BY AFOLABI GAMBARI

Elections ended effectively by mid-April with the winners revelling in their victories and the losers pondering on their next moves. Attention has also effectively shifted to the winners; the more for appointment seekers to pester them to no end. It’s been politics and politicking all the way. Nothing else matters as the May 29 swearing-in day approaches for many. Hardly has any meeting held at the seat of power in Abuja without speculations piercing through with regard to who holds what position in the near future. Nor is the National Assembly free of its usual rancour over who heads the two arms of the legislative branch. National well-being takes very little or nothing of their attention. Everything tends to focus on positions that would be occupied by principal officers of the assembly from May 29. The issue of ‘severance package’ is meanwhile being mentioned in low tones to the chagrin of Nigerians who believe that our legislative houses at the Federal and State levels are gaping drain pipes on the resources of the nation. If the penchant for outgoing legislators to even contemplate life pension is not checked on time, then Nigeria’s democracy may be truly the most expensive in the world. When the Lagos State government announced on April 21 that President Muhammadu Buhari was due in the state on April 24 on a one-day visit to commission some projects, trepidation filled the air as residents feared the paralysis that would be their lot on the day in terms of movement. They had experienced it before when Buhari visited last year and so believed this was yet another nightmare in waiting for them. Thankfully all the personnel on the ground ensured that Lagos was not grounded and the visit went without much hitches. There were residents who felt the President’s itinerary should not have been restricted to Ikeja and Oshodi areas, as it were. They thought he should have had a first-hand knowledge of the deplorable Oshodi-Apapa and Badagry-Seme roads, both of which have not only constituted image issues for Nigeria, but have also deprived the country of yearly revenue in the region of N272 billion. The President’s protocol, in apparent collaboration with the Lagos State government, had other plans. Buhari came and saw nothing of those roads before returning to Abuja. And the pain and anguish of commuters on the roads continued. However, must it always be about politics and politicians? In the past ten years, it has been revealed every year through statistical platform of the UNICEF in Nigeria that about 2.3million Nigerian children suffer mild and acute malnutrition and they are scattered in various hospitals and healthcare centers in the country. The more government’s attention was called to the serious threat being posed by this, the more government appeared to distance itself from it. Likewise, government attention was called to the reality that about 10.5 million children are out of school also across the country and particularly in the northern zone where poverty has combined with illiteracy and terrorism to wreak havoc. Two weeks ago, UNICEF also sounded the alarm on unsafe water that could cause various diseases to the vulnerable. As far as the government was concerned, such could only be figment of someone’s imagination as the alarm was regarded as a hoax. Yet, there are unclean and unsafe water in virtually all the rural areas and the danger posed to people in the areas can only be imagined. On Wednesday, UNICEF again revealed that about four million Nigerian children of ages 0 to 5 have missed measles vaccine in the past ten years, a situation that could jeopardise their sound health in the future. All the foregoing ought to give the state officials in Nigeria serious worry, especially as they are tied to the overall health of the people. After all is said and done, politics would always race ahead of all other human endeavours. It wouldn’t even matter that the politics has yet to lift Nigeria above the pedestrian level wherein it has been stuck for two decades without remedy in sight.

Afolabi Gambari, Journalist, Environmentalist, Social Commentator Lagos, Nigeria Tel: +2348064651922, +2348116706849