Cartelopia by Asabe Usman
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This is the 3rd day that we have been without running water. My husband and I live in a two-bedroom flat that we rent at an exorbitant six-figure per annum rate simply because it is within fifteen minutes of most parts of Abuja metropolis.
It’s in a neighbourhood called Garki Area 3. Most Nigerians would probably scoff at the idea that I am about to complain about not having running water on the back page of a national newspaper. They would scoff simply because it has and continues to be, the lot of millions all over the country. Utilities and basic public infrastructure have collapsed in most urban areas, casualties of the ‘up is down and down is up’ type of governance that oppresses us. In addition, many rural parts of the country never had any public utilities in the first place…So who am I to complain, right?
The death of ideas
I am not going to complain. Rather I intend to use this latest experience of being a Nigerian in this our great country dominated by brutes and cartels (this Cartelopia) to illustrate a few things. Eddie Iroh in a recent guest column (titled ‘the Death of ideas’), had me thinking about the many ways in which Nigerians expound and expound ‘on the trouble with Nigeria.’ He attributes our failure to build a proper, functioning nation-state to the fact that we ‘suffer from a paucity of sound ideas’ where all of us refuse to think critically, or exercise our intellect.
In my opinion he is right to the extent that solutions to most problems tend to involve overkill, lack of thought and always require huge amounts of money. We throw money, rather than thought into finding solutions. I would add that even paying for that ‘intellectual rigour or skill’ that we feel is not available locally, has in itself become a tool for another form of elite thievery.
Stealing too requires creativity, intellect
Consultants are hired at high cost. Where they are allowed to work unfettered, whatever they produce is either plagiarised and then shoddily implemented or simply thrown out with the next change of government. Usually though, unless they are prepared to inflate prices, use and abuse the system as the bona fide ‘technocrats and civil servants’ have been doing all this while, they are never allowed to get off the ground. Iroh’s piece also reminded me of a recent widely quoted statement of Nuhu Ribadu, the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC): that our leaders have lazy minds.
The main thrust of this argument is that things are not working because we do not want to or perhaps cannot make the effort to find realistic and practical solutions. The danger of this ‘we are intellectually lazy’ argument is that it seems to romanticise Western culture or ‘whiter’ or other people. Hear Iroh: ‘Developed societies like the West have been largely driven by sound ideas, powered by creative imagination; what experts call decision thinking…we must ponder the quality of ideas that have moved these nations to the moon…while we are in search of drinking water.’
Knowledge is dynamic, universal
Indeed. I would point out that much of this ‘great Western civilisation’ was built by copying innovations and the creative imagination of Eastern cultures, of darker races. Just google the history of pipe- borne water for instance and you may be surprised. Yes, I feel Iroh’s disillusionment but that does not for a minute make me forget the real dynamics of how the West’s so-called development came about. Much of it is hardly noble or of high intellect, rather it involved the use of murderous force and ruthless exploitation hitherto unheard of …
In my opinion this Nigerian dearth of ideas or creativity is actually very selective – if you think about it dispassionately. We as a country, as a people always get what we really want done, done. Take our so-called lazy minded leaders: Have you ever had a conversation with a government bureaucrat about the different ways in which fraud is sustained at every stage of a project or programme’s execution?
It takes creativity and imagination. The whole business of ‘419’ is built on pure creativity- low, down and dirty – but creative and sophisticated enough to require the establishment of whole new anti-corruption departments in the developed countries’ police forces. It is actually mind-boggling.
How about demanding truth from leaders?
Take some of our ex-military heads of state, such as for instance, Ibrahim Babangida. He is constantly being accused of corruption but no-one as far as I know, has provided any iota of evidence to support such an assertion. He is not called a ‘genius’ for nothing. Even our now iconic Halliburton scandal which has all manner of retired generals implicated cannot touch him. It certainly requires creativity and mental effort to become so wealthy without a public trace.
Iroh cites what I consider the real problem- in his very last sentence: It all depends really on whether we continue to tell our leaders what we think they want to hear or the truth, he says. Yes, indeed. It’s that truth seeking that would make it possible for me to ask Ibrahim Babangida to give a full account of the sources and size of his wealth before bothering to run for president. Such truths would also tell President Goodluck Jonathan to stop taking us for fools; that you don’t wait until newspapers declare the fact that your chief of staff is also your chief strategist for forcing your candidature by all means (fair or foul) on the Nigerian people, to announce that you have banned your aides from 2011 campaigning!
Searching for water already paid for
Such a pursuit of truth will also have me looking for the officer in charge of the water supply to Garki Area 3 tomorrow. I am going to ask him if everything his staff told me is true: that despite the fact that we have been paying our monthly water bill of N4000 regularly, they have shut down our water supply; That they have done so because we are required to ‘separate’ our water pipes from the communal mains, not because we have not been paying our bills.
This ‘separation’ of our flat from the mains, I have been told before, will cost at least N30, 000. When I ask this officer called Usman, what notice he gave us he says ‘flyers were handed out in 2008’ and a ‘road show campaign’ was done in 2009! I point out that it is now 2010… August. Yes, he says. So I ask to see the written authorisation that entitles him to punish me for not being in the path of a flyer in 2008 or a 2009 ‘campaign’. I ask to see a written notice that gives him the right to deprive me of running water that I have paid for, in order to coerce me into giving him N30,000 to install ‘separation’ pipes.
Reading the writing on the wall
When I ask for the written authorisation he says I should ‘go and read it on the wall of their headquarters.’ Surely you see where his creativity is directed: to frustrate me into forking out money I don’t have, to steal it or even ‘419’ it, just to get water to live.
Well, instead, I shall go and check that notice, rip it off the wall and take it to the man Usman tells me (alleges), has ordered all this ‘creative solution’, Bala Mohammed, minister for this special capital territory.
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