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.