The most unfortunate thing in life is to see a man carrying a bucket of clean water on his head move around begging for water to drink. Such is the case of the Kaduna state governor, Mallam Elrufai, who recently sacked 4000 staff because he thinks he has no money to pay them. Also such is the case of president buhari who goes all over the world borrowing money in the turn of trillions of naira.

It has become clear that our leaders in Nigeria lack the mental capacity to create new opportunities for paid employment for the unemployed citizens. Probably because the lack the necessary training, or because they have been blinded by the plague of greed and corruption.

Compare Nigeria with China, and you will discover that Nigeria is more endowed with natural wealth and resources. Yet Nigeria is nowhere to be measured with China in the utilization of this natural wealth to produce economic value and wealth.

This has resulted in the states and federal government sacking the workforce as a last resort instead of creating job opportunities.

A visit to any of the local, state or federal government offices will show you that no productivity happens there. No value is being created. Therefore, no value can be exchanged. Rather what they do is to carry files up and down and then wait for the end of the month to receive their monthly credit alerts. The alerts they wait for comes from the Federal Allocation, which of course comes from oil revenue.

Hence, if oil does not bring revenue, the federal will give not allocation. When the federal gives no allocation, the states cannot pay salaries. When the states can not pay salaries, they sack the staff. This is what brought us to where were are right now.

Is it not the primary duty of the state to secure the lives and properties of her citizens and create opportunities for their gainful employment? Definitely, this is not as complex as calculus considering the enormous power and resources at their disposal which they have refused to make use of.

Of a truth, if the states and local governments should make the best use of their resources, they will never need the federal allocations before they can provide for their citizens.

To be continued.