Connect with us

Political Issues

You Vote For Trash, You Will Get Wheelbarrows -By Jeff Okoroafor

Published

on

IMG 20170519 115730

The wheelbarrows distributed to the youths of Benue State by the Governor Ortom’s government

 

Democracy-at-work thesis is a term promulgated by political scholars. It simply means that the people collectively and democratically decide who their leader or leaders will be. Hence, the leaders at any given point in time are the ones that the people themselves chose.
This thesis goes further to retain a valid argument which by my definition means that if the people at some point realize that they made a mistake and the leader(s) that they so gleefully chose, happen to turn out to be of no good, incompetent or incapable of fulfilling promises made, then the people have the sole responsibility to remove those bad leaders from office. In a situation where the people fail over and over again to do so, then they are at fault because they will get the kind of government that they deserve. This, is where the citizens of Nigeria finds themselves since independence.

Incompetence, lack of vision, out of touch with 21st century realities, and village mentality may be demonstrated in many ways, some more evident than others. In 2015 when Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State hinted the SMEDAN Director-General who paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja, about partnering with them to economically empower the youths, I didn’t know that buying wheelbarrows for the youths of Benue State was at the top of his agenda.

The picture of “Governor Ortom For You” branded wheelbarrows have gone viral. According to a media aide of the Governor, the gesture was to make the youths self-reliant and self-employed instead of going around looking for non-existent white collar jobs. To further justify the wheelbarrow empowerment scheme, a government official in the state submitted that the move by the Governor came because Benue is a state known for farming and the governor decided to provide youths with wheelbarrows to help in carrying their produce from their farmlands. Let’s entertain this narrative for a moment and ask these simple questions – how many farmers in Benue state understands the technical know-how on mechanized system of farming? How many of them have an idea of how to enhance their seedlings to make them yield faster and healthier crops? How many of these farmers receive weekly or monthly training from the government on how to plant, when to plant, when to harvest, how to harvest and how to identify ready market for their produce?

Advertisement

Ortom has claimed no knowledge of the wheelbarrow empowerment scheme, that his consent was not sought and he did not give approval for anyone to inscribe his name on the said wheelbarrow. But let’s look deep into Governor Ortom’s administration and what he has done for the youths of Benue State. The major policy thrust of Ortom’s administration according to his one year in office speech are:

i. Good governance and revenue security;

ii. Agricultural-Driven Industrialization;

Advertisement

iii. Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM)-Based Education and Health Services;

iv. Investment in critical infrastructure; and

v. Promoting gender equality and empowering women, youth, sports, and persons with disabilities.

Advertisement

How many of these policies are visible in Benue state today? The National Bureau Of Statistics in 2010, said in Benue, that more than one out of every three persons is poor, more than one out of every four persons of working age is unemployed and went ahead to rate the state the 8th poorest in Nigeria. These stats remain the same today and all Ortom could do to get young citizens of Benue state off the poverty tarmac is a wheelbarrow empowerment scheme. How wicked, disastrous and shameful?!

One cannot but hold the youths responsible for this shallow-minded, ignorant and wicked (mis)leaders because if you vote for trash, what you get will not be too far away from a wheelbarrow. This madness is not unique to Ortom and his government alone, some months back, Senator Shehu Sani empowered the people (youths inclusive) of Kaduna state with transistor radios. And in 2016 Governor Masari of Katsina State bought 3,000 coffins for his people and also distributed goats as an empowerment programme. How can one explain that in 2017, when leaders of other nations are colonizing Mars, talking about STEM education, Artificial Intelligence, Space technologies, nuclear technologies etc our leaders are still trapped in the uncivilized days of homo-erectus.

Governance in Nigeria is a tragic joke and unless all Nigerians take the demand for good governance seriously, they will continue to get wheelbarrows, goats and coffins as an empowerment programme.

Advertisement

I rest my case.

 

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Facebook

Trending Articles