Read article written by Reno Omokri...
Let me start
this piece by congratulating former President Ibrahim Badamasi
Babangida on the marriage of his daughter, Halima, to her beau, Auwal
Abdullahi.
It goes without saying that the wedding would be the talk of Nigeria for aeons to come because of the kind of crowd it pulled.
In case you
missed the news, let me inform you that no fewer than thirty private
jets landed at Minna airport last weekend on account of this wedding
that locked down Nigeria!
Thirty
private jets. I do not even know what to exclaim! This is more than wow!
Gosh does not even come close to the exclamation I wanted to express
when I first read of this private jet convention in Minna! Gobsmacked is
the only that comes close, but even it does not quite capture the
reaction I had.
Thank God
former President Goodluck Jonathan, who was amongst the wedding guests,
does not have a private jet, because that would have been the major
topic of the day.
The propaganda loving All Progressive Congress would
have capitalized on that to rubbish Jonathan. Lai Mohammed would have
been hyper ventilating with excitement at the character assassination
possibilities if such had been the case.
But the
lesson Nigerians may want to take from this is that few, very few of
those who arrived Minna in private jets have any sort of productive
business venture that generates and sustains jobs in Nigeria.
Yes, there
were a couple of folks made rich by oil and gas at the Minna private jet
convention, but these are not people that did anything constructive,
productive or job creating that gave them wealth. Some were given oil
blocks or allocations, others were given allocations to import petroleum
products.
Even a monkey would prosper if given such oligarchic
opportunities. But how does that sort of business create jobs or adds
value to Nigerians?
Others
amongst them are government contractors, supplying sundry items to the
various governments at federal, state and local government level. They
are basically suppliers.
They buy and resell to the government. But how
does that sort of business create jobs and adds value to Nigerians?
Yet, they have private jets, private jetties, private yachts and even private body guards!
Nigeria has
one of the lowest, if not the lowest, tax to GDP ratio in the world. In a
country of 190 million people, only 214 individuals in the entire
country pay tax of 20 million naira or more. This is according to the
very latest official figures from the Federal Inland Revenue Service.
Norway has a
population of just 5.2 million people yet they have more than 100 times
the amount of people paying tax of $65,000 of more (the equivalent of
20 million naira).
But the
story does not end there. Norway has never had a private party or
private wedding or any private celebration that attracted 30 private
jets!
The funniest thing is that Norway gives Nigeria financial aid every year!
We have a
political and economic elite that that are so rapacious and parasitic
and who only think of what they can suck from Nigeria and could not
careless that they are surrounded by some of the poorest people in the
world according to official figures from the 2016 United Nations Human
Development Index released on the 21st of March, 2017.
Norway is
number 1 on that list. Nigeria is 152 out of 188 nations. Libya (102)
and Iraq (121) both of which are war torn nations, outrank Nigeria.
But
most embarrassingly, Syria that has been enmeshed in probably the worst
humanitarian crisis the world has seen in at least 10 years also
outranks Nigeria (149)!
And almost
all our elites are involved in this. President Muhammadu Buhari likes to
be seen as the only good person in Nigeria but we have not forgotten so
soon how, according to Daily Trust (which also happens to be the
President's favorite paper) his own daughter, Zahra Buhari, received pre
wedding gifts worth 47 million Naira from her then suitor and now
husband, Ahmed Indimi.
This same Ahmed Indimi likes to fly in private
jets, pictures of which dot Nigeria's social media landscape. I can assure you that Ahmed Indimi is not one of the 214 Nigerians who pay tax of over 20 million Naira.
Yet right
there in Indimi's Borno state, right there in Maiduguri where their
palatial family house is a sprawling tourist attraction, there are
millions of Internally Displaced Persons without food to eat and
medicine for their ailments.
Perhaps it is this sort of wickedness that
Mohammed Yusuf saw and which made him conclude that Boko (book) must be
Haram, if it can make people so oblivious to the suffering around them.
It is this
same Indimi family that likes to marry and be married to Nigeria's high
and mighty (President Ibrahim Babangida was also once their in law via
the marriage of Mohammed Babangida, his first son, to Rahama Indimi).
Many
Nigerians are not aware that if you isolate Borno state from the rest of
Nigeria, that state becomes the poorest region on planet earth BAR
NONE!
Borno has
the highest unemployment rate in Nigeria and the second lowest primary
school enrollment rate in Nigeria. What has her private jet loving, high
and mighty marrying elite done to change that?
I was in
Anambra once and the type of community spirit I saw there impressed me.
