The truth is that in Nigeria, there is no such thing as social protection programmes. That is simply code for the same smoke-and-mirrors spending plans in which billions of dollars have disappeared. Poof!
predict that no project worth the name, let alone the money, will be completed, and that nobody will account for their role in the disappearance of the money…”
It is now three years later, which is why I plead that the new $321m from Switzerland be spent on specific, identifiable capital projects. If not, it will disappear, and within 15 months.
Finally: Yusuf Buhari, the son of Nigeria’s leader, was in a road crash in Abuja on Tuesday night, and required emergency surgery for head and limb injuries.
Preliminary reports suggested he may have been illegally bike-racing in open city streets. But that is a contradiction in terms: Nigerian history shows that if you are rich and powerful enough, the law does not apply to you. That is the reason the government, not criminals, is the biggest protector of sleaze and criminality, and why the police rarely charge certain people with wrong doing. Such recent scandals as the Okija Shrine registers, Halliburton, Wilbros, violations of the electoral register by politicians, the NNPC reports and the Panama Papers prove the point.
That said, I wish Yusuf a full recovery. It is not unusual for children of the rich and powerful to seek unusual-and sometimes risky, dangerous or even illegal-expressions of their riches.
Mercifully, Yusuf suffered his mishap close to home, and close to his family’s limitless political real estate, and the rich and powerful have been lining up at the hospital and in the media to demonstrate how much they care. Yusuf enjoyed immediate surgery, which is a miracle if you consider that the accident could have happened far away; or on one of our terrible roads, or where there was no ambulance to take him to the hospital; or where, upon arrival, there may have been no hospital, or doctor or drugs or electricity.
Consider then, one of the other road crashes of the period: the Simon Onwubalili family. The Jos family of eight was traveling home by road to Enugu Abor, in Orumba North Local Government Area of Anambra State for the wedding of one of its members.
According to reports, four members of the party: Mr. & Mrs. Onwubalili and two of their daughters-Gracious and Ijeoma-were killed in a horrible accident in Benue State. The traditional wedding of Ijeoma, also a recent graduate in Medicine, was scheduled for today.
Hopefully, the lesson of 2017 for 2018 for the Buharis, and us all, is that there is only one way in which Nigeria can work: by being made to work for all. Happy New Year! • sonala.olumhense@gmail.com • Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense