This is to Fashola, The Minister of Power, Works and Housing
As do the rest of the country, I congratulate you on your recent appointment as Nigeria's Minister or Power, Works and Housing. I wish you the best and hope pray and plan to support you to bring out the best for Nigeria and Nigerians whom you pledge and are appointed to serve.
It is because we are lagging behind by decades that I write you in all urgency. We have no time to waste.
There are just a few matters I will like to press. I am certain you have the capacity to deliver; I just wish to emphasize and stress what we need delivered...
Nigeria Has Always Been For The Rich
Nigeria has for the past 30 years, 14 years of PDP godfathers (IBB, Gusau, Abdulsalami, Dangote and co) and 16 of PDP sons (OBJ, GEJ, Dangote and co) served to provide what facilities and infrastructure it may, for the advantage of the rich and cabal and to the extortion of the poor. We have highways built by the state planned to have toll gates to tax the poor commuters. We have phone companies provided by the Obasanjo regime that tax Nigerian customers triple what their peers pay abroad. We created a cement monopoly that charges triple per bag than the world average, making it impossible for us to own our own homes. Our new cars in Nigeria are sold at above the costs in all neighboring African countries and in the West. I can go on and on.
If They Will Extort Us, We Don't Want Them
One thing is providing facilities and the other is extorting the masses with these provisions. Indeed you can provide all the infrastructure of modernity, but if these are provided as a means to covet state fiances and set traps and siphons to eternally extort the masses, then in truth the masses would rather be in darkness and without homes.
It is not poverty or the lack of power and houses that is behind Boko Haram, MEND, Ombatse and Radio Biafra and other terror organisations, no, as I have written expansively on in the past, it is Institutional Disenfranchisement: the robbing of poor Paul to feed rich peter, the impoverishing and deportation of the poor to pave wealth and comfortable accommodation for the rich that is behind the unrest. Maiduguri peoples lived in huts without power and were satisfied. Their problem did not come from the lack of, but the wickedness of the extortionist cabal.
What I am saying is; please build with 90% of the money allocated, for the poor, by the poor, with the poor and for the poor; who are the majority of Nigerians. Create opportunities for local and small business entry-level power generation so Nigerians do not have to bow to the Cabal.
How Come There Is No Public Housing In Nigeria's Large Cities?
It is a shame that across Nigeria you do not have housing for the poor. This is called "Projects," Poor or Public Housing in the US. I wrote about this in early 2014 and again to you in August of this year. Public housing is NOT "affordable housing." I am not aware of any public housing complexes in the entire large states of Nigeria like Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt and Abuja where these are most critically needed. I may be wrong. That last such public housing complex I knew of was 1004, built decades ago.
The idea of humanity and civilization is that you cannot keep the poor far away from the centers of big cities and force them to commute for miles to wealthy paradises, to work to clean and cook and back without expecting social instability and terror. The poor must have areas where they too are accommodated in all cities for equality and fairness.
In America, in the middle of Manhattan, you have Projects. Projects are public housing complexes with government stabilized and substituted rents. You only pay rent based on your reported earnings and even live for free if you earn nothing. This is not done in the civilized world because they are wealthy, but because they understand the ABCs of society and prevention of more costly crime and terror.
Giving an example, I am not sure where the menial earners who will be working in Eko Atlantic city will reside? Are there poor housing complexes there? If not, do we plan for them to commute from out of the city to and from work every day? This would be criminally wrong. We must demolish houses within Eko Atlantic if so and raise a few Public housing complexes for moral and social progress. In Abuja and Lagos, we must demolish within rich neighborhoods to erect Public housing for the poor, otherwise our CHANGE tenure would come to an end with us only succeeding in further expanding the financial and physical distance between the wealthy and the poor.
I Don't Think There Is Anywhere To Deport Nigeria's Poor To
This is Nigeria now. There will always be poor...and there is no where to deport the poor to, unless Togo and Ghana, so we have no choice but to embrace them.
We must treat the rich and poor equally or else we are destroyed. Leviticus 19:15 "'Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
"...Those who came before you were destroyed because if a rich man among them stole, they would let him off, but if a lowly person stole, they would carry out the punishment on him. By Allaah, if Faatimah Bint (daughter of) Muhammad were to steal, I would cut off her hand.” [Al-Bukhaari]
Think about the real reason why the Chibok girls have lived so `long in Sambisa; and think about the Boko Harm dead and may the Lord lead you. We will watch you and help you make Nigeria the best it can be for us all.
As you build Nigeria, please think of the poor and utilize the poor who voted for Buhari and created your path to this position. Please do not use contractors who have in the passed for instance, used 200xs the money, lets say $900,000 to build two boreholes that should not cost more than $3000.
Again, "even though you are not an engineer," I trust your capacity to deliver. Nigeria will not spoil.
God bless you and grant you success.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah
http://ENDS.ng [Every Nigerian Do Something]
Email: drbrimah@ends.ng Twitter: @EveryNigerian
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