A CONFERENCE OF FOOLS - FASEYIKU

I have followed with keen interest but a detached commitment the deliberations and also the ways and manners of delegates at the on-going "national conference" taking place in Abuja, Nigeria. I have interest in it because I am waiting (perhaps hoping) that one might, for once, be proved wrong in my pessimism about Nigeria. So my interest is keen but it is of a pessimistic perspective. 

My commitment is detached because the easiest thing to do in Nigeria is go backwards rather than move forward. 

I have always joked that if you put just two eminent and highly intelligent Nigerians together and they have been working unified, just bring religion or ethnicity into the equation and you lose everything. And it is the same thing we are about getting from the national conference.
In an age where we have seen the quality of life of Nigerians plummet to an abysmal low and it has been proven that a most disproportionate percentage of our national patrimony is expended as cost of government, this "national conference of jesters" have recommended the creation of an additional eighteen (18), yes eighteen, new states, in Nigeria. 

At a time when we should be talking of collapsing the existing states into regional administrations and allowing each region to determine how it wants to structure itself either based on local governments or provinces or counties or regional states, those who have been assembled in Abuja are still asking that more costly units of administration be created. 

At the moment, we spend 72% of the federal income as recurrent cost of government. The situation in the state is much worse especially in states where no attempt has been made to develop natural endowments and enhance IGR (internally generated revenue).

 Indeed, the rate and nature of widespread poverty makes it developmentally impossible to enhance IGR in some states or in some parts of a state because the local population is so enmeshed in poverty that nothing can be gleaned out of them as tax. I do not intend to comment on any other issue these jesters have put down but just to note that it doesn't matter that you have a few intelligent people in their midst or in their leadership.

 There is a Yoruba adage with literally translates to one rich man in the midst of six poor is more or less a king wallowing in poverty. 

Sprinkling the "jesters conference" with a few good heads will never make their recommendations one that will advance the interest of the Nigerian masses. 

The new eighteen states is being designed to create more room for elite politicians to go and chop more at the expense of the masses. 

Why put men like Bolaji Akinyemi, Atedo Peterside, Tunji Braithwaite, Mohammed Jumari, Olisa Agbakoba, and my old school-mate, Nnimmo Bassey, there when Ali Baba, Basketmouth, Baba Suwe, Baba Ijesah, Sanyeri, etc are all available to be co-opted. 

I can only recommend to the representatives of the youths and students to write a small minority report, even if it is a one page report, saying to the President: "What they have submitted to you as their majority report is the Nigeria these old senile people want to live in but unfortunately as the youths and the future of this country, this is not the Nigeria that we want to live in". Shikenna.

By 

Oluseyi Steven Faseyiku