Sir: By next week it would be December, the month of Christmas, better put the last month of the year. Every Merry Xmas since 1999 has witnessed an increase in the price of salt, bread, water, and when fuel has not been increased, it is the cost of transportation that would be increased, and this particular one, it will be rice!
We have been on a progressive slide towards the tunnel of despair. Workers have either lost their jobs, or have not been paid their salaries, or those that have been paid, are in so much debt, to make a meaning out of the salary, pensions. Even after being disengaged, it is another tales by moonlight, and those that remain go through hell every day. We wake to an everyday existence of it is well when we know that all is not well.
Another end of the year and Nigerians are finding it hard to really to say that we have been blessed with the dividends of democracy; in some cases we have seen the rich also cry which at least gives us hope that we have co-sufferers. The poor cannot cry anymore; the tears have long gone. We all suffer; cooking gas is more expensive than motor spirit!
Read lso: LAKE Rice: Lagos to crash price
The borders remain closed and so do not hold any hope for the ordinary man. Even eggs will not grace the table of the masses this yuletide. A bag of rice in the last month of the year would be dream come true for millions of families. Do we remember that same bag of rice that was barely N3000 in 1999 sells for N20000 thereabout depending whether you are buying local or foreign and things are supposedly at the next level?
So, as the year ends, many plan resolutions, those decisions that are made at the beginning of each year. It is like a promise to be of good behavior. The resolution by the APC controlled government to the Nigerian masses is one that has never been kept. That which the government said it would do, it never did, that which it did, it never said it would. Nobody can even say this is the worst hit sector in Nigeria as the year rounds up…the educational sector is not well, the health sector suffers acute malaria…our transport is now a case of recurrent migraine, our polity has been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. It is a sad Xmas in the horizon, families are groaning under debt, all kinds and manners. The robbers we have are not just touts but fresh graduates or those that have found solace in a system that has no future for them. Widows have multiplied; our society keeps no stats so we care less about the orphans let loose by our collective carefree attitude.
- Prince Charles Dickson,
<pcdbooks@gmail.com>
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