RESTRUCTURING: THE DEMAND FOR A FAIR, NOT A WELFARE, SOCIETY.

22/03/18
SIR: Since the debate for restructuring became so loud about 4 years ago, the Northern region of Nigeria has maintained their argument for a welfarist system as against the position of the Southern region which is a fair and equitable system. The North sees her position as best for her because she believed that the region may not be able to sustain self in the event that restructuring was implemented in line with the South's idea of self-sustenance.
For over 5 decades now, Nigeria has operated a welfarist system of administration whereby the several states of the federation depended on the central government for survival. This has for instance, prevented increase in states and therefore buried several ethnic nationalities who wished to be given vent for expression of self in their own state. Another consequence of welfarism has remained the deepening culture of corruption, nepotism, laziness and insecurity.
The quota system - which is an offspring of welfarism - has since enthroned mediocrity in the high and sensitive places of society. Today, from the packaging of locally made movies to agricultural products right unto traditional medicare, there is simply no stamp of professionalism. Our graduates are becoming more and more unqualified and incompetent to compete with international best practices simply because those who are gainfully employed to lecture donot know the left from the right.
In the North, the effect of a welfare society has remained the feudal few who are rich and mighty as against the masses who are basically poor, uneducated, jobless, drug addicts and social misfits. With all the allocations and bail-outs funds that now runs into hundreds of billions of Naira, there is virtually nothing on ground to show that the region had an economy or was developing one. It has so structured itself that it now depended heavily on the center for survival.
Even if the region was basically Saharan, the possibility of a strong and stable agricultural economy was there provided that they got the basics right. Basics like education, reorientation of the people, prudent management of financial resources and visionary leaderships are necessary for a guaranteed shift from welfarism to a fair and labor driven economy. It is also necessary for investment attraction and maintenance as no investor can come into an insecure and unstable region.
This contrasts sharply with the idea of a fair and equitable society where the son of a wheel barrow pusher could become the Vice-chancellor if he qualifies. Nigeria has lamented the recycling of past leaders in her polity over the years but it is the effect of welfarism that has made it so. Talents are suppressed. Innovation is banned. Creativity is banished and even competence is trampled upon. When these happens, the youth - from whom all these qualities derived - are excluded from the equation.
The demand for restructuring should be seen - especially by the Prof. Ango Abdullahis - as a clarion call. This is because, Nigeria has already squandered the time she should've used to get the basics right in the other life, the only way out now was to devolve power from the center and allow the states to get those basics right. As it stands presently, the vision of the central government can never be understood by the people unless there was thorough sensitization.
In fact, until a leader successfully reworked the people's mindset to tally with his vision, he should embrace his eminent failure with open hands! The problem now was that the ideal of provision of basic amenities for the masses by the government was colliding against the reality of human behavior in Nigeria. People abused honest efforts of leadership to better the lives of its citizens but this is because the welfare mentality or what I called the Third World habits has not been reoriented to be in sync with the habits of self-reliant nations of the today's world.
COMRADE IFEANYICHUKWU MMOH WRITES FROM JOS 08062577718