A Nation without Memory

Between April and July, 1994 over 800,000 Rwandans (mainly Tutsis) were murdered in 100 days of civil disturbance and genocide. What triggered one of the world’s worst orgies of bloodshed and murder was the assassination of the country’s President when his plane was shot down by Hutu extremists as it came in to land at Kigali Airport. When asked in 1995 whether he wanted to remember or forget the harrowing incidents, a Rwandan government official was quoted to have said: 'We must remember what happened in order to keep it from happening again. But we must forget the feelings, the emotions, which go with it. It is only by forgetting that we are able to go on.'

These were prescient words indeed from a tiny African country from which our giant Nigeria has a lot to learn. In building a new and vibrant Rwanda, they never forgot the past. All the cases of murder and arson were thoroughly investigated, culprits were identified, and leading instigators and ringleaders of the genocide were arrested and tried by an International Tribunal set up by the United Nations for the purpose. Several convicted ringleaders and instigators are serving life sentences today. In addition, detailed records of the massacre are being maintained, and annual memorial ceremonies are observed in Rwanda in order to remember what happened and learn from the mistakes of the past.

Nigeria has gone through several natural and manmade disasters in its fifty years of existence as a nation. Let me recount just a few here to buttress my candid view that a nation which forgets its past is likely to repeat the same mistakes with even more disastrous consequences for its citizens.

Firstly, we fought a bloody civil war between 6 July 1967 and 15 January 1970. For those of us who were witnesses to the tragic events which preceded the secessionist attempts of Biafra as well as the trauma and loss of lives which resulted from the war, it is mind-boggling that nothing is really being done to specifically commemorate the end of this unfortunate phase in our national life. In the first place, General Yakubu Gowon declared his “no victor – no vanquished” policy which meant that perpetrators of the genocides and pogroms which led to the civil war were never investigated and appropriately punished. Similarly, those who declared war against the nation went totally scot free. Our feeble attempt to maintain a war museum fizzled out several decades ago. To my knowledge, there are no physical monuments erected and maintained anywhere in Nigeria as a memorial to those who lost their lives either as victims of the pogroms in the northern parts of the country or as soldiers during the civil war. Millions of people lost their lives in this civil war, and have been completely forgotten by the nation. It may be true that we celebrate an Armed Forces Remembrance Day each year. My view is that it is a vague and ineffective ceremony which cannot replace the need for a befitting and well-organised Commemoration Day dedicated specifically to our civil war. Activities need to be planned to annually remember the unfortunate Nigerians who died as a result of the war, and constantly educate the younger generation about what led to the bloodshed. The economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions among our various peoples which led to the war are still with us today. As a nation which suffers from amnesia, we seem to be moving precipitously towards the same mistakes that may lead us into an even bloodier civil war from which Nigeria may never recover.

May 1 – 8 this year were days set aside as Holocaust Remembrance Days in America. As done every year since the end of the Second World War, Americans remembered those who lost their lives during the Holocaust in Germany. This year’s theme was “Justice and Accountability in the Face of Genocide: What Have We Learned?” In addition to official parades and memorial wreaths, all public schools were involved. Instructions and activities were planned and executed with the aim of teaching young Americans about the Nazis and Hitler. Every succeeding generation of Americans is thus given the opportunity to learn about the Nuremberg trials and convictions of perpetrators of the Holocaust and the Second World War, while imbibing the lesson that while justice and accountability were necessary in the aftermath of genocide, inaction in the face of crimes against humanity could be deadly and early intervention could save innocent lives. In a similar manner, there are anniversaries for almost all catastrophic events in America’s history, dating as far back as the civil war which was fought between 1861 and 1865 and has never been forgotten since then. Both the first and second world wars are remembered each year. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which killed over 3,000 innocent people on American soil were remembered in a massive and highly symbolic tenth year anniversary this September. Americans, as well as other civilized nations, are determined not to forget the past in order to build a greater future.

Why do we in Nigeria prefer to bury the past and forget our painful memories? How can we grow as a nation if we never wish to, or are too afraid to investigate and punish the guilty?

