As our economy depends almost entirely on crude oil export the urge to generate resources is practically dead. We must be grateful to the foreign firms that are saddled with the responsibility of exploring and exploiting the crude oil and thereby making our idleness total. No one, particularly among our politicians, is concerned with the problem of creating wealth but almost all are concerned with the mechanism of sharing the national cake.
Political office is viewed as cake-sharing device.
We wrote into the Constitution the federal character concept to protect minority groups who maybe denied equal opportunity to attain public office but the concept soon became the qualification for members of majority groups to attain positions in the public sector to which they possess neither the necessary qualification nor the required skill. Award of contracts is a veritable source of sharing the national cake and so the contract needs not be satisfactorily performed or performed at all. Our sense of value has vanished and decency has taken its leave among us. But who cares when naira and dollars roll in in millions unlaboured for. Time was when pyramids of groundnuts almost suffocated the northern areas, Malaysian delegation was here to study our skill in tendering palm trees.