Tuesday, January 10, 2012

GOOD MORNING NIGERIA, WELCOME TO 2012

We celebrated the festivities of the previous year, 2011, with pomp and pageantry, with much eating and drinking, and as expected, the festivities in Lagos, was accompanied with loads a loads of noise. A friend of mine called me, during the New Year celebrations and heard the noise in the background. She was calling from Jos. She had to ask me what was happening. I told her that there is a great celebration going on. She was moved to ask: “is this how noisy Lagosians are?” Well I do not blame her for that, for us that have stayed most of our lives in Lagos, it is normal. In fact, it would have been abnormal if the state passed through the festivities without making noise. I recall on the hope we all had about the New Year and how the year was going to favour all the previous year had failed to favour. How it was going to multiply the fortunes of those that had loads of fortunes the previous year. How it was going to make better a good last year, and make good a bad last year. I am not recalling this to say that just two days into the New Year our hopes have been dashed, no. I am rather recalling this to state how deemed the illuminous-ness of this year has become. I wonder if people still make New Year’s resolution. I wonder if people make a resolution to make other people suffer. I wonder if people make resolutions to become worse than they have been. I wonder if people make resolutions to just be bad. The more I wonder, the more possible it seems to me. It seems possible, looking at the new prices of crude oil products. I am angered by the fact that in a country that produces oil, such a commodity should still be sold at a very high price. It is just like having a yam farm and still suffering from the lack of yams in the house. It is a situation of man’s hatred for himself. Nigeria, as a person, has debunked that thought that says that man loves himself more than he does his neighbor. The facts speak for it themselves- oil, raw material, produced, exported and imported as refined product; oil refineries in a state of ill health, a state that has defied all possible solutions. The government has tried and as her usual scorecard, failed to make the downstream sector, better, as she has tried with energy, commonly known as NEPA, even after its privatization to PHCN, as she has tried with corruption, as she has tried with NITEL, as she has tried in all sectors of the Nation’s economy. Someone should please tell me in what sector the Nigerian Government has produced an A. she has not even made an, agreeable, yet useless E8, it has always been the dreaded F9, which I think she is very proud to get. She has called upon her children to make good grades in academics, but the majority of her children are taking after her footsteps. Like mother like children. The removal of the fuel subsidy has been effected, Nigeria, you are on your way to a country free of corruption, as we have been assured. You are on your way to heaven; we should all rejoice and be glad. In fact, we should shout out in joy, for the inconsideration of the government to the teeming populace of this country. We should rejoice in the fact that the government has only a few people in mind, wanting the majority to die out. We should rejoice in the fact that the Nigeria, which was once in the light, but has for long been groping in the dark, would remain confined to that darkness for more years. We were told that deregulation would aid this country dearly. It was the theme song in the NTA: forwardi march oh! Deregulation. We were not allowed to enjoy any other song, it was only: forwardi march oh! Deregulation. Did that solve the problem of the downstream sector? It was said that if the prices increase, in the world over, the prices will increase in Nigeria and that if the reverse occurred the reverse would occur. For a time, I thought that this was actually a good thing. I thought that if the oil prices went low then fuel prices in Nigeria would come as low as probably N25 or even less. But my thoughts were never actualized, it went higher and higher, with divergent prices in many states in Nigeria. This was marked by reactions by the NLC, whose reactions were not capable of making the government move. We are now gearing up for another strike that will affect nothing, as usual. Pardon me for my negative attitude, but I guess I have been led to this, by the unruly behaviour of my mother- Nigeria. I do not want to speak of the untold suffering that would be unleashed. My aim is not to speak of this suffering, for even in my silence, the illiterate would write very beautifully, orally or in print, about the sufferings that this has brought them. In other words, experience would tell us better. I just want to show her that we have a mother who has refused to heed the request, the dying request of her children, making her unworthy of the name-mother. The more I think of it now, the more annoyed I get. This is because the one chief problem of Nigeria has not been solved, that which determines if this removal of subsidy would work. Jonathan, Okonjo Iwela and Sanusi Lamido should answer me, would this subsidy removal stop the corruption? We have been promised loads and loads of goodies that would come due to the heavy money that would be realized from this removal. But is it not enough? We have been promised times and times over, but nothing seems to be working. Again I ask would this action by the government stop the dreaded Boko Haram sect from bombing us into oblivion. Frankly speaking, I pity my president. Indeed I do not like this move of his, but I pity him. He has become that name that Nigerians would not want to hear, he has become that name that one would not want to give his/her child. He has become a scarecrow to all. He has been insulted and I guess that this is giving him quick rounds of grey hair, making him look older than himself. If he had just done the right thing. But let us ask, what should he have done, and what should he do now?     

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