The situation is the same with our natural disasters. I was a witness to the deadly Ogunpa Floods in Ibadan in 1978. It had happened in 1960 when 1000 residents lost their homes, and in 1963 when 500 houses were damaged. I witnessed the loss of nearly a hundred people in 1978. The floods of 1980 gave Ogunpa national and international notoriety. Thousands of people lost either their lives or property and the city of Ibadan was devastated in that disaster. Poor town planning administration as well as criminal disregard for law, order and safety were identified as the causes of the damage, yet nobody was found guilty and punished. There are no memorials built to remember those who lost their lives, and there are no anniversaries to remember and teach others who were not witnesses to the disasters. Is it any surprise that Ibadan floods have recurred several times in the five decades since they started? This year’s flood which killed so many people and destroyed so much property is also being swept under the carpet, and will soon be forgotten. It is a vicious cycle, perpetrated by our collective amnesia.

In Taraba State, we have flood problems which we constantly forget until they happen again. In 2005 heavy flooding in Jalingo led to several deaths and destruction of homes. The government promptly compensated victims in order to help them relocate to a new site allocated to them free of charge. Everything was soon forgotten – the displaced victims took the money and refused to move. Town planning authorities looked the other way until this year when the floods came again. Over 3000 displaced persons are currently squatting in various makeshift camps after the August 2011 flooding of the same river. The problems may be small compared to Ogunpa, but that was how Ogunpa itself started – small until 1980 when the whole world noticed in view of the scale of damage and destruction. If we decide to completely forget what is happening in Jalingo, and nobody loses his job or is punished, the same floods will come with more vengeance in the future. We need to remember the past in order to prepare for the challenges of the future.

No to Nuclear Power Plants in Nigeria

A nuclear plant, a windmill and a solar panel are at a party, and the nuclear plant is getting all the attention from the beautiful girls. Jealous, the windmill and solar panel ask nuclear power what his secret is. Naturally, the atomic power player says “Well, Mr. Windmill, you’re just spinning your wheels in place and blowing a lot of air getting nowhere, and you Mr. Solar Panel, you suck up all the light and your character is very flat. On the other hand, I am the bad boy every girl loves: I’m dangerous, I’m toxic to the core, I’m hard to handle, and my charm is radioactive.”

This joke would have been so funny, if not because the issues involved are so serious. I feel sad that after all that has been said and done about nuclear energy worldwide, my own President Goodluck Jonathan can make a complete about-turn and take steps to thrust a nuclear power plant on Nigeria. Around the world, enlightened people are already celebrating the imminent end of the nuclear age. In my country, we are begging Russia, the world’s leading merchant of deadly nuclear power plants, to come and build one in our very backyard. The news is both alarming and saddening.

Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan formally inaugurated Nigeria’s Atomic Energy Commission with a charge to the members to quickly evolve implementable plans and timelines for the delivery of atomic energy for so-called peaceful purposes in the country. He was reported to have said that generating power from atomic energy was very much part of the federal government's long-term plans for ensuring steady power supply in the country. And he promised the commission headed by passionate pro-nuclear pundit and activist, Erepamo Osaisai, that his administration would ensure that the commission receives adequate funding to carry out the task.

I recall that only a few months ago, President Jonathan’s own Minister of State for Power, Nuhu Waya, revealed that our government had foreclosed any plans to explore nuclear energy as an alternative source of electricity power generation. Speaking in the wake of the Japanese earthquakes which triggered the highly dangerous meltdown of some of their nuclear power plants, the Minister revealed that Nigeria did not need to talk about nuclear power. According to him, the country was blessed with abundant capacity in other much safer energy sources such as hydro, thermal, wind and solar which have not been fully utilized.

It is obvious that powerful pro-nuclear pundits have won President Goodluck Jonathan to their side. The mere fact that a few Nigerians such as Dr. Erepamo Osaisai went abroad and earned Master’s and Doctorate degrees in nuclear engineering when the field was still fashionable in the 70s and 80s should not mean that they must drag the whole nation down this dangerous path of nuclear proliferation just because they want to put what they learned into practice. Most countries the world over, including Japan, are now actively seeking ways out of the nuclear and radioactive nightmare which their earlier mistaken rush into nuclear power generation has landed them. Rather than use their expert knowledge to guide us away from making these same mistakes, these experts are bent on railroading President Jonathan and all of us into dabbling into a dangerous venture that cannot end well for this nation.

In a related development in July this year, Nigeria’s Minister for Science and Technology who is also a well-known nuclear pundit, Professor Ita Okon Bassey Ewa had set the ball rolling by calling on the Russian Federation to immediately start the process of designing and implementing a nuclear power plant in Nigeria. I must confess that on the day this man was screened and confirmed by the Senate as a Minister of our Federal Republic I had the sinking feeling that this government was about to take the irrevocable leap into nuclear power generation.

