President Umaru Yar’adua is presently in Saudi Arabia where he is undergoing a medical check-up, Lagos State Governor; Mr. Babatunde Fashola last Friday underwent a diagnostic check at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, and ASUU has threatened to release names of Govt officials’ children schooling abroad.
ASUU should stop saying it out but rather go ahead to publish the names of the rogues concerned?
Nigerians must compel public officials to educate their wards in Nigeria’s public schools, and should insist that these crooks patronise the health sector, to see firsthand the public health infrastructure that is crumbling due to neglect and official incompetence.
The counter-intuitive aspect of the Nigerian leadership attitude is that the leaders loot the public treasury directly or indirectly and therefore there are no funds to maintain or upgrade Nigerian educational institutions.
These leaders who ruin the system turned around and use the LOOTED FUNDS to send their own children to school abroad because of the mess they have made. The same music plays with hospitals and healthcare, and most Nigerian leaders seek health care abroad.
These men who that have been steadily bleeding Nigeria, sucking her marrow, dare not enjoy the local facilities because they squandered the money meant for their development.
In an interview with newsmen after the checks, Governor Fashola said he decided to use the facility available at the hospital to check on the sports injury he picked up a few weeks back because, having commissioned it a few months ago, he was confident that he would get the best treatment. He then urged Nigerians to use facilities available in the country for treatment instead of seeking such treatments abroad.
In contrast, Mr. Yar’Adua, known to have a chronic kidney problem, travelled to Saudi Arabia for more than two weeks, August last year, an absence which raised concern about his fitness to govern Africa‘s most populous nation.
Now he is in Saudi Arabia receiving treatment instead of building or improving the health facilities in Nigeria. Previously he had been to Germany and Dubai, to enjoy their world class treatment.
The kleptomaniac Abacha, despite the massive corruption that characterised his regime but thanks to his chronic sickness and the international sanction imposed on his regime has the National Hospital, Abuja as a remarkable legacy of the Abacha era.
In releasing that list, ASUU should not forget that the NEC and Governors have taken sides with the government, so they must be included in the list! What is ASUU waiting for?
It is either it has the list or it does not; if it has, it is a matter of public interest that such a list is made public to Nigerians. If no newspapers will publish it in Nigeria, ASUU can get it easily published on the internet.
Such a list as is being touted could be released as a way of sensitizing Nigerians as to the real reasons why government continue to pay lip service to education in Nigeria, namely that most of them are hypocrites who do not believe in the system they are forcing down the throats of Nigerians!
ASUU should simply go to PUNCH library, they have done the story in the past on governors children in schools aboard.
If ASUU is wary of any possible repercussions against its members in Nigeria, they should send the list to me and I will get it published on the net in as many places as possible.
This is the sort of way we can do something concrete instead of angrily ventilating on the net. The list of charlatans educating their kids abroad is long over-due!
Because bad, visionless and inept leadership is the bane of Nigeria‘s progress, the rules for participating in governance in Nigeria should be:
1. Your children MUST school in Nigeria, so that if you can’t maintain or upgrade Nigerian educational institutions, everybody suffers it.
2. You and your family MUST receive health care in Nigeria, so that if you can’t maintain or upgrade Nigerian healthcare system, everybody suffers it.
3. Govt should not fund “personal generators” in Govt houses; so that if the leaders in Govt can’t maintain or upgrade Nigerian power system, everybody suffers it.
It is TIME TO GET TOUGH! If you want to lead in Nigeria, you must be prepared to serve and be a direct consumer of the service you deliver.
Without these TOUGH MEASURES and STANDARDS, Nigerians will continue on the ride in the vans of ineptitude and opportunists called leaders. And Nigeria will continue to breed militants, kidnappers and robbers in a society where the majority of the citizens just hear or imagine the wealth derived from the resources of the society; but they never feel, see, sense or enjoy it!
Sadly, it is the children of ordinary Nigerians who are at the receiving end of this strike. Government has never given a hoot about the standard of education because their kids are all schooling abroad.
If only ASUU would call off the strike and then fight the government from within. ASUU can even go further by saying they should be saying they would call off their strike if they could get 10 children of Governors, Ministers et al in our public universities.
ASUU could be more constructively engaged with the sympathies of majority of Nigerians without striking. The government seems to be winning the propaganda war at the moment.
Apart from ASUU, Nigerians SHOULD SPONSOR A LEGISLATION BANNING ALL PUBLIC OFFICIALS FROM GOING T O OVERSEAS HOSPITALS AND SENDING THEIR WARDS TO STUDY ABROAD
THIS IS LONG OVERDUE!
I believe that these overseas “medical check-ups” are simply a ruse to siphon our looted funds and bank it abroad. Remember it is after a medical check-up in Germany that the former Bayelsa Governor, Diepreye Alameseigha was caught with £10 million in cash at Heathrow Airport by the London Metropolitan Police.
It is only by monitoring and holding these thieves accountable will Nigeria be better. They are your servants; they should be serving you and not the other way round.
We have formed an organisation to start monitoring these leaders to hold them accountable or to punish them. Come and join us here.
elsdaniel@yahoo.com