OBSERVATION: State Of The Nation II

• ADEMOLA YAYA

LAST week edition unraveled untold hardship President Bola Ahmed Tinubu hasty and poorly informed removal of fuel subsidy caused and what could be done to reverse the manufactured sufferings and creating conducive environment that can make people to be productive and be useful to themselves and the society instead of shadow chasing of distribution of the so-called palliatives, which are another veritable avenues by the ruling elite to further steal public funds.

Anyway, this is the way of the ruling elite; they can do anything and everything to cheat, including betraying themselves. They embrace development template of Britton Wood institutions – IMF and World Bank – to pillage our collective resources once their own cut is guaranteed via corruption. Hence, their regular slogan and action, “the poor should persevere and sacrifice for a better tomorrow” while they live extravagantly and junket around the world, looking for what is not lost.

Meanwhile, the level of the poor people complacency is very scary. At every four electoral year, few of them go out very early in the morning to queue to vote and wait till the evening for the vote to be counted while majority don’t go out to vote but use the election day as a holiday to do other things. Before the Election Day, candidates of some political parties would have bribed the voters with food items like rice, beans and noodles. The climax is the stipend between N5,000 and N10,000 on election day. With very infinitesimal exceptions, this conspiracy is so perfected that no law enforcement officer raises eyebrows. Before this, there would have been primary elections by various political parties seeking positions in the general elections.

Let us take Presidential Primary as an example. The political parties would sell nomination forms to interested party members. The purchasing price of this form is always very prohibitive; only those who have stolen or extremely rich could buy it.  The last primaries of the APC and PDP in Abuja to elect their presidential flag bearers in 2022 are pointers to this fact. APC presidential nomination form was sold for N100m while PDP sold its own at N40m.  Delegates to the primaries are selected from wards, local government and states by the party leadership. It’s a fierce battle and special privilege to become delegates to such national convention. Why? They are assured of making millions of naira and in some cases, thousands of dollar given by contestants to procure votes. When they return after the primary/convention, they do renovate their houses, buy Tokunbo cars, give cut to party leadership that made their nomination possible and ‘buga’ around their neighborhoods for some period.

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It is not difficult to conclude that at such conventions, only the highest bidders will emerge as candidates, not necessarily the best aspirants. And eventually, these are the people the political parties will present as their candidates during the general elections. Therefore, the majority of poor people who will ultimately determine who wins and becomes President of the land are passive onlookers from the beginning of the process to the final stage – general elections. Once the voters collected their portion at the general elections, the electoral circle is complete.

Apart from prohibitive party nomination form, delegates procurement, posters, billboards, electronics and prints media adverts and bribing of electorates during campaigns and other logistics for the general elections and finally, votes procurement from the electorates on the election day, the eventual winner and losers must have spent billions of naira individually. While the losers are on their own, the winner is not a Father Xmas. He/she will recoup his/her funds with huge profit. Hence, naked corruption and primitive accumulation of resources meant for societal development stream into private pockets of political office holder – elected and appointed.

Yes, I understand the relationship between cause and effect.  “A cause is something that produces an event or condition; an effect is what results from an event or condition.” I know that successive government neo-liberal policies could be very frustrating and turn virtuous but downtrodden to various crimes for a shortcut to bail out of poverty such as ritual killing, kidnap for ransom, robbery, etc. But avenging our frustrations on ourselves to bypass poverty is no solution. Neither does harassment of God day and night in the church or on mountain hill for prosperity is a way out.

A slave is half free the very day he/she is conscious of his/her slavery and is prepared to struggle for freedom but a willing captive cannot be rescued as he/she has given up, adapted to the condition and is unwilling to struggle. The latter is the case of poor people in Nigeria. They suffer and smile, pretending that all is well. As school children feel towards their school end of the year party so do poor people feel when begging for what rightly belongs to them from the ruling elite.

Meanwhile, every four electoral year is just a snap of one’s finger and another one is here. Traditionally, a Governor/President will do everything to spend his/her two terms of eight years in power. If a poor man of voting age of 18yrs, for instance, allows a rogue executive to destroy his/her life five time of 8yrs tenure, he will be 58yrs in poverty and misery if he/she is privileged not to have died before attaining the age.

Except the poor brace up to take the bull by the horn by forming their own political party or join the existing one close to their yearning and aspiration to wrest power from the ruinous ruling elites (rather than collecting stipends without qualms from their historical enemy and asking God for intervention), misery and poverty will be their permanent portion. It is not a curse but a scientific reality.