Enugu State governor Peter Mbah, who came to power in fraudulent (s)elections in 2023, has been wowing his social media fans with all manner of white elephant projects in a propaganda blitz tagged “tomorrow is here“.
The governor’s praise-singers have been dazzled by the apparent “launch” of Enugu Air – a state-owned airline, reportedly involving four aircraft. An “international conference centre” has also been built in the state capital, as well as reviving the moribund Hotel Presidential in the city that has been out of business for 20 years.
The noise from Mbah’s supporters have drowned reasonable questions about the governor’s priorities. Pensioners from the state have reportedly not been paid their pensions for up to 30 months. State government workers have reportedly not been paid since the end of last year.
The governor brought in a German “expert” and claimed he was going to deliver running water in Enugu in six months. This was two years ago. No water, but money has been shifted towards procuring airplanes for flights that the overwhelming majority in the state can’t afford.
Mbah with the German appointed head of the state’s water company
The reality is that neither an airline nor an “international conference centre” nor a luxury hotel should be on any priority list for a serious governor in a state without running water in every home. This is a criminal misplacement of priorities and an impeachable offence because the Nigerian constitution in Chapter 2, Section 14(2)(b) says the security and welfare of the people of the state should be the “primary purpose” of the state government. Building hotels, conference centres, airlines when you haven’t paid salaries and pensions and no running water, are examples of a criminal misuse of public funds while ignoring your primary purpose.
“International conference centre” in a city with how many international conferences each year?
What we have here from Mbah and other rulers like him are examples of “social murder”. This is a term used by Friederich Engels to describe murder committed by the establishment in which they deliberately permit conditions to exist where the poorest and most vulnerable in society are deprived of basic necessities, placed in conditions not suitable for human existence, leading to early and unnatural deaths. Life in Nigeria for the majority is “nasty, brutish and short” for reasons traced directly to bad governance.
Those are the conditions that many Nigerians find themselves in because their rulers have deprioritised providing the basics for their security and welfare, as required by the constitution that they all swore to uphold when they took office. Those rulers instead deploy most available resources on white elephant projects that provide loads of opportunities for the inflation of contracts.
Hadi Sirika, the aviation minister under President Muhammadu Buhari, claimed he was launching an airline – Nigerian Air – in 2018. There were no planes, no flights, about $300m of public funds allegedly took off and all Nigerians got in return were baseball caps.
Nigerian rulers get away with their criminality because many Nigerians have been so starved of good governance that they no longer recognise what good governance looks like. This is why they are quick to praise any of their oppressors that engages in some grandiose project that does nothing to alleviate the suffering of the people.
