without the N7 million bond of that time, the defunct Bendel Development and Property Authority (BDPA) would never have developed Ugbowo, Ugbirikoko and Okwe-Asaba Housing Estates together with major expansion works to the Oregbeni and Igbudu Housing Estates. Today, those Estates are worth billions of Naira, far beyond what Edo State can now dream of investing on housing.

Again, there are thousands of people in Nigeria – at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other institutions – who are paid to regulate our economy, including banking and currency.

You may then ask, how does it become the business of the market woman to take over the regulation of those aspects of our lives? The answer is simple: the institutions have departed from their originally assigned roles. The Central Bank has since become a republic within a Republic and it has in the process, abandoned its duty post and has taken over the functions of the emergency management agencies.

President Goodluck Jonathan has just forwarded a request to the Senate to enable Nigeria borrow $7.90 billion (about N1.26 trillion) from sundry foreign sources to finance its budgets.

Nigerians have every reason to be skeptical about the request. They are very suspicious of this government. In fact, for every action the government now takes, the people always wish it was the opposite. For one thing, similar borrowings in the past only succeeded in killing our economy and enslaving the country and its citizens. The loans vamoosed into the private pockets of a few individuals.

Again, in her first coming as a technocrat, so-called, Dr. Ngozi Okojo-Iweala succeeded in removing the chains of the debt burdens from our neck when she reduced Nigeria’s external debt from $32 billion to $4 billion; and not without enunciating very powerfully, the dangers inherent in those external borrowings.

Now, the same Okonjo-Iweala is back but this time around, as a politician of the real PDP induction. Sadly, the same Okonjo-Iweala who removed the shackles of indebtedness from our neck a few years back is leading the economic team that is now taking all of us down the alley, back to the slaughter house of debt over-kill. Perhaps we are now seeing the real Nigerian. Not only is her motive dangerous, it is also one framed in dishonesty.

What are we really debating now? Experience has shown that debates of this nature are usually diversionary. While we were yet busy rejecting the IMF Loan in the market place, our   leaders of those days were busy taking the loan, ten times over, through the back door.

Knowing what Nigerians know now – nobody will open his eyes and ask a corrupt, profligate government to go and take foreign loans to be appropriated into the personal pockets of a few individuals. In the main, decisions are taken as a fait accompli – you take it or leave it. Who says the loans have not been taken long before the request is now being made?

In good conscience, they should learn to leave us out of this dubious attempt to put Nigeria in the reverse gear of mortgaging our future generations. Even in a placid environment like ours, nothing still lasts for ever. Certainly, nemesis will come but when, we know not.