By Oyeniyi Esan
Nigeria remains a destination for the strongest individuals on earth because our nature is very resistant to oppression, exploitation and dehumanization. Resistance is the noblest way to describe our plight in the hands of foreigners, brothers and strangers in a leadership capacity. Every reasonable person wants to escape from this society because we’ve seen electricity turned to candles, we sell maize to buy cornflakes just as we have rivers of oil without oil refineries.
Now, we are denied our sweat by buying money with money. We struggle for everything! We are now struggling to have access to our money in this capitalistic-oriented democracy without regard to humanity and human dignity.
Yes, the federal government has extended the deadline for the new Naira note more than once following the announcement on the 28th of October 2022. However, we should be reminded that the masses shall bear the burden; hunger, poverty and untimely death. People are dying.
Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, NBS equally reported last December that the country’s economic situation is a recipe for the crisis, and home to over 133 million multidimensionally poor people. Yet, the government finds it convenient to institutionalize policies without public opinion and proper consultation.
The Governor of the Central Bank must have taken these necessary measures to enhance the welfare of the people, by curbing corruption. The dehumanizing effects of this Naira-saga measure on the poor man are pathetic videos from the naked man in the bank and the bundles of money in the hands of bandits in the forest. If people in the wilderness, not bush, have access to new Naira notes but people in the cities are going to banks with cooking gas, mattress and a small travel bag.
The nobility of the Naira redesign must be judged in reference to the political adventure of the Governor of Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, who is equally the longest serving in Nigerian history since 1999.
Fuel is very scarce that people die, fight and sleep at the filling station in an oil- producing country. Is this not an infringement on our freedom of movement at the eve of general election? The petroleum minister and all stakeholders hold posterity detailed explanations, or truth reveals itself with the course of time.
The ‘smiling’ in the language of Fela Kuti’s ‘Shuffering and Smiling’ needs to be reevaluated; what is the nature of the suffering man’s smile? The degree of suffering should be used as a measure to know the nature of such provocative smile. In matter where tears and laughter fail, it is such a smile that helps fill the gap. And that gap processes the power of life and death, sanity and madness. A kind of smile that preceded the nakedness and madness displayed in different banking halls across the country.
Fuel and naira saga reflects that corruption is the thread that holds the fabric of our existences; every channel these two commodities pass through has a different woeful tale to tell. A tale that questions logic, and living in a society where everyone is not a saint but nobody is dirty. Then, we are doomed. We won’t jeopardize our future with protest that costs lives, and how strong are we to remain poor and vote for our candidate of will? We’ve been so hungry for long that few days hunger shall have no voice in our decision for the next four (4) golden years.
The institutionalization of hunger and poverty has made use known the diferrence between wellbeing and welfare, and also demonstrated that our leaders are either deaf or strangers, but definitely not our brothers.
The gap between the rich and the poor is unreasonably wide, and this is one of the dangers to our human dignitaries.
We are pleading for drastic measures that respect our human dignity in the face of our wellbeing, and hopeful of having polling units without armour tanks and guns, We are humans, and not beasts.
