IT should interest the students of postcolonialAfrica that usually public institutions in the post colony transform into the very anti-thesis of the social problems which these institutions were established to confront and solve. Hence the police for instance become a haven for robbers, and the PHCN in Nigeria becomes the harbinger of darkness.RECENTLY, the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), wrote a petition to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adokie (SAN), and demanded a full investigation and prosecution of NAPEP officials allegedly involved in a tricycle project in which N417 million had been allegedly stolen.MR Agbakoba had written the petition on behalf of his client, that way back in 2002, his client had proposed the idea of poverty alleviation through the use of motorised tricycles for commercial transport to create employment and generate business for the masses. Along the line, after the initial success of the programme in 2002 and 2003, internal strife within the Keke NAPEP Owners and Riders Association of Nigeria (KORAN) had run the arrangement into a ditch. The issue of a sour business relationship between NAPEP and the motorised tricycles provider has endured in the Nigerian media for quite a while now prior to the recent petition written by Mr Agbakoba and for observers of the industry. It has become, albeit sadly, another Nigerian matter that once mentioned soon gets swept under the proverbial carpet. It is saddening, however, that NAPEPNational Poverty Eradication Programmehas come to be an agency that is entrenching poverty. The idea of using motorised tricycles to provide employment in an age where countries are targeting mass transportation system is in itself fickle. Our consolation is in the fact that at least some people benefited. But now that the production and distribution of these motorised tricycles have been stalled by a business arrangement gone sour, it means that the poverty alleviation process has come to a halt.THE observation had been made in several of our previous editorials that both corruption and poverty are Siamese twins, and that both are universal social problems. The difference in societies is what they do with these social problems. In some societies, they are celebrated until they start to threaten the foundation of the structure of the society. In others, they are repudiated with strong sanctions.IN the post colony, which Nigeria represents, both poverty and corruption are usually attacked with slogans and seminars, hence their malignant proliferation. Ordinarily, NAPEP as a government agency ought to have come under the skilful scrutiny of the anti-graft agencies which should have discovered why the agency would rather entrench than eradicate poverty.BUT then, maybe the oversight is understandable. If Nigerias Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are deeply immersed in the quicksand of corruption of mind-boggling dimensions, where billions of naira are involved, why bother about a miserable N417 million Such an attitude, however, cannot be acceptable because NAPEP by its statutory duty should be seen to be transparent and accountable in its operations. If NAPEP is so imbued with corruption, how can it help alleviate, let alone, eradicate povertyTHE anti-graft agencies ought to take more than a passing interest in the affairs of NAPEP with a view to bringing it back on the path of redemption and sanity. NAPEP should not be allowed to transmute into an agency that is the very antithesis of its essence.
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