Nigerians like to talk! -By Sesugh Akume

Chukwuma Soludo, then governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2005 said 70% of Nigerian university graduates were functional illiterates. It was such a scandal then. The quality and standard of education had been increasingly dropping, no doubt, and so was the quality of graduates, but no one was prepared for this shocker. That was noted, yes, so what was done about it?

Fourteen years on, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) director-general, Shuaibu Ibrahim, an army brigadier-general, has revealed that Nigeria has corps members, graduates who, not only can they not read, don’t know all the letters of the English alphabet! I don’t think it can ever get worse than this. I knew this a decade ago when the head of a federal agency in a state told me that he had corps members in his office who knew virtually nothing. That one day he had a wager with one to write all the letters of the English alphabet in both small and capital letters and he could have his entire salary for that month. The corps member didn’t take it, not that he didn’t want to, he could not write the letters. His boss said he already knew he couldn’t that’s why he did what he did. Nobody did anything about it.

If not only for purposes of blowing hot air as usual, it’s getting to 6 weeks since the NYSC DG made the revelation along with (very empty) threats. In another decade, someone else will come with their own revelation. And the talking will continue. Weren’t the DG only being talkative as we always do, what became of the corps members who failed such basic tests? It’s obvious that something underhand took place. The schools that mobilised them for NYSC are liable and have questions to answer, so do the corps members themselves. What happened with confirming whether their documents are forged? If it is confirmed that they aren’t, what happened to getting the schools to answer for vouching for such graduates as their products? What happened to making the corps members face the force of the law; as well as naming and placing those schools on temporary suspension until they satisfactorily prove that they have taken care of their internal issues that make it possible for them to certify stark illiterates? Talk, talk, talk. And more talk.

The earliest reported incidence of xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa, as I can recollect, was in 1997. They never stopped. Ten years later, Lucky Dube, possibly South Africa’s greatest music ambassador, was murdered, mistaken to be Nigerian. Today, 22 years on we are still talking the same xenophobia, blowing hot air, going in cycles and achieving nothing. Buhari pretended he wasn’t aware of this most recent wave of nonstop coordinated attacks on Nigerians until the outcry became too loud. He sent a so-called special envoy to South Africa whose journey was to take 2 days to arrive there. I wonder whether he was going by camel. There was no sense of mission or urgency at all. There, he delivered a tepid message to Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, spent two days and returned without as much as seeing the Nigerian community in South Africa at all. This alone explains where their minds are, certainly, not with the people, the victims. It never was.

Ramaphosa in turn sent his own envoy to repeat the usual platitudes about what Nigeria did for them during the apartheid era, and so forth, and why xenophobia stands condemned, but the public officials who keep inciting the public, stirring xenophobia in the hearts of South Africans are cozy, sitting pretty in their offices whilst Ramaphosa is saying another thing. If he wasn’t in support, his actions would have shown, not his words. So, for now, the matter is closed as our compatriots are killed daily, till the next organised attacks make the headlines again in a decade, then we will react and do what we do best, talk!

Between 2011 and 2014, Nigeria lost 60.2 million barrels of oil to thieves. What happened? This year, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that between January and June alone, 20 million barrels were stolen and there are chances that more than twice that amount would be stolen by the end of the year. For a proper perspective, 20 million barrels of crude oil stolen in 6 months is more than 109 thousand barrels stolen per day. This is more than what 60% of oil producing countries produce daily, as only 42 of 97 oil producing countries produce above this amount daily. That’s a billion US dollars worth of crude oil stolen in 6 months with more to come. So what happened beyond talking?

Stealing a hundred thousand barrels of crude oil daily is not something you claim to shut the borders about. This isn’t what small-time players can afford, or where people steal here and there and it adds up to that quantity. The Buhari regime won’t plug up those loopholes, it doesn’t care to save the billions of dollars frittering away on a daily basis, it’d rather increase taxes from value added tax (VAT) to all other manner of taxes. It won’t cut down the cost of governance. Wicked and unreasonable people punishing an already impoverished populace. You know why? They already know Nigerians inside out, they know and are sure that all we can do is talk!

There is no single issue, hardly anything whatsoever, today that can make Nigerians to first, agree on an internal issue unanimously. Nothing can, presently, make Nigerians take responsibility and not just talk, shift blames, bring divisions, make excuses, and then move on. In Hong Kong, for instance, they have been on the streets over an issue, every Saturday for 16 weeks, millions of them, just like the French Yellow Vests. Nothing whatsoever, can make 1,000 Nigerians take a committed stand on any issue. Absolutely nothing (save, perhaps, if it pertains to religion and religious activity.) In Nigeria, once we convince ourselves that it doesn’t affect us directly in the immediate, we feel we are spared, however things turn out, life goes on. What we don’t realise is, in Hong Kong or instance, the people are well off. For example, their minimum wage is more than 300 thousand naira equivalent. Minimum wage, for everybody. Not the phantom 30 thousand naira they keep talking about in Nigeria exclusively for government workers. Aside from the money, they don’t live in multidimensional poverty like we do, which nullifies whatever it is that we earn. They live in comfort but still care, and can organise themselves, and to take action, not just talk, and blow hot air on social media but do nothing.

The issue here, it seem is, most have lost hope and have no expectations of Nigeria, whatsoever. We see her as a basket case. On this, the fiendish rulers have us exactly where they always wanted. We are generally selfish, and incapable of collective action for the general good, we only hope Nigeria works for us individually, we hope to get our own share and we’re done. Some even like the chaos, we think our chances are brighter this way. Others are close to ‘making it’ and want to have their own turn/share first, its it’s for the status quo to remain. We are also mostly irresponsible, refusing to lift a finger. We expect others to do so, or God. So for these who care, they pray a lot and then sit back for miracles to happen. A vast majority it simply doesn’t care. So all we do is talk. Since we like talking, let’s keep talking.