They may not have a lot of private jets in Anambra, but in Anambra, they
have community associations that give scholarships and business grants
to those who are commercially inclined.
There is NO poverty in Nnewi,
one of the communities where this community spirit is most prevalent.
They build
their own primary and secondary schools through community effort. I am
dead serious. If you go there you will not believe your eyes! They have
well tarred modern roads that were built through their private efforts.
All over Anambra, the various towns and villages copy the Nnewi model.
I daresay
that there is more evidence of private and community development in
Anambra than there is of any type of federal government presence.
Anambra does not even have an airport! Borno does. Anambra does not even
have a publicly
built federal university!
The only so called Federal University in
Anambra, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, was built by the state government
with contributions
from private citizens and then compulsorily taken over by the military
government of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida via Decree No. 34 of
July 15, 1992. But in Borno, they have a massive federal university
WHOLLY built with Federal Government funds.
If any state
deserves to be poor from lack of Federal Government presence, that
state is Anambra. If any state deserves to be rich by reason of the
existence of Federal Government presence, that state is Borno. But Borno
is poor while Anambra is rich! Why?
Bill Gates
and Warren Buffet are sponsoring immunization and other medical
interventions in Borno state. They are together the richest people on
earth. Yet their life styles is nowhere near as lavish as Nigeria's
private jet loving parasitic elite.
Both Gates
and Buffet are known for their frugality. Both of them have shown more
concern for Nigeria's poor than any of the owners or leasers of the 30
private jets that converged in Minna last week.
In fact,
Bill Gates has personally visited with many of the poorest Nigerians and
has administered vaccines to their children with his own hands!
If those
thirty private jet owners or leasers could do in their communities what
Nnewi people do in theirs, then most assuredly Nigeria would not be in
recession today.
Jeff Bezos
of Amazon is worth $67 billion, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $55.5 billion.
Both of them are young people who made their money by dint of hardwork,
yet none of these two billionaires had a wedding as spectacularly
opulent as either Zahra Buhari's or Halima Babangida's weddings.
Mark
Zuckerberg actually got married at a simple ceremony in the backyard of
his home in Palo Alto, California in front of 100 guests.
The British
charity, Oxfam, recently released a report on inequality in Nigeria.
According to Oxfam, the combined wealth of the five richest Nigerians,
put at about $29.9 billion, could end extreme poverty in the country!
According to
Oxfam, in recent years the number of millionaires in Nigeria has
increased by 44% while the number of those living in poverty has
increased by 69%!
And instead
of the shameless Federal Government of Nigeria to appreciate Oxfam, not
just for its years of charity work in Nigeria, but for this new report
which distills the issues militating against Nigeria's efforts to
increase human development, it turns around to condemn the report and
accuse Oxfam of 'inciting' Nigerians against her elite!
It is
becoming clearer and clearer that Nigeria, as currently designed, can
hardly produce young people with the mindset of Bezos or Zuckerberg.
You see, if
we do not redesign Nigeria and ensure that the wealth of the nation is
more equitably redistributed, we will find out soon enough that Nigeria,
as it is currently designed, is designed to fail.
Nigeria has
such a high unemployment rate because the wealth of the nation is
trapped in the hands of carpetbaggers, rent seekers and influence
paddlers who flaunt their wealth at the masses without even giving them
token employment.
And it is
not as if Nigerians are not willing to work. We are. Strive Masiyiwa,
the Zimbabwean founder of Econet, famously revealed how stunned he was
when he found out how willing Nigerians were to work.
When he came
to Nigeria in 2001 and wanted to hire staff for his new company, Econet
Wireless Nigeria, he advertised for jobs seeking people with
telecommunications experience who had electronic engineering degrees and
a minimum of five years relevant experience.
Mr. Masiyiwa, a dollar billionaire with experience working all over the world was stunned at the response.
Let me allow him tell his story because I can not possibly tell it better than him.
"I came into the office to find postal bags, piled to the ceiling!
"I only want
to see the applications from people who meet our requirements, and not
from chancers who aren't qualified," I complained.
"Sir, these are the ones we have vetted."
"What?! You mean there were more than this?"
"Thousands, sir."
Then I came
up with an idea: "Why don't you separate for me, the most qualified
academically. Set aside people with MBAs, and even PHDs."
A day later, another postal bag of applications was delivered to my office. I was staggered!
There were thousands of people with qualifications in just this one discipline with MBAs and PHDs! Many
had qualified in the best universities around the world.
There were
also GSM-qualified Nigerians working internationally, including in
America and Europe, wanting to return home!
