By Igbotako Nowinta
Today, we are faced with a government unblinkingly moving in one direction, with unpopular programmes and intentions. In a country where millions of graduates and artisans are roaming the streets, a character who was once an associate Comrade has turned full circle, to be a promiscuous spade and rake, executing dirty and offensive jobs on behalf of the Buhari government. What do Festus Keyamo and his gang take us for? Morons? Why can’t the Federal Government of Nigeria introduce large scale mechanized farming and building of massive industrial complexes here, such as we see in Europe and United States? Such whooping N52 billion earmarked for this perfect wastage called Special Public Works Programme could have accommodated huge permanent employment for millions of jobless Nigerians. The folly of Festus Keyamo at this stage of our nation is a monumental insult on our collective psyche. This programme being anchored by Festus Keyamo is not only contagious or infectious, but a deliberate ploy by him and his masters at Aso Rock Presidential Palace, to reduce our country to a laughing stock, when other nations in the world have taken giant steps in science and technology, bringing their citizens along the path of modernization and sophisticated development.
In September 2009, l published one of my highly successful works: “Where We Are – A Call For Democratic Revolution in Nigeria.”
On page 164, l wrote as follows: “Nigerians must surely dump usurpers that parade themselves as rulers, and be spared their narrow minded haughtiness; people who believe in postponing Nigeria’s progress by their actions and words, and continue to plunder the nation with unrepentant concert.”
More than eleven years later, it is most excruciating and unfortunate, that a man (Festus Keyamo), who had flirted with progressive ideas; pretended not only as an associate Comrade, but an ally of the struggling masses, is now using his privileged position as a Minister in the Federal Republic of Nigeria to demonstrate his folly; his pedestrian inclinations to serious matter of national development.
If not why would Festus Keyamo, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, allow himself to be part and parcel of the ‘Wheel Barrows and Cutlasses’ of Special Public Works Programme Scheme (SPWS) of the Federal Government, that has already gulped N46 billion out of the total budgeted N52 billion?
It is nauseating to know that the beneficiaries of this temporal employment mockery will be paid N60, 000 (sixty thousand naira) each for just three months; and it is targeted at 1,000 (one thousand) unemployed youths in each of the 774,000 Local Government Areas in the country.
What has happened to lawnmowers or grass cutters that are available in large quantities in the market? What is the business of the Federal Government in an area that is supposed to be the responsibility of Local Government Chairmen across the Federation?
It is tragic that Festus Keyamo has descended this very low to this type of comic employment package that will not last long. This has glaringly shown that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is utterly bereft of ideas on how to employ the army of unemployed people in Nigeria.
Why have we been so blessed with “people who believe in postponing Nigeria’s progress by their actions and words and continue to plunder the nation with unrepentant concert”?
What Festus Keyamo and the Federal Government of Nigeria are doing today is furiously throwing daggers at our hearts; stabbing us repeatedly, because we don’t ever deserve this carefully orchestrated drain pipes called ‘Special Public Works Programme.’
Let’s quickly have a look at the recent happenings in Uganda. Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, gave the incumbent President Yoweri Museveni a good fight for his ‘stolen money’ in the recently conducted Presidential Election in that country.
Bobi Wine, a popular rapper, now a legislator in Uganda, decided to challenge a former rebel leader, Yoweri Museveni, who came to power in January 1986, because of decades of stark misrule, economic retardation, official sleaze and state motivated political murders.
Undaunted by nationwide premeditated murders, arbitrary arrests of his supporters, harsh dehumanizing torture of his wife and close associates, Bobi Wine sprang from the heavily prevailing atmosphere of fear and doom, to fight Yoweri Museveni’s demented political methods.
At 76 years, and having ruled for 35 years, Yoweri Museveni, like other traditional power drunk monsters on the continent of Africa, has again succeeded in thwarting the democratic aspirations of millions of Ugandans, who wanted genuine change.
Going into his sixth tenure as President of Uganda will certainly not be easy for Yoweri Museveni, because Bobi Wine has set an unprecedented example of extraordinary political consciousness and revival for the younger generation in that country.
This is Bobi Wine’s magic: it is very clear that sooner than later the political whirlwind generated by Bobi Wine in the 2021 Presidential Election in Uganda, will ultimately consume President Yoweri Museveni, as events unfolds in that country, even as Wine has refused the results of the election, saying that the presidency was snatched away from him.
Today, we are faced with a government unblinkingly moving in one direction, with unpopular programmes and intentions. In a country where millions of graduates and artisans are roaming the streets, a character who was once an associate Comrade has turned full circle, to be a promiscuous spade and rake, executing dirty and offensive jobs on behalf of the Buhari government.
What do Festus Keyamo and his gang take us for? Morons? Why can’t the Federal Government of Nigeria introduce large scale mechanized farming and building of massive industrial complexes here, such as we see in Europe and United States?
Such whooping N52 billion earmarked for this perfect wastage called Special Public Works Programme could have accommodated huge permanent employment for millions of jobless Nigerians.
The folly of Festus Keyamo at this stage of our nation is a monumental insult on our collective psyche.
This programme being anchored by Festus Keyamo is not only contagious, but a deliberate ploy by him and his masters at Aso Rock Presidential Palace, to reduce our country to a laughing stock, when other nations in the world have taken giant steps in science and technology, bringing their citizens along the path of modernization and sophisticated development.
Nigerian progressives must and should emulate Bobi Wine here, what has happened to many of our successful Nollywood stars and other fantastic professionals in different fields of human endeavors?
Must we all join or camp ourselves in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) or the All Progressives Congress (APC), before we can aspire to be presidential materials or aspirants?
Let a thousand younger vibrant Nigerians come out now, and take the unique revolutionary example of Bobi Wine, if the political conservative blocks in Nigeria will not tremble before the 2023 election?
We must not continuously delude ourselves. If we do not demand vigorously for paradigmatic power shift from our old, useless political cargoes in Nigeria, we will never smell the scent of supreme political power here, and our country will continue to be in a mess, in a sorry state, such as we are currently?
Nothing will take away this tragic truth: there has never been in our history, any civilian presidency as stubborn, inconsiderate and defiant, as this Buhari specie. For instance, we have been calling for the sack of the Service Chiefs, and the rejigging of the Federal Executive Council, to make room for fresher brains and ideas, but our General Muhammadu Buhari has simply refused to bulge.
What is democratic governance if the people, the bonafide custodians of sovereignty cannot have their way? What offence has Bishop Hassan Kukah committed that the Presidency has remotely used a fake Muslim group, that has brazenly called for his eviction from Sokoto?
Indeed, to demonstrate our absolute resentment for the likes of Festus Keyamo, we must allow the magic of Bobi Wine in Uganda to intoxicate us to action; we must walk the political path of Bobi Wine.
Sadly, Festus Keyamo has exposed the extreme state of how some of our public officials have gone berserk, in their attitudes to the issue of nation building.
This is a cruel case of a people being beaten down, being crushed to accept anything given to them without mercy, by ministerial recklessness, governmental myopic judgement and blatant insensitiveness.
We must continue to call for the immediate suspension of this oddity, coming from Festus Keyamo and his ideologically hollow bedfellows.
