Nigeria’s minister of works and power, Babatunde Fashola entered office
running. He kicked off his new job by announcing to the distraught nation his
plans to re-introduce highway tolls to tax the people. The toll gates like the
ones he setup in Lagos are not run by the government, but by private
companies of friends of his who make a delicious percentage from each vehicle,
for life.
Next, the former Lagos state governor remembered for his demolitions of
habitats of the poor and unconstitutional deportations of over 3000 Nigerians to
highways at the entrance to various States, north, south, east and west,
decided to hike electricity tariffs by a whopping 40% for the masses who cannot
eat, have no security and have never yet reaped the dividend of citizenship,
democracy or a new administration.
The hike in tariffs for next-to nonexistent electricity was protested against by
Labour and described by the senate, for once on the side of humanity, as “ultra-
wicked!” I believe they suspended it in the interest of God and delaying the
revolution. Since the new administration resumed power, prices of food has
risen and life has become so unbearable, but the first thing Fashola could think
of was making his friends in the power sector happy with more ponzi money
from every household in their pockets.
It is recollected that in 2012, elitist Fashola openly opposed government
subsidies on electricity tariffs, arguing that the same way Nigeria’s telecom
industry rips off the masses, making a killing for one of the shoddiest and most
expensive services in the world is the same way the Federal government should
allow the power sector fully deregulate and the cabal fix prices. How about
honest decentralizing power and allowing whoever, including SMEs, decided to
generate and sell power the freedom to do so? Don’t hold your breath. Fashola
will keep the “decentralization” limited to crony cabal big business coys.
Fashola who is remembered for building boreholes as Lagos governor at
$450,000 a piece for what should not cost more that $200 each, once again
among other schemes to enrich himself through his half-a-million dollar bore-
hole drilling cronies like Dr. Tunji Olowolafe, placed prices that could make you
faint in his ministry’s budget. Boreholes were listed this time at $700,000! The
rest of the budget was filled with other similar opportunities for his pocket.
While the dust from all his self enriching schemes was yet to settle, the Minister
of Power announced that he wished to increase mobilization money for road
contractors to get the roads done.
The question one has to ask Lord Babaunde Fashola is: is there anything he
does where he puts masses first? Is there any project he does where he thinks
of the people and not the cabal? Nigeria’s money goes: half for Fashola and
half for Nigeria, and then money from your pocket continues to go to him in
tolls and tariffs for life.
Fashola will provide infrastructure for Nigeria but at what cost? The works he
did in Lagos made the State eternally enslaved to Fashola, his godfathers and
their friends and placed the State calamitously in debt.
By the time Fashola is done providing infrastructure for you and me, for those of
us he has not found a way to force our deportation or self-exile out of Nigeria,
we will be so poor and enslaved to the cabal that as Jean-Jacques Rousseau
said in describing the underpinnings of the French revolution, “having nothing
left to eat, we will eat the rich.” Mark my word. Perhaps in a way, Fashola is a
blessing as Nigeria can do with a revolution.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah @EveryNigerian
