By Steve Omolale — In the last 25 years, there has never been a time Nigeria’s democracy is put under intense pressure and threatened than now. This is so because those elected at various levels to manage the affairs of the country in the last one year plus have been wobbling and fumbling like a rudderless ship violently pummeled by high ocean waves.
Regrettably, they are displaying the highest level of insensitivity with some economic policies that are inflicting excruciating and unprecedented hardships on the people, which they have, surprisingly, stubbornly refused to review.
Right from the federal to the local council levels, it has been the same sad story, the reason millions of disappointed Nigerians are slipping into crushing poverty despite the abundant natural resources in their land.
The immediate removal of fuel subsidy as soon as President Bola Tinubu was sworn-in on May 29, 2023, was a good policy, whose implications were not well-thought out. This is the root cause of the massive sufferings Nigerians are experiencing today.
Since Tinubu and other presidential candidates then used the removal of fuel subsidy as a campaign issue, even when no single public refinery is working till now, it is very obvious that they did not envisage the bandwagon effects of this otherwise good policy.
The palliative measures that followed the hasty removal of subsidy by this administration are as badly implemented as the subsidy removal itself. For instance, sending trailer loads of rice and other grains to the various states as palliatives is a completely failed measure, just like transferring cash into people’s bank accounts and other similar measures.
All the bags of rice and other grains sent to the states by the Federal Government, not surprisingly, ended up in the warehouses, homes and shops of politicians and a few of their cronies.
Edo State under Mr. Godwin Obaseki as the governor, where a group of angry and hungry protesters, during the recent #Endbadgovernance protests, broke into warehouses where bags of rice and other grains were kept by wicked and selfish politicians, readily comes to mind. Some politicians at the state level also re-bagged and rebranded the rice to be used as campaign materials for gullible voters.
Another palliative measure that has failed to have any impact on the people is the conditional cash transfer because the money always ends up in the bank accounts of politicians and their sympathisers. Up till now, I have not seen any non-party member who has received such money.
Yet, the corruption-ridden Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation keeps reeling out fictitious figures of millions of households who are supposedly benefiting from the shenanigans they are doing in the ministry, where a character like Dr. Beta Edu, whose corruption case has expectedly been swept under the carpet by some powerful individuals in the Presidency, presided.
At the state level, the situation is even worse. Many of the governors have become emperors in their states, just as a large number of the lawmakers are holed up in Abuja and their state capitals, enjoying our common wealth without minding what their constituents are passing through.
With the removal of fuel subsidy, the monthly allocations to the states have leapt considerably. But the people hardly see the impact of this increase in allocations in their states. Across the length and breadth of the country, it is a cry of hunger, which ordinarily should not be had the governors invested massively in agriculture with the huge arable lands that are wasting away in the states and with the army of unemployed youths who have turned to Okada riding, internet frauds, prostitution and other vices.
Besides, had the Federal Government and the states ensured adequate security, the cries of hunger would have subsided because all the farmers who abandoned their farms under the destructive and clueless eight years of Muhammadu Buhari’s administration could have gone back to the farm.
However, and for instance, in the Southwest zone, people have no cause to be hungry because the land is available, the weather is favourable and the will is there on the part of the people. The zone also has the least of the security challenges bedeviling other parts of the country. Even the North will all its security challenges is still trying to produce foods for themselves and other parts of the country, courtesy of the efforts of the security agents, who are battling the terrorists and the bandits, and many of their governors who are investing massively in agriculture.
But, of the six governors in the Southwest, only Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his Ogun State counterpart, Prince Dapo Abiodun, are showing the required commitment to agriculture. Mr. Biodun Oyebanji of Ekiti State is also making efforts, but the impact is yet to be felt by his people.
Despite the fact that Lagos has the least arable land in the Southwest, Sanwo-Olu has taken the bold initiatives to introduce some radical agricultural programmes like “Ounje Eko” (Lagos Food) where cheap foodstuffs are sold for Lagosians at designated points in the state. He is also investing in the provision of fertilizers and other equipment to make farming easy in the state.
Apart from making frantic efforts to open up all the bad roads in the state to enable farmers bring out their farm produce to the urban areas, Abiodun has invested in the 200-hectare rice farm in Magboro, Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of the state, dubbed “Alubarika Cluster”, which has 200 farmers on 200 hectares of land that can meet the rice needs of the entire nation. This, with the rice production in Lagos, Yobe, and a few other states, are impressive and commendable. There are the Farm Laboratories in the state, tagged Ogun Youth Agricultural Programme, which Abiodun is using to encourage the youth to embrace farming. This is besides the distribution of free 24,000 bags of fertilizers to 12,000 farmers across the nooks and crannies of the state.
Meanwhile, many of the governors are frittering away their increased monthly allocations on inanities. They are, at the same time, making every effort to finally bury the local councils that they have succeeded in killing, despite the Supreme Court judgement which granted autonomy to the councils.
Sadly, Governors Charles Soludo of Anambra State, Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, Siminalaye Fubara of Rivers State and many of their counterparts are making all efforts to disobey and undermine the Apex Court judgement, ironically, in cahoot with some local council chairmen themselves. In fact, the governors have succeeded in making various council secretariats mere Points of Salary Collection (PSC) for the council workers with no visible projects to show at the local level.
Unfortunately, the lawmakers who are supposed to put the governors on their toes to deliver the dividends of democracy to their people are also working hand in hand with them to pauperise the people the more. Many houses of assembly are mere rubber stamps, just like the Godswill Akpabio-led National Assembly.
However, if those at the helm of affairs in different levels of government in the country keep digging the shitholes they have already put Nigerians, it is certain that many of them will be stoned on the streets soon. Any government policy that does not start having little positive effects on the people within one year after its introduction may eventually end up as a failed policy. Those at the helm can not continue to tell the governed to be patient in the midst of massive pains while they live in opulence.
Year 2025 is just a few weeks away when politicking will go full swing; when the President and the governors will shift focus from governance to electioneering, as it is gradually happening in my state, Ekiti, at present, where the governor marked his two years in office recently and the hungry residents of the state have already started campaigning for his second term! Once attention is completely shifted from governance by politicians, the citizens are done for.
And with the kind of behaviour by the people during electioneering, will any politician ever take them serious?
*Chief Omolale, a journalist, can be reached via somolale@gmail.com.
