Nigeria: Hunger And Anger In The Land!

 By Kenneth Okonkwo

Jesus Christ was persecuted, assaulted, dehumanised, and eventually crucified for mankind. As he was dying on the cross, he raised his voice and shouted, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”. This same Jesus, when he was hungry and came to the living thing which God had created to give food to mankind and found no food on the living thing, he was angry and cursed the tree, and it died. He forgave his killers, but couldn’t forgive hunger.  

Indeed, even God knows that there’s no reception to theology when a man is hungry. James 2:15-17 was unequivocal when it states, “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone”. The first thing to administer to a man who is hungry is food, not preaching, not verses of the Bible or Quran.

Nigerian people are desperately hungry. There’s no food. Where there’s food, it’s gradually becoming unaffordable because of inflation which is conservatively becoming indeterminably high at more than 100% increase within the lifetime of Tinubu administration, because of the value and volatility of the naira that has collapsed at almost N2,000 and N2,400 to the dollar and pound respectively.

Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS), recently, declared that the country’s hunger crisis had reached an alarming state, “with about 26.5 million people, including women and children, in dire need of urgent assistance to prevent death and prolonged suffering”. The Red Cross boss said children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers were bearing the brunt of malnutrition, with nearly 4.41 million children and 585.000 mothers facing acute malnutrition, and about 1,000 Nigerian children dying daily from malnutrition-related causes”.

Anytime Red Cross steps into a matter, the situation is likened to a war situation in which people cannot afford food. Nigerians are now refugees in their own country that require external help to survive. Practically all the traditional rulers in Nigeria have raised the alarm that the hunger situation in Nigeria is unbearable. The Emir of Kano told Oluremi Tinubu, wife of the President, that she should tell the President that Nigerians are hungry. The Sultan confessed that he can no longer guarantee that he can dissuade his people from protesting against hardship. Tinubu’s village people cried openly to him as he is driving along in his opulent profligate unending entourage that they are hungry “ebin pawa”. Protests have erupted in Niger, Kano, Ibadan and so on, and the organised Labour is planning theirs. They all are saying one thing, “we are hungry”. 

Unfortunately, there’s only one answer that all these people receive from these clueless leaders, “be patient”. If patience works with hunger, Jesus wouldn’t have cursed the tree that didn’t bear fruit. Someone will argue that it wasn’t the fault of the tree that it didn’t have fruits. Jesus made it clear that a hungry man doesn’t have the patience to rationally think about whose fault it is that he’s hungry. He simply attacks the persons whose responsibility it is to give him food. This position is corroborated by the Constitution when it says that the primary responsibility of government is the security and welfare of the people. Unfortunately, this government has achieved none of this since its inauguration. 

The failure of this government stems from its negative optics to the people. The son of the President was pleading for patience while wearing a watch that costs millions of naira. The daughter of the President was pleading for patience while being decorated with a traditional title in a lavish ceremony on top of the uncountable titles she has already. The President is pleading for patience while appointing his son-in-law into the chairmanship of the Housing Corporation and allocating N126b into the Corporation immediately. Labour unions are persuaded to be patient, when none of the agreements reached with the government has been fulfilled. Patience seems to be for the poor Nigerians only. The President couldn’t plead with the 469 members of the National Assembly to be patient and drive made in Nigeria cars, but will plead with Nigerians to be patient and die of hunger. Unfortunately for him, a hungry man has no patience to spare. 

There’s no need giving anybody false hope because the situation is renewed hopelessness. It’s hopeless because the present administration doesn’t have a solution to the problem. The solution is simple: security for farmers to increase agricultural output, repairing of our refineries and selling them off when fully operational, ensuring stable electricity, reducing drastically the cost of fuel and other engine propelling oil products, revaluating the naira and sustaining the value through an industrial productive base and a steady export market.

This economy managers decided wrongly to devalue naira and start competing with the parallel market operators thinking that by pumping dollars to the market that the price of dollars will come down. The market simply continued to absorb their dollars and increasing their price because the only article in their trade is buying and selling currency. What the CBN should do is fix the naira at its acceptable value and make policies that will sustain the currency at that value like banning certain luxurious imports and patronising local products.

The government cannot descend into the arena of currency trade and turn back to start chasing the BDC operators for outsmarting the government in the game. If you devalue your currency to match the price of the parallel market, they will devalue it the more to make profit. The truth is that the naira and the economy have collapsed and the eventual collapse of this government is inevitable, one way or the other, if nothing is done immediately. The only thing worse than insecurity is hunger, and it has set in. 

The most disturbing thing is the deceitful efforts of this government to divide the people who are unanimous in advocating for a better society. The fight against hunger and hardship is an economic and survival fight, not a political fight. The circumstances surrounding the February 25, 2023 presidential election is a political issue not an economic issue.

Whereas, it’s admirable and advisable that the South-West should be in the forefront in this economic fight, it has to be the fight for everyone. The reason they should be in the front is to make it impossible for this incompetent government to twist the protest into a political protest. When protests against hunger and hardship erupted in Niger and Kano, this government quickly and unintelligently, dubbed it the work of the opposition parties, but when Ibadan protested, they dubbed it for what it is, a protest against hunger and hardship.

People who are asking for ndigbo to start demonstrating now should take a deep breath and not be too much in a haste. Ndigbo joining now will provide the unnecessary leeway for this regime to dub it a political protest intended to forcefully install Obi as president. Of course, they know it’s a lie, but does this regime ever believe in saying the truth? The Nigerian people did same thing in 1966 when the military took over power in Nigeria and wanted to install Awolowo as President because the man who led the coup was from Western Nigeria at independence and Midwestern Nigeria during the coup.

The only thing he shared in common with Ndigbo is his Igbo ancestral surname, Nzeogwu; his first name was an Hausa name, Kaduna, where he was born and lived throughout his life. A true Nigerian indeed. As a matter of fact, Awolowo was put in prison in the East for resisting the rigging of elections in the West which led to violence and created the fertile ground for the coup. The East was very peaceful then.

It was the government of the Eastern Region that released Awolowo from jail, from where he surprisingly joined the same military government led by the same people from the same region that sent him to jail. Surprisingly again, he turned against Ndigbo and supported the idea that hunger was an instrument of war and supervised, as Federal Finance Commissioner, the giving of every adult Igboman £20 to support his life after the war, no matter how much he had in the bank. They succeeded in twisting the political problem of 1966 against the Igbos simply because they were the most prosperous then. It was still Igbos that foiled the coup. 

It will be counter-productive if Ndigbo is identified to be in the forefront of this economic struggle because of the possibility of it being twisted. Let us be clear, Ndigbo cannot claim to be solely responsible for the success of Obi in the last presidential election. It was a pan Nigeria mandate. You cannot be claiming that the election was rigged and be claiming at the same time that the Igbos alone supported Obi because Igbo votes alone cannot make Obi President. Obi won 12 states including Lagos and the FCT, where no other candidate got up to 25% of the votes. Igbos have 5 states, but Obi won 12, meaning that Obi won more states outside Igboland than in Igboland.

The fight against hunger and hardship must be supported by everyone because hunger doesn’t know ethnicity or religion, and we must not allow this doom fated regime to divide us along ethnic and religious lines, but Ndigbo must not be in the forefront to avoid this regime using the opportunity to dub it a political protest away from what it is; a pure fight for survival. The only good thing about what is happening today is the unification of the people of Nigeria, irrespective of ethnicity or religion, against the corrupt and evil leaders in Nigeria, and the people must not allow this unity to elude them.

*Dr. Okonkwo, a lawyer and actor, is a commentator on public issues