President Muhammadu Buhari
In the 70s, a strong wind of Pan-Africanism blew across the African
continent, borderlines drawn by colonialism began to fade and the
continent shrank even further. Proponents of Pan-Africanism held a
strong belief that the economic, social and political progress of ‘one
Africa’ would unify and uplift people of African descent.
As a result of the proposed economic and infrastructural
integration, there was an agreement to construct railways that would
traverse North, East, West and Southern Africa.
President Shehu Shagari, who was then president of Nigeria saw the
opportunities in a united Africa and decided to build the Ajaokuta steel
company. As the giant of Africa, Nigeria was poised to use Ajaokuta
steel company to supply the required steel, needed for the construction
of the railway.
The railway was already a huge market for the company. Also,
Ajaokuta was projected to employ 500,000 people, with annual revenue
running into billions of dollars. It was envisioned that the project
would provide materials for infrastructural development, technological
acquisition, human capacity building, income distribution, regional
development, among many other achievements. Ajaokuta was more than sixty
percent completed by the Shagari administration.
Despite the promise of a glorious future, a booming economy and a
promising democracy, General Muhammadu Buhari and his military
colleagues plotted a coup and overthrew Shagari’s government. After the
ouster, Ajaokuta was abandoned with no further investment made into it.
Even if the sin of overthrowing a democratically elected president is
forgivable, how do we forgive the sin of the deliberate impoverishment
of our people?
Let’s fast forward to his second coming in 2015. The National
Bureau of Statistics in August 2016 revealed that 4.58 million Nigerians
lost their jobs during Buhari’s first year in office. The unemployment
rate has not dropped, but has rather increased. Many companies have
wound up. Fortune 500 organisations and other multinationals have been
quite concerned about the state of affairs in Nigeria. Portfolio
investors, including Aberdeen Asset Management Plc and Ashmore Group
Plc, which together oversee about $450 billion of asset, have retreated
from Nigerian markets. Nigeria became even less attractive as the
country fell from first to fourth, behind Ivory Coast, Kenya and
Tanzania in the ranking of business prospects by the research unit of
Nielsen Holdings Plc.
To make matters worse, the government recently revoked the contract
of INTELS Services. INTELS Services moved to Onne in 1982, which was an
almost empty field, only partially built. But INTELS refurbished Onne
Port and transformed it to the largest oil and gas free zone in the
world. The government has been struggling hard to convince keen
observers that the revocation was not done on the basis of INTELS’
affiliation with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Atiku has been critical of both
the economy and structure of Nigeria and in the same vein, shown that he
is interested in running for president in 2019.
For the avoidance of doubts, more than 15,000 families depend on
INTELS Services for their daily bread, clothing and shelter. The
question is what would happen to these 15,000 people? Should they all
suffer because of the ambition of one man?
For a government that detests the voice of dissent and would stop
at nothing to clamp down on anyone, Atiku’s INTELS was an easy target.
Before Atiku, the government tried to muzzle the opposition by
introducing a social media regulation bill. After the bill failed, it
introduced the NGO regulation bill to clampdown on organisations who may
oppose government policies. This bill will also fail.
A government should be creating jobs instead of destroying them.
INTELS also has a multi-billion dollar investment at the Badagry deep
seaport in Lagos, the investment in Lagos would create thousands of
direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians. If INTELS pulls out of Nigeria,
how many jobs can Buhari’s administration create for the teeming
population? Everything should not be about politics.
***
Mbasekei Martin Obono tweets @martobono
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