Obit: The eventual repatriation of Alhaji Rilwanu’s body raises a reader’s question and blogger’s response that must be shared – Tola Adenle

Fatai Bakare
Submitted on 2014/07/22 at 2:05 am
May his soul rest in peace.

Only now that his corpse will cost Nigeria money to bring home. The Bible and the Quran said, this life is vanity. At the end of the day, it’s six feet or less.

 

Dear Fatai,

Thanks.

Your point of state burials for what has become a deluge of personalities who have worked for government and those who have never done so in Nigeria is something that I believe the National Assembly at the “federal” level, and the state assemblies need to look into. While we must devise our own way of governance to some extent, we must do so within the boundary of decency and consideration for the wealth of all that those in power keep on finding ways to remove from common wealth and spending on those already loaded during their periods of Nigeria’s interpretation of “service”; we should also look to other countries in deciding on these state burials that are costing Nigeria tons of money at different levels of government.

Worse are the precedences being set without looking to the future and the burden these are already creating and will create, especially considering the over-the-top expenditures we spend on funerals in the country even by those who cannot afford it but who somehow find ways of doing so in a sort of  aping those who have access to limitless state funds; I mean ‘state’ in a general way. Worse, many of these rich people die abroad in search of good medical care which their profligate ways deny the country while they have the power to change things.

At “federal” level, it is my opinion that perhaps only a president and his vice need be given state burials while at the state levels, state burials with pre-set caps on the level of financial outlays for such by state legislature should be decided and enshrined in a state document that can always be referred to FOR GOVERNORS. It should not be the prerogative of sitting governors to decide.

Such must also have conditions: a “governor” booted out of office because it was found his election was rigged or one that is forced out through fraudulent actions, et cetera BUT not one forced out through the shenanigan of the kind of impeachments common in the country should get official funerals.

I know, Fatai, the late super-rich minister’s “corpse will cost Nigeria money to bring home” – and more for his family. It’s supposedly not good to say unkind things about the dead but like others, the late Alhaji Lukman earned salaries – he went from a government parastatal to Minister and then OPEC … – as far as we know  – but was one of Nigeria’s wealthiest men. These things need to stop and this is as good a time as any to discuss them.

Regards,
TOLA.

TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2014.  6:20 a.m. [GMT]