25/02/2024
ECHOES OF THE TIME!
Indeed, these are not the best times for everyone in our country. No one is spared of the skyrocketing rooftop prices of commodities in the country. It got to a point I don’t know the time I almost vented my anger on a Beninoise woman hawking pure water at Idiroko at the rate of 3 for N100. I also vehemently bluff off a woman insisting on selling bottled water for N200 and a bottle of Pepsi for N350. I quite understand the Nigerian Naira is at its lowest ebb at the moment but I wouldn't fathom how goods produced in the country are reacting to the dollar brouhaha even more than the imported goods. We are actually at a crossroads in the face of these price fluctuations. I rhetorically ask myself if Jesus Christ’s postulations in Mathew 24 in the Bible are to be fulfilled, is It starting from Nigeria? I had looked for the economics term to use from my little high school economics reservoir but it seemed, that no terms fit the situation. Whether it is galloping inflation or hyperinflation or I rather coined my own; hydra-headed inflations remain a serious academics quagmire.
As if adding salt to the injury, the much-touted climate change also adds its portion. We could imagine serious harmattan in February in the Southwest followed by days of excessive heat waves that challenged all cooling systems and added to the inconveniences of the earth. What a perilous time we are!
In the face of all these the masses are at the receiving end, the rich can easily afford anything they want at any price. Apparently, for us at Idiroko, an outskirt of the country where the markets and the economy are dominated by the Beninoise who scramble with the inhabitants for the available goods, with a more financial war chest arising from the unbalanced exchange rates coupled with the government stringent rules in the border areas, the situation becomes more tense..
But how did we get here? Agreed that the last administration greatly harmed the economy through her various corruption-ridden economic patch-patch policies. However, before and after the 2023 elections, I told people around me that in as much as I admired the political sagacity of President BAT, I did not see him soothing the masses' problems because I envisioned him as someone who has grown to become larger than life. He seemed to be at the Peak of every aspect of his life endeavors and believed in politics, he had become an oracle and could say anything and do anything. Otherwise, how could someone just receiving the mantle of leadership make two strong controversial statements on the day he’s supposed to make people happy for voting for him without asking questions from his economic team? Though there are other indices of the current economic brouhaha, these opening outbursts of the president added salt to the injury of the already deteriorating situation. Worsening the case is the bourgeois businessmen taking advantage of the system to exploit the masses.
While the apostles of the ruling party keep energizing the furnace of their optimism, the general masses including the opposition are gearing up for ways to take up their gauntlets. As analysts continue to peruse the situation, the common man is still engrossed in the dream of when will the prices of foodstuffs come down.
The various governments in a bit to assuage the people’s anger, had rolled out various perceived short-term interventions with some hiding under the guise of helping the populace to embezzle another set of budgetary funds. Otherwise, you asked the question; A government ministry that said it had shared 75,000 naira to several households across Nigeria, where did it get the database of those they called vulnerable people? A government that said he intends to send 100 trailers of rice for sharing to people, what are her modalities for measuring the poor and vulnerable households? The Nigerian customs in the Nigerian pattern of higgledy-piggledily handling things in their hypocritical manner of assisting the populace in precarious times had succeeded in sending seven souls to their untimely graves while selling their penny-pinching rice.
One would have thought a serious government is supposed to have rolled out her long-term plans especially as we approached the planting season. A more creative way to circumvent the so-called economic saboteurs could have been proposed rather than a ludicrous chasing of Mallams in the BDCs. A more transparent and sustainable pronouncements could have been made on the so-called palliative measures rather than the highly corruptible stakeholders’ meetings by Ogun state Government.
In all these, I continue to ask where are the academic researchers? Are they saying they have no research inputs in all these economic imbroglios? What of our religious seers? Is it that the gods refused to speak at this time? Or we have concluded that the period of tribulation is here already? Indeed, this time calls for sober reflections.
As far as I am concerned, I have concluded that it is a cheer waste of time to pray that the exchange rate should get better or that the government should get it right but rather the prayer should be whatever the case of things in the country, my survival instincts should not fail me. It is better to remain afloat of problems than to continue to hope that the problem should be removed when the causative agents of the problems have just begun to flower!
Photo credit- Vanguard Newspaper
