President Jonathan’s eleventh plane
The
Nation newspaper published some pretty frightening stuff on the state
of the nation last week. Quoting BGL, a Lagos based firm of
consultants, the paper stated that only about 5% of the country’s
population consumes over 40% of the country’s resources while the rest
of us – a whopping 95%- contend with merely 60% of the resources. And
this is on salaries and emoluments alone.
When you factor thefts, misappropriation, and leakages into this dismal scenario, you can then understand why the Federal Government budgets contain about 80% recurrent expenditure annually. Simply put, the bulk of our resources are expended on a tiny minority. Or put in another way, a few of us are over fed while the rest of us wake up hungry and go to bed hungry.
The states also showed that as bad as the unemployment situation is in the city, it is even worse in the villages where a vast majority contend with subsistence farming. Those who go home often know how bad it is in the rural villages and towns, and how far one thousand naira can go. And when you see the brown roofs, the caked walls, the dusty streets, the faded clothes they wear, and witness the slow, languid pace of the people in the day time and the simple meals at night time, you wonder if our people in the villages— any Nigerian village— have been arrested in time.
It is like we in the city live in a different world with our chrome and glass houses and flashy cars. Yet, almost all of us have walked the village streets bare footed and fed on simple, basic meals while growing up. So why have we refused to look back now that we have escaped the grueling poverty of our youth?
Why do we have the predisposition to consume everything in the city and forget the land and the people that nurtured us? Why do we condemn our kith and kin to a permanent life of deprivation while we gorge ourselves silly on the national cake?
If there is any class that is most guilty of this, it is the political class; the same class of people that has travelled the length and breadth of this country during electioneering campaigns and has thus seen the deprivations— and the potentials— in the land. Yet, there is so much disconnect between the political class and the rest of us. The political class in Nigeria simply has no respect for money or the welfare of its people.
A prominent politician I ran into on January 2, told me that no politician at his level can work effectively without a convenient means of transportation which translates to a private jet in his reckoning.( I also remember hearing that from a prominent man of God some time ago; but that is another story for another time.)So how did the old politicians manage in their time without private jets?
It will cost about 25000 dollars which is about four million Naira at today’s rate to fuel an average luxury jet for a mere six hour flight. Calculate that for a month and your head begins to reel with figures. Yet the plane still has to be serviced and run by experienced pilots and crew. Now imagine what the cost of maintaining a luxury jet for a year will do to the livelihood of peasants in the villages, and you realize how insensitive our political class has become. A private jet is a toy that is as expensive in the air as it is on the ground.
That is why I cannot understand how the shoe-less one who spent half his life in a rural setting can seek to indulge himself in such a mean and uncaring way. The amount budgeted for food alone in Aso Rock will feed a town for a year. We copied our constitution from the US; yet the US President feeds himself and his family from his salary. State funds only come in when there are State functions. So where did we get ours from?
Now in a country where the unemployment rate is rising and revenue is dwindling, where the exchange rate is rising and foreign reserve is depleting, where prices for essential goods are going up while purchasing power is dipping, where taxation is biting, the presidency wants to buy its eleventh plane.
We note that at the last count, the presidency according to press reports, had 2 falcon7x, 2 falcon 900, gulfstream 550, boeing 737, air force 001, gulfstream V, Cessna citation 2, hawker siddley 125-800. So what does the presidency need the eleventh plane for— even if it was free and not the whopping 1.5 billon dollars that is being touted?
How many countries have up to five jets in their presidential fleet for goodness sake? Again in the US whose constitution we have copied, the US President cannot fly any member of his family in Air Force One without paying the cost of a Ist class ticket for them. In 2010, Prime Minister Cameron of UK once travelled business class on a commercial plane whilst on an official trip to Washington just to prove a point and lead by example. Here, all manner of people use our presidential jets for all manner of errands at costs we can ill afford.
