By Ugoji Egbujo

A new year has come. It has come with old and fresh  hopes. It  will encounter reality and  hopes  that aren’t well founded, will crumble quickly. Then the year willpeter out, like the one that  preceded it. And a load of failed expectations will be optimistically deferred, hurled, to the subsequent one. 2016 had come with many hopes. Naira was still 198 to a dollar – officially- then. The disparity between that rate and the black market’s (N260 per dollar) was considered frightening.That crazy  black market exchange  rate was the handiwork of unscrupulous speculators, we were told.

Those were the good old days, it now seems. Then, they bothered to give excuses. The naira is now prostrate at N500 per dollar, and they aren’t saying anything. The gulf between the ratesis  now large enough to swallow  the Atlantic, but the  government is no longer rattled by it.

When 2016 came we were told the bleeding vessels of the economy would be tied up. The government, they said, was in full deliberate control. We believed because they never seemed to be in any panic,they spoke with knowing ease. Then  we, cheerfully , slipped  into a deep  recession.  They won’t take any responsibility for the decline. They  kept cheerful  and knowing faces. You don’t know if they understand pain because not even their tone  has changed.  You read their  messages of hope  twice and you can’t but hiss.  Where is the substance?  Where is a clear plan? Don’t look for it, thou man of little faith. Their inexplicable  assuredness rebukes doubt and scrutiny.

Naira is dying  from the ‘issue of blood’ and they are still smiling the smiles of messiahs. We thought they had something up their sleeves in 2016: A miracle worker/magician  could have been strolling down from somewhere, wanting  things to get thoroughly messed up before he arrived , so that the redemption is breathtaking.  They made us dream dreams. You can’t stillmake out if it’s lack of empathy or too much of it. This seeming nonchalance. A patient on life support cannot trust thefaces  her doctors put forward   to reveal any  direness. But she  can always  gleam turmoil from their occasional franticness. With these ones in Abuja, it’s baffling imperturbability.

The budget of 2016, we were told, would do economic wonders. It failed miserably. But no one has come clear. We had no money to fund that budget. We may not have any money to fund this new one. There is nothing in the 2017 budget indicative of repentance.  Kitchen utensils and other sinful items have made a noisy comeback. Soon ‘paddings’ will reappear.  And they will bicker and bicker, and pass the budget when it has lost allmeaning. The Avengers and their political sponsors haven’t disappeared yet.  And we are helpless against them.

Yet  we can, insouciantly, announce-  we will come out of recession soon. When a man finds himself in a suffocating predicament, he can embrace denial for temporary relief. But you would think that the affairs of a nation should be handled more truthfully , more soberly. So that,if  padlocking naira at 315 per dollar makes CBN and  government officials emergency billionaires, then a policy change would be effected in a hurry. But they will do nothing but say- “we are on top of it!”

Yes, they are on top of it. Violent  herdsmen are  still on the loose, everywhere. Whole villages were ruined in 2016, and not a flicker of real deterrence has been seen anywhere. There is no urgency, none that is reassuring, none that makes a distinction between cattle and human life.  We arebeing conditioned to take the massacres as inevitable.Like trees, shedding their leaves, occasionally, seasonally. We are now accustomed to gory spectacles, intestines and all. Everyone seems to know the source of the impunity of the herdsmen, except the federal government.

The federal government is shackled byparochial  cattle- rearing sentiments. We can leave it at that.  The Army , even the army, is now talking cattle ranches and cattle rearing. It’s 2017, but the  violent  herdsmen wont just disappear.

It will be a great year, that’s what they have said.  But the two political parties have their fingers  firmly on  self -destruct buttons. The ruling party has shed its sanctimoniousness. It has admitted too many leprous elements. But hasn’t it  always had an abundance of those? The real tragedy  is that it now has a torn soul. And since it has learnt not to tackle anything headlong, it won’t stitch. So  itsdecay will continue and its collapse may be sudden. Tinubu and Oyegun’s public spat has left the party permanently diminished and potentially moribund. How can the party of ‘change’  keep a national chairman whom its national leader has publicly branded a fraudster, an impostor? What lofty ideals can such a party still pretend to? Not righteousness, not fairness, and definitely, not unity.Tinubu and Oyegun are now mutually incompatible. But they look at us with smiling faces and say – “all is well, politics is about conflicts”

The opposition party is in rags. All it does is – howl and howl. If it stares hard into 2017, it must see abject bleakness. The imminent disintegration of the PDP is a major set back for our political growth. PDP was many ugly things, but it was inclusiveness and consensus. Another party may rise from its ashes, but can  any be as unifying as the PDP. The problems of the PDP are complicated by the fact that it is the party vociferously  making excuses for corruption. Buying of votes aside, no opposition party can appeal to the poor with such a message.

Workers have become bleating mules. Their salaries are tethered, andrampant  winds of inflation  have left it threadbare. But they won’t even get those frayed notes without tears. And no one will tell them anything besides sophistry: “The economic diversification policy of this and that government is on course,blablabla………..”  Wouldn’t you think that peoplewillfool themselves up to an extent, up to the brink, and then pull back from destruction? What has changed in the states where governors with itchy fingers, who know nothing besides the rigging of elections and self aggrandizement, preside? What will change in 2017? The purchasing power of workers will remain wretched, and their families will continue bleating in 2017. That is the truth.

The truth is that despite Buhari’s anti corruption stance, policemen will continue to extort motorists in 2017 in plain public view. The government is utterly  helpless. The Customs officials at Semeborder will continuewith their customary brazenness. The government will tell you some vacuous stuff:‘change starts with you’.  Lecturers will sell marks for sex and cash, everywhere. Yes, because thousands of them who sold marks last year are better off than those of them who held back and didn’t sell. No one was prosecuted. Soldiers of God had their way in 2016. They killed Patience Agbahime  in broad daylight and got away. Why wouldn’t they soothe their bloodthirstiness again?

It’s not easy for any government to contend with so much confusion.  But the confidence of the people is not retained by empty consolations and wishfulness alone. Lack of responsiveness  and  absence of visible plans , in theface of worsening  social circumstances, create gloom and  hopelessness.

When you get to the local wing of the Port Harcourt airport don’t walk pass without a thought. Spare a thought for Jonathan, Wike and Amaechi. Imagine the contribution of the region to the national economy. Ask anyone near you: “what is really happening?”While he fumbles for an answer, throw a cathartic, tufiakwa!at those  makeshift tents.