Quick on one contempt

I’m sat in traffic, setting fire to petrol that I bought at the black market. Makes me angry, and set me thinking. I might add links to this later, or better still, expand it for one of my paid columns. At least make I use am take buy fuel…

Something has been bothering me since I read it on Monday. It's an article in the Guardian titled, "After 251 days, Abuja-Kaduna rail service resumes amid ₦6.6b losses".

In the article, the newspaper calculated that in the eight months that the railline was closed after last March's terrorist incident, that the Nigerian Railway Corporation lost the equivalent of $9 million, and they showed their working.

In his reaction however, the MD of the NRC said that in the eight months since the terrorist attack, the government had lost "just" ₦113 million.

Brief diversion to a pet peeve: I tend to get very mad when Nigerian government officials use the word "just" to try and brush aside something that should be taken more seriously.

Just two people were killed.
Just ₦36 million was stolen.
Just four buildings collapsed...

When the fuck are you people going to realise that these numbers mean something?

Back to regular programming, and we have to convert that ₦113 million to a serious currency, and it comes up to $154 thousand. This comes to an average of $19,250 a month or $231 thousand a year. A rail line that connects two cities 190km apart. And the NRC MD was not ashamed to say that!

Last I checked, the Abuja-Kaduna rail was built with a loan of $1.2 billion. I repeat, $1.2 BILLION!

If the geezer in charge of our railways is correct, how many years will it take us to pay off this loan?

There are so many stories that you can draw from this, starting with the absolute contempt our officials hold us in.