Nigeria is losing its leadership position

Nigeria is fast losing its leadership position in the comity of nations, especially in Africa, where it used to be the giant.

I really felt humiliated when I saw President Umaru Yar’Adua seated in the third row behind the presidents of some small African countries at the inauguration of President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

As if that was not enough, it was recently announced that the President of United States of America, Barack Obama, would be visiting Africa for the first time.

Precisely, he would, in company of his wife, Michelle, visit Ghana between July 10 and 11, 2009.

It should bother Nigerians why the US president choses to visit Ghana and not Nigeria. This has further confirmed that we are fast losing our position in the comity of nations.

Could it be that Obama is afraid that he and his wife might be kidnapped in Nigeria, since they would neither use force nor pay ransom should anything like that happen to them?

It is a common knowledge that our governors, especially those in the South-South region, have been paying ransom to kidnappers to justify the spending of their security votes.

One of them (Akwa Ibom) in the recent past, was quoted to have said that the money that is supposed to be used in development projects is being spent on security, while the other (Bayelsa) claimed that he had been getting threats through text messages for stopping the alleged monthly N100million hand-out to militants.

Kingsley Ikpe Udoh, 111, Goldie Street,
Calabar, Cross River State.
kikpeudoh@yahoo.com

UN, AU call FG to order

This is to call on the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) to prevail on the Federal Government to engage in constructive dialogue with the Niger Delta militants.

While government’s action of sending troops to the area is justified since it could no longer tolerate the militants’ criminal activities, the ongoing operation will no doubt, increase the suffering of the people of the area.

The Federal Government should, therefore, not wait until the operation in the area turns into a full blown war before it engages in dialogue with a view to resolving the crisis.

Emem Emenike,
Port-Harcourt,
Rivers State.

Nigeria, a country of bottlenecks

Nigeria has been engulfed in various bottlenecks since independence. There are bottlenecks in the political, economic and social systems.

Bottleneck refers to a low-capacity part of a system that reduces the functions of the whole system. For example, where a four-lane road is reduced to a two- lane road, the traffic will have to “squeeze” through the two lanes, like squeezing through the neck of a bottle. As a result of these bottlenecks, we have not been able to maximally utilise our human and material resources.

Again, inefficiency in power generation and distribution has led to higher cost of production and low capacity utilisation. The nation is currently being powered by generators while a few business moguls who import these generators smile to the banks.

Another area where there is bottleneck is the crude oil supply chain. We have oil in abundance but we cannot refine it. The bottleneck in this case, is caused by the NNPC . The resultant effect is, imperfect market, which leads to fuel scarcity.

Another supply chain that has suffered bottleneck is farm produce. No doubt, Nigeria has great potentialities in Agriculture but there’s problem in the distribution process. We have bad roads and poor transport system. There are no good roads to transport farm produce and where they exist, we depend on trucks which are slow-moving and would travel for days to get to their destinations.Many of them always have accidents, thereby, destroying the sweat of the farmers for a whole year.

The question arises: What has become of our railway system? Why has there been so much policy somersault on this? Or should we accept that the railway as being killed by those who have interest in land travels?

I hope the government will seek for ways of solving these problems so that the country and her people can achieve their full potentials.

Bartholomew Okonkwo
barthlini@yahoo.com

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