It is an issue of pride to be singled out of millions for an honor by the government your country based on the rating of judges tasked with the assignment of sieving the chaff from the grain.
Penultimate Tuesday, some 450 Nigerians and foreigners were conferred with national honors out of about 5000 nominees submitted for ‘screening’. It seemed the pruning was well done and indeed quite a significant number of the honorees deserved the award.
Such an exercise is among the last the Mihammadu Buhari administration will be organizing for Nigeria before it finally exits office on May 29, 2023. But neither his honors’ list nor those of his predecessors since the beginning of the Fourth Republic escaped censure or controversy. The problem, clearly, is not because the list is sometimes fairly long, especially seeing that the categories are many anyway, but because, of the also striking presence of many political functionaries—some of them governors who looted their state treasuries, created hardship and pauperized the people, others legislators with poor legislative performance, heads of agencies who facilitated and institutionalized corrupt practices or security and law enforcement bodies who abused the law for personal advantage, or even mere political aides or appendages that run errands for their masters including pimping and other dirty jobs but made the list of the honored.
Of all the legislators so honored, from my rating only two deserved the honor; The Speaker House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila and his deputy, Ahmed Idris Wase for their unquantifiable efforts in stabilizing the polity most especially their recent intervention in resolving the ASUU vs Federal Government imbroglio. They deserve the honor from all fronts!
Many Nigerians had expected whistleblowers that exposed several cases of malfeasance, corrupt practices and looting of public resources to have formed Buhari’s list of honorees. Nigerians are not pleased or encouraged to put-in their best for such a politically biased and corrupted national honor jamboree that is fast becoming a near motor park affair.
Apart from being an elected or appointed public official, what else qualified some of those political leaders for national honor going by their antecedents in service to the Nigerian Nation? It is impossible for the government to defend some of the curious names on the list of beneficiaries without accepting defeat.
But the government won’t even bother to effect corrections for the good of future exercise. In the past, some of the awardees had failed to justify the honors, and indeed even undermined the good done them by the state, because they vividly know that they never actually possessed the reputation and quality that matched such honors. Every time national honors were conferred, including the most recent, there had always been sharp criticisms laced with facts including allegations of bribe taking and sharp corrupt practice during compilation and selection of beneficiaries. How can a sane person offer bribe to be honored? What does that signify?
Interestingly, except on rare cases, the previous administrations were never bothered about the public’s reservations to bury shame. The depressing story of undeserved honors will, therefore, continue ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Two reasons account for the curious name on the list. Either the government lacked the character required to be rigorous in investigating and screening of submitted nominees before final selection, or it lacked the elementary discipline to abide faithfully with the yardsticks necessary for unimpeachable selection to convince any doubting Thomas or critic.
Nigerians were denied the privilege by the government they massively voted to power based on ‘integrity’ to screen those to be honored for fear of the obvious. If there was the privilege, not more than 30 of those 450 awardees could have scaled the public test.
At any rate, it was done and we are left with no option other than to say, ‘Congratulations’ to those favored 450 who had the wherewithal to have made the list out of the over 5000 submitted names for screening.
But with the government denial of public screening of nominees for the national award, should we as watch dogs of the society accord the award the prestige, respect and honor it deserves or we pass it as one of those scandals of government? Your Guess is as good as mine!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