I was blown
away by the qualifications. I thought to myself: "You can start almost
any business or industry here. I wish investors would one day discover
the wealth of this nation."
Whenever I
hear people talk about the wealth of Nigeria in terms of oil, I shake my
head to say: "You have no idea what you're talking about!"
The true
wealth of Nigeria is its extraordinary human capital, and passion for
education. Unleash that and no one can stop them!"
The funniest thing is that Strive Masiyiwa, a
dollar billionaire who made his money from a productive industry like
the telecommunications sector and who provided enduring jobs for
literarily tens of thousands of Nigerians, does not live as large as
many Nigerian elite.
No wonder that the exploitative carpetbagging elite of Nigeria chased him out of Nigeria!
Strive Masiyiwa is the antithesis of the exploitative Nigerian elite who epitomize at least six of the seven deadly social sins:
Wealth
without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Religion without
sacrifice. Politics without principle.
The only one
they do not epitomize is Science without humanity because that involves
work and intellectual and creative abilities which many of our elite
lack. If it were cleverness and guile, they would supersede even the
best!
Ango Abdullahi
Ango
Abdullahi has no basis for saying that the North would not allow
Professor Yemi Osinbajo succeed Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. The North does
not decide for Nigeria. Nigerians decide for Nigeria.
What Ango
Abdullahi seems to have forgotten is that it was Asiwaju Bola Ahmed
Tinubu that God used to make Muhammadu Buhari President in 2015.
If the
Northern Elders Forum could have made Buhari President, they would have
done so in 2003, 2007 and 2011 when Buhari tried unsuccessfully to
become President.
Nigeria has
changed. Unfortunately, people like Ango Abdullahi and Junaid Mohammed,
who add very little value to Nigeria and exist only to make provocative
statements should realize that should their words precipitate crisis
today or in 2019, both they and those they represent will be the biggest
losers because they have more to gain from a united and peaceful
Nigeria founded on the rule of law than others.
Nigerians
will famously remember Ango Abdullahi as the liar who said that money
from the North was used to develop the oil industry in the South. His
exact words in 2014 were as follows:
"It is the
North that developed the present day oil industry in this country. It is
Northern money; it is the Northern leadership that developed the oil
industry."
Since Ango
Abdullahi purports to be a professor and since he is from the North, let
me use the words of another Northerner who happens to be a professor to
respond to him.
On Saturday the 6th of May 2017, Farooq Kperogi wrote thus:
That money from the North funded oil exploration in the South.
Professor Ango Abdullahi actually repeated this lie recently. He said
this, ironically, while exhorting Emir Sanusi II to “go and read
history.” The truth is that not a dime of northern Nigeria’s money
contributed to oil exploration in the Niger Delta.
When oil was
discovered in commercial quantities in Oloibiri in 1956, Shell bore the
financial burden for the exploration.
Other Euro-American oil companies
later joined in oil exploration. It wasn’t until 1973 that the Nigerian
federal government acquired 30 percent shares in oil companies. By
1973, Northern Nigeria had ceased to exist; it had been divided into
states.
In any case,
colonial records show that the biggest motivation for amalgamating
northern and southern Nigeria was because northern Nigeria wasn’t
financially self-sustaining and the British Imperial Government said it
would never subsidize colonial administration anywhere in Africa.
So
Lord Lugard amalgamated the two regions and used the surplus from the
south to sustain the north. It’s illogical to say that a region that
wasn’t financially self-sustaining financed oil exploration in the Niger
Delta.
It is a very
sad day when a character like Ango Abdullahi is called an elder
statesman. I think a better word for his ilk would be an agbaya!
Professor (?) Abdullahi can ask Farook Kperogi to tell him the meaning
of that word!
Reno's Nuggets
Never marry
just because plans are at an advance stage. If there is doubt in your
heart, call it off. Embarrassment is better than a wrong union.
It is
easier to change I dont into I do than to change I do to I don't. And be
aware that the sexier the woman, the higher the maintenance. The
lovelier the woman. The lower the maintenance.
Sexy is expensive. Love
is not. Finally, do not be moved by beauty. With fake hair, fake lashes
and fake eyes, any girl can be fine. Focus on character. It has no fake
#RenosNuggets
Reno Omokri
is a Christian TV talk show host and founder of the Mind of Christ
Christian Center and the Helen and Bemigho Sanctuary for orphans.
He is
the author of three books, Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God, Why Jesus
Wept and Apples of Gold: A Book of Godly Wisdom.
His upcoming fourth
book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiracies, is set for release in June.
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