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Death, the Grim Reaper, comes in diverse garbs. Sometimes, it even snatches someone who is making an effort to live.
Such is the case with scores of Nigerians who met their deaths at recent stampedes across Nigeria.
It is not wartime, yet Nigerians are dying in droves scavenging and scrambling for food handouts as if they are in IDP camps.
Imagine a healthy person seeking what to eat and beat hunger; the death they were trying to avoid still stealthily came behind in bags of rice and plucked them.
It was as if death rationed its assignment this time. It took 35 children dead in Ibadan, Oyo State, 20 people in Okija, Anambra State, and 10 more in the FCT, Abuja. Thankfully, the thousands that thronged Bourdillon, the Lagos abode of the President, on a similar quest returned home alive.
However, the balancing equation of hunger between the North and South was shamefully celebrated by Ali Ndume, the vocal Borno State senator, who felt elated that even hunger that was a preserve of the North had also invaded the South. Is it not baffling that Ndume, who has been in the National Assembly for over a decade, is exuberant that hunger has become a national problem, as if it is a golden trophy for the government?
Tragically, Nigeria is cursed with cold leaders who have pushed the citizens of a country so blessed with vast wealth and resources to become food foragers who die in stampedes.
The National Bureau of Statistics recorded that over 80 million of Nigeria’s 200 million people live below the poverty line. Many struggle daily in search of what to eat without commensurate response from the government.
So far, the most obvious response of the government has reduced Nigeria to a ‘riceocracy’, a new political concept of governance by rice. So, most times when people complain or tend to riot, the government rolls out some bags of rice to pacify them.
Its policy thrust seems to be ‘give them rice, give them rice, and give them more rice’. Sadly, the rice, being our staple, does not even go around, as some politicians corner it, thereby exacerbating the crisis and exposing the poor to the unkind vagaries of life.
There is no gainsaying that the government’s anti-people policies are responsible for Nigeria’s descent into hunger-worn Somalia. Nothing can testify to the mismanagement of state resources more than the avoidable severe drought and misery in the land. It is wickedness that the country’s abundant wealth and resources are frittered away by sticky fingers in the public till.
Only these political and economic vampires can tell how Nigeria, a country that once reportedly boasted of having too much money it did not know what to do with it, came to this sorry pass, especially under the immediate past administration that even mortgaged the country’s future to loan-servicing.
Truly, things were only marginally better under the PDP government. It was during this era that then President Olusegun Obasanjo removed Nigeria from the loan hangar but the speed with which the APC government has plunged the country into deeper debt mire has wrecked everything.
One wonders what happens to the multi-billion recoveries from looters. The loot is re-looted by other sharks, otherwise, the country has no reason to resort to borrowing on the scale it does, if the loot were ploughed back into the economy.
It is annoying that, instead of arresting the political crooks that brought hunger to the land of abundance, the government is hounding patriotic Nigerians who were only helping fellow citizens with their sweat.
Mistreating these good-hearted Nigerians is dispiriting. The organiser of the Okija event, Obijackson, for instance, is a well-known philanthropist who has been doing that over the years and has also transformed many lives in his community.
Regrettably, hunger led to these avoidable deaths. The government’s failure to ensure food security for the people is behind it, period. It has made people desperate and prone to risk. The government has also neglected to priotise the wellbeing of the citizens.
There is an urgent need for the government to re-examine its priorities and take immediate action to address the root causes of the hunger crisis. Under the current circumstances, the government should compensate the families of victims of the tragedies that occurred because of its perfidy and stop talking above our heads.
Quite several people who died in the Okija incident were from Imo State. They had fled their homes because of insecurity to live as refugees in the nearby community. Ironically, the stalking death still caught up with them, as in all other places ravaged by insecurity across the country.
After over 60 years as an independent country, Nigeria still excels in its dependence on depraved leadership that has stultified commendable progress. The country has been constrained by deep-seated tribal jingoism and corruption in public and private spheres that has remained a cog in the wheel of progress.
This has contributed in no small measure to the acute hunger in the land despite the touted renewed hope(lessness) of the APC government.
Why would Nigerians die in food stampedes? Why must a supposed leader rejoice that hunger is not only a northern issue but also in the South?
Sadly, President Bola Tinubu in his first media chat in Lagos chose to misplace the cause of the recent stampedes in Ibadan, FCT, and Okija.
Blaming the organisers or the unruliness of the victims is unfair. The avoidable tragedies were a result of the failure of the government to stem the deplorable food scarcity. Why cannot Nigeria feed itself despite the huge land mass in the country? Why can bandits not be driven out of the farms so farmers can have access?
Would anybody with enough food in his house degrade himself to go queuing for food handouts? So, what is this talk about them not being orderly? What is this talk about not putting enough crowd control measures in place? Where were the police and other security agencies when events of such magnitude were taking place? Or, perhaps, they did not bother because nobody settled them? Would the Imo people have died like that if their homes were secure and they did not have to flee?
A deeper look beyond the surface would reveal that apart from the disorderly attitude of our people at such events, the principal cause is deep-rooted poverty. Nigerians have never felt so crushed by runaway inflation and scarcity in the country’s tattered history.
The people have been roasted since the coming of the APC in 2015. The economy was run aground by the administration of the overwhelmed General from Daura and, sadly, to pull the country back, the present administration has let it slip into worse mire.
Before Buhari’s arrival, a 50-kg bag of rice sold for less than N8,000, but by the time he left last year, it had risen to about N50,000. Today, it is sold for about 110,000 in a country where the government has only recently reluctantly approved a minimum wage of N70,000.
Yet the president said he had no regrets about the removal of fuel subsidy during his inaugural speech in May last year, which set the country on a spiral to Somalia. Nigeria, you are an orphan; may God help you.
Jesus Christ is God
One reason those in government take Nigerians for granted is that we are unserious people. Instead of seeking ways out of our hunger quagmire, we would rather chase mundane issues or stir trouble.
In Lagos, some funny characters felt that, despite all the needs in these dire times, they should waste money to print a banner denigrating the deity of Jesus Christ.
The country would have been on fire by now if a Christian had expressed a similar sentiment about the opposite religion.
However, the good thing is that Christianity is decent and reasonable, not given to frivolities to validate itself. That is why that blasphemy was ignored. Whatever they say, write, or believe does not matter; Jesus Christ is provably, indisputably God. On Judgement Day, everything shall become plain.
Another group in Oyo is posturing to introduce Sharia law. If it is not hijab in public schools, it is this or that. The world is in turmoil because of these people; won’t they get tired of fomenting trouble?
HAPPY NEW YEAR! May we experience peace and prosperity in 2025, Amen!
