20-11-2024.

Only last week I wrote an article pleading for assistance and support for the success of the Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO). It is the intention of the company to produce and supply sufficient electricity to, especially, some key organisations in its states of mandate, Kano, Katsina and Jigawa. I wrote that it was incumbent on one and all, including its customers, to make the company succeed.

However, just yesterday, I received a bill for the monthly payment of N35,000 from the company, notifying me that the tariff has been increased from the N33,000 it recently used to be. Before that hike, the monthly electricity rate I used to pay was N15,000, but was increased to N33,000, as I have supposedly become a ‘Band A’ customer. The hike is the third one in less than two years of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu led regime, whose delight appears to be to increase the hardship of the poor citizens in the country.

I do not blame KEDCO for yet another electricity increase for (mostly) providing me with DARKNESS instead of LIGHT, but I blame the person who pretends to be the president of my country, and who is supposed to serve me ‘to the best of his ability’. He is definitely serving even well above his ability, but his foreign Western masters, and his tribe. As for whatever happens to the rest of the country, he appears not to care, one little bit.

Most of his tribe’s people, including his biological daughter, Adetoun Tinubu, rejected him resoundingly at the poll, but they seem to be the leading beneficiaries in his bigoted regime of very incompetent cronies. His cabinet and the heads of monied agencies and parastatals are mostly made up of people from his tribe. Even when the failure of some of them is very obvious, the president still retained them after his shambolic cabinet reshuffle.

Only last week the (IMF) approved for Nigeria a loan of $2.5 billion, whose terms of repayment will make the country even poorer, according to an analyst. According to the analyst, since Nigeria is blessed with human and material resources, she would have been better off without taking the loan, given the stringent conditions attached to it, but which Present Tinubu went ahead to take, to the detriment of the country.

The same IMF had a couple of weeks ago in Abuja, Nigeria, observed that the economic reforms of the present administration were not working as other African countries’s reforms were working for their citizens. 

What the IMF failed to say, since it encourages and expects it, anyway, is that most of the loan money will disappear into the pockets of the takers of the loan, and their cronies, at the expense of the beleaguered and hapless citizens of the country, who were supposed to be the beneficiaries.

Presidents and heads of government, whether civilian or military, take the oath of office to fiercely ‘protect, defend and fight for the interests of the nation’, but President Tinubu appears to be in a hurry to ‘hand over the Nigerian nation quickly on a platter of gold’ to his Western controllers’.

As if the myriad of the so called economic reforms introduced by him since he took over the rulership of the country less than two years ago are not enough with the fatal consequence of sending poor citizens to their early graves, the president has recently sent a bill to the corruption ridden National Assembly (NASS) for approval for the introduction of more measures that are wickedly designed to send even more poor citizens to their early deaths.

Pervasive poverty and hardship all over the country were the result of the on going MONUMENTAL corruption in the country, in the name of the so called economic reforms. The extreme poverty, lack and hardship being experienced in the Nigeria had never been this BAD.

The corruption can be seen in the recent exposure of the (corrupt) misadventure of a key administration official, who recently DEMANDED an up front payment of $1 million before an appointment to head a ‘lucrative’ federal government agency was facilitated by him. The official, who is known to be with the president for a very long time, works close to the president inside the Villa.

And that is only a fraction of the picture of the monumental corruption that has become the daily staple of those in the corridors of power, at both executive, legislative and judicial levels. Most of the evil economic sabotage in the country is perpetrated by its so called leaders on constant basis every day.

The president has turned Nigeria into a two-broadly divided groups in the country. These are the group of the few obscenely rich people, and the stingingly poor citizens, who are in the majority. The middle class has completely disappeared in the country under the present clueless regime, and the resulting two groups are diametrically opposed to each other.

The first group, made mostly of rent takers, live a fabulously obscene lifestyle in the society, while the later live in abject poverty in the country. The internet was founded by Tim Bernard Lee to connect the world, whereas Tinubu appears to become Nigeria’s President to distance Nigerians from one another.

His ill intentioned economic reform policies have made compatriots, who are siblings, acquaintances or friends, to distance one another to the extent that telephone calls or text messages are often not replied to by the recipient, for the apprehension that the caller may be calling to ask for an assistance (probably) in cash or kind.

And it would appear to be tantamount to signing one’s own death warrant to snitch on economic saboteurs in the country, because the next minute, the culprits would round up the exact same people who informed the relevant authorities of their nefarious activities, and give them the torture of their lives, with some of the patriotic compatriots even making the ultimate sacrifice during the process.

If the country continues on the path to barrenness (of people), who is  the president and his Western controllers going to abuse? Tinubu, sure would find himself out in the cold, while his controllers would be beside themselves with joy, as that is exactly what they want in the first place. The situation would give them an unfettered access to the abundant material resources in the barren country that used to be called Nigeria.

May God bring enough sense to the Nigerian electorate to reject those who do not have His fear in their hearts, and bring forth, as leaders, those who sincerely believe in, and fear, Him.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.