Was There An Exaggeration?

So I saw a post where someone said that obsanjo’s letter was exaggerated. I don’t know what the writer of that post meant by exaggeration because if it is bothering on immense hunger-poverty then that letter is not exaggerated. Obsanjo said “The lice of poor performance in government- poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, condonation of misdeed- if not outright encouragement of it, lack of progress and hope for the future, lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality- are very much with us today. With such lice of general and specific poor performance and crying poverty with us, our fingers will not be dry of ‘blood’.

As Nigerians, what is exaggerated about all he has said? Why do we continue to allow sentiments play with core human values of life and dignity? Is the former President, Olusegun Obsanjo a saint? No he is not. There were cases of corruption during his tenure which has been buried like other cases of corruption in Nigeria. Should we sweep dirt under the carpet because of these and discard the truth? For how long are we going to allow religion and ethnicities blind our intellectual thinking? Do we seek western education just to make mockery of it with religion and ethnicity? When are we going to hold our leaders accountable and demand that the reason they were voted into power be achieved? 

According to National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, about 112 million Nigerians (representing 67.1 per cent) of the country’s total population of over 170million live below poverty level. The underemployment rate in Q4 2016 rose to 21.0% while unemployment rate in Q4 2016 rose to 14.2% in population we have 11.55 million unemployed Nigerians and the working age population rose to 108.59 million Nigerians. Note that this working age is between the ages of 15-64 years who are currently available for work, actively seeking for work but without work (Report Date: June 2017). 

Having given the above data I will use a personal day to day experience of a Nigerian to buttress the fact that there was nothing exaggerated about that letter. Taking an insight from Samaru-Zaria, Emanto / Graceland junction to be precise, it would be noticed that there is a group of almajiri children between the ages of 6 to 10 begging for alms. It is indeed sad to tell you that you can find a child of less than 4 year old there too.  These children are without sufficient food, good clothing, foot-wear among others and all manner of skin diseases can be found on their body (not to mention shelter because not having where to sleep is a norm for these kids). All they are asking for is that the lowest denomination of our ‘dear Naria’ be given to them so that they can buy beans cake (kosai) or soya cake (awara) to fill their belly. You would see them stand by the sugarcane seller just so that they can pick the peels of sugarcane, just to get something to eat - in fact they sometimes fight for these sugarcane peels. Are we truly blind to this?

So I went to ABUTH Shika to visit a friend whose child was sick and admitted in the children’s ward. My God! That place smells, I do not want to go into details of what the hospital looked like but this is where I got sad for the situation my beloved country is. There was a baby whose bed was not far from my friend's baby’s bed, my friend told me both mother and child had no food to eat, husband is nowhere to be found as he went to look for money but has not returned and a doctor even donated blood for the child. The state of this child would shock you; the child was malnourished and has been sick for a long time but the parents could not bring him to the hospital because there was no fund to do so, sadly the child died. The mother of the dead child eventually ran away from the hospital with her dead child and did not offset the bills.

As an average Nigerian working with the government or private institution how much is your salary? Fifty thousand naira? A Hundred thousand naira or one fifty thousand naira? Can you boldly beat your chest that you are able to meet all your needs? A man who earns a hundred thousand naira, whose wife earns fifty thousand naira and have two kids in a private school do you think they are comfortable? Do you think before the 15th of every month they have not exhausted their salary and by this time the food in their store isn’t exhausted too?

Why do we pretend as if majority of Nigerians are not hungry? Sure, I agree that there are Nigerians who earn over three hundred to four hundred thousand naira as salary but what of your family members and friends … are they that fortunate? Aside from food- what do we have to say about the killings happening around Southern Kaduna, Taraba, Plateau, Benue and other states in the East. These are major states with the most blood shed which is connected to Fulani herdsmen. If your family was affected would you say Obsanjo exaggerated in his letter? Why are we insensitivity when other people mourn? When the president’s son had an accident and some people wished him dead I saw how those who felt they have one affiliation or the other to President Buhari reacted. Do we now rejoice at the plight of others? Have our love for religion and ethnicity over-shadowed the fact that blood flows in our veins and we are meant to be humans who should be tactful, full of empathy and sympathy?  

The attitude of the President towards these killings speaks volume. Just a day after the victims of the Benue killings were buried, some governors gathered themselves to pay the president a visit so as to endorse him from the next election campaign. I call this a show of insensitivity and an insult to the dead and bereaved. I know what it is to lose a loved one; I know how the pain lingers. These precious ones I have lost, died of sickness yet I could not come to terms with it so how do other people come to terms with the fact that their loved ones were butchered and their pains is not felt.

What was most significant to me in Obsanjo’s write up was when “wherever I go, I hear Nigerians complaining, murmuring in anguish and anger. But our anger should not be like the anger of the cripple. We can collectively save ourselves from the position we find ourselves. It will not come through self-pity, fruitless complaint or protest but through constructive and positive engagement and collective action for the good of our nation and ourselves and our children and their children. We need moral re-armament and engaging togetherness of people of like-mind and goodwill to come solidly together to lift Nigeria up. This is no time for trading blames or embarking on futile argument and neither should we accept untenable excuses for non-performance…If leadership fails, citizens must not fail and there lies the beauty and importance of democracy…we must neither adopt spirit of cowardice nor timidity let alone importance but must be sustained by courage, determination and commitment to say and do and to persist until we achieve upliftment for Nigeria.” 

If citizens understand that we are the ones with power and not the elect then most of the situation we find ourselves in would be solved.