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Times are changing gradually but surely. It is truly an unusual time irrespective of where you turn to. Virtually all the states in Nigeria are in it together: The economy is in a shambles, the type hardly ever witnessed in the history of our nation. Worse also is the fact that the “big father,” the Federal Government, is also not left out of the conundrum. It has affected virtually all sectors of the Nigerian state: The economy, the education sector, health, agriculture, infrastructure and all others.
We have for long been living in fake realities and living in denial that things are not what they are supposed to be. The late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, had forewarned of impending gloom, which today has become our reality. He had dreamt of a society in which every true nationality that makes up of the artificial Nigeria would be self-sustained through the development and control of its own natural resource, which nature has endowed it with. And come to think of it: No state or region in Nigeria is without its own peculiar natural endowment. We are all blessed in some way with our comparative advantage in natural and even human resource. So blessed are we that even every and each of the constitutionally recognised 774 local governments of Nigeria also has its own natural resource with which it can survive without an external help. But over the time, we have failed to harness these God-given resources. We have refused to be unique even though we were created unique in each of our own ways.
We have mouthed true federalism as a national symbol, but strangely, and for a very long time, have been romancing unitary system. Nigeria of today is a de facto unitary enclave. Everything begins and ends in Abuja. The economic fate of every state in Nigeria is decided in the federal capital even though each and every of the states has been blessed with what can make it great, irrespective of what Abuja can offer in financial and political handouts.
Even as I write, we can get out of the woods if and only if we are ready to be real and honest with ourselves and stop living in fake realities. It baffles me that we look but fail to see and we still prefer to live in the long foregone past of $120 per barrel of crude, a period when the oil was flowing like tap water; a period when all we needed was to dig the oil well and fetch as much volume as we desired and the petro-dollar was flowing. We still seem to live in the old past when allocations from Abuja was more than enough to take care of its needs as a state or as a local government even after much of this flow would have been pillaged by those of our politicians entrusted to use the resource to make our lives better for us.
We still want our wards to join the already over-bloated civil services of the federal, states and local governments even though in our very open, not closed, eyes those already engaged are really not getting paid as and when due, due to dwindling and virtually unavailable resources. We still desire to park multiple of automobiles in our yards, which will eventually become liabilities in fuel consumption and maintenance, rather than just having one serviceable, which our individual economy will and can only allow. We still go to work from eight in the morning, close by four in the afternoon, without really earning our pay for that day, chatting and twitting verbally and electronically. We still lack that moral honesty to ask ourselves whether we have worked conscientiously for that money we expect to be paid by our federal, state or local governments at end of the month.
Yet, we blame our government for not providing enough for us when we, in our own little ways, have refused to create that wealth from which we expect to reap. We still close from work by 4pm in the afternoon, have our whole weekends free, have our annual and casual leaves, without thinking of other streams of income, which we are capable of generating with these spare times. In fact, we have refused to be resourceful, thinking in our subconscious reasoning that the big dad, the government, is still there to take care of our needs. We still consume foreign foods, which the unavailable foreign exchange can no more provide, neglecting our local staples.
Indeed, what used to be an exception in our food and social consumptions are now our regulars: Foreign rice, foreign teas and beverages, foreign automobiles, foreign wears and clothing as well as even foreign habits when we have been told times without number that no nation develops if it does not develop the habit of self-sustenance.
Even in governance, we still live in the vainglorious past, as if it has not gone and gone for good. Many a state are still in the habit of engaging in unscrupulous political appointments, even though they know it is not sustained. Who could have predicted a few years back that we would have, in 2016, a Federal Government with very lean political appointees, even at that, where a single minister would be saddled with unenviable responsibility of three “heavy” ministries to manage? Who, for example, would have thought of the office of first lady, only in name without those encumbrances of office, including long vehicular convoys? The times are really and truly hard and it is only the truly hard and truly committed leaders that have the potentialities to survive and still provide real leadership to its citizens.
Osun State seems to be different. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, using very meagre resources, with native intelligence, patriotism and dedicated few has achieved much for his state. Many pundits have criticised his “refusal” to appoint regular political office-holders, such as commissioners and certain advisers as well as a behemoth of other opulent office holders in these days of not only meagre but truly unavailable resources. How long will we still live in open denial when the truth of the financial matter is staring us in our bare faces?
If the various tiers of government, MDAs, corporations, medium scale companies and cottage establishments and even families can change their lifestyle, coupled with technology, our lives should be better off.
• Akinola is a developmental and policy analyst temporarily based in Osogbo, Osun State.
