Photo credit: the Blueprint
A former wife of the Ooni of Ife, Naomi Silekunola had planned a children’s fair alongside an empowerment scheme for 5,000 children each of whom would have been given 5,000 naira (USD3.21).
Tell reports that however, the event, which was scheduled for Wednesday, December 18 turned out to be a scene of tragedy
According to reports, the crowd was well above the 5,000 the organizers expected, and the lack of adequate security did not help issues either. The venue – a secondary school – was filled beyond capacity. There was a stampede even before the program commenced which led to the deaths of an unverified number of children.
Many were already dead before being taken to hospitals in the city.
Other reports say Mrs Remi Tinubu has gifted N1.98 BN to some elderly people. It’s only the tip of the iceberg of her donations.
By the way, is Mrs Tinubu distributing her personal or government money? At least, we know the Nigerian constitution does not recognize the Office of the First Lady.
While consoling those who lost their children in the ill-fated Oyo State Fair, we should look at some basic things.
Had we had constitutional organizations, would people have been looking up to others for their daily bread?
I will always talk about food. That’s because apart from my interest in agriculture, I do know that a majority of Nigerians are hungry. I have no other thing to say except the earlier we returned to the farms, the better it would be for us.
Many countries have gone beyond giving physical cash to people, they use electronic transfers. However, in Nigeria’s case, the government says there’s no data whenever it wants to confuse.
Pray what about the data in the electoral register, the census, the national identity card program, the NIN, birth and death registration, school registration, and so on?
If we had not wasted resources on useless projects, we should have been talking of old-age pensions, and meaningful student loans but it’s never too late.
All I’m saying is that it’s useless to feed people during festive occasions while they are left to their own devices on other occasions.
And our people too are not beyond receiving blame. Have they ever asked those bringing the so-called empowerment programs to them to make solid impacts on their lives? When we start asking them to teach us how to fish instead of feeding us with fish, we definitely would have arrived.
