Saying it as it is (not)...

The joke is told of a businesswoman who died and was met at the Pearly Gates by St. Peter. He told her she would choose either heaven or hell after she had been allowed a tour to either place.

First, she went to heaven and found it was a really boring place where people merely lounged around playing harps and singing ‘Halleluyah’ all day long. Afterwards, St. Peter put her in an elevator (it’s a joke, remember?) which took her down to hell.

Contrary to what she had heard about hell, what she saw was a golf course, a country club and standing in front of her were all her friends — all dressed in evening gowns and ‘resource control’ hats (yeah, I added that bit o) welcoming her. They played an excellent round of golf and at the Country club, she enjoyed an excellent steak and lobster dinner. She met the devil who was — again, contrary to what had been written about him — a very charming guy. He told her a lot of jokes which had her laughing all the time. Of course, when the time came to make a final decision, she chose hell.

So she entered the elevator again and went down to hell. When the doors opened she found herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in grease and filth. She saw her friends dressed in rags, picking up the garbage and were putting it in sacks. The devil came up to her and welcomed her.

“I don’t understand,” stammered the woman, “yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a country club and we ate lobster and we danced and had a great time. Now, all there is a wasteland of garbage and all my friends look miserable.”

The devil looked at her and smiled. “Yesterday, we were recruiting you. Today, you’re a member of staff.”

Now, I had to dig out that joke after reading all the lofty promises and assurances President Goodluck Jonathan made at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea to prospective investors. In the age of the Internet, it is hard to travel to anywhere in the world and deceive the rest of the world about the true situation of things in your country. These days, information is so democratised that it is hard to hide anything from those who know how to use the mouse. It is therefore difficult to paint your country or yourself in a brighter colour than is true. Only the devil in the online jokes can pull it off.

It made me wonder if the President knew the joke was on him all the time he spoke about replicating the Miracle on the Han River on the River Niger.

A quick example of how news and image precede people: This week, Ogun State had an Investment Summit. The keynote speaker was a former Prime Minister of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, who just days before he made it to Nigeria, had to resign over a corruption scandal. A section of the UK media made a big joke out of Nigeria’s paying this disgraced politician a whopping €30,000 to appear at the summit. They said corrupt Ahern found a home in corrupt Nigeria! The fact that Ogun State, on the summit website, listed Ahern as a “global leader” and described him in glowing terms was also grossly ridiculed.

So, when Jonathan said Nigeria will undergo an economic miracle like South Korea by 2020, I am sure it took all the diplomatic courtesy for Koreans not to fall off their chair laughing. How can a country that promised SURE in January, but later said it was unsure in February be talking about a miracle in March and expected to be taken seriously?

Jonathan also spoke of political stability, the investor-friendliness of Nigeria, a strong judiciary and a vibrant country. He spoke about Boko Haram attacks and said they affect only a part of Nigeria and that such abnormal behaviour will not extend to other parts of the country. He further promised that by the middle of the year, Nigeria would have subdued the terrorists.

He was quoted as saying, “Nigeria is a very, very green area for investors. …I assure you that Nigeria’s enormous natural and human resources, as well as its viable market will guarantee maximum returns on your investments.”

But like the devil in the joke who woos in prospects to hell by any means possible, the President forgot one important fact: Koreans probably know a lot more about Nigeria than the President gave them credit for. They must have read about the failed promises of dealing with Boko Haram and the kidnap of foreigners by supposed Al Qaeda agents. For a country that didn’t take corruption lightly during their years of economic reconstruction, they must be amazed at the endless corruption stories that emanate out of Nigeria daily; they must know about the fuel subsidy story and how a certain figure jumped many paces like Chioma Ajunwa doing her thing. They would have heard that of all the scandals that involved even foreign nationals, Nigeria did not punish their own and it took Britain to deal with a corrupt ex-governor.

Beyond all those tales by the Nigerian moonlight, what is considered as the greatest invention of the 20th century, which parts of the world like South Korea have learnt to take for granted, electricity, is still elusive to Nigerians. I read it someplace that a western journalist interviewed former Korean president and asked him what their secret was. He replied, ‘Make sure power doesn’t go out.’ It’s a simple truth. There cannot be investment paradise destination in a country where many young adults have never witnessed 24 hours of unbroken power supply.

Last year, when power went out in South Korea for six hours because demand rose by 3.2 million megawatts, the country was thrown into crisis. If a country that is less than a third of Nigeria’s population could be talking about that volume of electricity, and the best Nigeria is still projecting is 35,000MW by year 2020, then what really is Nigeria’s selling point? Does the president think Koreans are unaware that even Nigerians are running to Ghana to invest because their own country does not guarantee power supply? I wonder!