Nigeria: Between infrastructure and humanity

By Akpo Ometan

In Nigeria today, there is a revisionist logic at work. And it’s intent is to emphasize the development of national infrastructure as an end. This is dubious logic. Infrastructure does not hang in it air. It serves a definite purpose.

In the current instance in Nigeria, the attempt to sell infrastructural provision over and above every other rational human development indicator is so obnoxious in that it is being projected over and above everything else. Do not worry about educational development. Do not bother with the state of healthcare. Pay no heed to the escalating poverty and misery index. Infrastructure is your nirvana. Lori iro.

The question that is glossed over is that of who would be the beneficiary of the grand infrastructure estate at the end of the day. It will definitely not be those being felled by insurgents bullets all over the country today. Not those who are being displaced from their ancestral lands. Not those who are being pulverised into illiteracy and helplessness. Who then would be the grand beneficiary of this infrastructure utopia that is being constructed with the toil and blood of innocent Nigerians? Who?

There is an error that I have seen under the sun, the wise man said in the Bible Book of Ecclesiastes. That error walk on all fours in Nigeria today. Just as existence precedes essence. Humanity precedes infrastructure. Let there be a course correction today.

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President