Records are continuously being created and broken all over the world, even though a good number of them are not recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records( GBWRs). In Netherlands, a Lady from Sierra Leone on her way to work walked side-by-side with the Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, who was on his way to the hospital. He had neither a one-kilometre long motorcade nor an intimidating entourage with kill-and-go overzealous security details . She is from an environment where even an LG Chair has sirens and outriders. In Sweden, sex was recognised as a sport, and the first championship was scheduled to last 6 weeks, in which participants were to engage in sexual activities( real time, online) for about 1 hour daily and be scored by the panel of judges and the audience on the basis of stamina, endurance, thrusting speed, chemistry, styles et al( It has been denied and so, do not quote me!). In Senegal, there is a culture of flogging a corpse for infractions which the ‘owner of the body’ committed while on earth. The flogging is done by the offended parties including side-chicks, unpaid creditors, those he broke their hearts, etc. Camerounians also created a record when they protested the removal of fuel subsidy in Nigeria; which is akin to A taking Panadol for the headache of B. Or is it so?
We are also creating and breaking records in Nigeria. Hilda Baci has just broken the record for longest ‘cookathon’, which she claimed cost her N 80m hard-earned money. Anyway, my Bookathon is loading and Hilda will be my in-house chef for the duration of the exercise. Burna Boy is the first African to sell-out the 80k capacity London Stadium. Lagos State House of Assembly, is to pass business laws that will be deliberately discriminatory to non-indigenes (I shall go and verify if those saying these things a TRULY Lagosians). The young Fela has created the record of being the first idle civilian to slap an armed policeman and lived to tell the tale. Emefiele created his own record, being the FIRST CBN governor world-wide that sought to contest for the presidency and the first to be suspended and detained. Nigeria has the most powerful president and presidency as well as the highest paid federal ‘legislooters’ in the world. Their case is even better than the ‘executhieves’ whom nobody knows what they earn. And just last week, Nigeria became the first country to increase fuel prices by300%… and the people received it with equanimity and in peace! In the field of democracy, we have successfully introduced COURTocracy while BATiocracy is being finetuned( see Ik Muo, COURTocracy: The final stage of Nigeria’s democracy)
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Our latest invention, which will soon be chronicled in the GBWRs is in the field of governance, where we have over the years designed and are currently fine-tunning the last-minute model of governance and cascading the dividends of democracy( DoD). There was this story of the crafty tortoise who was on a business trip to a far country when he received the news of his mother’s death. The trip usually took 3 days. Surprisingly, he crawled, crawled and crawled but as soon as his compound was within sight, he turned into a Ben-Johnson mode; to create the impression that he came back in a haste. The trip took 2 days longer than it should have. Our people also say that the Onye-Igbo will not run from when the rain is drizzling or when it is in little droplets. He will only run when he is FULLY drenched, when the efforts will no longer create any value. There are also some people, the 11th hour people, those that we call ‘ogba na-e je enwudei’( those who run when they are about to be caught; when it is too late) . These anecdotes are the philosophical foundations of the Last-Minute( 11th hour) Model of Governance.
You see a governor or president who has been in office for 8 years, acting as if he has till eternity. And then at the time he should be parking his things and writing his hand-over notes, he jumps up like one stung by a vicious scorpion and start doing this and that, all in efforts to provide DoD for his beloved people. Bills are rushed, contracts are awarded, some paid for upfront, people are promoted, uncompleted projects are unveiled all in order to create last-minute impression of finishing strong. They will not tell us( but we know) that all these deceptive activities are aimed at hurriedly settling old scores or settling some people, or further padding their pockets through last minute looting . And most often, because they did ‘that thing’ standing or in a terrible hurry, they beget imbeciles as in the case of Nigeria Air.
The Federal Executive Council under PMB passed 83 memos and contracts with unparalleled supersonic speed : within one week. He unveiled the uncompleted second Niger Bridge which original design was short-circuited. He also launched the uncompleted Dangote Refinery, a product of incestuous relationship between Dangote and FGN which facilitated the refinery project but shamefully could not repair its own refineries. As he was preparing his departure from Aso Rock. PMB approved N32bn for National Library Headquarters, inaugurated VIP Wing Of State House Medical Centre, sacked and replaced the MD of FAAN, swore in 7 RMAFC commissioners appointed a new DG for NACETEM, sought senate approval to pay $556m, £98,526,013,N226bn judgement debts and approved N128bn for FERMA. His engagement in his last one week was record breaking and was the most intense per unit of time since 2015.
His apostles also followed suite, with the champion being the Sirika 1 of Aviation, who in April 2023 bought 10 firefighting trucks at N12bn( check the prices of such trucks and let’s compare notes) and who launched the Air Nigeria by hiring and repainting an Ethiopian aircraft and presenting to Nigerians as Air Nigeria. He is even bold enough to defend the chicanery. He was also central to the replacement of the heads of various aviation agencies, and renaming of airports, one of which is Osubi Airport and for which Okpe people are now up in arms, after the horse has bolted.
On 17/5/23, Dr Okowa presented N71bn supplementary budget to the assembly ‘to fund ongoing projects and pay for important government policies and programmes’. On 20/5/23,, Wike demolished Bayelsa Government quarters at Akasa Road, Old GRA and flagged off the construction of Judges quarters there. Umahi who launched the Ebonyi Airport in April, swore in 4 new commissioners in May 2023. Ortom employed 1001 people into the civil service on the eve of his departure, which was what Odetola did on Osun state . In Kaduna, El’Rufal proscribed the Atyap Community Development Association while Ganduje was busy selling off government properties in addition to properly hiding the Dollars that were initially stuffed under his cap.
You see, whatever we do, we do it very well. This model has been developed, finetuned and is now ready for exports to other parts of the world, starting from Africa. Harvard Business School will soon mainstream it into their public sector governance and policy models, just as they had done to the Igbo apprenticeship entrepreneurial model. SURE, we are moving.
