Let me put it simply borrowing from the definition of inquest which is the synonym for probe (Nigerians abhor the word probe): a judicial inquiry to determine the cause of the death of Nigeria’s economy, its institution, values and rampant corruption witnessed in the past 16 years. It won’t deter from the urgent and enormous task of cleaning up the Augean stables.
If you ask me, the in-coming government has business of immediate significance to initiate a probe into every aspect that has negatively impacted the country to be able to understand where to begin the surgery. The probe (I prefer inquest) will be akin to a diagnosis of an acutely sick patient. It is certainly one of the first-to-do on the list to address the hordes of concerns.
Besides, it is about truthiness. It is about finding solutions of discernable reality, acting and creating our own reality. It is about regurgitating the truth from the guts and distancing in the future from the discomforting questions that can arise from dented credibility.
I am hearing the argument now that the legal and political ramifications for that would derail the Buhari’s administration agenda for change and bog it down in indefinite, tempestuous controversies-simply put, chasing shadows and consequently a waste of precious times and energy.
If you tow this line of thought, you are saying that you are not incensed enough by the absurdity and rampant roguery that ravaged the country this past 16 years-with historical citation and serious physically strenuous consequences for the lives of everybody in the country-mother, child, hard working fathers, the very poor, dehumanized Nigerian and the very honest Nigerians.
That is why I believe it will be good to know why and when it all went wrong with the economy, why those who chose to take up the responsibility for managing the country’s resources chose instead to mismanage it in an unprecedented scale. It will be good to know why corruption became the norm and taken for granted by everybody. It will be good to know why impunity assumed a very humongous dimension while merit was gleefully cast out of the bag.
It will be good to know how much money the gatekeepers have stolen from the country’s coffers. It will be good know why all government institutions run inefficiently. It will be good to know why political jobbers populate the country’s public sector. It will be good to know why the education, health, transport, petroleum and the electricity sectors collapsed.
It will be very good to understand why federal ministers have dozens of special advisers who have special advisers too.
It will be good to know why the National Assembly are so inept in understanding critical Bills, discussing the Bills and passing the Bills. It will be good for Nigerians to know why the National Assembly unilaterally refused to discuss in the open the ills of the Petroleum Industry and the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) let alone pass the Bill into law. It will be good to know why all the inquiries conducted by the National Assembly died naturally on the floors of the National Assembly. It will be good to know why members of the National Assembly appropriate and earn so much more money than their counterparts in other democracies.
It will be good to understand why the country’s budgeting process is fundamentally flawed and why the quality of external borrowings is so ugly.
It will be good to know why $870 million was invested in upgrading airport infrastructure, an amount enough to build 4 airports like the UK Thames Estuary Airport, which is estimated to cost about 24 billion pounds only. It will be good to know why nothing has changed at the airports since the investments began.
An it will also be very good to know why every body is so jittery about being probed.
Charles Ike-Okoh
