A questionsble town hall meeting

Last week, the All Progressive Congress (APC) government headed by President Muhammadu Buhari kick-started the process of marking its one year in office.
It organised a town hall meeting to sensitise the public on what the government has done or not able to do.
Watching Professor Akin Oyebode, legal luminary and law teacher at the University of Lagos, on Channels Television on Monday, April 25 talk in the maiden edition in Lagos, I was not particularly pleased with his assessment of the administration.
Six Ministers – Lai Mohammed (Information and Culture); Babatunde Fashola (Power, Works and Housing); Geoffrey Onyema (Foreign Affairs); Rotimi Amaechi (Transportation); Okechukwu Enelamah (Industry, Trade and Investment) and Ibe Kachikwu (Minister of State for Petroleum Resources) – were present at the Lagos town hall meeting.
I had expected Oyebode to evaluate the performance of the ministers particularly in the light of his earlier view during their screening that they did not meet the expectations of Nigerians.
Oyebode had said then that he expected Buhari to drop most of them after their first quarter in office as they did not cut the picture of those with the capacity to turn things around for the country.
But viewing their appearance at the town hall as a step in the right direction kept me wondering if what Nigerians expect to hear from the ministers are stories about what they had achieved, how far they had met targets in terms of deliverables, and not their challenges – as if we did not know the challenges were a deluge before they assumed office.
With more town halls to hold in all the other zones we can as well say that our political leaders are back to what they are good at – politicking – with their minds firmly fixed on the race for 2019 election.
It is not strange in Nigeria to see elected officials abandon the same office they strenuously campaigned for immediately they got into such offices in pursuit of re-election.
And that is the signal the APC is sending across to perceptive members of the public.The drumbeat in some places that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock is about to be beaten louder through the town halls.
That is the way our politicians are wired, regardless of party affiliations, and some of us are not surprised.
There is nothing wrong with town halls if the intention is real and without a preconceived notion. Unfortunately, ours are such politicians, through their cronies, organise to lie to the electorate about their failure to deliver on electoral promises and leave crumbs for them to ensure re-election.
This is what has kept us perpetually where we are and, surprisingly, the APC, the arrowhead of change, has not departed from the route.
From Mohammed who moderated the Lagos town hall and reviewed the key programmes of the APC administration in the context of the plight and expectations of Nigerians, to the rest of the ministers, nothing substantially different from what the ministers have been saying was told the public.
In the case of Fashola, I could not but reflect over what a friend told me regarding his eight-year tenure which he said was characterised by town hall meetings to hoodwink Lagosians about his achievements which were actually minimal compared with the funds available to him.
The question agitating the mind is who brought the idea of the town hall? Typical of what happened during Fashola’s tenure in Lagos, the venue was filled with traditional rulers, party faithful, former state leaders and a good dose of rented school children.
On Tuesday, April, 26, Fashola reportedly lamented on Channels Television Talk Show, Sunrise, that heat rash is afflicting his children.
There is sharp drop in power generation that has come to 1,585.7 megawatts from 3,701.7mw. Fashola’s ministry is power and he thinks unstable power supply is affecting everybody including his children.
Said he: “It’s a very hot season of the year. Even my children look at me and wonder. I see them sweating too, having heat rash and they look at me like what are you doing about this thing.
“Let me be very clear, this problem can be solved. It needs detailed and methodical approach.
“The first work to do is supply more gas because without gas, I am like a generator owner who can’t get fuel, so I can’t power my plants.
“There are errors of planning of yesterday but they are errors that can be corrected.”
Fashola added that the best way to get out of the power problem is to supply more gas to the power plants.
The question to ask Fashola is, what happens to the President Goodluck Jonathan’s highly celebrated Gas Master Plan? If Fashola is also telling Nigerians about gas what then is new that he is telling them which they have not heard before?
In the case of Kachikwu, his story looks like that of a man whose house is on fire but chooses to pursue rat.
For close to three months now Nigerians cannot see petroleum products to buy and rather than feel ashamed of their plight Kachikwu was busy composing another national pledge and asking Nigerians to pray.
His new pledge reads: “I am a Nigerian. There is a reason why God made me a Nigerian. I have a stake in this country.
“I have the skills and determination, the focus and belief in my capacity, to be the best in what I do, and to help this country change and make progress.
“Today! This day! This moment! I commence to be an instrument of change and to work hard with my brothers and sisters to move this country forward. So help me God. Thank you.”
Nigerians are tired of hearing about sabotage and lack of gas to power the turbines. They are tired of hearing about the rot Buhari inherited and those who stole the country dry.
Buhari’s foreign trips no longer strike Nigerians. Nigerians want food. Nigerians need roads and electricity. They need schools and hospitals. They need jobs. They are craving for protection from new killer gangs.
The situation in the country today is enought to agitate workers who are making their day to day with little to show for it since this government came into power.
They need fuel to move about and help themselves because they do not have leaders who can help them.
If only the ministers were perceptive enough to learn from the forlorn faces of the attendees at the Lagos town hall meeting that they brought them together to listen to the usual disappointing tale of what they lack the capacity to do.
There was no other way of expressing it than through the words of Fashola and Kachikwu. While the former complained about heat rashes, the latter admonished us to pray.
If our problem solvers, our so-called champions, are sounding helpless it therefore means that every other Nigerian is on his own.
The APC should do a deep interrogation of the town hall to see if it is the most apt thing to do now going by the feeling of Nigerians about hardship and the failure of the government to make an impact in their lives.
To even say that the town hall will be taking place in areas where Fulani herdsmen are invading and brazenly massacring indigenes stretches the impunity against the electorate to an all time high.