The Peoples Democratic Party held what it called
a ‘special’ convention on Saturday, August 31,
2013 in Abuja. The party, according to the
faction that met at the Eagle Square, wants to
be seen as having succeeded in bringing Nigeria
to a great place in the comity of nations. I
believe the PDP is great if we choose to see
greatness from its other side . I will use selected
realities to make this point: First, education.
It is very easy to score the party extremely low
here because university students and lecturers
are currently at home as is often the case. This
would be the reason to score them low but it
would not be the only reason. Just look at the
state of education in Nigeria apart from the
ASUU strikes and what you get would be nothing
short of a disaster. No Nigerian with the means
and valued sense of education would send his/
her child to Nigeria’s glorified secondary schools
called universities. A computer engineering
student studying at one of the nation’s top
public universities confessed he had never done
a thing on a computer despite being in his third
year at a university the President cared enough
to change its name but not its fortunes. The
West African Examinations Council’s results are
these days noted more for the failure rates than
their functionality as a tool for separating
students and identifying their various academic
abilities. Most students fail anyway. Nigerian
students now find themselves in places like
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania not to mention Ghana,
the United Kingdom, the United States,
Singapore and the likes. The PDP has succeeded
in killing education in Nigeria. It was a smart
move for them. It is always dangerous to have
too many educated people in a population to
make demands about their human rights and
just ask too many questions. So then, we have a
kind of democracy quite all right but our “great
party” has ensured a majority of the people are
more concerned about what they eat rather
than what schools their children go to. Over 10
million Nigerian children are out of school. This
is a world record and the PDP being a great
party is already on course to add to this number
next year.
Then Infrastructure.
The much-maligned military governments built
majority of the airports if not all the airports we
have in Nigeria. When these airports were built,
they were good enough to be called airports;
today, considering what we have around the
world, we can safely call ours airstrips. They are
nothing better than garages in other climes.
Most train stations in saner climes are better
equipped than most of our airports. Ask any
Nigerian who travels out of this country, any of
them with a conscience that cares about our
country and they’d tell you their first point of
sadness are the airports they see upon arrival in
other places, even places like Ethiopia not to
talk of the United Arab Emirates that make ours
look like their public toilets at best. So then, in
14 years of running this country with tens of
trillions of naira to boot, the PDP – what some
call a great party – has yet to deliver one, just
one major airport to this country. Instead, they
are gleefully renovating what the military built.
We should not even talk about roads. To show
how much and how bad things have since
become, they threw a party to celebrate the
award of the contract for the renovation of the
Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. As we speak, months
after that public display of national mediocrity
that had the President himself dancing, nothing
has been done. The road remains in a shambles
that it has always been.
Power is on the right track. The privatisation
process is on course. If done the right way to
the last letter, this is one area the current
government could write its name in gold.
As regards the economy, make no mistakes, the
Nigerian economy has largely grown since 1999
and this growth has only been dwarfed by
another kind of growth; poverty! The growth of
the Nigerian economy has benefited a few to the
detriment of the majority. As of the last count,
this growing economy still cannot guarantee four
out of five graduates jobs, it cannot keep seven
out of 10 Nigerians out of poverty and it has
ensured a majority of Nigerians depend on
families and friends to keep body and soul
together. In perspective, there are just as many
poor Nigerians today as they were Nigerians in
1998. What is the point of a growing economy
that also grows poverty? Do we deny the reality
of poverty because international organisations
and aunty Ngozi tell us our economy is growing?
The PDP has done extraordinarily well here;
growing an economy during periods of
increasing world oil prices while simultaneously
breeding a society of more poor people than
there are people in West Africa outside of itself.
And considering indices like maternal mortality,
child mortality and life expectancy, every
passing day, more women die trying to give
birth in Nigeria than at most other places in the
world. Almost 53,000 Nigerian women and girls
die of pregnancy- related issues every year!
According to UNICEF, some 20 per cent of child
deaths in sub-Saharan Africa occur in Nigeria.
According to the World Health Organisation,
almost 400 out of 1000 Nigerians die before
they are 60 years of age. That is apart from the
number that die before the age of 15. Should
we talk about the fact that had any of the major
delegates fallen from the podium at the
convention venue, they would have been flown
to India to have their heads checked faster than
it takes for these hypocrites to see that today,
we are worse off than we were in 1999. When
you realise how much has gone down the drains
to have us where we are today; — a people
without direction and hope for a better
tomorrow — you will weep for our beloved
country. Some Nigerians would wish these
brigands were wiped off the face of the earth.
One cannot begin to outline the failures of
Nigeria since 1999. One way to know how bad it
is would be to pay attention to what Nigerian
governments celebrate these days. Gone are the
days when projects were inaugurated after
completion; these days things are so bad that
projects are celebrated for being awarded to
contractors. This says it all about where we are
today compared to where we used to be. All
hope is not lost but you cannot solve a problem
you insist does not exist. As long as the ruling
party continues to celebrate itself as having
helped Nigeria succeed over the past 14 years,
then we are safe to agree that we are in a really
bad place. No country moves forward being led
by a group of largely deluded rulers who are
perpetually obsessed with perpetuating their
gluttonous selves in power rather than making
the country work.
Nigeria has a long way to go, not essentially
because things are so bad we can’t fix them but
because those expected to fix them believe we
have never had it so good. Isn’t that what they
mean when they say each mediocre step of the
current government is “in line with the
transformation agenda”?
•Omojuwa teaches about Africa and its
democratic struggles at the Free University,
Berlin. He tweets @omojuwa

Didnt know this dude is a lecturer
http://naijalog.com/pdps-14-years-of-greatness-by-japheth-omojuwa/

When did he became a Lecturer? The Last time I checked his profile on Linkedin didnt find such there! Besides what qualifications does he possess that qualifies him as a Lecturer in Berlin? I know he travels for conferences and not to tell me he's a lecturer!!