By Olatunji Ololade
Materialism has failed the world over. Compulsive philistines and prescient think-thanks attack grievous social problems – mostly self-inflicted – with paper bullets. They are peashooters trying to collapse Gibraltar.
In Nigeria, however, we see combustive ‘change’ pulse with lust and self-interest among political personae. But the electorate do not know better. They repeatedly fall for the same ruse.
Both politicians and electorates are, however, caught in a familiar cycle of cannibalism, often enacted by characters, who attack and retreat in obsessive rhythms of victory and defeat.
The electorate has caught Sappho’s fever; that is why voters recycle familiar tormentors via the ballot box. They have caught Olohun Iyo’s bug hence they sway to the melody of supernal choirs and vanish to the lure of infernal conductors – or deceptive politicians if you like.
The politics of domination by deceit, violence, and deep pockets is implicit in Nigerian culture, and this escalates at charged historical moments, like the present. Even in the throes of the coronavirus aka COVID-19, large segments of the electorate ignore the ravage of bad governance, and go to war, online and offline, to defend the honour of the presiding oligarchs.
Ultimately, they guard their tormentors’ right to keep exploiting and dominating them. We have seen this happen in successive ‘civilian’ governments from 1999 to date. Its a function of ignorance. I would call it the ritualisation of eye and mind to witlessness.
The bêtise of such heedlessness manifests around us in real-time. The eye and mind elect narcissistic, bigoted personae as galvanizing objects, and then formalise the relation via votes at election time.
Ignorance is the first rung of the ladder leading to death. It precedes the plunge to nothingness. Nigeria must be guided by this truth through the pandemic. Our increasing vulnerability to COVID-19, for instance, is yet another manifestation of our plummet down the steep vale of ignorance.
It was ignorance that drove state governors to acquire toxic chemicals to rid the public space of COVID-19 via fumigation. Against the rule of wisdom and uncommon sense, they dumped toxic chemicals on communities in their domain as a preventive measure and solution to COVID-19, while their aides cheered and polluted mediasphere with contrived photo ops.
Cleaning with simple disinfectants and providing sanitisation stations in public places were cheaper, more sensible alternatives but supposed state agents needed to flaunt fumigation gizmo in exaggerated onslaughts against COVID-19 in public space.
Disinfectants are ill-suited for dispersal via fogging machines, they are solvents applied to surfaces to kill microbes argues Paul Erubami. Rather than drown the citizenry in poisonous fumes, the governors should redirect their energies at more simplified testing, humane quarantine measures, contact-tracing, physical distancing awareness, and efficient distribution of palliatives.
Ignorance and greed stirred the initial reluctance of the health and science ministries, to explore opportunities presented in the nation’s herbal endowments at fighting COVID-19 and any homegrown palliative or vaccine by any other African country.
For instance, prominent public functionaries, revealed a source, wished that Madagascar’s herbal therapy, COVID-Organics, failed at clinical trials because they were wary of losing contingency funding and ‘lootable’ loans accessible via international lenders, she said.
A clinical evaluation of the spending of the contingency fund of NGN984 million ($2.7 million) reportedly released to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the additional NGN6.5 billion ($18 million) mooted afterward must be done by relevant state agencies, the media and civil societies.
Likewise, the expenditure of the N500bn COVID-19 Crisis Intervention Fund purportedly established for the upgrade of healthcare facilities at the national and state levels, must be done to ascertain if the fund administrators truly committed the funds to target projects.
Right now, there are no social safety measures and intervention schemes for society’s handicapped: the deaf, blind, homeless are left to the ravage of the elements. Leprosariums, orphanages, geriatric homes, to mention a few, are ignored in ongoing intervention efforts.
Before COVID-19, Nigeria grappled with terrorism, kidnap for ransom, child and sex trafficking, armed robbery, homelessness, mental health problems, divorce, collapse, and corruption of the family unit. These are social problems requiring sustainable welfare policies but the country’s lack of a visionary and humane leadership denied the citizenry such benefits.
There is currently no social welfare programme that offers health care assistance, non-discriminatory entrepreneurial loans, food stamps, and unemployment compensation, among others to deserving citizenry divides. The absence of such initiatives wreaked untold havoc on the citizenry at the outbreak of COVID-19, leading to increased crime, for instance.
While government intervention efforts focused on the poor citizenry, presumed middle-class segments have lost their jobs, suffered arbitrary salary cuts, and lack of access to welfare relief that could help them cope with the economic hardship foisted by COVID-19.
There are no housing subsidies, energy and utility subsidies, and assistance for other basic services to individuals that are most affected by the pandemic, notes Ozili.
At the backdrop of these challenges, the numbers of the unemployed sky-rockets. A 2019 World Bank report shows that Nigeria created about 450,000 new jobs in 2018, partially offsetting the loss of jobs in 2017. And while over five million Nigerians entered the labour market in 2018, the number of unemployed increased by 4.9 million in 2019.
More radical estimates indicate that over 18 million youths were unemployed by the end of 2019. Many more have lost their livelihoods in the wake of COVID-19.
Even the purported employment of 774, 000 youths by the federal government as part of a Special Public Works Programme aimed at cushioning the economic effects of COVID-19 has run into a gridlock. Of course, it was an ill-fated, knee-jerk reaction to rising unemployment and the pandemic.
Nonetheless Nigerians must use this crisis as an opportunity to reconstruct the power equation, redistribute social privileges, reinvigorate civil societies, and dormant economies.
The public healthcare system must be overhauled with better social safety nets and driven to earn foreign exchange. And this can never be achieved by recycling the incumbent ruling class in power, come 2023.
Something’s got to give. Renaissance hierarchies are dramatized in the noisy climax of gladiator politics. The average voter must re-emerge decisively as political personae of a renaissance Nigeria, come 2023.
He must re-emerge as the culture hero and worker of marvels: the farmer, painter, plumber, sculptor, street trader, student, unemployed graduate, and manual labourer must reprise their roles as fearless change-makers, irreconcilable to visions of them as pawns and inferior social elements.
In the ongoing duel with the pandemic, the ultimate purpose of families, states and nations, is to breathe. Its a sublime irony: man labours to breathe in an atmosphere corrupted by his labour for material wealth.
The relentless drive for profits birthed COVID-19, the nondescript virus that tamed the champions of industry, nuclear warlords, mortal destroyers of the ecosystem, political minions, and juggernauts.
To survive at a time like this, the Nigerian voter must quit participating in heavily choreographed elections, in which the demands of corporations, individuals, and banks are paramount.
He must vie to tilt power in Nigeria’s interest. It’s time to take back what’s ours. Yet slogans and scathing bromides are hardly the way to go in reclaiming Nigeria’s soul from the fangs and talons of raptorial oligarchs.
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