Jonathan’s Govt Still In Dreamland —Esele

Nigeria’s plan to be among the first 20 economies in the world by the year 2020 may just be a huge joke, says the President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Peter Esele.

Esele’s comment is part of the speech he would deliver tomorrow in celebration of the May Day celebration for workers in the country as obtained by P.M.NEWS.

The TUC president, who reeled out the challenges of the various sectors of the country, also described the judiciary as becoming a mockery to the country.

“The judiciary has earned a new cliché for itself. From ‘Temple of Justice to Temple of Fixers.’ The common man’s hope is now a temple to fix judgment against the collective will.

“The National Judicial Council’s suspension of Justice Abubakar Mahmud Talba, though a welcome development, is certainly not deep enough. Are the judges above the law?

“It is really disheartening that some judges now seem to have no qualms turning justice on its head.

“On several occasions, we have received reports of how injunctions have been hastily and unwisely granted barring security agents from carrying out their constitutional duties of investigating and/or arresting and prosecuting suspected offenders.

“Apparently the higher one’s social and financial status is, the easier it is for such persons to procure such injunctions. The common man’s last hope has evidently become the wealthy man’s first hope!

“To say that this is a sure path to anarchy is only stating the obvious,” Esele said.

He also took a swipe at the government for its inability to meet the electricity needs of the country, saying this is a major reason many companies have relocated to neighbouring countries like Ghana.

“Despite presidential assurances that the country’s total electricity supply will hit the 6000 MW mark by the end of 2009, the level of production is still less than 4000 MW three years later! And this is a country with a population of over 160 million people,” he said lamenting that Brazil with a population of 192 million people produces over 100,000 MW of electricity, while South Africa, which Nigeria helped to attain independence and which has a population of about 50 million people, generates over 40,000 MW of electricity.

He said Nigeria was fast losing the battle against corruption.

Esele said: “The scourge has become so endemic that it has constituted the single most important factor in our failure to develop appreciably.

“It has killed many of our industries. It has destroyed various aspects of our national life. And it is now threatening to kill our government,” he said further lamenting that the country’s anti-corruption agencies had become overwhelmed and even backsliding from their avowed cause.

He said it was disheartening that the country’s sole reliance on oil has become a huge challenge and this  has created an unhealthy situation in which all other sectors have been neglected.

“A country with this mindset cannot fulfill the Vision 20:20:20 agenda. We just cannot survive on only one item.

“On the sector itself, there is no doubt that certain people in our society have created hegemony over our commonwealth. And the government appears not to be committed to check-mating or bringing them to book.

“It is high time that the government demonstrated its leadership capacity, and prove that it is in charge rather than just watching helplessly as ‘cabalocracy’ gets entrenched in our body politic.

“We strongly condemn the prolonged importation of petroleum products into this country and the huge loss of foreign exchange that it occasions.

“This ugly situation also means that we are indirectly stimulating massive creation of jobs in those countries from whom we buy the petroleum products, while our own people seek for jobs here at home,” he said, urging the government to focus on changing this trend and tasking the National Assembly on the Petroleum Industry Bill.

He said the education sector is in shambles asking: “where does this take us to? Actualisation of Vision 20:20:20? Most certainly not! The government needs to get its acts right in the educational sector lest we soon become a country of educated illiterates,” he said in the lengthy speech.

—Eromosele Ebhomele