What Governors? What Forum?

 

Anger, danger, hunger that Nigerians suffer from governments’ ineptitude are unimportant. Everything is about 36 men and some outsiders who have created another distraction to keep our eyes off them as they steer the Nigerian ship recklessly.

What is the NGF? Why is it suddenly so important? Why if the Presidency is not interested in the crisis, one of the factions feels obliged to report to the Vice President (the President was at the African Union 50th anniversary celebrations in Addis Ababa)? Would the faction have reported to the President if he was around? Why the presidential support for a factional NGF secretariat?

Sentiments and issues have tangled; it is difficult to separate them. Governors who participated in the election, certain of their group’s victory, are turning around to smear the exercise as flawed. If they won would their position have been different?

Thanks to technology even those who said they did not vote have been contradicted.

Where was the rigging? The 35 votes cast matched the number of governors in attendance. Nobody complained about the counting until the loss. Political miscalculation is at the root of what has been promoted to a crisis. The complaining faction believed it had the numbers to win.

NGF is an association of governors. Membership is not compulsory. Attendance at its meetings used to be poor until the past two years when NGF has rallied governors’ positions on issues, mostly States’ participating in decisions about dispersing Nigeria’s resources.

Every governor wanted more money, presumably to develop his State. The forum met a need. Among its critics are those who wonder why states resources are spent on NGF, an exclusive club, whose membership is only 0.0000225 per cent of Nigeria’s population.

The undue importance placed on NGF is an excellent example of how our governments think only about themselves. They would stop at nothing to please themselves, showcase their importance, and disrupt things to get things done their way. Quests for power platforms are primed at annexation of any association that could raise a contrary voice. NGF was a prime target. Opposition would not be brooked. The point is made emphatically enough to strike fear in dissenters.

Politicians have again placed their greed above everything.

We hope parties to the conflict realize Nigerians elected them to serve the people. Nothing is more important than the welfare and security of the people, the NGF crisis cannot enhance them, especially governor Jang that failed to manage his own state, I wonder how, he will manage the whole northern part of Nigeria?