By Funke Egbemode
It all started with Lux soap. The housekeeper said she bought a pack of six bars for N5, 400. My 92-year-old father gasped.
‘For just soap? Was that for a carton or two cartons?’
I told him, it was for just six bars.
‘Where is this country heading now?’
That is a frequent question my father asks these days. The old man just cannot understand today’s prices of anything. How can he? He bought his brand new Vauxhall Chevette E for N4,800 and now his soap costs N5,000! Of course, he is confused. I told him I bought a bag of cement for N10,200 the other day and he asked the same question, ‘where is this country headed now?’
How can he understand, considering that he built a six-bedroom bungalow with two sitting rooms as a primary school headmaster? His tear-rubber car and nice house were all achieved less than 50 years ago. And here we are today with little or nothing to show as a nation for half a century of annual budgeting, massive spending, colourful promises and empty hands. Tell me if a Nigerian Vice Chancellor can buy a brand new car and build an eight-bedroom house on his salary, without cutting corners or bending rules.
But really, the question should be ‘how did this country get here?’. Trying to peer into the future to see where Nigeria is headed will not only induce migraine, it can bring on a heart attack. The way things are right now, trying to figure out what is around the corner is a hard thing. Figuring out how we got here so we do not continue to make the mistakes that brought us to this sorry pass is what we should do.
Planlessness. Living like a drunk. Foolishly believing that tomorrow will take care of itself. And all of us are guilty, leaders and followers alike.
I know some people are itching to take me to task on the culpability of the average Nigerian in all these floundering and drifting leaves in the wind, but wait a while. The fault is not just that of the leaders. The followers are not helping in any way. And don’t bother me with the rhetoric of ‘weaponised poverty’ because it only emphasises that the poor are brainless and will accept whatever you throw at them year in year out. Trust me, the voters, the followers have power and they know it. They just trade that power in the worst, cheapest way. Why do they listen to the lies politicians tell them every four years? Why do they accept the silly, demeaning, insulting paltry sums politicians bring on election day a-la vote – and – cook – soup? Why would the people who continue to sink deeper and deeper into poverty and penury still listen to political lies and re-elect their oppressors and traducers? I thought hunger should teach all of us sense in between elections?
If a man goes to a woman with flowery promises only when he has an erection, should that woman keep opening her legs for the erection and the fake promises each time the man shows up? Because seriously, a politician seeking political office is like a man with an erection. He is desperate. His third leg is killing him. And that is the time to make a kill, squeeze him for premium juice. But what do my people do? They ask for peanuts. They ask for ephemeral things. Nobody, no community asks for what they will be able to count as gain. Imagine if 10 aspirants show up to woo voters and they make demands like these:
We will vote for you if you patch our roads.
Give us a borehole.
We need six cartons each of drugs for malaria, diabetes and hypertension for our health centre.
Give us uniforms for 50 pupils in our primary school.
Our secondary school needs a new roof.
You can count on our votes if you provide a tractor for our farm settlement.
Buy tools for our children who have learnt a trade but have no capital to start their businesses.
Our local market needs new toilets.
Buy textbooks for our primary and secondary schools and we will vote for you.
Imagine if each of the 10 aspirants provide each of the above needs. Just close your eyes and imagine each town verifying these even before election primaries. Will unformed, unserious people come to us with their turgidity? Even if they fail, will the boreholes fail? Will the books they bought not be useful for years? But Nigerian voters are easily swayed by flowery promises. That is why the politicians get away with non-performance or at best a two-minute performance that leaves the voters halfway to Paradise.
Is the simple reason why prostitutes are still around not because some men love to pay for s3x, pre-paid or post-paid? If you put yams by the roadside and nobody buys them, won’t you think of another line of business? Not in Nigeria, the politicians repeat the same promises they have never kept (or are our lots better?), the voters reward them with more years of nonsense siren, gun-toting escorts and in-your-face wealth display. Year in year out, we go through the motions. The government houses budget for cooking and catering utensils every year and we do not ask them if they eat crockery along with their meals in there!
What kind of people are we, leaders and followers? Let me cite two events reported in just one day, some years ago, to answer the question. Do not take the stories lightly or literally. Do not consider just their face value. Do not get emotional over them, just use them as a gauge and guide of the kind of people we are.
In 2017, some Nigerian pilgrims in Saudi Arabia were reportedly defrauded of their hard-earned foreign currency, the funds they saved for years to fulfill one of the tenets of their faith. They were trying to fix gold and silver teeth. That ‘fixing’ is not a tenet of any faith. Gold and silver teeth, do they chew better, do they make you live longer? Do they guarantee paradise? Are they even business investments, like, can you sell your gold teeth when you are broke or trying to pay your daughter’s school fees? So why do Nigerians who save for years to go on pilgrimage stake extra funds on gold or silver teeth? My answer: the deeper meaning is we are a people who leave the important to attend to the frivolous.
My second story.
The candidate of the All Progressive Congress in Bauchi South Senatorial District bye–election some years ago (I will withhold his name) said his sole reason for wanting to be a senator was to ensure late President Muhammadu Buhari was made life president.
Here’s what he said that was unforgettable and widely reported on Thursday.
‘I want you to know that the mandate that will be given to me on Saturday is to go and protect Buhari’s interest in the Senate, having fulfilled every other mandate in the House of Representatives for eight years by God’s grace. We will amend Nigeria’s constitution to allow Buhari to be President for the remaining years of his life. He will only cease to be President when God takes his life.’
Imagine! He had already spent eight years in the House of Representatives. That means his people had elected him to represent them twice. I don’t even want to imagine what he told them on the two previous occasions. What else do you need me to add, except that his people richly deserve him? He was the choice of both the old and young, rich and poor, literate and illiterate, in that constituency. They like him like that, all of them. Monkey no fine, I’m mama like am. He said he was done with doing anything else for them, except to make Buhari a life President. If his constituency gave him the go-ahead, who would they blame for their choice if he remains Senator for life?
Again, do not take the story at face value. As it was in Bauchi, so it was everywhere else. That ‘honourable’ represents what our politicians do, most of them. They always have an agenda. That the guy got elected at all , for any political office represents what we, the followers, do in Nigeria; quick s3x, wham-bam-and ooh, thank you ma’am.
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We built 100 classrooms in 1960 and expect them to last forever. We have been rebuilding the same roads and awarding and re-awarding the same contracts for the same highways and bridges for two decades! I’m not mentioning names or making a list. You and I know them. We are, followers and leaders alike, a floundering people, like leaves in the wind, not sure how we got in the wind but believing the wind will take us somewhere, anywhere. No plans, no strategy. Just happily drifting along, somehow thinking we are headed for el-dorado or the Promised Land. Who does that, please? Who doesn’t know that the natural way to impregnate a woman is to take her inside and thoroughly know her? So why are we people who think smiling at a beautiful fertile woman will impregnate her?
We are a republic in love with quickies where the climax is quick, the pleasure fleeting, and the regrets long-lasting.
Voters here keep getting screwed cheaply. They complain after the act, but they will do it again and again.
