Toying With The Hardship Nigerians’re Going Through

 By Adekunle Adekoya

Since May 29, 2023, Nigerians have been struggling with unrelenting rises in the cost of living following peremptory removal of subsidy on petrol by President Bola Tinubu.

The much-touted ‘market forces’ have since reacted to the development most viciously, and continue to do so, with many Nigerians gnashing their teeth as it gets harder to make ends meet. What is very disturbing about the whole thing is that government has completely abandoned the people to the mercies of the market forces.

Last Tuesday, we saw yet another increase in the price of petrol, from the previous N998 that we struggled with, to N1,025 (these are NNPC Retail prices). In Abuja, for obvious reasons, it’s higher — N1,060. That increase was the third within two months. In our peculiar petro-economy, the marketplace has reacted already; from transport fares to cost of foodstuffs, prices have listed many upward notches.

And as a result, people are suffering great privations, almost beyond what one can describe in words. Many more Nigerians have taken to begging. I am in fact alarmed at the sight of well-dressed people, who intentionally bump into you on the street, and as you get ready to protest, you get an apology, quickly followed by a request for an urgent N500, or any amount as the kids have not had anything to eat all day.

Yet, the president and his men keep insisting that the policies inflicting this hardship on us are the right ones. In fact, all the people who this administration matter to have been unanimous in urging the rest of us to bear with government, and these people include traditional rulers, titled chiefs, party chieftains (minus the opposition, of course). 

In addition, the World Bank and the IMF are applauding the president and his men, and while the traditional bastions that come to the aid of the people in times like these, like the media, are doing what is expected of them by ventilating the anguish of the people in stories and editorials, government spokesmen have been at daggers-drawn with media houses.

In their impish, servile defence of the president and his policies, presidential spokesmen hurl figures about rising foreign reserves, increased FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), and growing GDP at the rest of us. They conveniently forget the rising number of out-of-school children, rising prices of foodstuffs, spiralling headline inflation, and the failure of mitigating policy initiatives like duty-free grain imports, N40,000-per-bag-rice, and the CNG initiative that is not gaining traction in a way that can make a difference. They also forget that a 50-kg bag of rice now sells for N108,000! And it was N8,000, BC!

Restructuring the economy is good, but I think it should not be at the expense of the well-being of the people of Nigeria. The economy is about the people. What use is a performing economy when the people it is supposed to benefit have all died or become incapacitated by the brutish life we are now forced to live as the president pursues his policies? In short, the president and his men seem bent on a mission to make all of us”disappear,” the same way one member of the Federal House of Representatives, Alex Ifeanyi Ikwechegh, threatened to make a Bolt driver disappear.

In fact, Ikwechegh’s conduct as it concerns the Bolt driver is emblematic of the contempt in which people in positions of authority and privilege hold the citizenry. We are dying from inability to feed, to pay school fees, to pay house rent, to buy drugs when we fall sick, and yet, those wielding the levers of power somehow feel detached from our plight because they are at the doors of the national exchequer and can draw at will without let or hindrance to finance their own needs. At no time in the history of our dear country has political leadership been so insouciant.

Knowfully well that ours is a petro-economy, the political leadership running affairs by now should have retreated into their inner sanctotum and reappeared with policies that can ease our suffering. But no. They keep telling oga patapata that he is doing well, just as the Nigerian Governors Forum did yesterday. After their meeting they rose and announced that yes, “there is hunger in the land,” and in the same breath expressed support for the president’s policies. There can be no worse oxymoron in terms of thought, speech and action. How can you see a madman on the street, in rags, unbathed for years, grimy with overgrown hair and nails and tell him he is looking good enough to be a model?

Earlier in the week, I listened to a radio programme during which the issue of Rep Ikwechegh came up. A concerned citizen phoned in and asked: “Where do we get this kind of people from?” The programme anchor answered: “From among us, of course. Government doesn’t manufacture its people. People go into government.”

And there you have it. As they say, a people deserve the government they get. We are our own enemies. For decades, we have managed to always elect people who go into government not to serve us, but themselves and their cohorts. If we had people with empathy in the likes of the founding fathers — Awolowo, Azikiwe, Sardauna and others of the First Republic, perhaps our lives would be better. 

But their inheritors are carrying mutated political genes. Again, I urge the president and his men to quickly consider allocating crude to Dangote Refinery for local consumption at no more than three quarters of the global crude price. That will be a nice way to reflate the economy without recourse to the word subsidy. And I really pray this gets to the president.

*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues