With the look of things across the country, it does seem that Nigeria’s light fingered ruling elite have found their collective answer and solution to the ‘Poor question’ that is to the question of what to do with the poor, as a way of dealing with poverty.

This will not be the first time in history though that a ruling class has collectively decided on a solution to very persistent and nagging questions, that is issues of existential developmental challenge that they are unable to, or incapable of resolving in any other way.

The Nazis under their supreme leader, the Fuhrer in the first half of the 20th century also arrived at their final solution to the problem they had dubbed the ‘Jewish question’. And what was the Nazi’s final solution? Exterminate the Jew!

So what is Nigeria’s ruling class of the 21st century’s final solution to the ‘poor question’? Eliminate the poor! Ingenious isn’t it?

Every time the treasury looting elite gets up boastfully, beating its chest as to how under its watch we have become Africa’s largest economy, and the world’s 26th largest economy; or as to how a Nigerian man is Africa’s richest man, and the world’s 25th richest, while a Nigerian woman is the world’s richest black woman; etc, each time it goes on this euphoric grandstandings, the poor and poverty keeps popping up to burst the balloons of lies and puncture big potholes in the tarmac of falsehoods.

So yes we are Africa’s largest economy, but we are also home to the largest concentration of poor people in Africa, and the third largest concentration in the whole wide world.

Yes 15 of Africa’s 40 richest are Nigerians, but 112 million Nigerians at a poverty rate of 70% live in poverty.

And whereas Nigeria’s rich own some of the choicest properties, the overwhelming majority of which are empty and not being lived in across Abuja, in Lagos, in PH, in Europe and the Americas, and in Dubai; yet the country suffers a 17 million housing deficit. The implication of this at an average household size of 6, is that nearly 90 million Nigerians are living in subhuman housing conditions are simply homeless.

And so it seems that as the country has grown in wealth, the lot of its ruling elites has improved magnificently while the conditions of living of the overwhelming majority of citizens have largely regressed or at best stagnated engendering a precarious existence for them.

And yes GDP has grown steadily since 1999 at more than 6% annually, nevertheless so has the rate of unemployment; with general unemployment growing from 8% in 2004 to 24% in 2013, and youth unemployment topping 54% in 2012.

And in the midst of this grinding, crushing and alienating poverty and misery that is the lot of the majority, what has the thieving ruling elite been upto?

Every year in the last 5 to 6 years at least, outside of the annual budget of more than N4tn, the country’s ruling class has expropriated extra-budgetary funds to the tune of at least on the average $8bn from the Excess Crude Account annually, and at least another annual average of not less than $10bn from the External Reserves.

The implication of this is that at least in the last 6 years, on the average Nigeria’s ruling elite have had access to and claimed to spend on the Nigerian economy at least the combined sum of N4tn [annual national budget] plus N4tn [combined annual budget of the 36 states] plus N2tn [being additional withdrawals from both the excess crude account and the external reserves] on a yearly basis. That is more than N10tn each year, and more than N60tn over the 6 year period.

This is in exclusion of the untraceable stolen resources that simply disappear into the bottomless pockets of these gangs of treasury looters. Take just one instance, that of the so-called crude oil theft. If we take the lowest but clearly understated estimate on loss of 100,000 barrels of crude oil daily to theft, at $100 per barrel this amounts to nearly $10m per day over 6 years.

Additionally since celebrating with fanfare our debt free nature after paying back in excess of $12bn at once in order to be forgiven the remaining $18bn of debt in 2005; our external debt profile has since climbed back to just below $10bn, growing by about 40% between June 2013 and July 2014 alone.

Where have all of these monies gone? Is it a mere coincidence therefore that a mere 10% of wealthiest Nigerians now own more than 40% of national wealth, while the bottom 20% of the population own a mere insignificant 4% of national wealth?

And so how have they addressed the poverty question? Well we have 17 million housing deficits; what to do? Demolish the houses of the poor and evict them from the urban cities.

We have such a high unemployment rate; what to do? Criminalise the livelihood of the poor. So you ban street trading, ban okadas, ban buses plying some routes; harass street traders, okada riders, bus drivers, sometimes chase them to their deaths, sometimes destroy their equipment, and oftentimes arrest and jail them and absolutely provide no alternatives.

Then to hasten this quick fix solution, ensure that hospitals are either nonexistent or not equipped and staffed and charge exorbitant fees. That way when the poor get sick from your harassment, they can die quickly.

Obviously therefore it seems that to this clueless, irredeemably greedy, light fingered treasury looting elite, the solution to poverty is not to curb their humongous appetite to steal, not to drastically scale back the historic scale and scope of their corruption, and certainly not to punish the impunity that drives this piracy; but instead, it is to eliminate and eradicate the poor from the face of the earth.

Our bounden duty is to chase this inhumane and inconsiderate treasury looting ruling elite from power before they get the chance to fully realize their final solution to poverty and the poor.

Only by waging a war against this thieving ruling class can we end their war on the poor. And we can do this only by taking concrete steps to Take Back Nigeria.

(Follow me on Twitter: @jayegaskia&@[DPSR]

In recent weeks, the All Progressive Congress(APC) has been rocked with a tidal wave of defection of founding members, Chief Tom Ikimi and the party’s 2011 presidential candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to the party Nigerians loathe but can’t vote out of power at the centre, the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP). Ikimi’s grievance with the APC hierarchy stems from how he was barred from contesting the party’s chairmanship position.

