12th May, 2011
Day by day, Nigerians are becoming more impoverished as inflation eats deeper into their meagre earnings. The cost of living is heading for the skies and policy makers seem not to care. The middle class which seems on the verge of making a comeback after the locust years of General Ibrahim Babangida is suffering a relapse.
The country is drifting back to the edge as prices soar and government seems unwilling or unable to stem the drift. Prices of essential commodities like food, fuel and accommodation keep rising and the people are dying.
The promise by the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, in 2010 that the inflation rate would soon be reduced has not materialised and the naira is not doing better against foreign currencies, six months after Sanusi’s promise.
Curable diseases are killing Nigerians and nobody seems to care. Kerosene, the poor man’s cooking fuel, is getting out of reach and people are going back to firewood and coal, both of which prices keep rising.
As a result, many families can no longer eat well and are vulnerable to disease and consequently, death.
In a country which is the sixth largest oil exporter and is the biggest importer of finished products, policy makers should rise up and stop this dangerous trend.
The fact that the family of most high networth individuals do not live in Nigeria should not make them leave the masses to the mercy of failed economic policies.
If the executive and legislature can take home as much as 25 per cent of the total budget of the country, it is only fair that the problems of infrastructure, health, agriculture and electricity be addressed to enable the masses exist, if not really live.
It is sad to note that in a country where close to 90 per cent of the population live on less than a dollar a day, SUVs and luxury automobiles cruise the roads while expensive and deluxe hotels are springing up daily and policy makers are having the best of times.
Nobody prays for a bloody revolution but there is a limit to human endurance. There will come a day when the people may decide to stage an uprising if things continue this way and nobody comes to their aid.
Some states of the federation are rising to the occasion by paying attention to agriculture and provision of infrastructure but we pray it will not be too little too late.
As a new term begins for elected officials, they must begin to plan how to ameliorate the suffering of the average Nigerian. They must begin to think of ways to stem the tide of inflation and increasing poverty.
They must begin to find ways to provide for the masses who are suffering in the midst of plenty. The people are not asking for too much. They are not asking to be given money. All they need is an environment in which they will be able to live, even if not too comfortably.
The prices of essential commodities, health, accommodation, energy and others must be made affordable. A vibrant middle class must emerge again or our country is doomed. We don’t need a biblical Moses to lead us to the Promised Land. It has been done in Ghana and other developing countries like ours. Our leaders must stand up and stem this drift to nothingness. They must always remember that the price of bread brought about a great revolution in France in 1789.
We must, at all costs, prevent a spontaneous uprising like the ones in North Africa and in the Middle East.