The stolen public money used in sustaining their invidious, ostentatious and flamboyant lifestyle is funds earmarked for infrastructure. That is unpaid salaries, unpaved roads, dilapidated public schools, and deplorable hospitals. Their distasteful and abhorrent lifestyle is funded and sustained by the troubling absence of critical social amenities and infrastructural facilities
Last week, the pictures and videos of two children of prominent and influential politicians graduating from top universities in the United Kingdom went viral on social media. The two politicians, Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and former Governor of Rivers State, and Abdullahi Ganduje, the immediate past Governor of Kano State, were the ones whose children were graduating, and they were in the UK to attend the special occasion. Wike’s son, Joaquin, completed his MSc at King’s College London. Ganduje’s daughter, Fatima, also graduated from King’s College.
This is not the first time the children of prominent politicians are graduating from elite universities abroad, especially the UK but something is deeply unsettling about the recent graduation of the current crop of politicians at these expensive universities. The politicians’ jarring insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians while they share cute, heart-warming and mushy pictures of themselves and their families at the graduation of their children. The brazen insouciance to the parlous and precarious state of the nation as they jet out of the country to attend the graduation of their own children while thousands and millions of Nigerian students are unable to access quality education.
The only reason the two politicians can confidently share the pictures of them attending their children’s graduation ceremony from King’s College is that such abnormality has become normalised, and they know that thousands of their hirelings are on standby to rationalise and justify such damaging and destructive action. They can also boldly post these pictures on social media because they know Nigerians are a defeated people who will never stand up to them no matter what they do, no matter how heinous, grotesque and despicable their actions are. They will only grumble about it on social media and forget about it after a few days.
Many Nigerians may see politicians educating their children in foreign universities as something terrible but they may not fully grasp the danger and consequences of such practices. The moment they come to terms with the opportunity cost and knock-on effect of these practices by those they elected to serve them, they will realise how much they’ve been cheated and shortchanged by those who should look after their interest and make their lives better, and they will direct their anger to the right people. They will move beyond the innocuous and ineffectual ranting and excoriation of these politicians on social media and take real actions that will put an end to the disgraceful and uninspiring actions of these politicians that have stunted the country’s growth.
The millions of dollars in stolen and embezzled public funds that mindless, corrupt and unscrupulous politicians spent on the foreign education of their children destructively set the country back in growth, impede it’s development and also deprived the hapless citizens of the socio-economic structure and system that make their lives worth living. Don’t forget that the university education of these politicians’ children abroad is not the only pathetic and reckless thing that the nation’s scarce resources are expended on; if anything, the tuition fee of their tertiary education constitutes a fraction of the troubling wastefulness and profligacy that they and their parents indulge in.
The private jets they are transported in, the pricey designer wears and other fashion accessories they don and flaunt on TikTok and Instagram are what the nation loses in development and sacrifice in tangible economic growth. The stolen public money used in sustaining their invidious, ostentatious and flamboyant lifestyle is funds earmarked for infrastructure. That is unpaid salaries, unpaved roads, dilapidated public schools, and deplorable hospitals. Their distasteful and abhorrent lifestyle is funded and sustained by the troubling absence of critical social amenities and infrastructural facilities.
Recently, there was a debate on social media on whether corrupt politicians’ children, who live extravagantly and profligately on stolen and misappropriated public funds, should also be subjected to public excoriation, heckling and opprobrium like their parents. The consensus is that the children should not be exempted from being called out or lampooned by the public as they are the primary beneficiaries of their parents’ unscrupulous ways.
While the vacuous and unimaginative disposition of Nigerian politicians is long known, their unnerving incompetence and lack of progressive ideals to build a nation through visionary, enviable, and outstanding statecraft are well documented; it is the citizens’ receptive attitude to this reality and the acceptance of it as the norm that confounds one. Nigerian politicians are not known to course correct and change their uncharitable and diabolical tendencies until a brutal epochal event that threatens their lives and that of their property takes place.
A nation that allows too many politicians and high-ranking government officials to educate their children and wards abroad with embezzled public funds will only have tertiary institutions that lack the required structure and system to produce minds and brains that can hasten the development of the country and solve real and material problems plaguing the nation.