By Douglas Anele

When I read that each of the mostly President Goodluck Jonathan’s handpicked delegates to the national conference going on in Abuja right now will collect N12million at the end of their three-month meeting, I was outraged. My reaction was based on the following considerations. First, as a very senior academic in one of the best universities in Nigeria, my emolument in a year after sundry deductions at source is less than N4million.

Therefore, it is annoying and unfair that a government which refuses to remunerate university teachers adequately can afford to pay selected prominent Nigerians three times that amount in three months for just discussing their fatherland. Again, the minimum wage at present is a paltry N18,000. Several states of the federation are paying their employees something less than that, and some had had to retrench in order to pay. Hence, it looks like Jonathan’s government is indirectly robbing the poor to settle the rich.

The list of delegates contains a sizeable percentage of retired soldiers and expired politicians who, through senseless corruption and indiscipline, contributed to the sordid socio-economic state of affairs in the country right now. What is the sense in rewarding some of the very people responsible for our arrested development millions of naira for doing nothing?

At any rate, why is the federal and state government willing to waste over N10 billion to host a mere a discussion fiesta, when previous conferences had been egregious waste of time and resources? What is the rationale for paying a select group of Nigerians N12million each for “serving” their country, most of who already have posh houses in Abuja or can comfortably pay the bills charged by any hotel of their choice? Did President Jonathan and the vicious cabal ruling Nigeria think deeply before coming up with the idea of a national conference as the answer to the vexed national question?

The way I see it, the current exercise, like the previous ones before it, is an unreasonable waste of money, based on a simplistic assumption that mere discussion without radical change in the immature attitude of the ruling class to public service will solve our problems. Thus, even if the conference comes up with a geopolitical arrangement more viable than what we have now, it still requires men and women of vision, integrity and commitment to our national interests to make it work.

There is no good reason why Nigerians should have high hopes and expectations from the conference, because over the years members of the ruling elite, instead of working for the people, have been preoccupied with preserving the status quo for their own selfish interests, with sharing and eating the “national cake” to satisfy their bulimic appetite. They are not interested in baking enough of it that can get to the poor as well.

That is why, according to media reports, some delegates consider the monthly honorarium of N4million insufficient. This shows that for such people the conference is a moneymaking venture. Tunde Bakare and Olisa Agbakoba have rejected the money on principle. Their stance is commendable; it demonstrates that some Nigerians can rise above the temptation of easy money from a spendthrift government. That said, I think President Jonathan is insensitive to the feelings of poorly paid Nigerians who are toiling daily to eke out a living.

Of course, there are men and women of substance and integrity among the conferees. But what can they really achieve in the midst of carpetbaggers and Machiavellian opportunists for whom the conference is a golden opportunity to resurrect whatever is left of their drooping political relevance? Most probably, the well-considered opinions of the likes of Prof. Anya O. Anya, Femi Falana, Olisa Agbakoba and others will be swallowed up by the cacophonous voices of incendiary ethnic jingoists desperate to promote ethnic agenda to the detriment of other Nigerians.

The national conference is another instantiation of financial rascality by the ruling elite, which was inaugurated by the Tafawa Balewa-led government of 1960 to 1966, baptised by military dictators from 1967 until 1999, and canonised between 1999 to 2010 by Obasanjo and Yar’Adua. Now, I wonder why well-respected Nigerians who ought to be sceptical whenever government comes up with phantom conferences eagerly participate in the charade.

Are they idle and, therefore, looking for avenues to wile away time and make some money simultaneously? How many conferences are sufficient to convince people that Nigeria’s problems cannot be solved by a collection of ageing men and women handpicked by government in the twilight of their productive years?

Nigerians must begin a serious interrogation of themselves to discover what has immunised or inoculated them from feeling moral indignation and outrage towards wanton wastage of public resources by government officials. Our people must find out why they do not feel sufficiently enraged to creatively and resolutely challenge government and compel it to manage the country’s resources with circumspection and creative imagination, rather than with irritating prodigality.

This brings us to the unfortunate reports of missing funds, which is a mind numbing leitmotiv in Jonathan’s administration. Now, it seems that top officials of government mismanage our resources like people suffering from Aggravated Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), that is, drastically impaired capacity to manage huge financial resources intelligently in the collective interest of the masses.

The totally unnecessary purchase of new Presidential jets, and some documented cases of misapplication and criminal misappropriation of funds by some ministers prove beyond dispute that something is definitely wrong with the mindset of our leaders. In our opinion, they do not have the required degree of critical intelligence and willpower to spend public funds with circumspection.

In the early stage of his Presidency, many Nigerians, despite vitriolic criticisms from Tam David-West and others, believed that President Jonathan deserved benefit of the doubt, that he might still surprise his traducers by performing above expectation. It must be admitted that there is some marginal improvement in infrastructure, food production and foreign affairs since Goodluck Jonathan assumed power.

However, in the critical area of fighting corruption and elimination of financial rascality and indiscipline in government, his administration has failed. The President seems to lack moral stamina and steadfastness to tackle corruption, beginning with himself and impressing it on his lieutenants that wasteful spending will not be tolerated. But it would be unfair to blame him alone for the mess. Members of the National Assembly are even guiltier, since they have the constitutional powers to check impunity in all its ramifications by the executive branch and eliminate inherent anomalies in the system that foster extreme profligacy in government spending.

All the same, it is regrettable that a man who confessed to have experienced extreme poverty would, when the complex dialectics of life gave him a wonderful opportunity to improve the excruciating condition of the poor and powerless is now behaving precisely like the oppressors whose pathological greed nourished and spread the conditions favourable for poverty nationwide.

President Jonathan might be scheming for a second term of office in 2015 and he could succeed. After all, the so-called opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), is both in substance and in ideological stance a mutant of the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Thus, APC is not a genuine alternative to the PDP. Still, if he continues mishandling the country’s resources, he will be remembered as a failed leader who presided over one of the most corruption-friendly government in Nigeria. No sensible person would want to be associated with such a damning verdict. CONCLUDED