The ‘Little Devil’ in All of Us - Olusola Ojekunle
I have watched with keen interest, how some opinion leaders and other Nigerians have been calling out the President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the economic crises facing the nation, most especially the skyrocket price of foodstuffs and other consumables. I agree that the situation is so bad and it’s becoming unbearable every day. However, I will like to dwell on the causes of our precarious situation and acceptance of everyone’s actions and inactions that, ‘There is a little Devil in all of us’.
Most of the
commentators have opined their thoughts being beclouded by the emotions and
pains we all go through, forgetting or mischievously leaving out how we got
here. Our knowledge of where we are coming from will be of great help going forward.
Of course
this is not the right time to apportion blames. Yet we all need to reflect on
the past decisions made by the Men in charge of affairs which affected our
wellbeing. There was a regime that recklessly sold most of our common heritage.
As if that was not enough, the then President appointed a certified thief to
supervise the sale of our common fortune. Expectedly, those heritage were
conspicuously sold to his cronies and fellow thieves. There were regimes of Oil
Boom and excesses. Instead of investing or at least save for the rainy day, the
‘Jegudujeras’ in disguise as State
Governors mounted huge pressure on a weak President and they successfully squandered
all the money. Another clueless administration mounted the leadership and
played Ludo with our source of
livelihood. For good 8 years, that regime gambled with our lives with different
failed economic policies which left us in the deep shit of debt and hardship.
The same regime gifted Nigerians, the World Capital of Poverty. A gift which placed
a giant of Africa at the very lowest bottom.
On
assumption of duty, the present administration has shown rare courage that all
his predecessors ran away from by declaring fuel subsidy removal. The scorn,
fuel subsidy has not only made our crepe inevitable but denied us of
infrastructural development for ages. The City Boy assembled hands into
different positions of relevance according to their competence and merit. He
gathered people of different ethnics, age bracket, background and other
variations with the sole aim of giving Nigerians result. The President has
since initiated policies that most of the emotional commentators could not
successfully rubbished. PBAT has increased the monthly allocation of all the
states and the state Governors have been more financially empowered to cushion
the ugly effect of subsidy removal. Just few days ago, the Senate President,
Senator Godswill Akpabio declared that about 30 billion naira was given to each
state by the Federal Government, aside the usual monthly statutory allocation
to reduce masses hardship and pain. How has this money been spent?
The song in
town is about food inflation and high foreign exchange rate. It is a common
knowledge that any country that doesn’t produce more than her consumption, may
likely end up where we are. It is in Nigeria we bastardize our locally produced
goods and embrace foreign products even when they are substandard in quality.
We pay so much for ‘Panda’ (fake)
from abroad and condemn the ‘Goolu’
(gold) that is locally made. We want to have our cake and still eat it. If not
for the little devil in us, what concerns yam, vegetables, cocoyam, cassava,
beans, tomatoes, onions, palm oil, maize, potatoes, pepper, fish, meat and
other locally produced foodstuffs with the foreign exchange to the tune of 45%
increment? No doubt there is a little devil in us.
We must all
rise to nurture our local economy and stop the quest for foreign products
especially, the ones we have the capacity to produce in Nigeria. No magic will
strengthen the NAIRA except we start consuming ‘made in Nigeria’ products.
Olusola Ojekunle is a Public Affairs Commentator and Educational Consultant.
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