It might mean that despite billions of Naira being spent on it, the Aso Rock Clinic is unbefitting of the president and that when he is ill, the only option is a hospital abroad those nationals chose to maintain

of projects to be completed in 2019, an election year, with nothing completed in 2017 or scheduled for completion in 2018. To be fair, at “98%”, the Abuja Light Rail appears set for completion in 2018. “…Progress has reached 98% completion, as at 64% completion when we assumed office,” Mr. Buhari said. This ought to be of considerable interest to Nigerians: In 2012, when the Goodluck Jonathan government negotiated a related $3bn loan Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said were for “people-oriented projects,” one of them was the Abuja rail, for $500 million. The Buhari government then budgeted $1.6bn for “Phase II” of the same project. In effect, while the entire project was supposed to have cost $500m, it seems that only covered 64%, with the remaining 36% somehow costing $1.6bn. Total: $2.1bn. Nigerian Time. In the same speech, I find it also to be highly curious that President Buhari said only 23 words about the Lagos-Calabar coastline railway. Originally negotiated with China’s CCECC in November 2014 for $11.917bn, the current government renegotiated it in 2016 to $11.1bn, which is good news. “My expectation is that the project can be completed in two years since funding won’t be a problem,” Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi said in July of that year, adding that the project was in the budget and was at the point of execution. Nearly two years later, when we should therefore be talking about completion, nothing in the New Year statement suggested any importance, let alone urgency. It is Nigerian Time. In Nigerian Time, project-construction is perpetual. One of the key disclosures in President Buhari’s address is of nine roads to receive “special attention” in a scheme in which “each geopolitical zone will benefit by an equal amount of N16.67b.” In Nigerian Time, under which there is no hurry, most of these roads have been under permanent construction and reconstruction. But other countries proceed with great despatch, and hurry to complete projects because it is a matter of honour and of national interest. It is because of Nigerian Time that contract projects of governments curiously have a start date, but no end-date. The question is why, as a people, we choose the path we know to lead to nowhere. In official terms, while other countries are sprinting into the future, Nigerian Time expands the time required to fulfil a project until more money can be obtained to justify more work-real or imagined-while the officials are still in office, or to engage in work previously budgeted for, or undertaken by a predecessor. It is a key reason why we lie prostrate. • sonala.olumhense@gmail.com • Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense