Before I deliver this piece, let me make it ABUNDANTLY clear that my support and admiration for and belief in the leadership of PMB is unflagging, irrefragable and 105%!!!
That said, I want to say, even if everyone knows, which is good in itself, that we are in very turbulent times. Yes, we are, my brothers and sisters. Everywhere you look, there’s anger, hunger and strife.
Things are NOT working. There’s palpable apprehension and, sometimes, fear, fear of the unknown, that is. Indeed, people are dying. I’m sorry but I wager that the suicide rate in the country will spike. Those who can’t cope with the times will succumb to hypertension and depression or even suicide and murder. That’s how bad it can get.
How did we get to this sorry pass, people still ask-even if they know what happened. Well, the truth, bitter truth, my dear friends, is that we have lived wastefully. We have lived a profligate and extravagant life. We have built a country that consumes and hardly manufactures. We moved from the groundnut pyramids, cocoa plantations, onion mountains and palm plantations to an AGO, DPK and PMS economy. We consumed and consumed and consumed. We didn’t save for the rainy days, and the rains-with all the warnings-have come upon us.
Over the years, the leadership of the country at the federal, states and local government levels have failed the people. Majorly, men and women without an iota of vision but with an abundance of rapacious proclivities have occupied leadership positions.
The period between 2011 and 2015 will rank, to me, as the watershed of the country’s economic and Socio-political despoliation and stagnation, even if they kept telling us lies, white lies about the “largest economy in Africa”. The flagrant, blatant and luciferous gang-raping of the economy and the deepening of the divisive tendencies of the peoples of Nigeria were the hallmarks of that better-forgotten era.
In any case, I’m seized of the opinion that what we are experiencing now is a very serious mid-air turbulence, like you have on long-haul flights. Unfortunately, it is very severe. We must pray (as believers) for God to take control and guide the pilot and his crew to navigate us out of the stormy weather to safe landing.
But we must fasten our seat belts and comply with the instructions of the captain. We must be in the brace position to ride the storm, this terribly terrifying storm.
Beyond the prayers, we need to throw overboard our extravagance, imprudence, excessive appetite for foreign materials, needless “investments” and thriftlessness-like expensive overseas holidays, more bags, more shoes, foreign products. We must tighten our belts. This is also time to get smarter and find other streams of revenue outside what we currently do (but please let’s avoid stealing to make a living!).
A country that once imported toothpicks will never develop quickly, if at all. Now, that’s stopped. Let toothpick be a euphemism for unnecessary foreign products. We must reduce our dependence on foreign exchange, ($2.5b weekly????) and if possible get into commercial activities that will instead earn forex.
It’s good to see many young folks getting into farming. Personally, I am taking my passion for fashion into tailoring, and, as I told someone, the numbers, the Benjamins, are not looking bad at all. Besides, we will take some young men off the streets, and give them hope.
Brothers and sisters, let’s get creative. Let’s get smart. Let’s switch on our survival instincts. Let’s get positive. Person wey dey cry no dey see road, they say in Sapele. The economic challenges will get even worse, but then again, it will begin to get better sooner rather than later. I’m supremely confident in the leadership abilities, good intentions and patriotism of President Muhammadu Buhari. He, however, needs to inject some fresh blood (and some tested hands too) into his government and do away with politicians, who have nothing but their personal interests at heart.
By the way, I have a short story to share as a way of ending this epistle. A friend called recently to lament she was struggling to buy tickets for herself and her son to go on vacation to the US.
Between the first time she contacted the airline and the last (just 7 days!!!) the price of an economy class ticket had moved from N1.3m to N1.8m. She was distraught, justifiably, because she believed her son would be disappointed. Well, I asked her to avoid the vacation this year because things are not good at all. She would pay for tickets. She would pay for upkeep. And pay for shopping. I advised her to have a talk with her son, who’s 14 and in college. To her amazement, she had hardly completed three sentences when the boy said “but mom, do we really have to go on vacation to the US this year? Let’s forget it this year. I know things are very bad, Mommy. I don’t want us to come back and you start struggling with my school fees.” Wow! A son from heaven, yeah? It is what it is. Even kids know what the birds are singing right now. They should. Shouldn’t they?
So, let’s not over-reach ourselves to please our kids or feed our ego (as Bob Marley sang, “every need has an ego to feed!”). Now, I hope I made sense. If I did, then gwazia ndi yard unu!