By Gbenro Olajuyigbe

About thirty years ago, I bought a book, Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon at Yaba bus stop in Lagos. It was a replacement for a copy I had a decade earlier. The book was one of the ingredients that strengthened the anti-colonial movement. In fact, it was not a book. It was a creed of war against colonialism and neocolonialism. It was a volley of anger against tyranny and oppression. It was a revolution in  a tablet of history and syrup for freedom from psychiatry of boundage.

Today, neither colonialism nor neocolonialism is more of our problem than the audacious  cruel movement of internal colonialism led by prebendal power hustlers, who get people into slave camps with their own consents. Bad governance and obnoxious economic policies that have rendered large numbers of people incapacitated, writhing in poverty, have become the directive principle of the state, instead of welfare and security of people.

The entropic mess of the culture of governance in Nigeria is frightening. It has implications for the future. A government that is constitutionally established to abolish poverty has today the most prominent manufacturer of poverty and misery, giving wings to the converging  cloud of disasters with dire consequences for security, peace and stability.

 This depressing helplessness has taken hope away from the majority of the population, particularly  the youth. In the midst of these, we have rulers that are not ready to discuss the state of anomie that is being driven by worsening poverty, biting hunger, rising anger, frightening frustration, increasing aggression, spike in violence, upsurge of crime and despicable relapse of countering violent extremism gain but comfortable with building pyramid of inequalities.

The prime amongst the drivers of radicalization to violent extremism in Nigeria today is inequality that is rooted in unjust poverty and unjust wealth. Astonishingly, that is one of the  consequences of obnoxious policies that the Tinubu administration is celebrating as an achievement today – a policy that is supporting households with twenty thousand Naira but armed other individuals in the parliament with one hundred and sixty million Naira to purchase a car each.  

The simple implication of this is that we have one Parliamentarian, expending on one car, paliative that could go to 6,400 households or 32,000 persons at the sun of twenty five thousand Naira per household, in an economy that is characterized with excessive borrowing, running inflation, shrinking disposable income and with 150 million of her population living in abject poverty.

One hundred and thirty three million of the population  are multidimensionally poor; meaning poor access to opportunities, education, health, employment and other services. As if that was not enough, the extra appropriation bill proposed buying a Presidential Yacht as well as expending billions of Naira on vehicles for the office of the First Lady that has no bearing with the constitutional provision, among other things. Democracy has become an epicurean vehicle in Nigeria, used in facilitating and oiling ostentatious lifestyles of elected rulers at the expense of the welfare and security of the poor who are in absolute majority.

Naira has scandalously fallen in value. A little but not sustained rise in Naira Value  to 950 Naira to a dollar recently was shamelessly celebrated, even though it resulted from   the magic market effect of Injection of 10 billion dollars into Foreign Exchange market as an ‘artificial’ way of enhancing intrinsic value of Naira with no link to even marginal improvement in productivity.

It means a few Naira are now chasing more dollars. Simple case of how Law of demand and supply determines price. This is not sustainable without stopping importation of Fuel and fueling productivity. The seemingly rise in Naira value is ‘magic market effect’, to create hope, albeit, furlough. The ultimate beneficiaries of this bazaar economy are the elites who need dollars to power their ostentatious lifestyles, not the poor people that are being strangled by the running inflation that has imposed an unacceptable cost burden on basic needs.

Whatever the cost, the Federal Government should work harder on ending importation of Fuel and increase its capacity to meet its oil export quota.

Ejaculating over this episodic happenstance of Naira’s sudden rise is like rejoicing at seeing the rotten underbelly of a dilapidated latrine with halogen powered light. It’s a kaleidoscopic flashlight.

In the days of conscience, before the onset of this epicurean Yacht Economy, Nigerian Military Heads of State were making their Trips from Dodan Barracks in Lagos to Maiduguri by road, using Nigeria assembled Peugeot 504 cars. Today, in our very eyes, we indolently watch how things degenerated in democracy, even ordinary Governors started flying by Air  to where road transportation is more cost effective. When we didn’t talk and hold them accountable, they tested our will with flying business class.

Today, they are not only moving around in Chartered Aircrafts at the state’s expense, some are recklessly building ego flipped unprofitable Airports to announce their conquest and the death of accountability.

Are you still wondering why Nigeria roads will never be motorable and why Air Travels will no longer be accessible to you? The Wizards have taken over the Air, the apex of the pyramid and condemned the poor citizens to the agony at the basement of the pyramid, where roads are now laden with macadamized blood of numerous accident and crime victims, whose rights have become prey to predators in power. A nation does not die until her people get decayed. Our roads will never be good, safe and secure until the people compelled the  President, Governors and other public officials drawing from public funds and tax payers monies to start using them. Tax payers money is not for picnic!

The maladministration is so much now that one can not tell whether the country has been privatized or not.One hears of the daughter or son of the president traveling with presidential jets that are being run with state funds and resources. We hear that an individual in the private sector has near unrestricted access to the Central Bank,s vault with limitless foreign exchange notes.

If not that law has ended in Nigeria,  crooks who once upon a time manipulated shares in the Stock Exchange, played mind games with the banking system, turned the Central Bank of Nigeria to cesspool of iniquities have become the star boys and girls of our economy. We glorify the rogues and allow the diligent hard working honest people to continue wallowing in poverty.

 These crime entrepreneurs, who are often at the front lead of our economy are the flossy faces of economic infamy. They are  termites of productivity, proverbial mills of vertical inequalities and tireless manufacturers of misery and poverty. The stories of mass foolery and mass poverty in Nigeria cannot be told without deference to the hyper activities of these buccaneer-non-state actors that aligned in partnership with incorrigible power holders that have weaponized poverty and lack as vital ingredients for sustaining the criminal enterprise we called economy.

The media that is expected to focus on these economic racketeers prefer to focus on Big Brother Africa. Journalism is the warehouse of helpers and killers of truth. Nigeria has been the biggest loser to the cowardly pen of those who wrote straight from the lure of their pockets. They are the tribe that reserves mercy killing for accountability. The trust of the constitution is that corruption and poverty must be abolished. Journalism can never fulfill its task of crusading for accountability if it continues to be populated by hedonistic fiction writers that deliberately focus on yansh at the expense of the revenue sinking and ethic-stinking Yacht.

 When a nation has the misfortune of being ruled by king sized wicked rulers whose tender mercies are cruel, the tongues of her journalists must be acerbic and acidic in order to destroy the twin towers of corruption and poverty; the duo demons that have become the ugly face of governance in Nigeria.

Barely a few weeks before Christmas, a 25kg bag of rice is now thirty six thousand Naira, a price more than the national minimum wage of thirty thousand Naira.

In my book ‘Challenges of being a Nigerian’ written in 2000, I wrote that ‘those who buy cars like bread have no right to request sacrifice from those who buy bread as if they are buying cars’. Today, I will write that those who buy yachts like rice have no right to demand sacrifices from those who buy Rice like yachts.

Nevertheless, with a space filled with air of indolence and sea of complacency, having Yacht is great fun. It,s Yacht economy. Bon Voyage!

Gbenro Olajuyigbe is the Executive Director of Emergency & Risk Alert Initiative.