“We need to SEE that government is really working to bring relief to the people. Right now, most Nigerians FEEL they are just plunging down a dark, bottomless hole. That feeling must be banished.” — Adekunle Adekoya
The quote above is taken from the essay titled, ‘Plunging Down A Dark, Bottomless Hole’, By Adekunle Adekoya. There are two verbs — ‘See’ and ‘Feel’ — in the last paragraph of the essay, which ought to attract comments from keen observers of the political economy of Nigeria. This is because they seem to fall under the category of a ‘wishful thinking’.
First, the statement that says, “We need to SEE that government is really working to bring relief to the people”, is a delusional optimism. How can we see what is not physically visible to the human eye? The reason why we failed to see what the government is doing, is either that the speed of government actions is too rapid for the eyes to follow, capture, register and perceive. Or, the government’s actions are some kinds of Nollywood reality films, with titles like, ‘Government Magical Abracadabra: The-More-You-Look, The-Less-You-See’.
Secondly, the statement that “most Nigerians FEEL they are just plunging down a dark, bottomless hole.” is no longer a fiction but a reality of the Nigerians’ daily existence that cannot be willy-nilly banished away with a magic wand.
As a matter of fact, most Nigerians KNOW in their day-to-day life that the political, economic, social and spiritual situations of Nigeria have gone beyond the subjective state of sentimental feeling. Most Nigerians KNOW at both the physical and psychical experiential levels that they have already been plunged down the dark hole and are practically suffering unbearable hardships in one of the bottomless ‘hell’ holes of the world.
What is most disconcerting, in addition to the many disheartening cases of woes and tribulations cited in the essay, is the common pretence and the outright denial of reality by most people in Nigeria, particularly by writers who ought to know better. The idea of holding on to the illusion that there is still a country that is buoyant, promising and that can be rescued from the self-inflicted ongoing human suffering and economic disasters, is bewildering and beyond comprehension. The true reality of where Nigeria is presently consigned, is too far away from any suggestion that can be adorned with some forms of optimism. The pathetic human situations of the indigenous peoples of Nigeria are too dire, too dismal and too hopeless.
The British incorporated economic plantation dubbed Nigeria has been totally and comprehensively bankrupted. The former President Muhammadu Buhari and his Cabals brazenly, openly and callously emptied the treasury of Nigeria into their individual deep pockets. And more worryingly, those accursed criminals sunk the country into massive debts.
From the abysmal performance of Muhammadu Buhari and company, they have proved to be a set of political misfits, bigoted charlatans, economic bandits and a terribly retrogressive lots. They deliberately misgoverned Nigeria with impunity for selfish and sordid pecuniary gains. They were a gluttonous bunch of deplorable characters that Buhari knowingly and stupidly assembled from among his kith and kin to rob Nigeria of all her movable assets. The suspicion is still very rife amongst awakened Nigerians that there must have been a conspiracy around a covert agenda to deliberately ruin and if possible burn down the country for some yet to be disclosed nefarious purposes.
We must never forget Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, the extraordinarily incompetent and profusely ignorant minister of finance, who went all out with begging bowls to borrow funds from every Tom, Dick and Harry in the international financial markets. This woman had no comprehension or any foggiest idea about common-sense economic practices. She never understood that it is advisable for a country or corporate body to borrow money for only productive investment purposes and not for consumption. In her own peculiar judgment, the ex-Minister of Finance of Nigeria gladly went abroad to borrow for purely recurrent consumption and more shamefully for egregious looting and sharing with her money grabbing colleagues in government. (See RE: FG TO BORROW $3BN VIA EUROBOND IN OCTOBER)
Since Muhammadu Buhari and his ruinous cohorts couldn’t see beyond their noses, they failed to understand the need to set aside appropriate funds for investment on either short- or long-term socioeconomic developments. Therefore, for eight godless years, the funds borrowed by the last government were never put to productive uses. The government never gave a thought to set aside insurance protection for unexpected rainy days or articulate repayment plans for the various loans. And more ridiculously is the fact that some of these loans were used to service overdue interest charges on past loans.
With the current shambolic state of the economy, if Nigeria happens to remain intact as a corporate political entity, without undertaking a serious revolutionary effort to restructure or reconstruct the burdensome political and economic arrangements of the country, fiscal analysts and sound economists can easily forecast that in a century from now Nigeria will still be held and bugged down in the Debtor’s jails across the world.
After a careful and agonising consideration of the inscrutable Nigeria Question, particularly the low level of our present evolutionary development as a people, it is sad, but it has to be said, that the Nigerian elites seemed to be intellectually, morally, ethically and spiritually incapable to handle the affairs of the Trojan Gift — the complex geographical contraption — that the British colonial empire cruelly bestowed on the hapless indigenous peoples of Nigeria. This amalgamated contraption of a country, I think, is the winning Joker in the political game of fraud that the British Deep State fudged, with the sleight of hand, to ensure that she will continue to maintain a permanent political and economic stranglehold on the country and the people.
Unfortunately, with the speed that the mismanaged runaway economic train of Nigeria is trodding down the treacherous slope of infamy, without capable hands, serious minds and a responsible leadership to control and stop the inevitable disastrous crash, there is no longer any doubt that the people of Nigeria are already at the precipice of a calamitous dissolution of the country.
The question we should be asking is, how near are we to the Doomsday of Nigeria? And the effort we should urgently be making should be toward, how to find the best way to dissolve, to deconstruct and to reconfigure the moribund country in order to prevent a massive loss of innocent lives.
In The Spirit Of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
ITSOT 