The Insight by Lateef Adewole
It is no longer news that Nigeria is going through a lot of challenges right now. “Arun oju ni, ki se arun imun.” Everyone can see and feel it. The citizens are being battered from left, right and center. The young and the old. If those who are gainfully employed are crying, what do we expect of those who are under-employed or unemployed? It will amount to callousness of anyone to pretend that all is well because such person belongs to the ruling party, APC or they are supporter of President Tinubu.
Interestingly, in most of the president’s interactions and public comments, he has never shied away from acknowledging these challenges facing the people. He is not one not to take responsibility and live in denial, as it is usually the case with leaders, whose appointees often feed with lies about the reality of the people, and they never bothered to find out the truth on their own. Tinubu seems to be different. I have heard him talked about reading tweets. Any leader who visits ‘X’ messaging app (formerly Twitter) regularly can never be deceived of the reality about those he or she is leading. That’s the ‘hottest’ social media platform for updates. Although, social media platform like that could be taken over by ‘barbarians’ sometimes, like Professor Soyinka said in his recent interview.
So, right now, what is plaguing Nigeria and Nigerians have only increased our religiosity. They have shored up the business of religious entrepreneurs who capitalise of peoples’ misery to line their pockets, in the name of solving their problems through some ‘miracles’, etc. Nigerians are religious people. Every single challenge they face, they attach spirituality to it and seek refuge and solution in religious houses from religious leaders, who claim to represent God on earth.
Two days ago, I watched a video clip on social media. It was made and posted by one man. He said that few years ago while in Nigeria, he used to have about thirty six prayer points. These are requests he made of God to help him solve. He mentioned that he used to pray for job, for promotion, for food. Pray for power (electricity), water supply. Whenever he was going out, he prayed for journey mercy against accident. He prayed for security from unknown gunmen, kidnappers, robbers, ritualists, bandits and other criminals both when outside and at home as nowhere is guaranteed of safety. Kidnappers now enter peoples’ houses and kidnap them.
He seeks God’s favour to have money so he could get affordable accommodation to house himself and family members. He prays for money to be able to send his children to good schools, cloth them, feed them and take care of their basic needs. And every basic human needs. This is a typical life of average Nigerian. Almost all of us, except a small percentage, do these as they are what we all face daily. So, that was not peculiar to him. Then, he had the opportunity to travel to England. He said that after some weeks, like within one month, he realised that all those his prayer points have disappeared or have been answered. He no longer asked God for their solutions again. He wondered what changed.
On introspection, he realised that all those challenges he was facing while in Nigeria, like majority of us, which formed his daily prayer points, for which he fasted, prayed, did night vigil, and so on, were actually taken care of by the system, government of that country, not God. Two days after his arrival in England, he got a job. He didn’t have to pray for job. The company that employed him already helped secured a reasonable accommodation that will house him and his family members. On resumption, he was informed of his wage, which is reasonable enough to meet up with his responsibilities there and it is paid on time. A conversion to naira made him a ‘rich’ man suddenly, if he were to earn such in Nigeria. He was usually notified of his promotions whenever he was due. No one sat on it that he had to pray for promotion at work
Within same week of arrival, his children in primary and secondary schools were already enrolled in schools that will qualify for expensive private school in Nigeria which parents pay through their noses to send and keep their wards here, but they are public (government) schools and he paid no ‘shishi’, “abi na penny!” Everything was given to them free. Books, uniforms, and all the facilities they need to study with. In fact, they were later given laptops for studying at home. It was the real ‘miracles’ he has been praying for all these years. However, not the kind we are promised by our clergies in Nigeria, but ones given by the government of Britain.
As he lived and worked, there is effective, efficient and affordable multiple means of transportation. As he moves around, he didn’t need to be looking over his shoulders for his safety or be worried about that of his family members, children in school from being kidnapped. He sleeps at home with both his eyes closed, despite having no fence or burglary proof. It’s being some years now since he left, he has never seen power go off. It almost seems ‘natural’ that there must be light, just as sun shines naturally. As long as he pays his bills, water, gas, power, are always available. The National Health Service (NHS) is there to provide quality health services for the people- free. Life was completely different and transformed. He then wondered if the God of these people is not the same God that we ceaselessly pray to in Nigeria.
Another shock to him was that, if things are working because of prayers, the people are not religious in the way we do in Nigeria. In fact, most do not even go to Church. They just live their lives devoid of the religious burden we heap on our heads in here. How come people who ‘don’t seem to believe in God or worship Him’ as we do in our own country, are the ones whose prayers seemed to have been answered? That was a confusion.
The truth of the matter is, most of things that we pray for and disturbing God about, are not the responsibility of God but that of man. People like us, from among us, whose responsibility is it to provide them for us, by virtue of their positions which we gave to them, directly or indirectly. It is the responsibility of the government which is made of these people; politicians, civil servants, and public servants. ‘Government Of the Day’ is our ‘GOD’ on earth. They are saddled with the duties of taking care of us.