My candid view is that in spite of the newly established commission dangling the prospect of generating 1,000MW of nuclear energy by 2017, with the hope of increasing this within ten years to 4,000MW by 2027, Nigerians must speak out with one voice against this nuclear misadventure. There are several compelling reasons for my stance.

Firstly, nuclear power plants are not a safe method of generating electricity in spite of the assurances of Nikolai Spassky, Director General of the Russian State Corporation which is set to earn a lot of money from Nigeria for designing, building and probably maintaining the nuclear power plant. Nuclear accidents do happen, with the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine as well as the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown being the two worst disasters ever. By 2005 there had been more than 6,000 reported cases of thyroid cancer among those exposed to the radiation from the Chernobyl explosion. Besides, residual radioactivity in the environment means human movement or activity must remain excluded from a large area surrounding the damaged plant for thousands of years to come. Nuclear power accidents are catastrophic with unimaginable consequences for humans, animals and vegetation alike.

Secondly, handling the nuclear waste which such a plant generates is costly and extremely dangerous. Spent or used nuclear fuel rods will remain hazardously radioactive for at least 10,000 years. They must be kept in sealed containers and continually cooled for all this time, if not they will heat up and a meltdown will lead to the same nuclear consequences as a power plant meltdown. What a price and burden to place on future generations of Nigerians for our nuclear stupidity of today! I can imagine my great, great, great, great, great, grandchildren (up to twenty generations) having to bear the burden of handling nuclear waste left behind by my generation –  just because we were thirsty for ‘cheap’ electricity, and were too lazy to use safer alternatives that abound around us.

Thirdly, Nigeria’s reputation for corruption and ineptitude in managing government facilities gets me worried that President Goodluck Jonathan’s nuclear power plant venture will end up like our railways, airways, NEPA, Nitel and other failed government corporations of the past. The alarming thing is that when this nuclear power plant fails (which I know it will, given our antecedents), it will spill a lot of radioactivity that will send us all scurrying to other countries for safety. I cannot but totally agree with the observation of a fellow Nigerian resident in the USA, who observed that “we must pause as a nation and urgently review this dangerous program. The observation that as a nation we have not been able to harness the skills and discipline required for maintaining simple hydro-electric and thermal power generating plants is valid. It is extremely difficult to convince skeptical Nigerians that all of a sudden, we will be able to maintain and run nuclear power plants.”

With customers dwindling in other civilized parts of the world, nuclear power plant merchants must not be allowed to dump their dangerous and highly unpopular technology in Africa. If we cannot realize vision 20:2020 without nuclear energy, we definitely cannot realize it even with nuclear energy. President Jonathan and his nuclear pundits must hear our voices when we shout NIMBY! Nuclear energy, Not In My Backyard!

Fuel subsidy removal and the rest of us

The hottest news in Nigeria is about fuel subsidy. The decision by President Goodluck Jonathan and his economic team to announce the removal of fuel subsidy as from next year (less than three months from now) has taken both supporters and opponents by surprise. And like all true Nigerians, passionate comments for and against the impending fuel price increase are pouring in from all angles. But this controversy is not new, and I doubt very much if we will have heard the last of it even after this President leaves office.

Let me take you down memory lane. At independence in 1960, fuel importation and sales were handled by private business enterprises. Government had no hand in it. I remember with distinct nostalgia the mid-sixties and early seventies in Nigeria. Filling stations competed with each other to get customers – each trying to charge slightly lower prices than the other. They also offered inducements such as free plastic and glass cups as well as ‘free air’ to motorists in order to attract them. Petrol prices varied from day to day and week to week depending on the importers and international price regimes. But the great thing was that there was no product scarcity or shortage, and no profiteering either. What went wrong?

I bought my first car in 1978 when things were this good. With less than 4 Naira I could fill up the tank of my small Japanese car. That was within my income level. Unfortunately, that was the very year when the military government led by Olusegun Obasanjo took the ill-advised step of raising and fixing fuel prices. The government doubled the price of petrol to 15kobo per litre, triggering a series of price increases and subsidy debates which is yet to end 33 years after. Under the military, the litre price of petrol grew in quantum leaps to 60kobo in 1990, 70kobo in 1992, N3.25k and N11.00k in 1993. The price still went on rising, going up to N20.00k per litre in 1998 and N22.00k in 2000. Obasanjo in his re-incarnation as an elected civilian President continued his tinkering with fuel price increases, raising the price of petrol to N40.00k per litre in 2003, and finally to N65.00k where it now stands. I stand to be corrected if I am wrong, but I sincerely believe that Obasanjo was almost single-handedly responsible for all the fuel price increases we have suffered as a nation since independence.

