SENATE President David Bonaventure Achelenu Mark has become famous for his candour. He speaks so explicitly about the Nigerian condition that he easily forgets his place in it. Nobody would have clearly affirmed that Nigeria had become a laughing stock than Senator Mark.

What is the role of Senator Mark in Nigeria being a laughing stock? If the issue is security, Senator Mark has run a full course in it. He retired as a brigadier from the army. He was a member of the Abandoned Property Committee in Port Harcourt, a Military Governor of Niger State, former Minister of Communication, among other high profile appointments.

His 13-year-tenure in the Senate includes serving as Chairman of the Committee on Police. That Committee shares in today’s security flaws.

How is Nigeria a laughing stock? Is it only in terms of security? Why has Nigeria, literarily retarded in 13 years of unprecedented receipts from oil and gas sales with governments that only promise to make the country better?

Concerns about Nigeria should transcend words. Is Senator Mark not worried about travelling to Israel for medical attention, almost 52 years after Nigeria’s independence? What health policy under his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, could leave Nigeria in this morass, in 13 years of firm control of Nigeria’s resources?

Does he know the world laughs at our leaders going abroad for medical care? Is Senator Mark unaware that the National Hospital, Abuja, billed as a prime health facility, is unable to provide basic health services? Even Nigerians laugh at leaders who do not trust health services they provide for the people.

Sadder than these is the fact that the Federal Ministry of Health, contract-driven like most government agencies, would ignore malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, gonorrhea, river blindness, leprosy, polio to bother itself with a trauma centre, which the Minister of Health Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu is promoting as an excellent facility with a helicopter pad.

His concerns are not about non-functioning basic health centres. Professor Onyebuchi has fallen into the annoying routine of speechifying. Like Senator Mark, Onyebuchi thinks words will cure Nigeria’s health system of its non-performance, though it consumes billions of Naira annually.

To his credit, Senator Mark is right that Nigeria is a laughing stock – the leaders more so. When will Nigeria feed her people?  When will it provide electricity? Will her leaders ever send their children to public schools? Will Senator Mark, and his colleagues, contemplate patronising Nigeria’s public transport system?

Nigeria remains a laughing stock because its leaders do not believe that, “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government,” as Section 14 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution states.