Let no one misinterpret, misunderstand or misrepresent what I am saying. It has nothing to do with blasphemy but truth. Sadly, we are a people who loathe truth. We like to be lied to, deceived, conned, cheated, manipulated, stolen from, whether with or without our consent. Someone might ask how can one be stolen from with one’s consent? That is when one takes himself or herself to the ‘slab to be slaughtered’ (literally). You take yourself to someone who promised you ‘miracles’ that won’t happen but collected your money in the process. That is self-inflicted robbery!
So, why do we take responsibilities that belong to our government to God instead of making demands on the people who are saddled with them- our political leaders? That’s not what religion is all about. It is believed that all powers belong God and He gives to whoever He wishes. Yes. But God does not or won’t come down to vote to choose political leaders for us. We do that by ourselves and each choice has consequences.
Ordinarily, I want to believe that people who aspire to public offices do want to do good and positively impact on their people, especially at the executive arm; the level of the presidency and governorship, where ‘real’ power resides in the type of democracy we practise. They have the powers of ‘life and death’ (literally), because, they make the policies, control the resources, manage the funds, in charge of the power architecture and many things that are required to make positive impacts on the people they govern, if they choose to do right by them.
However, like the saying, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. When we put people in office and leave them to their devices, without questioning them or demanding for accountability from them, they are bound to become complacent. Whose fault is that? The people who put them there ofcourse. We, the people, are very guilty of this, especially where it concerns the lower level of government at states and local governments. Many of us don’t even know who our local government chairman is, not to talk about our councillor, yet, they are the closest ones to us.
As a young man in the 80’s, all I knew was my local government. This was because they were responsible for nearly everything that touched us as a people. They did the roads and provided the healthcare. Pipe borne water that traversed my home town then was built by our local government. That has become a thing of the past now. Many young people have never seen water run through pipeline provided by government. They provided transformers to ensure stable power supply. The primary schools were under LGs and well run. We had Local Education Inspectors who ensured that teachers are up and doing by regularly paying unscheduled visits to schools. The local government health workers called “wole wole” usually go round town to ensure the well-being of the masses health-wise. We hardly bothered about state government, not to talk of federal. Sadly, all that have changed.
The local government administration has been destroyed by the state governors who turned them to their cash cow, by abusing the constitutional provision that made the payment of the LG’s allocations to state purse, from where it is disbursed to them. Unfortunately, this is no longer done by governors. They sit on the funds and give only what they feel like giving to them. And these chairmen dare not ask question since they are stooges of the governor. We saw the fate that befell the Ijebu-East LG chairman, Hon. Wale Adedayo, who dared to voice out against the governor for not releasing their allocations to them. He was suspended and then impeached by his LG legislative arm, arrested by the police (but later released) and was hounded by the state agents. That was how LGs were destroyed.
I often said that if Nigerians can pay just half of the attention they pay to the ‘far-away’ federal government to their immediate constituencies of state and local governments, deploy similarly half the energy they use against the president to their governors and LG chairmen, there is likelihood that we will begin to see positive changes. This has become imperative in the light of the humongous amount of money that government at all levels are sharing since past eight months.
Since the removal of the fuel subsidy and the unification of the exchange rates, the revenue that accrued to the federation account on monthly basis, available for sharing among the three tiers of government, has not been less than N1 trillion. Almost half, 47.32% of this goes to rhe states (26.72%) and local governments (20.6%) combined. Where is the money? The consequences of the FG’s policy decisions on petrol subsidy and exchange rates have been borne by the people. Life has been hellish as a result.
If all these funds that accrued from them are judiciously utilised by the governors and LG chairmen for the benefits of the citizens, then, we would have known that “iya meji ko je oku igbe” (people did not suffer double jeopardy). But this is not so, in most states, with exception of very few. Whose fault? It is the fault of the people who chose to pray for miracles instead of putting pressure on their elected and appointed public officials to do their jobs.
“Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” can be said to be the case here. President Tinubu receives all the attacks for these decisions while the governors are coolly enjoying unprecedented level of FAAC monthly allocations, apart from many other interventions for palliatives to the citizens, which they have also not been held accountable for, by the people. This is the bane of our development.
Same thing is applicable to the legislative arm at states and federal. Most times, it seems those people are only representing themselves and not us. When it is time for elections, you will see them all over the place, visiting all the nooks and crannies of their constituencies, no matter how difficult or inaccessible the places are, to canvass for votes. Immediately after getting to the offices, they forget the people who sent them to the parliament and continue to live their own life.
Which lawmaker can show that the life they live is a reflection of the well-being of their constituents? A national assembly member will drive a N160m car (SUV) to his constituency with no motorable roads. It is a shame that bad roads across the country was even one of the excuses given by the lawmakers for buying such criminally expensive cars with public funds, despite the perennial complain about paucity of funds. Whose responsibility is it to fix these bad roads? Government ofcourse. Do we blame them? No. The people are to be blamed. They are the ones who have remained docile and do not ask questions. They will rather pray!
Until the people take responsibility for their lives, start making demands on their leaders, particularly at state and local government levels, in the manner the federal government is pressurised, and ensure accountability for the funds they receive, both from the center and the Internally Generated Revenues (IGR), they are only wasting their time praying to the God in heaven to come and do the jobs that their ‘GOD’ on earth, which is their ‘Government Of the Day’, are responsible for. Nothing will change!
May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.
God Bless Nigeria.
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February 3, 2024.