Analysis
Wish We Had a Country

By Paulinus Nnah
I truly miss this space from where I have stayed away for as long as about a year now.
But today, certain very compelling factors have persuasively beckoned on me to put down my routine thoughts in a season like this, the same old May Day anniversary.
It has been most unfortunate that the situation that one is experiencing in the Nigerian contraption of today is that everyone seems to either advertently or inadvertently wish that Nigeria were a country. But as the axiom goes: If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride! This, of course goes to mean that wishing alone is often of no use; you must act as well.
When a layman’s understanding of a country is supposed to be a politically organized body of people under a single government, where basic amenities of life are made available to him to live as human being, and when the phoney system we are bludgeoned to live in today smacks of nothing close to the above simplest of descriptions of a country, then everyone of us that is sitting here in this jungle state and still expecting any normalcy has gone steps further from wishful thinking to abysmal daydreaming!
Let’s put it this way: it’s only in a politically organized body of sane persons that leaders whose sole aim of coming on board leadership platform must be to give better life to the led. But when from start to finish of the process to put in place the highly coveted politically organized body of individuals known, accepted and roundly fit by the peoples of their constituencies have far fallen short of all known acceptable standards, the result of that entire fictive exercise, such that we had, cannot be anything other than what we are getting: a bunch of unresponsive, insensitive and obviously confused folks posing as the people’s leaders.
One can honestly say that back in the campaign days leading to this regime, bulk of the bidders then, from top to bottom, the very ones maintaining the reins of power today in various leadership posts, scarcely had any cogent words of promise, talk less of any outlined manifesto spelling out concrete plan of actions should they get there. All we saw on electioneering daises were buffoons and inventors of most incoherent phrases ever, and words that can only be found in the lexicon of the underworld!
Very little wonder then that for about one year of its existence this regime has completely been lacking in any iota of tack and know-how with which to tackle and bring to end all the humongous socio-economic, political, and security issues that are fast tearing Nigeria into shreds. The complete collapse of our judicial system and total disregard for the rule of law have added to the weaknesses of our security and anti-graft agencies that are always seen to bark without being able to actually biting, thereby lending fresh boldness to top public officials to loot in billions and trillions of Naira, and criminals in all shades to hold sway in their most horrifying acts and get away with it. These ones still walk our streets freer and bolder than the poor innocent fellows.
Today, the current din is about salary increase for about 5,000,000 civil service personnel across the Nigerian state (federal, state and local government employees put together); and the federal government has just announced a 35% increment for its under-one million-man government workforce in a population of about 230 million people as at last year. Assuming any salary increment for federal, state and local government workers added together will ever get them anywhere, what happens to the rest of the 90-something percent of the citizenry, including labourers in the informal sector? Of course, for the Nigerian workers in the formal sector and all others alike, the gimmicks of salary increases can never be enough to take the people’s economic woes away, instead it is bound to further deepen poverty in the land. Commonsensically, let the government workers at the federal, state or LG figure out how far the current minimum wage can take them in a month, when it is obvious that their survival does not depend on how much meagre salary increment they bicker to grab from government, but much more about what that money can actually buy in our today’s open markets. That’s the home truth! Right now as we speak, the staple foods of garri (N72,000/bag), rice (about N75,000/bag), beans and other essential commodities and services are far out of reach of the common man, leaving him with no affordable alternative.
The other day, some feigned squabble ensued in the supply sector of petroleum products here in Akwa Ibom State, and marketers shut their stations, letting black marketers to have a field day as they exploited the situation and raked in N1,200/litre of PMS. At reopening the fuel stations the next day pump price of PMS shot up to 740/750 per litre; and the situation now is that it is pegged between N780 and N800-plus/litre. The recent hike in electricity tariff has come as added suicidal burden. Thus, when a handful of persons within the ever swelling population of about 250 million people now are asking for a paltry N615,000 as minimum wage and are not looking for ways and means to addressing key economic factors that would usher in holistic solution for the benefit of all, it looks to me we are aiding this gang in power to further tighten the rope of economic strangulation around our necks ever the more.
However, if the Nigerian people will have to manufacture wisdom, let them do so quick and turn to those who pose as their leaders and seek for their proof of leadership capacity to make life meaningful for the people by putting in place workable price control mechanism in order to force down or, at least, stabilize prices of basic goods and services in the economy for the people’s survival. This forms the very basic policy thrust of any organized political system in the world. Next, let them test the sincerity and political will of the so-called leaders by asking them to drastically downsize the cost and privilege of governance, which have been the reason why cerebral mediocres and morally bankrupt fellows have continued to bask in wild ostentation in the corridors of power all their lives and are celebrated, while the superlatively merited ones are forever relegated to the background.
There is no doubt, ours is clearly a jungle situation and never any well organized political system that we can confidently call a country. That is why some of us will always wish we had a country.
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