“The country is in a financial mess and, in the absence of urgent and sincere remedial measures, is going downhill. This is not a cynical prognosis; the country currently expends over 99 percent of its revenue on debt servicing even as inflation takes a heavy toll on the hapless populace.” — Tribune Editorial Board
The above statement that says Nigeria “is in a financial mess” is the greatest understatement of the century. The financial situation of Nigeria is worse than just messy; it is already dead. The Nigeria’s economy is only awaiting the interment ceremonies.
This is not rocket science for anyone with a discerning spirit to deduce that when a country or an organisation or a household is spending 99% of its yearly revenue/income on the servicing of mere interest charges of its debt that this is an outright state of bankruptcy. And when not even a cent is paid towards the principal sum owed, nothing remains for the day to day sustenance of the people, no dime for investments on new capital projects or for the maintenance of old infrastructures and nothing set aside for the rainy day, obviously such a country or organisation or household is definitely existing on a borrowed time.
Nigeria is an example of a country in such a dire strait. And to be sincerely honest, the country is already dead and is resting without peace in the coldest part of the morgue of life. What people see as a country is only the cold and rotten carcass of a once-upon-ago great country blessed with laudable promises. Unfortunately, the promise of prosperity, progress and peace was squandered at the shrine of the god of corruption. Now, without an urgent burial of the deceased country, the toxic stench oozing out of its carcass is going to pollute and eventually kill off the entire population in and around its vicinity.
Sadly, all the prescriptions offered by the Tribune Editorial Board are the most inappropriate palliatives on the table because they are not potent enough or relevant enough to save the Doomsday situation of the Nigeria’s economy. By wilfully neglecting to look at the unwholesome foundation and the dilapidated structures of Nigeria, every suggestion that is being made to reform or to correct the various political and socioeconomic deformities of the country shall remain like an insignificant fairytale told by idiot.
For starters, Nigeria has no national credible government, no loyal and impersonal bureaucratic institutions, no honourable public/civil servants, and no enlightened civil societies worthy of these names to whom the sensible advice on offer by the Tribune Editorial Board could be forwarded. Furthermore, there is no newspaper house or media house or journalist that is morally conscientious and ethically dedicated enough to seriously call anyone in the government of Nigeria to account for their unforgivable immoral and unethical deeds and for their bloodsucking type of corrupt practices they inflicted on the indigenous people of Nigeria in the past years and at the present time.
Whenever anyone with a living conscience looked back at the insane levels of corruption that were perpetrated by the most dishonourable and incompetent set of people ever assembled to govern the affairs of Nigeria by Mr ‘Integrity’ Muhammadu Buhari, inquisitive minds could not afford to keep quiet but to seek, beyond the superficiality of the observable events, for the covert motives behind the great calamities that have befallen the people of Nigeria.
Sometimes ago, I broached a proposition that the ex-President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, which was principally made up of his ethnic/tribal kinsmen and other willing nonFulani accomplices (the carefully selected useful idiots), did not do all the macabre and heinous things they did between 2015 and 2023, which have sunk Nigeria into inglorious bankruptcy, as a result of innocent error of omission or commission.
I suggested, based on vivid observations and on the simple ability to connect the dots of the disparate social, political and economic events that were unfolding in the Nigerian societies, that there must have been a premeditated sinister political motive from the inception of the regime in 2015, to destroy the financial and capital base of the economy and to destabilise and complicate further the wobbly political structures of Nigeria.
I think it is still a veritable point of view. It should raise critical questions worthy of the consideration of every concerned person of Nigeria, who is under the yoke of something that looks more like an alien government of forced occupation. Nigerians need to ask, Was the covert Fulani genocidal ethnic war of 2015-2023 waged for the conquest of the landmass and for the enslavement of the indigenous people of Nigeria? Was the deliberate economic pauperisation of the indigenous people of Nigeria set into motion to weaken Nigerians and to ensure an easy seizure of the landmass of Nigeria for the implementation of a selfish, barbaric, narrow-minded hegemonic agenda by the Fulani ethnic group over Nigeria?
Was there an ungodly irredentist agenda, which is being promoted by a few hawkish members of the Fulani ethnic group? Could it be true that the hubristic desire and goal of this infernal agenda is the establishment of an expanded New Sokoto Caliphate to cover all the geographical areas of Nigeria that were outside the Old Uthman dan Fodio’s Jihadist Caliphate of 1804?
These incessant and consistent political chess games being played by the ruling ethnic group since 1960 are the real conundrum of Nigeria. No one should continue to entertain any doubt that this cruel project is not real and that it is still not going on, even if it is without the knowledge and connivance of the nonFulani ‘interim’ President presently in Aso Rock.
However, Nigerians can only hope that the incumbent in power would have the moral fortitude (but how is that possible with the question of legitimacy still hanging in the air?) to investigate all the loans that were taken and all the local and international debts purportedly incurred in the past 8 years. If a clinical audit of the treasury is done, Nigerians should not be surprised to find that a high percentage of these borrowed funds have been stolen and diverted into the personal accounts of faceless members of the Fulani Establishment and their surrogates (the “Willing Tools”) in and outside Nigeria.
At this moment of great uncertainty, we can only hope that the true elites of Nigeria will be morally inclined and blessed with the right spiritual impulses to look critically at the terrible political conditions of manufactured insecurity in the lands; to connect the dots of the horrible socioeconomic situations caused by the unbridled economic banditry of the political and economic elites; and to rise above the mediocre propaganda from the government that continues to obfuscate the truth, to divert attention from the core issues and to offer lies and deception as coverup for their sickening atrocities. If there is a concerted effort to pursue the aforementioned direction, maybe there can still be a tiny ray of hope and the possibility of stopping the final consummation of the genocidal plans that were purposefully designed for the inhumane extermination of the indigenous ethnic people of Nigeria.
Or, what else can the indigenous people of Nigeria do, in the face of untold hardships, hopelessness and powerlessness than to hold on to the soothing comfort of Hope. Hope is the only virtual commodity that everyone is holding onto in Nigeria today. We can only hope that our hope, which we have refused to build on the stable and rugged foundation of common sense and on the true reality of the unanswered Nigeria Question, won’t be a misplaced hope at the end of the day.
This is a food for thought for all the inquisitive minds out there.
In The Spirit Of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
31st July 2023
ITSOT 