WHY did our Honourable Minister for Power, Works and Housing agree to take up that portfolio when it ought to have been obvious to him that the job would be too onerous for any one individual, given our present realities?

Even if in consideration of his competence, Mr. President had decided to give him such wide responsibility, forthrightness alone ought to have compelled Fashola to have politely explained to Mr. President that Power alone, being unarguably our biggest challenge in this country, requires two ministers and should not be collapsed into the hybridised ministry Fashola is now constrained to grapple with.

What has the Tourism Development Corporation of Nigeria  been up to? What is its one single achievement since it was created? Has it even been able to attract a single additional tourist to justify its very existence? Surely is this not one of our myriad agencies which merely exist to waste government funds with nothing to show in terms of delivering on their mandate? We once had a certain Otumba Runsewe, whom I only remember now for defending Moses Adamu over a bribery scandal at FIFA. Then we had a certain Ms Mbanefo whose only claim to distinction is probably the fact that she incongruously insists on a headgear fashioned from the Nigerian flag in a manner suggesting an affinity for fashion-riotousness. What sort of people are these who regularly seem to get into public office and come out with hardly anything to show for their stewardship?

How come the Tourism Development Corporation does not seek to standardise food taste, variety, hygiene and pricing in Nigerian restaurants such that tourists are impressed at our food repertoire as the Giant of Africa? Has it ever occurred to any official at this corporation that there should be a minimum standard in hotels as to rooms, toilets, showers, etc? What in the world does this corporation even do?

While our erudite Attorney General has been threatening to jail judges – as if he has the power to do so – has it occurred to my very distinguished and learned senior colleague that our blessed judges are constrained to labour in court houses that are complete pigsties? How can an Attorney General sit pretty when officials as noble as judges are constrained to dispense justice in environments approximating to poultry pens? How come all manner of political office holders have a retinue of aides while judges cannot avail themselves of the support of similar assistants?

Is the Attorney General not alarmed by the grotesque lawlessness of political office holders who break the law and demand to be applauded for doing so? How come governments across the country embark on demolition of so-called illegal structures without recourse to court? It is my submission that in law, no structure can be demolished without a court order. How come Governors regularly demolish buildings in which kidnap victims were housed without the suspects having been convicted? Suppose the court later discharges and acquits the suspect, what then happens to his demolished property? How can it even be necessary to demolish any house in an under-housed country in the first place? Why not simply take the property into temporary forfeiture until the determination of the case? How does an Attorney General stand by while all manner of government officials keep breaking the law, left, right and centre all across the nation?

The cluelessness in governance is simply alarming. Does someone like Nnamdi Kanu ever need to be arrested in the first place? You only need to listen to the young man to realise he is probably someone you should be escorting to a doctor for counseling rather than someone anyone with good sense should ahound into jail! This was an individual who only a fringe  of South-easterners were listening to, lapping up his utterly ridiculous fantasies of his utopic Biafra to which he had hitched scores of Niger Deltan and Middle Beltan tribes who have absolutely no interest in ever becoming Biafrans. I mean, I am a Nigerian from Niger Delta and if ever I stopped being a Nigerian, I would simply remain a Niger Deltan – certainly not become a Biafran! Why would I? Yet some trigger happy fellow at the DSS got the idea that it was imperative to nab an inconsequential person like Kanu and  ended up making an international hero of him! How to run a country!

We can do without the army of trigger-happy persons crowding the corridors of power and our dear President would do very well for us and his government to distance himself from this rabble of clueless unproductive men and women who seem to have been unable to render him any commendable degree of assistance thus far. We direly need some creativity in governance and we must have it soon or God help us all in this country.

Mr. Jesutega Onokpasa, a lawyer, wrote from Sapele, Delta State.