“Nigeria is about to enter into a new phase in its history. Scarcity will soon become the word most commonly used by us starting from 2024. We already have scarcity of cash in banks, foreign exchange scarcity, rice scarcity and job scarcity is about to kick in with several multinational companies voting with their feet.”
— Dele Sobowale
How I wish Nigerians have been nurtured to embrace learning as a mandatory habit for soul development and rebirth like the daily rituals of eating food for the physical growth and sustenance of the body. Then, each Nigerian would have been able to cultivate the culture of reading both for pleasure and for the progressive development and improvement of the mind.
As it is today, the efforts of notable columnists like Dele Sobowale, among several others who have devoted their lives to the business of informing, educating and enlightening the society, are going to waste. If only Nigerians can read, can comprehend and can understand the nittygritty of Dele Sobowale’s weekly economic sermons, how fabulously blessed the country could have been.
As a result of the political choices Nigerians have made in the past or that were imposed on them by their irresponsible political elites, Nigerians have now found themselves in a situation like that of the fable of the boiling frog that was slowly boiled alive. The boiling frog metaphor is often used to describe “the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.”
Unlike the lowly frog in the animal kingdom, Nigerians are supposed to be a highly developed sentient beings blessed with common sense, intelligence, intuition and reasoning faculties. If so, how did Nigerians manage to find themselves being slowly roasted to death in the economic pit fire of “scarcity of everything”?
In his weekly column, Dele Sobowale has been consistent in highlighting and in sounding the appropriate warnings from time to time about the Coming of Economic Crisis in Nigeria for decades. But the ‘Shakers and Movers’ of the political economy of Nigeria have irresponsibly, and for selfish reasons of gluttonous aggrandisement, ignored him.
However, for all those who have the ability to think and who are blessed with foresight, they would have seen this moment of economic doom several years ago. Now that they will be forced to watch the dance of shame of Nigeria into oblivion, through the “scarcity of everything” that makes life to be worth living, it would be like watching a deadly accident as it happens in slow motion.
The coming ugly spectacle of the mass of human suffering in Nigeria will be more painful and unbearably too sorrowful to watch. More so, when the warning signs of the calamitous human disaster were known a long time ago. It is unfortunate that the economic disaster which has speedily approached the shores of the country with its harvest of doom and gloom, could have been easily avoided or prevented many years ago.
Is it too late to do anything about the impending socioeconomic doom and gloom?
This is a question that will be left for each Nigerian to answer. But it will be highly advisable if Nigerians can urgently begin to use their eyes to see and their ears to hear in order to understand the urgency of the need to act appropriately in the right and most sensible direction.
But for Nigerians to think that they can continue with the usual careless attitude of neglecting the essential issues that matter in the political and spiritual life of a nation; and to think that they can continue to ignore the various stimuli and telltale social indicators of the impending socioeconomic and political calamities, this type of irresponsible behaviours will be a sign of the collective degeneracy and stupidity of a hitherto powerfully endowed and richly blessed people. There can be no doubt anymore that if this sort of mindless carelessness is allowed to persist like an untreated deadly cancer, it will eventually lead to the extinction of Nigeria in the comity of nations.
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
Link : Implications of Scarcity of Everything, By Dele Sobowale
ITSOT 