Within a few days of last week, three mutually exclusive events struck me as the nature of living in Nigeria. On the evening of Tuesday July 5, there was an attack and total break into Kuje Correctional Centre, as we are told to refer to prisons in Nigeria. That is one of those nomenclatures that put dark veils on the actual meaning of objects or subjects of embarrassment in this country. The centre happens to be close to the core of our government’s heartbeats. Real arson was carried out with many vehicles burnt down and infrastructure destroyed. More importantly, many prisoners or yet-to-be corrected criminals were released! Some people were actually sleeping on duty.
That incident made it clear that the country’s security apparatus is unreliable and disorganised. In a sane society, some managers of internal security would have resigned or sacked for incompetence. How can security experts put such a large number of criminals in one prison instead of distributing them into many such that it would be difficult for any group to free all of them at once? Now that they have been released into the Nigerian space by their organisation, their confidence in that organisation will be strengthened and they will become more vicious in their activities than before. Public safety is now totally compromised. The Senate was concerned that such an important place had no Closed Circuit Television. There is the need to check the budget record whether CCTV had not been purchased on paper in the past.
The incident embarrassed the President himself that he declared in an unmistaken words that the Nigerian security management is shambolic. I am just thinking aloud that something should jolt the President to know that his economic managers too have been sleeping on motor bikes. That Nigeria, economically, is on its knees. We know that the President, members of cabinets and their families live on our sweat, so they do not go to markets to know how prices are moving up almost daily.
In the afternoon of Friday July 8, I watched ordinary Nigerians like me milling around markets for rams, all looking distraught or sad but determined to live. We were roaming around like the rams we went to purchase. Some eventually bought one instead of two, or smaller one than intended, or none at all. The prices have gone up astronomically. No thanks to the tough economic conditions that have over time conditioned Nigerians into undeserved depth of poverty due to incompetence, corruption and mismanagement. One can see the state of the nation in the ram markets across the market. A nation in distress, a nation where its youths are either out of school by ‘destiny’ or out of school by the I-don’t-care attitude of the government, and a nation held down by lack of planning or improper execution of plans.
Every year, humongous funds are allocated for projects and programmes that are never executed but the funds disbursed. The country’s currency depreciates every day, domestic prices are rising inhibited, payment of subsidy on fuel is being paid for fuel not imported, and production of electricity continues to fall while its tariff is being adjusted upward every month to meet expected revenue and profit. Debt(domestic and foreign) continues to rise without caution and debt servicing and repayments continue to take away funds that could have been used for development.
The third event was watching on television in the evening of the same Friday, July 6, the meeting between the River State Governor, Nyesom Wike and three governors of the All Progressives Congress, Babajide Sanwolu of Lagos State, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, accompanied by the former Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayo Fayose. One could see all of them exchanging pleasantries with reckless abandon, careless banters and undiluted happiness. They don’t have the feelings of insecurity and poverty that the common citizens have.
They are all jolly good fellows. Their mood gave me the feeling that they are aliens in Nigeria. They, like the rest of them, are not part of us. Their children are likely studying or working abroad and their wives are around to share in the glamour of office as the First Lady of their respective states. More important is the fact that they eat what they want to eat, not what they feel like eating. I am sure they do not eat ofada or abakaliki rice. If it is not ‘Uncle Bens,’ it must be ‘Uncle Chin’. Please, don’t be jealous, it is their turn but this excellent time will definitely pass.
Those thugs who have been fighting themselves under the umbrella of the Peoples Democratic Party or beating each other with the brooms of the APC need to rethink. The politicians are not worth dying for. Albeit, only educated people know that and most Nigerians have been subjected to thinking with their feet. A country with about 50 per cent illiterates! No thanks to the government’s deliberate decision to keep citizens down while promoting and reproducing themselves in their children.
Often, I have heard from speakers of churches and mosques in local areas offering prayers for Nigeria. Of course, that is expected because we have no other country than Nigeria but I do wonder whether the rich do remember to pray for our beloved country. I suspect that they must be praying for their households’ continued dominance over the rest of us. I also suspect that they are in Nigeria in body but not in soul. Their souls are somewhere abroad. They do not believe in Nigeria because if they do, their children will be studying here, Nigerian universities will not be closed even for one month without solution and the institutions will be well-equipped to offer quality education. If they are in Nigeria in body and soul, they will not be running abroad to take care of their health challenges without first seeking local solutions and transferring abroad on referrals. If they are patriotic and have genuine love for Nigeria and other citizens, they will not be transferring our funds, secretly or openly, into their foreign accounts. They would invest their money, including stolen funds, in the Nigerian economy to create jobs and reduce unemployment. That would also make them initiate and implement policies that grow domestic investments.
When I watched the film “The rich also cry” in the last decade, I wondered what was so special about the rich that they would not cry. They are also human like the poor. They must have ups and downs in their lives like any other person. The only thing is that the rich cry more for personal loss or inconvenience than the collective cry of the poor. The poor cry more for hardships imposed on them by society or more appropriately, by the government. To that extent, the rich are less nationally patriotic than the poor who are victims of bad government. And it has been a long time since Nigeria has good government and good governance, particularly nationally. Some states are lucky with their governments though.
As this government is rounding up and with the magnitude of insecurity and economic quagmire, I do not see any turn around for the better for the nation in these important areas. Those who are aspiring to take over should start providing advice on the way forward so that we can start appreciating them and be properly guided during the coming elections. When sometimes I meet or see those leaders who ruled us with arrogance and self-aggrandisement for 16 years and have been out of power since then, I observe them with pity. Many of them are now begging for positions because they are now broke and irrelevant. They are reaping the fruits of what they sewed. The time of those who are in power today will also come to pass and they will reap the fruits of insecurity and poverty they are planting today. Nothing lasts forever.
