Train Treason, NNPC, PWD Returns  The trouble with the train treason is to find out what next for Nigeria. The train treason comprised mass and multiple murders, terrorising military tactics, mass kidnappings and now the bloodthirsty threat of an out-of-hand execution of over 120 kidnap victims while knowing the killers have as they say no regard for human life. That is the bigger picture. We have just suffered a huge national attack about on par with the five major mass school kidnapping beginning with the Chibok attack still with fellow Nigerian girls missing. Each of those terrible attacks was accompanied by the as-yet unpunished murder of innocents, their blood soaking into the earth of their birth and generating a generation of tearful bereaved parents. Instead we are faced with more murders and kidnapping.

The bigger picture is what next for Nigeria? A reversal of these murders is impossible but release of all the kidnapped victims is a possible outcome, though it will not bring succour to victims’ families. This appears a remote dream in the wake of the cold-blooded nature of the video from the terrorist group which dismissed as inconsequential the lives of their remaining victims. They claim they want government to contact them and that government knows what they want.

Fortunately, we are hearing of military advances, forest bombings, weapon seizures and terrorists arrest by armed forces. But Nigerians require the liberation of the ‘The Train Treason’ victims.

NNPC finally announces what we have known for years. Corruption is killing Nigeria!  If 90-95% of a simple pipeline flow is missing in transit, it is a huge profit at our expensive for the criminals. Sadly, no country will survive with up to 10 %.  However, once the corruption rate tips 10%, all development indices with fall because the cost of building infrastructure become unsustainable with no or negative profit margin, i.e. a loss. But here we are facing a 90-95% shortfall in this one pipeline. If oil is the blood in the veins of the body of Nigeria, imagine what the patient would be like losing 10 or 20 or 50 or 90% of such a supply. Its survival is in question.

The corruption may have been horrible but manageable in a society which accepts almost anything thrown at it. However, we must add the huge detrimental effects of the long war declared by herders against farmers, the ravages of Boko Haram and successive waves of terrorists, many invited by politicians. These have conspired to create massive inflation, massive falling in the value-for-money of work, reduced farming opportunities from insecure farmland almost in every state, and the rubbishing of the value of the naira in particular which predated the new financial and food collapses. If we add the unexpected war with very predictable consequences of possible famine and financial instability, the economic situation in the future is bleak. Once again, our leadership has to make hard decisions. They have appealed to kidnappers, terrorists and herders to release their victims and free the land from tyranny and allow a return of the five million+ Internally Displaced Nigerians to their home lands. One expects them to appeal to the corrupt oil bunkerers to give up their corrupt trade for Nigeria and Nigerians to recover or there will soon be nothing to left to steal.

Already CBN is drying up and foreign exchange for normal citizens is difficult. Nigerians abroad hold more than the country’s reserves. It seems it is time for a blood transfusion-of foreign exchange, of Honesty-I WILLL NOT BE CORRUPT IN 2022, and of Love. Many Nigerians are already doing this.   The government has finally inserted a maintenance law in the management of all its assets, Ministries, Agencies, Departments and assets under its authority. Hopefully this will do away with the requirement to send out a contract for every pothole, paint stain and clogged toilet in every MDA. This is not new but a return to an old, tried and tested working model setup and handed over by the colonial power. Ask grandparents about PWD, the Public Works Department. In those days we had two-to-four man teams securing stretches of road for cleanliness and detection and filling of potholes as they occur and before they get big. The team had a tripod of sticks with a red flag and a wheelbarrow in which they had some hot tar in watering-can to fill the baby pothole before it grew into a car and human being killer.  The PWD was also responsible for paining government residential quarters every seven years. This seven-year cycle was cast in stone and managed using a PWD Forward Bookings Diary which was seven years in the future. On every house and office, there was a 10-inch painted circle with a date in it. A week to that date, the PWD staff come to remind the resident of the impending maintenance visit and do an assessment visit. The whole team of painters, carpenters, plumbers show up on the appointed day and repaint, restore repair. Once finished they paint a new date, seven years in the future and also into the PWD Forward Bookings Diary. The system was abandoned by a greedy political class which ate the maintenance money. The PWD will return jobs to a raft of skilled professionals abandoned for 50years but only if their budgets are honest and implemented without political or professional theft.