THERE was a fable that teaches life line lesson for who cares a hoot. I called it a fable, because I am yet to come across the record of documentation of the story, but all the same, it is a story worth telling. So, please go along with me.
It was said that the Great Napoleon, once upon a strong man of France, who combined powers of executive, legislature and judiciary together while calling the shot in the European country, decreed on his death bed that if he died, certain conditions should be met before he was released to mother earth.
That the best doctors must be assembled to carry his casket; that his gold, diamond, platinum, guns, and paraphernalia of office must be lined on the street; that his hands must be left flung from the casket, to which his Generals concurred.
The third day, the great man died, and his instructions were followed to the letter. To the ordinary people who could not think beyond the box, Napoleon was painting a larger than life picture, but to one living Philosopher in the country, Napoleon made a statement to arrest the minds of the theologians and the atheists.
The Existentialist philosopher disclosed that Napoleon wanted the world to know the reality of death as an ultimate project as postulated by Jean Paul Satre that if a man’s life must end, all the best doctors in the world cannot save him; that if he dies, nothing would be buried with him; that he came to the world empty-handed, and must return to nature empty handed.
I deliberately related the above story to lay foundation for the discourse of this piece, because it is only designed for the wise ones among us, who can discern. If you read and abuse the writer, you are forgiven for limited intelligence, but a philosophical look may certainly be different. But the baseline is there is no point in life for telling cheap lies, because the entire space called life is ephemeral.
Please, join me in fighting the government of Rauf Aregbesola of the State of Osun on the issue of delayed pension payment for the retirees. We have to fight the governor for making the vulnerable elders hungry, a situation that forced them on the streets of Osogbo for protest. I am angry because one day, we are all going to retire either from public service or private job, and we all pray to be cared for one way or the other in our old days, but while getting angry, let us exercise little reason for wisdom.
I learnt that Osun, as a component unit of the federation, is number 34 out of 36 states on the federal allocation table, suggesting that she is designed for peanuts, when compared to what other states above her would take. Compare and contrast, when the funds in the federation account dropped, Akwa Ibom still manages to take N40 billon monthly, while Osun takes N2.9 billion. So, if a governor or a political party goes on air and describes his tokenism an uncommon transformation, the figure is there for you to place it.
It was also a public knowledge that before the subsidy removal, Osun was getting close to N4 billion on the average every month, and that informed the planning of the governor on his ambitious projects, which have transformed the state from sleeping villages to modern cities anyway, and when other governors were advocating for subsidy removal, including governors from the APC, it was only Aregbesola that stood against it.
The subsidy was arbitrarily removed, the workers began agitation for full implementation of their justifiable minimum wage, and the wage bill and pension in Osun shot from N1.8 billion to N3.6 billion monthly. Surprisingly, from last July, the allocation dropped from the federation account from N4 billion to N2.9 billion, not only in Osun, but other states were affected too. Please, do the mathematical calculation and reconcile the figures, if it matches the equation on ground.
When Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State shouted that strange things are happenings to the federation account, people kept quiet and ignored the fact, when the suspended Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, shouted about the magnitude of stealing of our resources, and that $20 billion running to trillions of naira had gone missing, people were not shocked, they thought it was politicking of the opposition; when it was reported that the Minister of Petroleum, who is saddled with the responsibility to make money available to the federation account, was using the same money for her private jet normally referred to as adult toy by Sam Omotseye, nobody cares, and the only answer from the President for the shortfall is: “our crude oil is being stolen blind.” Whao! In a country that has Navy, Air Force, Army, Police and Coast Guards. Ditto for billions of Naira contract on the security of the pipelines to the Niger Delta thugs, who all owned private jets and universities in neighbouring countries by the federal government.
Now, the chicken has come home to roost, the irreconcilable account at the top has started biting us, Benue and Cross River states have cut the workers’ salaries by half, Akwa Ibom and Ondo, all oil-producing states cannot pay salaries and are negotiating with workers, but the saving culture of Aregbesola’s government is still keeping the state afloat, for how long, I can’t say, but the opposition, who desires to hijack power from him, were instigating the old men and women on the streets to call on the governor to stop ongoing developmental projects, with a view to using the money to pay them, as if the governor is doling out cash to the contractors.
Honestly speaking, we are very right to sympathize with the retirees, but it is the natural law that the vulnerable segment of the population will continue to be endangered in the face of terrible depression. I felt for them, I felt equally for the students of the state-owned Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, who are at home, because their teachers have gone on industrial action, but in our anger, we must reason, and reason must be made to prevail, that is what a renowned scholar, Professor Soji Aremu called EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.
The last time I quoted Nuhu Osahon in his work titled: ‘The Victim’, he said: I am a victim, the son of a victim and the future father of a victim; I had a situation like retirees’ protest, student protest and other protests in mind, but I think our anger must not be misplaced. Let us direct it to the centre, where a lot of stealing of our collective resources is going on with impunity. For your information, each canvasser of Goodluck Jonathan campaign for 2015 is getting N250,000 monthly. Where do you think the money is coming from? Please, do the mathematics.
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