By Steve Nwosu
Take a good look at the attached diagram. Take time to study it, and commit as much of it as you can to memory. That is the Chinese alphabet. And you might need it sooner than you thought.
Yes, with all this talk about mindless borrowings from China and the curious conditions attached to the loans – especially as they relate to our sovereignty, we might well be on our way to becoming Chinese citizens (or better still, vassals). And what better way can we prepare than to start learning the language.
I’m told there are nearly 20,000 characters in the Chinese language, out of which about 2,000 are actually in regular use.
However, these have been further reduced to just the 26 letters above, for the convenience of us English speakers who are used to only 26-letter alphabets.
I know Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi is optimistic that the $3 billion loan we’re taking from China to finance our railway infrastructure would be repaid in 20 years. But I have my doubt. So, I’m hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
Of course, I’m not in doubt that Amaechi would deliver the project. However, I know that, as important as the railway project is, we might not have factored a lot of economics into it.
We might not have comprehensively thought out the business model that would enable the trains to make the money to repay the loans.
Rather than using it to link up all the key economic and manufacturing centres of the South-East, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna and the North East, we might seem more interested in extending our rail-line to Agadez and all of Niger Republic – to continue to play the big brother, and recreate the great Songhai and Mali Empires we seem to have an inexplicable emotional attachment to.
It is the same template that we also seem to be adopting in our gas master plan, as well as our road construction projects.
We are just borrowing billions upon billions to build infrastructure for infrastructure sake, without a detailed business plan of how such infrastructure can help repay the loan used to build it.
To make matters worse, more than 80% of the quality jobs that would be created by this $500 million would be created in China – for Chinese nationals.
Most of the money would be spent in China. Even the Chinese experts who would be engaged by the Chinese contractor to execute the contract would have their remuneration paid into Chinese banks back home. They would only be given pocket-money to help them feed, while in Nigeria.
All the parts, tools and machinery would be manufactured in China, and paid for, from this same loan.
All we will get in Nigeria is a railway line (and trains), owned by China until we are able to offset the loan.
Before we know it, 20 years would be upon us, and the Chinese would come for their money. It is then that we would know the import of those tiny prints in the loan agreements, which we are presently dismissing as ‘normal contract terms’.
Then, we would not only be forced to hand over the management of the railway, and the bridges, and the roads to the Chinese, but we would also be compelled to accept a handful of the Chinese into our NNPC and Central Bank.
Yes, as receiver-managers to our then failing Nigerian enterprise, they would have to monitor all our receipts and recover their debts from the source. Yes, Beijing could even decide to run us like Taiwan, or even Hong Kong. I wouldn’t know where that would leave our much-touted sovereignty.
Until then, let me just keep learning my Chinese. It can never go to waste. After all, Chinese is the largest spoken language on earth – spoken by about 25% of the world’s population.
Unfortunately, revenue from other sources, which we would ordinarily have used to pay back the loans has all been looted.
The recovered loots have equally been re-looted, as we continue to run our country like a criminal enterprise. Every passing day presents fresh proofs of the organized scam we erroneously call a country.
Every government ministry, department or agency appears to have an in-your-face looting cell cobbled together and franchised to respective gangs for the sole purpose of siphoning public funds.
From SEMA to NSITF, NIPOST to FIRS (the stamp duty gang), CBN, NNPC, Customs, Police, NSCDC, Immigration, NACA, FAAN, NCAA, NAFDAC, EFCC, ICPC, INEC, UBEC, NPC, NIMC and PHCN, the story is the same.
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From fertilizer fraud to Rice revolution fraud, import waiver scam and all, its fraud everywhere.
That is why there are so many federal agencies that we don’t even remember all of them. There, directors, civil servants and all manner of appointees quietly, but steadily, cream off stupendous amounts into private pockets.
Meanwhile, they mostly do practically nothing. Funds are regularly allocated to them, and all they do is pay staff, attend all manner of irrelevant international seminars and workshops (just to earn estacodes), over-invoice their procurements, and pocket the rest. We only hear about them whenever there’s disagreement over sharing formula.
If we are not talking about how we expended N500 million feeding phantom students in schools that have been shut down for several months now, it would be how we shared out several billions of naira (raw cash), without records, as Covid-19 palliatives.
Or how the office where we claimed the records were kept, suddenly went up in flames a few hours later.
Curiously, while one minister said nothing of value was lost in the fire, another minister, a few days later, announced a mind-boggling amount consumed by the fire.
Few days after we announced that we would be using N64 billion to fence University of Maiduguri, to among other things, further secure it against Boko Haram insurgency, the state governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum, raised a big poser concerning the entire war against Boko Haram.
Like several of us, the governor suspects that the war against insurgency has spawned a class of warmongers and conflictpreneurs who would go to any length to ensure that the war never ends.
Zulum’s latest outburst came on the heels of the attack on his convoy last week. The governor, who is convinced that the attack might not have been masterminded by Boko Haram, wondered why the military, on one hand, says it has cleared the towns of Boko Haram, would, on the other hand, refuse to let residents return to the towns, claiming it is not yet safe to so do.
Could it, therefore, be that the attack was masterminded by the military to further convince Zulum that it was not safe for residents to return to their homes?
Is that where the allegation of sabotage comes from? Are some people feeding fat on the IDP arrangement? How about the contracts to deradicalize, retrain and reintegrate repentant Boko Haram fighters?
Is anyone making a kill from this and the Presidential Initiative for the North East? Are the ongoing trials of military chiefs, both retired and serving, a pointer to the racket that the war against Boko Haram has become?
Regrettably, the National Assembly, which constitutionally has the oversight function over all these executive misdemeanours is itself neck-deep in the cesspool.
And it’s not just because it unconscionably padded-in N37 billion into the 2020 budget for the renovation of the NASS complex.
Both the ongoing probe of the NDDC and the rural electrification/power probe before it clearly show the monitor is as guilty as the monitored.
Like the National Assembly, the media, which is patronizingly regarded as the fourth estate of the realm (though without any budgetary allocation) and is constitutionally charged with holding the other three arms to account is not completely innocent.
But even when it wanted to assert itself, the executive immediately waves the Hate Speech and Social Media laws in its face. Suddenly, every criticism of the government, its official or agency can subjectively be declared a hate speech or falling foul of the social media, or even cybercrime, law.
So, while we continue on this path to sure perdition, I might as well begin to learn Chinese.
At least, I now know how to write my name in Chinese. The next task now is, knowing how to pronounce it. But, deep in my mind, I pray our lawmakers are only raising a false alarm. but, I’ll also add a little bit of Mandarin to my studies.
