HOW OLD IS NIGERIA'S VICE-PRESIDENT?
Many Nigerians do not know the age of their Vice-President. But they congratulate His Excellency, Namadi Sambo, anyway. It is good to congratulate. What is not good is for those who have the deep pockets to take spaces on TV and in national newspapers not to know the exact age of the person they congratulate. They embarrass everyone in the process, especially the international community that may be watching. Never bother with Nigerians; they have been so bullied that they have outgrown being embarrassed by the actions or inactions of their leaders.
A congratulatory message on TV, August 2, 2012, announced boldly that Vice-President Namadi Sambo marked his sixtieth (60th) birthday anniversary; another in The Punch newspaper of the same date announced fifty-eighth (58th) birthday anniversary. The same anomaly had attended the occasion of his birthday in 2011, each congratulating party claiming different age for the nation’s number two citizen. Note. People congratulating the Vice-President is not the issue, making wrong claims as to his exact age is. And trust Nigerians to be quick to wish others well on the occasion of an anniversary. Tell them not to make much noise about your birthday, for instance, that’s when they grow wings. More so, if they have what it takes to splash it in the appropriate media. Even Ministries and government agencies use public fund to achieve the same purpose, a punishable endeavour by any standard. This matter about exact age calls attention to a major national ill – how little Nigerians know about their leaders, and how little leaders themselves want the citizens to know. And this is not just about seeing their faces, and knowing the few facts they place in the public space about themselves. In fact, the more ‘facts’ any high-profiled person places out there about his life, the more wary the discerning public tend to be. Citizens here have since discovered that the more think they know their leaders, the less they really do? The root of the problem can be traced to the successive administrations these elites are part of.
One reason for this is that public officials don’t take deliberate steps to put the right information into the public space. Anyone with high public profile should be concerned about the kind of information peddled in the public about him, especially in the press. If that is not done, everyone comes up with information from sources that may not be so credible. The mind could be very imaginative. On the other hand, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to leave personal information that is of interest to the public out of public spaces as much as possible. Only those who have things to hide do that, meanwhile they do more damage to themselves than good. Sometimes, this is done out of ignorance, and as such do themselves more harm.
This writer could recollect a gubernatorial aspirant from one of the South-East states and another in the North-Central Zone who, two years ahead of their intention to publicly announce their ambition, had asked experts to come up with a book on them. Part of their calculation was to place materials in the public space that would give accurate information about them; it was an effort meant to provide resource materials, rather than for self-aggrandizement. Informed people do this. Barrack Obama did, and so no one is in doubt about any phase in his life even before he arrived in the White House. It is the way to go. It is not enough to make reference to different phases in a man’s life as many politicians here do at campaign rallies, where, for instance, someone from other parts of the country claims to have done the architectural design of a major project in the Niger-Delta when all he wants is the vote of the people of the area. Such information should be made visible and accessible as much as possible, even when the politician is not on ground.
One other fact is that many in official positions don’t pay attention to what is noted about them in public spaces. In climes where such spaces inform public opinion, influence voters’ choice, and votes count, no leader dares to overlook what is stated about him. He immediately takes step to counter a deliberate falsehood or correct a mistake. And there is this other part of this nation that shows a lack seriousness about data collection on both the citizens and the leadership. It has been noted the kind of confusion that trails every attempt to have a proper databank here. Funds are made available, they are pocketed, contracts to capture data are not executed, and no one answers for it. Magicians, that’s what people in high places have become. Such failure in having accurate data on and about every citizen is a deliberate attempt by some to ensure that this nation runs in perpetual confusion? Some benefit from the confusion because planners plan without adequate data, executors take funds to the stage of implementation where funds disappear, without the effect of projects being felt by most citizens. Known cases, for instance, are the pension fund scandals.
No one knows how many pensionable retirees there are in Nigeria. In the event, billions of naira disappear into private pockets, paid to fictitious names both in the civil service and in the armed forces, as if these institutions don’t know how many people they recruited in the first place. This is not to mention the devastating effect on citizens for whom budget plans, for instance, are made, but because true and exact number to benefit is not factored in, projects and schemes end up as a drop in the ocean. In the process, the plan, the drive and the vision behind it are lost.
The negative effects of all this stretches to various aspect of national life. Age cheats abound among sportsmen. A generation of teenage players had been wasted when cheats in age grade football competitions were found out and the nation was banned. Comments such as “We gave him sixteen in his international passport,” are common among football agents and coaches who, in trying to reduce the age of their football players, registered falsehood. This tells much about data keeping in the country. Absence of relevant data encourages criminality because it is difficult to trace them. Today, the best means of tracing offenders in Nigeria remains the mobile phone, which should not be, and now that pre-registered new mobile phone lines are all over the place, even that becomes an issue. And there are areas of investments that service providers from outside the country would not go into as a result of lack of adequate data on citizens; they are more likely to go bankrupt because of the activities of fraudsters who can disappear without a means of tracing them.
As it is, credit card scam is a headache and online, some websites blank out Nigeria once if has to do with transaction of funds. Now, since these ills appear to have been summed up in how ignorant some congratulating parties are about the exact age of their vice president, it is time for those who are in charge of this nation to take the issue of a citizens’ data bank more seriously. Congratulations to His Excellency on this auspicious occasion of his birthday anniversary though. But his information officer can seize the occasion to clear this confusion about age once and for all.
Written By Tunji Ajibade
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