15-10-2024.

By now everybody around the globe is aware that Nigerias have never been in a very difficult, sometimes often fatal, situation as NOW. And the leadership in Abuja, particularly President Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, keep appealing to us to exercise more patience that better things are going to come our way in the not too distant a future. In other words, there is the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. A pleasing and appealing talk, that.

Except that the Abuja lords of the Nigerian manor are not walking their talk. They lead a very ostentatious lifestyle, which the world’s richest people would envy. They live such an opulent life that did not portray the country as home to millions of people who sleep at night with an empty stomach.

The Nigerian US based Professor Faruk Kperogi, recently hit the nail in the head when he wrote that the trio of President Tinubu, his wife, the First Lady, Senator Remi Tinubu and the President of the Nigerian Senate and former Governor of Ebonyi State, Senator Godwill Akpabio were “Mocking Nigerians’ Hardship”.

Take Mr. President for instance. A report by a reputable leading national newspaper in the country said that the President has had all the four tyres of one of his official vehicles changed at an UNBELIEVABLE sum of $200,000, which translates to $50,000 (75 million Naira) per (one) tyre. As if that is not enough, many more tyres of the same value were also brought to the villa by some ’contractors’ whose identity is debatable because the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in its files described the companies as ‘dormant’.

Some witty commentators said even if the tyres would be permanently free of the wear and tear caused by use over time, the amount alleged to have been spent on the purchase of the four tyres was still too much. The Villa claimed that the four tyres cost exactly the same amount that the whole car, a brand new Toyota Jeep, cost, which was $200,000.

The President’s Chief of Staff, Right Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, who was the immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, would probably claim that Mr. President used his personal money to purchase the tyres. He said the same thing when the Nigerian money was used to purchase a brand new plane, brand new yacht and brand new American made General Motors jeep for the President, not long ago.

In his huge oil sector business, Mr. President smiles to the bank every minute of the day, as the several businesses run for him by others milk his poor compatriots, who barely manage to survive the harsh economic policies he wrought on them.

The Ordinary President, aka, Dr. Hamas Isaah, recently made another call on President Tinubu, telling him that he had brought severe hardship to millions of Nigerians while he himself and some people in the country live in obscene luxury. The Ordinary President had a couple of weeks ago told the President that there were hunger and anger in the country, and unless there was a change for the better, he might as well forget about the second term. This writer reported that warning in an article titled, ‘Tell The President, Ordinary President’.

The First Lady was reported to have doled out N1 billion as ‘donation’ to Obafemi Awolowo University Ibadan (OUI), the South West of Nigeria. Many people are (rightly) asking the one billion dollar question, Where did she get the money, since the office of the First Lady is not recognised by the Nigerian Constitution, or was the money from her own pocket’? The poor millions In Nigeria await her answer.

If the money was from the government coffers, then her ‘donation’ was illegal, as she has no appointment to warrant giving her such huge amount even as she is the President’s wife. But if the ‘donation’ was from her pocket, then the first generation Universities of Ahmadu Bello at Zaria, in the north, and Nsukka in the east, are also waiting for her ‘generosity’ to reach them. Her husband is the President of the whole Nigeria, not a section of it. After all, the First Lady never gets tired of advising poor Nigerians to exercise a little more patience, and that all her husband’s biting economic policies would yield positive results in the near future.

Well, for the millions of poor people in the country of abundant mineral wealth, Mr. President’s economic policies are unbearable at the moment, and talking of what would happen in the future is not for the hungry and angry, or even the dead, but for the living, to fret about.

As for the Senate President, he advised the hungry and angry masses of the country that “People should place the love for their country above financial gains. That is why many of us choose to remain here”. Really, are you telling the truth?

In a country where the the President Tinubu led Federal Government reluctantly agreed to pay workers a mare minimum salary of N70,000 per month, but pays the Senate President an astronomical ‘salary’ of billions of naira every month, it is not very difficult to understand where Senator Akpabio is coming from.  With his salary and many allowances to smile to the bank every month, he is staying put In Nigeria for anything but the love of the country.

Everyone would not mind to say the same thing, similar thing or even more self serving and demeaning thing for a fraction of what the Senate President gets every month, especially if the person does not have to remain in that ‘retirement home’ perpetually, for the fear of eventually getting caught up by the long arm of the law on account of illegally ‘eating’ from the Commonwealth in the past. Many people ‘elected’ to the Nigerian upper chamber of parliament consider it as just that, and are therefore there not to contribute to the development of the country.

The unfeeling action of the Villa is one of the reasons that African leaders were described, tongue in cheek, by the Western media, as being the richest in the world. They are reported to always take the best hotels in Lower Manhattan, the most expensive part of New York, whenever they are in the city for any unnecessary United Nations (UN) event. Their White colleagues, however, book at inexpensive hotels, in some inexpensive areas of the city, or even stay in accommodations in their respective Missions.

But for the daily assistance rendered by the Foundation of some wealthy business people and others not as wealthy, but wealthy all the same, many people in the country would have voluntarily made an early exit from this world, and end their daily suffering in Nigeria for good.

Let not those voluntarily assisting say that this writer is bothering them too much, but MORE  is NEEDED of them in the area of FEEDING in all parts of the country. No section of the country is without good rich individuals among the people that inhabit it, in this land which is supposed to be tremendously rich in mineral wealth.

I said  ‘supposed’ because the mineral wealth is only harnessed and utilised by the leadership over the years, but especially NOW, when most of the rulers are swimming in illegally acquired billions and trillions of naira, while millions of the country’s citizens wallow in abject poverty, deprivation and want.

Nigeria has never been lucky to have leaders who lead for the people, not for themselves, since the First Republic, the second and third military regimes, as well as the second coming of the military after the Second Republic. Since then, it has been one corrupt government after another, to the extent that the country’s yesterday was a lot better than its today. The worst of them all is the serving government, which has rendered most of its citizens very very poor.

In fact, survival for most Nigerians under the present administration is a Herculean task that only the fittest go through the daily routine with their sanity intact. But only just.

Apart from the chronic corruption, there are also chronic cases of insecurity in all parts of the country, and which have so far defied all government ‘efforts’ to end them. Many fingers are pointing at the complicity of powerful individuals in the country, who appear to be ‘untouchables’ for now. As a result of the menace of the several forms of insecurity in Nigeria, not a few people sleep with their two eyes wide open. Some in fact and deed, sleep on top of trees to avoid the terrorists who terrorise their villages.

Least I forget to mention, Nigerians are subjected to two collapses of the National Grid in as many days, with the second one lasting for as many days, so far. It is in spite of the Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu’s boasting that Nigeria was NOW producing 5,500 (ONLY) megawatts of electricity in the country, and that 40% (ONLY) of the 230 million Nigerians get up to 20 hours of electricity per day. This is 64 years after the country got its Independence from Britain.

May God get us out of the fierce and unkind grip of bad leaders, and their evil ‘employees’, such as the bandits, who make life a living nightmare for many people, especially in the north western part of the country.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Abuja.