THE FORSAKEN POPULATION 

Who will save Nigeria’s rural population? asks Josef Omorotionmwan

In the face of continued maladministration, Nigeria may have found itself in an awkward dichotomy in every state – a tale of two GRAs. The first GRA is Government Reservation Area. In the Inner City, where the oppressors or the big men, as they are usually called, live. Here, the streets are adequately manicured and there is uninterrupted water and electricity. There are still relics of the defunct water board plus the fact that these influential people are abundantly able to provide their own water systems and security.

The second GRA is the Government Rejected Area. This GRA is made up of The Forgotten Population. They are all over the rural areas where there is no water, no light and no roads. Far into the 21st Century, many in this area live and die without seeing a water tap, and some of them may see a motor car once every four years when the politicians come to ask for their votes.

In the beginning, there was a good life everywhere – even in the second GRA. It was thought that if we provided cottage estates in the most remote area; provide a road to places, put water so that the rural people can drink and bathe when they return from the farm, and provide light so that they can operate their portable radios to know what is happening in the city, the rural people will live happily forever. The rural people are very easy to satisfy.

Instead, Nigeria has also become like the weather, which everybody complains of but nobody is able to do anything about. 

As life becomes more and more unbearable, they tend to move to the first GRA in search of the good life. But they do not get there. They settle at the fringe, thus they only succeed in expanding the second GRA. They have left Oghada, Ekudo, Amaho, Igbanke, Ugboko, and so on, en route to Benin City. 

They soon find that they have left the village but cannot get to town. 

In Sociology, that’s the theory of the Marginal Man. The people are to be found in areas that have become known as Upper; Upper-Siluko, Upper-Sokponba, Upper-Lawani, Upper-Mission, Upper-Upper… By whatever name called they suffered the same fate as those in the second GRA, they are still in the Government Rejected Area – only to be remembered at the approach of elections. 

This is where government sharpens its appetite for complaints and that’s about the only thing that the government does well. It complains about rural-urban migration. Meanwhile, the marginal man soon discovers that things are not any easier in his new place than where he is coming from. He has to move on in search of greener pastures. The government complains of brain drain. 

Local government: Going, going, gone! Things were not always this bad. The death of the rural areas was a direct consequence of the death of the local government. 

Until recently, when the local government had some semblance of life, they provided a lifeline of sorts to the rural areas. There was the annual grading of the earth roads that connected the villages within the local government area. This encouraged open interaction between the villages.

Some more serious local governments, like the Owan East, during the chairmanship of Hon. Pally Iriase undertook bold projects like the tarring of roads in their domain. Others sank boreholes and provided water to their rural population. Yet, some others provided market stalls to their people. They had a peer review mechanism that encouraged open competition among the local governments. This is all gone.  

But where did the bottom fall off in all this?

Quite recently, the state government found that they could totally annex local governments and add their funds to their loot. It worked!

The State Army of Occupation first ran the local governments with hand-picked care-taker committees in utter defiance of the provisions of Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution, which guarantees only the existence of “Democratically Elected Local Governments”.

Not done yet, they moved to the next level and began to organize sham elections, which produced errand boys as local government chairmen and counsellors. 

When allocation comes at the end of the month, the slave masters send to the council, barely enough to pay their staff salaries and sit on the rest. 

And so, the local governments died! The rural areas also died! As the rural earth roads that linked the villages have not seen any graders all these years, they now form part of thick forests that separate the villages. 

This narrative, which is prevalent throughout the country is, however, without prejudice against some state governments that do not withhold local government funds. They are few and far apart.

Who will save our local governments? Who will save rural Nigeria, the forsaken population? Who will save Nigeria? We have no quick fix here. Past efforts to seek autonomy for local governments have been self-defeating. To the extent that state assemblymen, local government chairmen and their counsellors have been inextricably tied to the apron strings of state governors, the majority of votes required for the necessary constitutional amendment here would remain elusive. 

Again, our politicians are at war with themselves. Is it not a curious paradox that the politicians who openly condemned vote-buying are the same ones engaged in it? It’s a rumble in the jungle! 

However, all hope is not lost. In times like these, we must remember our universities. Like or hate them, that’s where the egg-heads are. In the 1960’s, America was in a more precarious situation than Nigeria is today. They quickly assembled the best brains in their universities; impanelled them into task forces; and they soon came out with miracles that saved America. We can do the same. 

This we recommend!

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada