Preamble
This world is a dramatic entity mysteriously coded in parables. Every living thing therein sees it and relates to it according to its own nature of existence. It takes history to decode it only after the actors might have left the stage. Who are we? Where are we coming from? And where are we going from here? Those are some of the questions which all rational human beings should ask themselves from time to time.
But, in Nigeria, such questions have been rendered irrelevant because the circumstances of life in this retrogressive country have changed the priorities of her citizens. The only question now in vogue, which everybody seems to concentrate upon is this:: ‘what am I getting from this?’ Hmmm! We live in a material world without any material substance.
That very question is the real drama that has permanently engaged the attention of Nigerians since the commencement of the fourth republic. It is the question that crowns money as the king of the world. It is the question that fosters greed and fetters humanity to the stake of Satan. It is the question that presents mirage to man as the only substance worthy of pursuit. Incidentally, however, no answer to that all-time question has ever proffered any solution to any human problem. Such an answer would rather confirm the ephemerality of this world.
Hope or Despair?
What can we say of a man who fixes his eyes on the sun but does not see it? Instead, he sees a chorus of flaming seraphim announcing a paroxysm of despair. That is the parable of the country called Nigeria. Like the Israelis of Moses’ time, Nigerians have become gypsies wandering aimlessly and wallowing in abject poverty in the midst of abundance. What else do we expect from Allah beyond the invaluable bounties with which He has blessed us?
What is Nigeria not blessed with? We have land in abundance, not in terms of size alone but also in terms of agrarian soil and rich vegetation. At least over 77 million hectares of land is said to be arable in Nigeria. Out of this, only about 34 million hectares was reportedly being cultivated for various agricultural activities including husbandry some years ago. This has even dwindled to less than 25 million square hectares as more and more rural youths keep migrating to cities and towns for imaginary greener pastures.
Bountiful Blessings
We are blessed with rainfalls that water our plants from the sky and graze our animals to satisfaction. We are endowed with variety of nourishing food crops enough to feed us from generation to generation without importing from anywhere. The Qur’an testifies to this in chapter 80 thus:
“Let man reflect on the food he eats; how ‘We’ pour down the rain in torrents and cleave the earth asunder; how ‘We’ bring forth the corn, the grapes, the fresh vegetables, the olive, the palm products, the thickets, the fruit-trees and the green pasture for you and for your cattle to delight in…” Allah’s favour is regular and incessant. We cannot deny it.
In addition to the aforementioned, we have energetic and dedicated work force that is married to the farm land in Nigeria despite all odds. We also have intellectual brains that are capable of engaging in research work days and nights to ensure agricultural improvement of our country.
Nigeria is not lacking in forest and savannah. She is rich in rivers and mountains all of which are great resources for people who are seeking reasonable comfort and are not self-deceptive.
Dearth of Leadership
What we have consistently lacked is a responsible government that should care about our foremost heritage which is agriculture. That food is becoming a threat to Nigerians today is purely due to naivety of the past governments especially in the disastrous past 16 years of the so-called democratic dispensation from 1999 to 2015. That misfortune started when the first shot at the Presidency in 1999 was entrusted to a parochial ‘prisoner’ who had lost contact with the actual reality of the modern life.
On his assumption of office in that year, some die hard Nigerian optimists saw him as a reincarnate of the Biblical Yusuf (Joseph) of the Egypt of yore who could rescue Nigeria from an impending economic scourge. But no sooner had he assumed office as President than Nigerians realized that the man who was thought to be a modern day Yusuf coming from the prison to transform the dream of Nigeria into reality was actually a Mathew without focus.
As a farmer that he claimed to be, before incarceration, he had been expected to act like Chairman Mao of China who started the revolution of that country with agricultural self-sufficiency. But this Mathew eventually confirmed that a man cannot give what he does not possess. Thus, with his style of governance, he proved that he was never tutored in good governance and decency. Those who imposed him on Nigeria have since openly confessed their calamitous error while expressing a belated regret even as are now liking their bleeding fingers with internal agony. Today, Nigeria is worse than what she was two decades ago.
Compounded Tragedy
The South West governors of that time and their South East counterparts also did not help the matter. Rather than focusing on agriculture which was the natural occupational endowment of their regions, those gold diggers preferred to depend on oil boom largess coming to them from the federal government through the so-called allocation revenue sharing. To them, such a quicker way of making money was more beneficial than investing in agriculture which could only yield results perhaps years after they might have left office.
In Nigeria, the cost of running government alone is enough to render the country bankrupt. What were we doing with about 40 federal ministers and scores of Presidential Senior Special Advisers as well a retinue of Special Assistants when even America with her huge economic resource, large but effective population and adequate financial wherewithal had only about a dozen ministers?
Besides, what informs the idea of the so-called constituency allowances for legislators running into billions of naira, at the federal and state levels, especially at a time when innocent women and children were crying for food which is a foremost necessity of life?
Evidence of Hunger
No one could think about two decades ago that artificial hunger would be added to the abysmal level of poverty in Nigeria despite the unprecedented rise in price of oil in the international market during those wasted years. However, with the lotus eaters in government, Nigeria became an artful trick adopted to bamboozle the populace into blind submission. The propaganda in the 1980s, spearheaded by a government agency called Mass Mobilization for Self Reliance, Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), established by the self-styled military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, and headed by Professor Jerry Gana was almost hypnotizing. That Agency’s slogan of “Food and Shelter for All in the Year 2000” rented the air with wide reverberation but in the end, nothing came out of it. Rather, some new multi-millionaires suddenly emerged from the smart project. That slogan was to later change in the 1990s to: “Vision 2010” with loud brouhaha under the dark goggled dictatorship of Sani Abacha. And when year 2010 began to approach under the Presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo, the slogan again changed to: ‘Vision 202020 in which Nigeria was deceptively envisioned to become one of the 20 most buoyant economies in the world. Both of that vision and its initiators have now naturally and quietly fizzled out into hopelessness.
Game of Deception
It takes two to tangle. If the deceptive leaders of those years could pretend not to know that a game of deception was in place, was the deceived populace also pretending to play along? It takes a visionless populace to beget a deceptive government as the case in Nigeria. No country in history is ever known to have achieved economic vibrancy by magic and Nigeria could not have been an exception. But that was the portion of a self-glorified country that calls itself ‘the giant of Africa’. And, today, what is the result of that self-deception?
In a report of the Food and Agricultural Organization some years back, about 300 Nigerians were said to be dying of hunger daily. Only God knows what that figure has risen to become now. Yet, rather than reacting to that sad news practically by devising a policy of rescuing the downtrodden people from the scourge of poverty, our government turned deaf ear. Rather, it continued to assure the populace that Nigeria would soon become one of the biggest economies in the world even as the easy money accruing from our petroleum resources was being partly stolen brazenly and partly shared monthly among states and political cronies without any benefit to the masses.
Yar’Adua’s Tenure
By some actions taken during his tenure, President Musa Yar’Adua of the blessed memory remains commendable for showing the example of governance with human face and human heart. He regulated the importation of food items and suspended tariffs on importation of essencial food items to the relief of all and sundry. He also released grains from the national silos to check inflation and pumped N400 billion into the economy for the purpose of creating about 10 million jobs then. He also granted unconditional amnesty to the then South-South agitators and thereby opened way for negotiation with them in the interest of peace and harmony.
Although, such measures were far from being adequate for a country which was aspiring to become one of the biggest economies in 2020, the move was generally seen as a good beginning of a hopeful future. However, as soon as Yar’Adua died, all progressive steps were suspended and the national treasury was thrown open for audacious thieves to scoop upon with impunity.
The Jonathan Years
Now, it is evident that no miracle could have yielded any success based on a ramshackle foundation laid down for Nigerian economy by a Mathew (from the prison) who, as President, could hardly reason beyond the siege mentality of the prison yard from where he had emerged. If Goodluck Jonathan who succeeded Yar’Adua as President had sincerely meant well for Nigeria he would have known that the vessel which took this country’s Napoleon to the proverbial island of Elba was incapable of conveying Nigeria to the Cape of Good Hope.
Yusuf (Joseph), the son of Ya’qub (Jacob), did not know that he could have any solution to the then fundamental problem of Egypt. But the accident of history never ceases to play itself out. Without Yusuf, only Allah knows what the history of Egypt would have been today. And without a Pharaoh’s dream of drought, the story of Yusuf would have been totally different from what we now know of it.
Egypt of the 1970s
Yours sincerely was a student in Egypt in the 1970s when the hostility between that country and Israel was fierce. Egypt was then an ally of the (now defunct) Soviet Union while Israel was virtually a satellite of the United States. Not only did Egypt suffer isolation from NATO member countries but even the Soviet Union which was supposed to be the main ally of Egypt was not forthcoming with any meaningful assistance beyond the supply of light and medium range weapons. Thus, the Egyptian government had to buckle in firmly in other to fend for its people at that critical time.
Realizing the importance of food supply especially in a war situation, Egypt mobilized all her agricultural resources around the River Nile and forgot about any food importation. The result was tremendous as Egypt grew to become a food exporter rather than an importer that it had been for years.
Uganda for Instance
Less than three decades ago, Uganda, a sub-Sahara African country, found herself in the position of Egypt. A colossal drought broke out in that country killing thousands of people and virtually wiping out the entire cattle business in the country. No Pharaoh had any dreamed premonition and no Yusuf was in a prison to translate any dream into a solution.
What the Ugandan government did to find a solution was to reset the country’s agricultural focus. Rather than concentrating on tilling the already sapped land and rearing the cattle, which drought had eroded, a new focus was brought to bear. Uganda took to commercial ‘bee farming’ as a relieving alternative. The seriousness which the government of that country attached to the new focus was such that Uganda became a leading country in the production and exportation of honey and other bee products to Europe and the United States.
Nigeria’s Situation Today
Today, Nigeria is not afflicted by drought or famine. Neither is she engaged in any uncontrollable war. Yet, the fear in vogue is hunger compounded by insecurity. How this country arrived at such a deadly scourge is irrelevant for now. What is relevant is how to get out of it. Like Egypt of yore, Nigeria needed a ‘Yusuf’ to unravel the mystery surrounding the dream that brought this scourge about. With the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as President, that ‘Yusuf’ seems to be here. It is only left to Nigerians to learn a lesson from the Egyptian example by cooperating with the current government as the Egyptians of yore did with Yusuf who eventually solved their problem. Chief Audu Ogbe is now the Minister of Agriculture. Will he be the long awaited Yusuf?
It is in the interest of those in government, especially the legislators who are most active in sharing public funds, to let the national wealth spread across board legitimately if only to avoid the current Lagos situation where every house has become a prison in which the occupants are self-jailed voluntarily. To ignore the rule of law and shun justice in a land blessed with milk and honey is to cultivate trouble with insecurity in all its ramifications.
Observation
Where people are well educated and conscious of their rights; where they perceive wealth as a divine privilege and not an exclusive right of any group; where they see themselves as qualified but denied their legitimate entitlements; nobody can consign them to ignominy indefinitely. They will react in no uncertain terms. That was what obtained in the recent past which paved way for insurgency. It must not be allowed to continue. Let Nigeria grow from a country into a nation that we may all be proud to be her citizens. “….God does not change the situation of a community until such a community is ready for change”…. Q. 13:11
