Going Venezuela!
The scriptural injunction is that truth is established in the mouth of two or three witnesses. We may soon be singing, don’t cry for me Venezuela. We share much more than strange coincidences with Venezuela. We both seem to have leadership deficient-ruiners. We are both blessedly cursed with an economy solely dependent on oil.
Two weeks ago, Venezuelans queued-up to exploit the generosity of their kind-hearted neighbours the Colombians for the supply of essential commodities. The last time we consciously queued for such was thirty years ago when we formed the phrase - essential commodities. Those were the days when Naija cried to heavens for a break from the shame foisted on it by lack of leadership. Back then, we spent days on long queues. It was so bad that when General Muhammadu Buhari came on the scene, he had to create the War Against Indiscipline, WAI Brigade to whip hapless citizens into line. Congratulations Naija, thirty years later you have had to virtually beg the man with ‘no certificate’ to return and rescue you from a supposed clueless PhD holder. Nearly half into its first mandate, the APC is still doing the blame game. Wherever it finds a miraculous mistake of good governance, like it did with the Abuja– Kaduna rail line, it wantonly appropriates it as a landmark achievement
Americans idolize George Washington as the British do Winston Churchill, but nobody prays for their return to power in 2016. Societies advance in knowledge and leadership, we proudly regress. Nearly half into its first mandate, the APC is still doing the blame game. Wherever it finds a miraculous mistake of good governance, like it did with the Abuja-Kaduna rail line, it wantonly appropriates it as a landmark achievement. Plagiarizing citizens are simply following government example. In the PDP, they find no fresh blood, no; they too are digging graves praying for the resurrection of dry bones. With such strategy, it would be foolhardy to expect different results.
Venezuela’s one time ambassador once threw both truth and diplomacy to the winds in tasking the obvious lack of foresight of our political ruiners in managing our oil resources. Perhaps exploiting our geographical naïveté, he painted the picture of his country as the Dubai of Latin America under Hugo Chavez. Just like the wisdom of our elders say that a man who lies that he has 20 yams when indeed he has ten, would soon finish his real yams and be forced to starve on the imaginary ten. Thank God for America, everybody’s whipping boy; Venezuelans have completed the Chavez honeymoon but they are not laughing with the Nicholas Maduro whirlwind.
It is natural that even this writer once laughed at the ‘jeremiad’ of Venezuela oblivious that what goes round, does come round. To have to beg for a neighbour to open its borders so that your citizens could bath, and for your children to have access to milk is the worst form of national humiliation. To tear down the Gregorian calendar by shrinking the 40-hour working week without UN-convention is shameful. So is having to shrink the working week from five days to three.
But here in Naija subconsciously time lapsing back to 1985. The federal government has resurrected WAI. There is usually nothing wrong with living history - on a stage. We are basically asking for history to repeat itself - as a farce. This clearly means that those who returned to power after 30 years have learnt nothing and therefore can teach nothing but resurrection of the arcane. In 30 years, not only are they embarrassingly unconscious of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dynamics of a technologically mercurial world overpowers them. They entrust key positions into the hands of a coterie of friends, relatives and in-laws, because trust is a young damsel dressed in a garment that must not be questioned. In 2016, with all its security challenges, we are worried about what a dog owner calls his pet. True nations question cruelty to animals.
If WAI is the only vomit we’ve returned to lap, it would have been bearable, but no. In Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, the only standing arrowhead of the APC in the entire South East has gone Venezuela by declaring a three-day working week. He asks his workers to return to the farm, which may be okay for rural Imo, except that, just like 30 years ago - farming implements are still the same - back-breaking work using hoes and cutlasses. Okorocha is not alone, 26 other states are waiting to follow suit. They cannot pay full salaries even with federal handout. But they won’t declare bankruptcy.
The bailout master is not in a better position; Vice President Osinbajo has given a similar advise to federal workers - go back to the farm. Who knows, with time, we may be shrinking the working days or hours at the federal level; in other words, our nation may be going Venezuela! I know this would be denied like everything else in a nation where people take salaries but expect God to do the work for them. I could see a few readers rolling their fingers over their heads and declaring - Allah ya sawake, Tufiakwa, Olorun maje - God forbid! But how much is a dollar to the Naira?