‘Water, Water Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink’

By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi

I have borrowed the title of the famous poem by the English author, Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his book ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’, to headline my article, without seeking for the approval of the author. And let nobody think that I am changing my genre of article writing to poetry writing. I do not have that talent, in the first place.

When the book, ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ was brought to us as literature students in Form (class) Three, I understood not what Coleridge was saying in the poems published in the book, yet I was said to be ‘good at literature’.

But now, I very well understand what ‘water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink’ means, because the situation obtains in present day Nigeria, where despite the trillions of naira interventions by the governments in the country, most of the citizens are still extremely impoverished. Welcome to the period of the ubiquitous assistance, and sponsored social media.

One is bombarded in the media (conventional and new) with tales of the huge amounts of money the three tiers of government spend individually to ease the poverty and hunger that are prevalent in Nigeria, by way of ‘development’ projects and programmes, as well as donations by the President, by the First Lady, by the 36 state Governors and the 774 local governments in the country.

As if not be outdone, members of the assemblies at both levels, ministers and heads of government agencies and parastatals, do chip in their donations, assistance and constituency projects (by the lawmakers) periodically.

But for the constant intervention by wealthy business people around, there is pretty little on the ground to suggest that these huge amounts of money have been spent in the country.

Yet, the federal government ‘spends’ in trillions, each state government ‘spends’ billions, and each local government ‘spends’ millions to ‘develop’ the society so that Nigerian citizens can live their lives fairly well.

There is the mysterious elongation of the 46-kilometre road into a ‘magnificent’ 156-kilometre long road as the federal government claimed to have constructed the ‘156-kilometre’ road from Zaria to Hunķuyi, in Kaduna state. The magical feat is achieved under the current Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, a one time Governor.

The country is full of disappearing empowerment projects, which whereabouts is only known to the empowers that be. And all the levels of government are not innocent of this abracadabra.

Some projects stop working a little moment after their ‘commissioning’, for which the whole world was shown ‘one of the monumental milestones achieved by this administration’, through radio and television, as well as the many media (social and conventional) owned by them.

To be a little personal and literally, I live in an area which is a few hundred meters away from one of the booster stations in the state capital. But for over one year, the whole area (at least my street) has not received a DROP of pipe borne water, despite the effort (in billions) said to be put to ensure the supply of water to most parts of the state capital.

The self service of many in the present federal regime explains why many ‘important’ people of today, who came to their positions yesterday with unpresentable clothes, are so rich that they can afford to build palaces, buy mansions and houses elsewhere. Some of them do these things to prepare themselves for even more stealing from the citizens’ Commonwealth.

The Minister of Darkness, Adebayo Adelabu, for instance, who supervises the collapse of the electricity sector, has so far built a palace in Ibadan, Oyo state, in under two years of the present regime of ‘RENEWED HOPE’. The hope of someone who came to office without reasonable dress, is definitely renewed even as majority remain ‘HOPELESS’.

For the information of the empowered, nobody needs to be congratulated for doing what they promised to do. One does not need to be applauded for giving back to the people, an insignificant fraction of what has been taken away from them in the first place. Neither does anyone need the klieg light to attend the ceremony, when you are giving to the people sincerely.

Still, such people have their media both conventional and new, that they bother ordinary citizens with the ‘good’ things they are doing to the society.

We have entered into the era of open corruption, where few moments after one is elected to a big office, or appointed as a minister or head any government agency, someone becomes rich beyond imagination. But anyone not willing to join the practice, is abandoned by the leadership. They never mind the level of the abject poverty and hunger that the country is facing.

Many of them, now rich big people, send their children, nephews and cousins to schools abroad. But some of them returned to the country not as graduates who passed out with flying colours, but as drop outs who were dismissed for one misconduct or another, including doing Involvement with drugs.

Sime of the parents are themselves into drugs, so their returning kids automatically join in the ‘lessons’ that they learned abroad for further education.

The irony of the situation is that some of the children of the poor, who have no choice but to attend public schools at home, come out, ASUU willing, with First Class degrees. Foreign universities and research institutions snap them up with mouth-watering offers, which many of them find too attractive to turn down.

Meanwhile, the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, should be wary of his ‘Ides of March’. You are not going to be done what was done to Julius Caesar of the Ancient Roman Empire, but it will be worth your while to learn from the misjudgment of one of your predecessors. Majority of the governors of his party wanted him to be the next number one citizen in the country, but his principal, kneeling on his knees, pleaded with him to allow him (the principal) do a second term.

He agreed. And as it turned out, that ‘agreement’ was the biggest political miscalculation (mistake) he had so far made. History is there to tell you what happened afterwards.

Although the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) has yet to give the nod for campaigning to begin, your ‘Ides of March’
is coming for sure if you agree to be persuaded to run again as number two to your current principal. Take it from me, the political non-starter, you will become someone to be pitied the moment the second term begins. Think wisely, VP, or that will be your political waterloo.

May God get Nigeria out of the mess of corrupt leaders and equally, their corrupt aides.

Malumfashi writes from Katsina