The ease with which politicians decamp and re-decamp (return to a party one has left in the past) – the latest addition to Nigeria’s political lexicon – erodes any shadow of doubt if any ideological basis exists for much of what goes on in Nigeria’s political landscape. Defection has become the trade in stock of many politicians who have found such canvassing phrases as “there is no party that is exclusively for the good people or for the bad people,” reminding us of the sameness of the two major political parties as basis for cross carpeting.

Close observers of unfolding political events were not jolted by Chief Ikimi’s official resignation of his membership of the APC, after many weeks of withdrawal from party activities without disclosing his next political destination. His antecedents have shown he has no particular conviction. His political sojourn has seen him traversed the defunct APP, ANPP, ACN, PDP. The former Foreign Affairs Minister was a founding member of the APC. He was instrumental in the alliance that metamorphosed into the mega opposition party. It is only a matter of time before he re-decamps to the PDP. He has already expressed his readiness to join the ruling party and bring his wealth of experience to bear when members of the ruling party’s BoT, including Chief Tony Anenih and National Vice Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, led by the PDP National Chairman, AdamuMu’azu, paid Ikimi an august visit.

Indeed, Ikimi and Ribadu, like every other politician and Nigerian, have every right to exercise their freedom of association with any political party in the country, but it should be consistent with the ideology and principle that defines the character of the politician and his political party.

However, the manner Chief Tom Ikimi and other founding members of the party like AlhajiAttahiruBafawara, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, Brig-Gen Buba Marwa (rtd), Mr. Marcus Gundiri among others who helped to nurture the APC to mega status, have drifted to the PDP calls for concern and genuine fears for the future of the progressive party. When such party stalwarts dump the APC in droves, it is an indication that Bola Tinubu, who prides himself as the sole financier of the party, regrettably, is not upholding democratic principles in the affairs of his party. If the APC retains and wins more seats or otherwise in 2015, the party takes the credit, if not the APC will pay the price for his highhandedness. The buck stops with him. This is the party Nigerians are looking up to as an alternate platform to wrestle power from the PDP.

What shall we say of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu? He once described the PDP as a disaster and a total failure in his heyday in the APC. In the weeks leading up to the PDP governorship primaries for Adamawa state bye-election, the former anti-corruption czar joined the PDP, the only party he thinks on whose platform can make him realise his ambition to hold elective office. These days, he regales us with tales of the sameness of PDP and APC. He was quoted as saying ‘there is no party that is exclusively for the good people or for the bad people’ That Ribadu has taken a walk from the APC has raised all sort of personality and ideological issues, particularly as they affect young Nigerians who hitherto looked up to such political figures for some sort of mentorship.

Consequently, many have called Ribadu’s character into question, especially those who were cynical about the manner he discharged his duties as EFCC Boss. He seem to have acted in character that is consistent with other Nigerian politicians even if his ‘intolerant’ and ‘ruthless’ stand against corruption gave him a garb of incorruptibility. Since he joined the murky waters of Nigeria’s politics, he has become a turncoat-in-waiting. Indeed, Ribadu the politician is different from Ribadu the crime fighter who once sat atop Nigeria’s foremost anti-graft agency.

Has Ribadu lost faith and confidence in the APC for allegedly selling out in the 2011 general elections to the PDP Goodluck Jonathan candidacy? If truly Ribadu was sacrificed by his own party whose attitude to winning the election was at best casual, as Ikimi submitted in his lengthy missive to Bola Tinubu, who sold out the party? Could it be that Ribadu’s heart and soul has never been with the APC since then? Has he been hobnobbing with PDP politicians all the while? Or maybe he thought to himself, if the party could sell out at the eleventh hour in 2011, there is nothing stopping the APC from repeating such this time?

Essentially, nothing separates a politician in party A from another in party B. The current wave of impeachment blowing across the country is yet another indication that politicians do not have any genuine intention to serve the people. They seek personal elevation and gains to quench their insatiable greed for power. It is this brand of politics that has thrown up charlatans in political offices and the present leadership bankruptcy in the country.

Elsewhere, lifetime commitments to political parties and ideologies are made that even transcends to generations unborn. Political parties have clearly defined principles that differentiate them from other parties.

Nigerian politicians suffer from compulsive obsessive disorder to occupy political office and will stop at nothing; defecting from one party to another, sponsoring terrorism, blackmail, cultism, rigging and all what not to clinch power. Their desperation to occupy political office and lack of political character cannot deepen democracy. To them, principle should never be an issue on the front burner, ideology and manifestoes mean nothing on the premise of the fallacy that the end justifies the means.

You can follow the writer on twitter @tilevbare. [myad]

The introduction of the land management outfit in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) by the FCT Minister, Senator Bala Muhammed, to be known as the Accelerated Area Council’s Title Reissuance Scheme  (AACTRIS) has brought the best in the minister’s tenure.
He really deserves commendation from FCT residents and other stakeholders.
The programme will go a long way in addressing problems being encountered by allotees of land from the area councils as well as deal with land issues emanating from the six area councils in the FCT.
Also worthy of commendation is the taking over of the Abuja Geographical Information System (AGIS) from the management of Julius Berger Nigeria Plc.
It will be recalled that Julius Berger Plc took over AGIS in the wake of the Nasiru El-Rufai reforms that swept through the former ministry of the FCT leading to subsequent establishment of secretariat agencies, departments, including the AGIS.
One can see a very bright future for the FCT under Senator Bala Muhammed’s leadership who appears to be a detribalized Nigerian, and ready to offer his best to the nation as a whole.

Biu sent this letter from Abuja.

[myad]