Why do I feel the need to monitor news from Nigeria very closely whenever the 18 old fighter jets are eventually retired by the Canadian Air Force?

Is it because I fear headlines like:

Nigerian Air Force acquires 18 brand new fighter jets?

Needless to say, our budget for purchasing the 18 scrap fighter jets from Canada would be double what the Canadians would have spent buying 18 truly new ones…

If you hear plans by NAF to buy “brand new fighter jets” in 2018 – 2019, be vigilant…

There is precedence. When the city of Toronto decided to retire many of her inter-city trains because of age and metal fatigue, Babatunde Raji Fashola rushed to Toronto to acquire them all for the Lagos rail project.

Only Canadian human rights groups protested the human tragedy waiting to happen. Very soon, the thoroughly metal fatigued but refurbished trains will be launched with fanfare in Lagos. Our poor maintenance culture will combine with the metal fatigue one day and

Boom!

And hundreds of our people will die without knowing what hit them.

Whoever is Governor of Lagos when it happens will be blamed for not “maintaining Fashola’s work.”

Nobody will remember that Fashola had set off the chain of events by buying metal fatigued scrap deemed unfit for human use in Toronto.

In Nigeria, our leaders always think that that our people are only fit for Western detritus – which they buy at a much higher price than brand new products because of corruption and price inflation.

The people themselves, lacking civics and their heads panel beaten by poverty, do not understand the importance of dignity. They defend the leaders who deem them worthy of only aloku oyinbo (Western detritus) and abuse people like me for being unrealistic and wanting to impose Western standards on local realities.

I was thoroughly abused when I wrote about Fashola’s metal fatigued trains. The most generous criticism I got was:

Fashola sha tie try. Ibikan sha la ma ti bere.

It is true that you must start somewhere.

But there is no decree that states that you must start from Western detritus.

If your leaders are in the habit of buying Western detritus at a price much higher than what the Japanese are selling the latest supersonic train coaches, it means you could have started from the latest supersonic train coaches.

Your leaders just don’t think you are worth it. After all, when they buy their own official cars, those Mercedes Benz G Wagons, Toyota Prado Jeeps, BMW Jeeps, which they replace every two years in very long convoys, do they ever buy second hand?

If they used the trains, they’d buy brand new coaches…

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Pius Adesanmi, a professor of English, is Director of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada