The truth is Nigeria is not a merit Oriented society, the people that earn the most are not necessary the ones that deserve the most;

Who earns the most?

Politicians/Legislators: From this thisday article http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/what-nigerians-pay-fg/94277/ you will find that on the average
The about 1000 people we have in the Senate, house of rep etc earn about 390mill naira a year. They are the highest paid politicians in the world. This is about 3.5mill dollars a year, 7 times what President Barack Obama of the USA, who has highly depreciated and aged from his hard work earns. From that article also you will see that these politicians are not earning their wages, making about only 11 legislation a year. Even if they make a thousand legislation a year, they still have not earned 10% of that amount. It is only in Nigeria that a politician earns more than an experienced Doctor who caters for human life and well groomed engineers that shape our economy, ONLY IN NIGERIA.

Friends of Politicians: Google this; Theophilus Danjuma. He recently donated 100mill dollars to his Charity foundation. How did he make his money? He was given and oil block of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a GIFT, that's right a gift, by the late Sanni Abacha. He sold this gift for mouth watering 500mill dollars to one of the oil companies. Now tell me what did he do to earn this money?? This is just one person I'm sure there are 100s of them.

Other friends of politicians also get contracts at exaggerated prices.

The ones who work to get legit contracts often have to bribe politicians, a friend of mine in Abuja got a 14mill naira contract but had to pay off a politician 7mill naira for helping him get the job. You tell me what will he have left to pay his staff. This is further compounded because most jobs are directly or indirectly government jobs because, let's face it, they control the oil money.

I can contimue to sight several examples of how "Money dey miss road" in this country, but often times if I start talking about Nigeria I can go on for days , but it has changed nothing.

Rather let me shed a little light on why Nigeria will make absolutely no progress if things continue like this;

An economy only makes progress when value is added to it. Many people have the wrong notion that money adds value, no on the bigger picture is money is even more important because it controls/facilitates the adding of value. I'll explain.

Take Mr. A and Mr. B in the Lagos economy as an example. A is a Mechanic and B is a manager in a road construction company. B is heading to work on a Monday morning to approve the repair of a damaged road. On his way to work his car breaks down. He calls A to repair it in exchange for money. A repairs the car in no time adding value to B's life and hence the economy. B drives on and approves the repair of the road and the road is repaired that same day. B adds value to the economy and his company gets paid money by the Government. The Government makes money by collecting tax. In the evening when A, the mechanic, is heading back home he makes it home 2hrs earlier that day because of the road that was repaired by B and he has more time for his wife and kids and the family is happier, this adds further value to the economy.

We can see here how the work of each man that gets paid adds a factor of value to the economy. B gets paid for road construction work, which directly adds value to the economy. And A gets paid with the construction work money, for fixing A's car, they both add value to the economy because they need each other. Mr A further pays his tax to the government with that same money given to him by B, and it's that same money that the government uses to pay people like B. So the money just goes round and round but in the process value is added to the economy for the benefit of all. People add the value with money as the facilitator/controller/motivator. This should always be the case, money keeps going round and the economy keeps improving and moving forward.

Moral: Money should NEVER exchange hands without value added to the economy one way or the other.

If money exchanges hands without commensurate amount of value added to the economy, there will be a deficit in the economy and someone has to pay for it. Who pays for it? You and I.

Take for example the 500mill dollar given to Mr. Theophillus Danjuma, he added no value at all to the economy and did not deserve that money. The economy therefore operates in a 500mill dollars deficit and people are paying for it. With that money, bridges could have been constructed, schools built, research centers created, hospitals built. All of these create jobs and add value to the economy. But the economy operates in a deficit, jobs are not added and value was not created and everybody loses except the likes of Theophilus Danjuma who some times send a large chunk of this money abroad "Frolicking and junketing" as someone said.

And there are hundreds of people who get money like this every day, both for the highly over paid politicians who don't add a commensurate value to the economy, to those who get gifts of our national treasures worth billions of dollars, to those who get contracts yet know nothing about the contract and only end up selling it to those who should have got it in the first place leaving them with something miserly to pay their staff.


Some people may argue that Danjuma used the money to set up companies, but the principle is that money should NEVER change hands without value added to the economy, but it did, and a very very huge amount of money for that matter.

And this my brothers and sisters is how less than 5% of the people in the Nigerian economy squanders about 90% of the funds that should be in circulation for the benefit of all. The money does not flow down through it's natural process but is truncated through corrupt practices. 98% of the problems Nigerians face can be traced back to issues like this, money getting into the wrong hands. You hear people dieing of malaria, I mean COME ON.

I'll stop here for now. Questions??

God speed to all.

Bros na watin now? u don turn Nairaland to Storyland.

nice one

This is one of the best write-ups I have seen on nairaland. Thank you so much.

I'm glad some of you like it. Seriously tho, it is people that add value not money. Money is just a controller. It's high time we stop throwing money at any problem we face in this country instead of getting the right people for the job to handle it and giving them the support they need.

No power they throw in 16 billion dollars yet there's no power, No/bad roads they throw in millions of dollars yet the roads are still bad.

God will help us.