Under Obasanjo’s watch, government actively meddled in and took over nearly all aspects of mining and exportation, refining, importation and sale of petroleum products in Nigeria. The few private companies left in the sector have had to dance to the music of corruption and gross inefficiency being played by military as well as civilian government appointees and stooges. While a few Nigerians have smiled (and are still smiling) all the way to foreign banks with their oil loot, the majority of Nigerians have continued to groan under the weight of an enforced fuel price regime caused by the mismanagement and sabotage of our domestic oil refineries as well as the gross inefficiency and massive corruption beguiling our fuel importation and distributive system. The subsidy which government talks about is actually the subsidy the nation is paying to corruption and ineptitude.

When people rise up against the so-called removal of fuel subsidy, two things come to mind.

In the first place, for us ordinary Nigerians, it means that Government is once again going to raise fuel prices (in the name of subsidy removal) in order to stock its treasury with more funds to be shared between the three tiers of government.  Of course we are used to the deceptive promises that the product would be made more available, and that the extra money generated would be used to improve our national infrastructure and the lot of the poor. As long as corruption in the lucrative oil sector of the economy is allowed to continue, more subsidies will creep into the pockets of corrupt politicians and key oil sector managers. Eventually, more price increases will become necessary, and the vicious spiral will continue. In the not too distant future, it may be more costly to fill up your tank with petrol than to buy a secondhand car. This is a gloomy prospect for Nigerians.

In the second place, petroleum products constitute the prime power source that drives the whole economy and our social life as a nation. Everything depends on the price of fuel. As fuel prices are set to go up with the announcement of this latest attempt at subsidy removal, we all know that the prices of commodities, food and everything else in Nigeria will go up astronomically. Economists call it inflation. For the rest of us, we know that it is more than inflation. It means more sweat, hunger, illness and death for ordinary Nigerians. Why is this government willing to inflict this pain and suffering on the very people who elected it to office barely seven months after?

My candid view on this matter is this. If the President truly believes that he wants to do away with the much-talked about fuel subsidy, then he must be prepared to go all the way. There are two things he must do to ensure success, and perhaps take us back to the golden post-independence era.

Firstly, he should not be talking about fuel subsidy removal at all. What President Jonathan should be aiming for is complete deregulation of the oil sector. Neither NNPC nor any government agency should be involved in refining, importation or sale of petroleum products anywhere in Nigeria. Everything should be left to market-driven forces – it is ridiculous to say government is removing fuel subsidy, and then go ahead and fix a price for petroleum products. There is no sense in it. Let private companies be allowed to import the products, or refine them locally, and sell at their own prices. Any attempt by government to implement a phased withdrawal of subsidy or fix ceiling prices for the products will be manipulated by those who have been stealing from the system, and it will fail. I know many Nigerians will groan at this suggestion – but I sincerely believe that what happened with the telecommunication sector with the introduction of independent GSM companies will also happen in the petroleum sector. Prices will be high initially, but eventually, market forces will bring them down. Remember that some of us initially paid as much as N25,000 for our GSM SIM-cards. They now go for as low as N200. We had to beg, crawl and bribe to get SIM cards at the beginning, now they are available in every corner shop in the country. Telephones were the preserve of the super-rich in those days. Remember David Mark’s arrogant statement when he was Minister for Telecommunications before deregulation: ‘Telephones are not for the poor!’ With deregulation, every Nigerian can now enjoy telephone services. That is the benefit of government deregulation. My honest view is that the petroleum sector will also gain if the deregulation is total, with no half-way measures.

Secondly, President Jonathan must institute a very high powered and high profile judicial inquiry into all the theft and corruption that has bedeviled Nigeria’s oil sector. Culprits must be exposed and punished, no matter how highly placed. This is the only way Nigerians can forgive him when they start paying the high prices for petroleum products that will emerge after he introduces deregulation. If he does not have the guts to do this, let him please let sleeping dogs lie – his predecessor President Yar’Adua was wise enough to refuse to increase fuel prices while he was alive. Jonathan has a lot to learn from him.