NO TO ‘ALLIANCE FOR MEDIOCRITY’
“Nkem bu nkem, nke anyi bu nke anyi” is an Igbo adage for “what is mine is mine to maintain, and what is ours is for anybody to maintain” which explains the idiom that ‘a cow that belongs to the community dies of hunger’. This is because most members of the community are more interested in getting their share of beef from the cow’s flesh than in fattening the cow. However, if the cow is sold and the money realized is used to distribute different species of fowls to the different persons in the community, each person will surely take care of his own fowl. Each person will take care of the fowl, so that the fowl could lay eggs and reproduce more fowls for his wealth and sustenance. With full concentration to develop one’s own productive capacities for fulfilment and sustenance, one is able to specialize in a field and become more productive, self-sustaining and contributive to the society.
Human society is sustained by the productive activities that produce and process the resources that are used to satisfy human needs in the society. The more the productive specialization each of the smaller units in a society has, the more productive output it generates for its members and for exchange with other unit’s products. Just like the people in our story will be able to feed more when they are able to rear their own chicks to produce and reproduce more. Presently in Nigeria, the various communities’ capacity for industrial productivity (in mineral and human resources) have been bound together. Hence, Nigeria is comparable with the society in which everyone expects to get beef from the cow without thinking of how the cow will survive. They ignore the fowls in their communities in order to hustle for the cow meat (oil revenue).
Specialization is the root of industrial development and every community in Nigeria has some industrial potentials to develop. A fish is a swimming genius, but it would be unfair to discard the fish when it is forced to climb trees and be judged by the scale used to judge a monkey in climbing trees. The communities in Nigeria have often shown ability to engage in technology (though crude), which can be developed to modern standard. Yet, since they are forced under a unitary government to wait for the beef from a national cow, the ethnic communities will not be dedicated to rear their own fowls and, thus, are not as productive and self-sustaining as they should have been. So, all the communities are made to queue up in waiting for milk and beef from the community cow.
The land use act is a decree which was used
“to vest all land comprised in the territory of each state (except land vested in the federal government or its agencies) solely in the Governor of the State, who would hold such land in trust for the people and would henceforth be responsible for allocation of land in all urban areas to individuals resident in the state and to organization for residential, agricultural, commercial and other purposes while similar powers with respect to non-urban areas are conferred on local government.”[1]
Then the federal government the other lands that contain special mineral resources like crude oil, gold, copper, limestone to itself. And this right to minerals in people’s lands is reserved for federal government to give out, while the proceeds from sales of these mineral resources are distributed to the communities according to the discretion of the federal government. Owing to this forced role of queuing to obtain benefits, different people would prefer to own, extract, process and distribute their resources themselves.
Governor Ajimobi of Oyo state, in an interview with the Nigerian Television Association, lamented the situation in which the federal government grants access to the mineral resources in a state to strangers without any consent or even information to the state government where the mineral is deposited. This system of general control of resources by strangers to the ethnic communities weakens the individual commitment of states and its peoples to the security and development of both the mineral and human resources.
Diligent individuals and ethnic communities in the present system of queuing for benefits in Nigeria would prefer their right to extract, process and distribute whatever resources they find in their private lands. This will engender a sense of personal ownership and commitment for work towards the protection and development of the environment, its inhabitants and its mineral resources.
[1] 29th March 1978, Land use act. P7