willieojo@yahoo.com
It is not my intention to express too fierily about the achievements or otherwise of the Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle. I believe it is too early to make that call either way. But without a shred of doubt, I am beginning to love the young man. His good deeds so far have captured my heart and attention. And I am not alone.
Matawalle succeeded a man called Abdul-Aziz Yari. Yari was governor in Zamfara for eight years. Just like I do other men and women in positions of power in Nigeria, I followed Yari. I believe his election as governor in 2011 was the inauguration of the perilous metastasis of ignorance. This is my candid opinion. I am not fond of twits in leadership positions; unfortunately, over decades, twits have crept to thrones of authority in Nigeria; and have dragged the country down into the abyss of hopelessness and despair.
Under Yari’s ‘bleedership’, violence ravaged that part of the North. I recall a few years ago when meningitis ravaged the good people of Zamfara. What was Yari’s intervention? A sheepish declaration that the killer-disease was sent on an errand by God to punish the sins of fornicating men and women. Meantime, under Yari, only 0.2% of children were immunised against fatal diseases because parents feared a hidden western agenda to depopulate their Islamic population. Thus, children were hidden from immunising health officials. Instead of putting together machinery to impact knowledge on a people thirsty for understanding, Yari followed the path of tomfoolery and sheer incognisance blaming the disease on God and recalcitrant men of flesh.
Yari as governor ran a community programme where he gave out freebies of N100,000 and more to young men and women as incentives to get married instead of fornicating. Unemployed and unemployable men and women were lured into getting married with no skills to earn a living. Innocent young girls were turned into baby factories. Yari was a yucky governor. In 2015, he fired salvoes of complaints to the Nigerian presidency that he was in dire straits to pay N18,000 as the minimum wage to toiling workers in his state. But, there were other things Yari wasn’t telling the presidency. Behind closed steel-doors and in a furtive collaboration and collusion with his cunning cohort in the legislature, he hatched out plans for a big pension and upkeep allowances for himself and others once they were out of power.
Zamfara is not a big moneybags state. Its three million people pride themselves as ‘farmers’. For now, there is nothing much going on in Zamfara. It is not a coincidence that the letter ‘Z’ is the last on the alphabets’ list; Zamfara is also the last on the monthly allocation list from the Federal Government. Zamfara, like a few other Nigerian states, is a poor geographical expression. In a shameless letter written to his successor, Bello Matawalle, this week, Yari with audacity called out the incumbent to release his N10m monthly as upkeep allowance. “Accordingly, you may wish to be informed that since the expiration of my tenure on the 29th of May, 2019, I was only paid the upkeep allowance twice i.e. for the month of June and July while my pension for the month of June has not been paid”, Yari said in the letter. This was a law he hurriedly coerced his accomplice lawmakers to pass shortly before he left office as governor.
Matawalle fired back revealing that the former governor paid himself a whopping sum of N300m as severance freebie while men and women qualified for pensions were dying queuing up for their rights in Zamfara. Yari, according to the incumbent governor, owed pensioners N10bn while he and other politicians got to keep N1bn as upkeep allowances every year. Matawalle rallied up his state legislature to end the impunity, wickedness and callousness. That ‘upkeep’ law will no longer exist in the book of laws in Zamfara! Big thanks to mighty Matawalle who has made himself a ‘martyr’ for the poor.
It is disheartening and heart-rendering that what Yari foisted upon a people today makes the state gasp for breath of survival. What is wrong with these people? Don’t they see what we see in and around Nigeria? Don’t they see the premature death and pervasive hunger and poverty? By 2050, Nigeria will become the world’s third largest country; and today, about 100 million Nigerians are considered extremely poor. But the average pension for a ‘retired’ Nigerian governor is $549,450.60. This is wicked and callous! Nigeria is largely led by self-absorbed, self-obsessed narcissists whose fixation is all about ‘Me-Myself-and-I’. They are solipsists who live in the stratosphere and troposphere of egocentricity. Nobody else matters or is considered important but themselves. In power, they strip others naked to cover their own nakedness. They pillage our commonwealth and pilfer the people’s money to provide themselves the honey. They are cruel and mean maniacs whose métier is pulverising the people’s means of livelihood to prosper their egotistic self. Aggressive aggrandisement is their game. Greed is their name. Calories of corruption are requisite nutrients for their physiologies.
What is going on in Zamfara is spread across all Nigerian states. These ludicrous and ridiculous pension scams are causing state economies intense tension. The same set of human beings who drew up Nigeria’s pension laws rake home monthly their own pensions after years of disservice to Nigeria; after building mansions and castles all over the world from our patrimonies; and after denying little people who really need the scheme in the aftermath of their years of sweat and blood serving Nigeria.
Do these politicians truly love Nigeria? Are they sincerely fighting for the people, or just in service for themselves? The righteous considers the cause of the poor, but the wicked regards not to know it. These are wicked men. What else do these governors want that they don’t have when in power? The air they breathe; the food they eat, the medical attention they get; the cars they drive are all dished out for free. Yet, many of them aren’t satisfied! If a man is not satisfied with what he has, he will never be satisfied even if he garners more than what he already has. The spirit of ‘it-will never-be-enough’ is what is driving the characters who write crazy pension laws just to satisfy their lust. The Nigerian ludicrous pension law benefits the APC, the PDP, APGA, and all politicians who ever walk into the corridors of disservice pretending to be in national service.
My people, is it not time to fight for your lives; and for your children’s children? Is it not time to ask that these laws be downgraded if truly we are in the dispensation of fighting corruption? The Nigerian wave of corruption is pestiferous and pestilential. It is a never-ending carnival; a sempiternal surreal celebration among the chosen wicked. The pension lawlessness is a cycle and revolving door of scams on Nigerians. It’s got to be scrapped! From Akwa Ibom to Lagos and to Zamfara!
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