I believe a leader is asking for trouble when he is asking the rest of the country to tighten its belt while he indulges himself in a grandiose lifestyle that is out of tune with reality and the demands of modern governance. That eleventh plane is unnecessary. It must not be bought.
When you factor thefts, misappropriation, and leakages into this dismal scenario, you can then understand why the Federal Government budgets contain about 80% recurrent expenditure annually. Simply put, the bulk of our resources are expended on a tiny minority. Or put in another way, a few of us are over fed while the rest of us wake up hungry and go to bed hungry.
The states also showed that as bad as the unemployment situation is in the city, it is even worse in the villages where a vast majority contend with subsistence farming. Those who go home often know how bad it is in the rural villages and towns, and how far one thousand naira can go. And when you see the brown roofs, the caked walls, the dusty streets, the faded clothes they wear, and witness the slow, languid pace of the people in the day time and the simple meals at night time, you wonder if our people in the villages— any Nigerian village— have been arrested in time.
It is like we in the city live in a different world with our chrome and glass houses and flashy cars. Yet, almost all of us have walked the village streets bare footed and fed on simple, basic meals while growing up. So why have we refused to look back now that we have escaped the grueling poverty of our youth?
Why do we have the predisposition to consume everything in the city and forget the land and the people that nurtured us? Why do we condemn our kith and kin to a permanent life of deprivation while we gorge ourselves silly on the national cake?
If there is any class that is most guilty of this, it is the political class; the same class of people that has travelled the length and breadth of this country during electioneering campaigns and has thus seen the deprivations— and the potentials— in the land. Yet, there is so much disconnect between the political class and the rest of us. The political class in Nigeria simply has no respect for money or the welfare of its people.
A prominent politician I ran into on January 2, told me that no politician at his level can work effectively without a convenient means of transportation which translates to a private jet in his reckoning.( I also remember hearing that from a prominent man of God some time ago; but that is another story for another time.)So how did the old politicians manage in their time without private jets?
It will cost about 25000 dollars which is about four million Naira at today’s rate to fuel an average luxury jet for a mere six hour flight. Calculate that for a month and your head begins to reel with figures. Yet the plane still has to be serviced and run by experienced pilots and crew. Now imagine what the cost of maintaining a luxury jet for a year will do to the livelihood of peasants in the villages, and you realize how insensitive our political class has become. A private jet is a toy that is as expensive in the air as it is on the ground.
That is why I cannot understand how the shoe-less one who spent half his life in a rural setting can seek to indulge himself in such a mean and uncaring way. The amount budgeted for food alone in Aso Rock will feed a town for a year. We copied our constitution from the US; yet the US President feeds himself and his family from his salary. State funds only come in when there are State functions. So where did we get ours from?
Now in a country where the unemployment rate is rising and revenue is dwindling, where the exchange rate is rising and foreign reserve is depleting, where prices for essential goods are going up while purchasing power is dipping, where taxation is biting, the presidency wants to buy its eleventh plane.
We note that at the last count, the presidency according to press reports, had 2 falcon7x, 2 falcon 900, gulfstream 550, boeing 737, air force 001, gulfstream V, Cessna citation 2, hawker siddley 125-800. So what does the presidency need the eleventh plane for— even if it was free and not the whopping 1.5 billon dollars that is being touted?
How many countries have up to five jets in their presidential fleet for goodness sake? Again in the US whose constitution we have copied, the US President cannot fly any member of his family in Air Force One without paying the cost of a Ist class ticket for them. In 2010, Prime Minister Cameron of UK once travelled business class on a commercial plane whilst on an official trip to Washington just to prove a point and lead by example. Here, all manner of people use our presidential jets for all manner of errands at costs we can ill afford.
I believe a leader is asking for trouble when he is asking the rest of the country to tighten its belt while he indulges himself in a grandiose lifestyle that is out of tune with reality and the demands of modern governance. That eleventh plane is unnecessary. It must not be bought.
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