With one American dollar, we are now sure of at least a thousand naira. Forget the official rate. The fuel price is at all-time high because the subsidy that kept it cheap is almost gone. Almost because if some of it is not left, the price will be more than it is.
The floating of the dollar and the near absence of subsidy have far-reaching effects, which, one way or the other, have to abate soonest.
Also, in the last few years, our nation has been bedevilled with incidents capable of precipitating a civil war: In the Southeast, police stations are attacked and razed, private properties are set on fire and human beings are felled like fowls. In the Southwest, herdsmen and kidnappers are on the prowl, ethnic champions are singing Oduduwa instead of Hallelujah, and some elders are chorusing to your tent oh Israel. Terrorists-cum-bandits-cum-kidnappers have turned the North into their haven, their territory where they do and undo.
Those behind these acts are carrying on as though we want to finish what is left of ourselves. Yet, ours is a blessed nation with gold, oil and gas, tantalite and beauties such as Mambilla Plateau and Farin Ruwa Falls, friendly soils, and a people ready to give their best.
We have brilliant souls scattered all over the world and doing wonders in their adopted nations. We have a young population that understands the ins and outs of technology and can manipulate it to our advantage. When our average brains go abroad for education, they turn out in flying colours.
As blessed as we are with these brains, these beauties and these resources, we are also blessed with leaders who, at the sign of a headache, take the next available flight to London or New York for medical examination. We are also blessed with a political class that steal with their future generation in mind; we are fortunate enough to have men and women in positions of authorities all because they want to decorate their garages and wardrobes with the best in automobiles and jewelleries; and we are blessed with leaders who will tell us to pray over a problem or challenge we elect them to resolve.
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We have in abundance people in positions of authority who still convert commonwealth to theirs and brazenly acquire estates. There are public office holders in Nigeria whose country homes are as big as some villages. Their garages brim with vehicles running into tens; and many are gathering dust. They own homes in Asokoro, Banana Island, Maitama, Ikoyi, GRA Port Harcourt, GRA Enugu and in cities across the world, especially London, New York and Paris — many of them empty and only occupied for a few days throughout the year.
In our nation, hard work is not the only way of making money. Graduates cannot even get employed. Thousands of graduates roam the streets every day looking for jobs, man-know-man dictates the pace, and we are yet to rid our society of the bribery-to-receive-favour syndrome. Personal interests are sold as general interests. Politicians jump ship to retain their control of the public tills, yet sing at every given opportunity that they are in power to serve and are making sacrifices for the betterment of our nation.
If God had wanted prayers to be the solution to pervasive poverty, it is not beyond Him. If He had wanted prayers to fix roads, make Nigeria number one on the sustainable development goal index, and stop being the country with the second-highest number of deaths of children under the age of five, He will do it. But He wants us to use our brains, and so no amount of prayers we say can do for us what He expects us to do with our brains!
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says no fewer than 250,000 children in Nigeria die on their first day of life. The figure is the second highest in the world, according to the 2017 multi-indicator cluster survey. A child born in Nigeria today, no thanks to this situation, is likely to live till the year 2074, while a child born in Denmark is likely to live until the 22nd century! The quality of life is a different kettle of fish. Most of these children regrettably die from preventable causes such as premature births, complications during delivery, infections like sepsis, malaria and pneumonia. You have shown us times without number that prayers cannot stop this, only policies and programmes can.
We badly need more investments to grow our economy at a higher rate to be able to lift 100 million people out of poverty.
The North/South dichotomy is still very real. We still look at the country from this prism. Till this day, the North still does not trust the South and the South does not trust the North. And in the North, the Middle Belt is dissociating itself from what is known as core North. In the South, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Niger Delta are also doing their own battles. As it was in the beginning so it is now.
Our oil reserves have made us unable to think. Oil has been a curse and a blessing. This curse began with the enactment of the Mineral Ordinance by Nigeria’s first Governor-General Sir Frederick Luggard in 1914. In 1937, the British colonial government gave the exclusive rights of exploration and exploitation to Shell D’Arcy, which could not actualise this mandate because of the Second World War, and a year later entered into collaboration with British Petroleum — formerly Anglo-Persian Oil Company— for oil prospection in Nigeria. Their early efforts yielded 450 barrels of crude oil in Akata I Well in 1951. Further successes were made in Oloibiri in 1956 and Bomu Oil Field in 1958, when oil was struck in commercial quantity.
