But Things Are Very Difficult for Nigerians

While we are having all the conversations about how much has been stolen in Nigeria and how to repatriate such criminal proceeds, I suggest that our leaders begin to quickly ideate on ways — practical ways, to reverse the frightening level of poverty in the land. There is nothing more deserving of utmost urgency in today’s Nigeria.

In our usual hasty and unreflective response to issues, someone is bound to surmise that recovery of loots and stopping corruption is one of the ways to reverse the pervasive lack that Nigerians currently grapple with, but I disagree.

No matter the level of corruption that has been perpetrated in a country, taking care of the people is a first charge necessity and creative governance works to save the common man from despondency. Governments find ways to put their people to work and provide social safety nets to ease the burden of everyday living. Governments make public institutions work so that the proletariat does not get trapped in the web of temptation that lead to corruptive infractions. If these do not happen, there will be no way to stop delinquency from attending official negligence. The unproductive mind is the laboratory for assorted evil machinations.

So, when government elevates any other objective above the wellbeing of the people, they are barking up the wrong tree, especially if the priority is to eliminate corruption. There is so much hunger for a deprived people to care about morality especially when their leaders serve mammon and flaunt same in their faces.

The Yoruba people have a saying that compliments Abraham Maslow’s “Theory of Human Motivation.” The saying, “Ti ebi ba kuro ninu ise, ise buse,” ties the importance of the ability of man to feed with dignity such that the moment a man is able to feed himself and his family, the magnitude of his poverty pales significantly. To expect righteous and unquestioning patriotism from men and women who have not been paid salaries for months or whose salaries no longer take them home is to expect pigs to fly.

Concerning the extant battle against corruption in Nigeria, copious progress is evidently being made in dissuading top government appointees, who possibly live in government houses, drive cars fuelled and maintained by government and have access to choice medical attention within and outside the country, from stealing. But how much attention to do we pay to the working class whose purchasing power has diminished considerably, even when they are paid?

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo once told a delegation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) of the dangers that starvation portends for the sub-region. This came after Doctors without Borders (MSF) spoke about the malnourishment of children among internally displaced persons in Bama, Borno State. 480 of such children allegedly died.

The problem is not just the North-East. One of the most outlandish stories out of Nigeria is that of Mallam Yusuf Bala, who allegedly forfeited his five-year-old son for a bag of rice in Kano State. The Guardian also reported that the theft of food being cooked on fire has become a common occurrence in Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State. The report quoted a number of people who came back to the spots where they were cooking with firewood to find the fire burning without the pot or food. Those stealing the food do so without consternation about being caught in the act. Parties have also become places where women stray in to collect food for themselves and their families.