58 Years of Blood, Tears and Pain
The lavish display at the Eagle Square, Abuja, on Tuesday, which climaxed Nigeria’s 58 Independence Day celebration was absolutely unnecessary. For me, there is really nothing to celebrate. October 1 should have been a day for sober reflection, with so much hunger, disease, poverty, pain, malnutrition, insurgency, mass unemployment, decaying infrastructure and all the negatives you can think of, ravaging mother Nigeria.
For 58 years, wicked civilians and military politicians combined to pauparise the masses of the people, turning our commonwealth into personal wealth. As a result, our dear country is miles behind her contemporaries on all development indices. It is a big shame that after 58, Nigeria can’t provide quality healthcare in public hospitals, quality education in public schools and quality infrastructure to motivate development. Our leaders run abroad for healthcare and send their children overseas for quality education. In the year 2019, Nigeria is still struggling to provide uninterrupted electricity to its citizenry, while inner and outer roads remain largely tattered. The bulk of our commonwealth is stolen and stashed abroad. So, how will Nigeria develop?
The last three years have been horrendous, with poverty assuming a frightening dimension. For the first time in a long while, inflation in Nigeria jumped to a double digit. Unemployment jumped to an unprecedented height. No wonder the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, openly branded Nigeria as “home to the poorest people in the world”.
May made the statement while delivering a speech in South Africa just before her visit to Nigeria. The surprised British PM remarked: “Much of Nigeria is thriving, with many individuals enjoying the fruits of a resurgent economy, yet 87 million Nigerians live on less than $1 and 90 cents a day, making it home to more very poor people than any other nation in the world.”
Yes, Nigeria is indeed World Poverty Capital. Our dear 58 years old Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the larg- est number of extreme poor as of 2018, a report by the Washington-based Brookings Institution confirmed.
The report titled, “The Start of a New Poverty Narrative said: “At the end of May 2018, our trajectories suggest that Nigeria had about 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million. What is more, extreme poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty in India continues to fall.”
So, what is there to celebrate? The October 1st charade was clearly a celebration of poverty.
The International Monetary Fund in a report in March affirmed that poverty assumed an unprecedented height in Nigeria within three years of the Buhari administration. It reported that more Nigerians got poorer under Buhari’s watch. The IMF said Nigeria needed urgent economic reforms to stem the poverty.
It is also pathetic that Nigeria is now ranked as one of the most dangerous countries to live in, in the world, and more unsafe than war-torn Libya, according to the 2018 Global Law and Order Report by the Gallup Poll. In the latest annual ranking of the safest and least safe countries by Gallup, Nigeria placed 116th out of 142 countries, with the index score of 66, which is lower than the global average score of 81. Nigeria ranked below African countries like Egypt, Rwanda, Mauritius, Morocco, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Niger, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Togo in the law and order log.
Nigeria also placed lower than violenceridden Libya, the Central African Republic and Algeria. What a shame. Nigeria is evidently one of the most dangerous places to live in the world, with Fulani herders, Boko Haram, bandits and numerous unknown gunmen killing scores of people daily. What a country! Rather than address these challenges, the government went about celebrating on October 1.
I also watched with dismay, the military displaying its so-called “might’ at the Eagle Square on October 1. The Nigerian military that was once revered globally is now persistently humiliated by Boko Haram, bandits and herders. These days, stories of terrorists dislodging military posts pour. From Zari, to Bama, from Jilli to Gudumbali, the story is the same. The terrorists continue to overrun military posts.
Majority of the industries that ought to help alleviate the poverty in Nigeria are gasping for survival. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), last week reminded the Buhari government that the country’s industrial sector is yet to record any growth for a long time. According to MAN, the development does not portend well for the country that is striving to make impact in the highly competitive global economy.
MAN said despite the alleged growth of the Nigerian economy in 2017, the challenges are not yet over as the manufacturing sector is still on the brink of recession and called on the government to take urgent steps to address the challenges facing the sector to enable it impact on the macroeconomic development of the country.
The association’s national President, Dr. Frank Jacobs, said the situation of zero growth in the sector was an indication that a lot needed to be done by the government to rescue the sector from imminent collapse.
Unfortunately, this is not a listening government. May Allah save Nigeria.