The Vanguard Newspapers held its annual Personality of the Year awards last Friday at the Eko Hotel. It was a big, glitzy affair. Maybe it had more of the ‘big’ than of the ‘glitz’ because at a point, you had a feeling that the hall was too small for the guests streaming in.
Two hours after the show was supposed to have started, some expatriates found themselves stranded without seats. An ambassador sitting next to me said by way of explanation that they were diplomats. I retorted by wondering why diplomats should be two hours late for any event! While one should say that the timing and seating arrangements could be improved upon, one should perhaps also add humorously, that these are some of the Nigerian traits that have refused the ‘change agenda’.
I should confirm however, that three of the four people conferred with the ‘Lifetime Awards’ were there by six. The culprits were the governors. Some came three hours after the show was supposed to have started and still expected to be recognised! And they came with a retinue that not only disrupted ‘the flow of the show’ but made seating arrangements difficult.
A particular Governor from the North-east whose state has been ravaged by Boko Harm came with such a large retinue that it became a subject of debate on our table of veteran journalists. One suggested that he would have had to charter a commercial plane to bring them all down. Another raised the issue of accommodation while a third joked about the ‘ester –codes and mary-codes’ that would leave the state’s meagre coffers. What applied to this Governor applied to the other governors who received their awards that night since they probably all came with a retinue of over 50 people each to receive their awards. Many of these governors have financial challenges. Many cannot pay workers’ salaries due to dwindling revenue. Yet they have refused to moderate their lavish life-styles.
You do not need a retinue of three score people to follow you to receive an award, one of many at that. Unfortunately, financial discipline and prudent management of scarce resources are far from the lexicon of our political leaders. If ever there was a time to prune the political hangers-on and make every penny work productively, it is now. As to be expected, the narratives of the various awardees were impressive. You don’t get to be chosen for an award in a country of over one hundred and sixty million people without some achievement. What was not expected is that over 80% of them had been in politics or in public office at some point in their careers.
And almost all of them are super rich. While I am not suggesting any nexus between political office and super wealth, those responsible for the awards should also not give the impression that wealth and political office are part of the criteria for qualifying for the personality awards.
There must be men and women somewhere who have distinguished themselves in the sciences, humanities and other professions who have never held public office but whose quiet achievements merit Personality of the Year Awards. The Vanguard panel should seek them out. Too often in Nigeria, even in the churches and mosques, we give undue approval to wealth irrespective of how it is gotten. It is as if wealth, righteousness and achievement must go together. It is my belief that integrity and high moral standing must rank high in deciding the recipient of an award. It is also my belief that sitting governors should not be recipients. After all, it is never over until it is over. All too often, some recipients have become subjects of EFCC investigation after leaving office.
And it takes something from the credibility of an award when past awardees turn out to be stained by fraud and corruption. We all know how many erstwhile bankers and governors have been de-robed and de-mystified after receiving countless awards. Finally, it would help for the sake of transparency, if the yardsticks for choosing the awardees were spelt out. Then we would know why humble but achieving people in private lives don’t qualify. Two of the four governors who got the awards singled out their colleague from Bornu State as most deserving because of the security challenges of the state. The third recipient, his counterpart from Gombe State, however insinuated that Chibok girls’ kidnap could have been avoided with a little bit of pro-activeness. In his interview published in the Friday edition of Vanguard, he said Boko Haram used to send advanced warning in those days and it would have been Gombe girls if he had not acted quickly in evacuating the girls within six hours of receiving the warning.
Did Governor Shettima receive an advanced warning and did not act quickly enough? What interested me however, was Governor Kassim Shettima’s analysis of what probably led to the insurgency in the first place.
“This country is a country of two nations,” he admitted in a published interview in the same Vanguard edition.
“The south is much more prosperous due to its investments on education. The son of a certified pauper can become an icon through education. Meanwhile all the secondary schools in Bornu and Yobe states are not up to the number of schools in Ibadan metropolis alone. We need to wake up from our slumber in the north and live up to our expectations. There is more to politics than stealing public resources.
“Secondly, most families have three to five children in the south but in the north, there is massive procreation without responsibility.
Without being disrespectful to their line of duty, in the north, a clerk, cook or driver who earns 25,000 naira per month, will marry four wives and have 30 children.
He doesn’t care where the next meal will come from. So with desertification, illiteracy, unemployment, e.t.c, these are the recipe for disaster”. When he was asked if Modu Sheriff, his predecessor left 67 billion cash he replied “it is partly true, but it is equally tragic in the sense that there is more to leadership than stockpiling funds in the banks. If Sheriff had invested half of what he stockpiled in agriculture, believe me, this madness would not have happened.
Leadership is about development. The funds are meant for the people, not for banks. But what I really want to take away is what Dankwambo, an accountant and the Governor of Gombe gave as part of the reasons for the poverty in the North-East. “By our location, there is fear and a lot of temptations on the people not to invest. An investor uses money and money is a coward. It doesn’t go to places where there is fear. Nigeria itself must understand that nobody will come because there are lots of uncertainties in the decisions and business plans we make for investors. If I invest money, I should be able to take back two to three times what I invest. I don’t think we have that type of template, not only in Gombe but in Nigeria as a whole.” Hmmn! Food for thought and time to look at our template again.
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