An appeal to Buhari

Every Monday morning I get apprehensive of what the lead story would be headlined in most newspapers, particularly this unique medium. My palpitations usually quadruple because of the characteristic despondent news items. Let us take last week’s front-page banner of DAILY Sun: “Tougher times ahead as oil revenue drops”. This seeming perpetuity of hopelessness explains my daily trepidation as the rest of the week regales readers with similar reportage—nothing ever ameliorative, consolatory or therapeutic!
I have a strong belief that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) does not know how the less-privileged get on with survival in this country. He cannot feel them because our convoluted bureaucracy has so made it that our rulers (not leaders, please) are shielded from the rest of us as if we were potential enemies of the President. This systemic administrative lacuna which cascades from the First Citizen to local government chairmen has made public functionaries to be aloof and indifferent to the excruciating plight of the downtrodden.
Nobody should be deluded by public officials’ obfuscation of realities that tomorrow will be better than today. There is nothing that suggests such. Rather, current circumstances and anticipatory developments amid ominous signs ahead indicate that toughest times—not tougher moments—are already here without looming. Our squandered past has caught up us.  Last week I did a comparative analysis of the Buhari Presidency and his predecessor’s with the incontrovertible conclusion that Nigerians were better off under the immediate-past president’s tenure for multifarious reasons. It has never been so tragically bad since the liberation of this country from colonialists—whether civilian or military dispensation. Everything is confirmatory of autocracy where the people do not matter and the rule of law is trampled upon unchallenged. Nobody is accountable to anyone as our existential humanism pales into mediocrity with the social contract between the government and the people becoming mere rhetoric.
During the intolerant era of former President Ibrahim Babangida, it was the National Security Organization (NSO) that was used to terrorize “non-conformist” Nigerians. In the dictatorial days of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo it was the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that was let loose on oppositional politicians and those who did not support the “third-term agenda” like Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr., GCON and Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu. These days it is the Directorate of State Service (DSS) that has combined the attributes of NSO and EFCC and is unleashed on anyone who needs to be reminded of his past vis-à-vis “official manhandling” of PMB before now and the potency of power absoluteness in current exigencies in all its corruptive architecture on a landscape of witch-hunt.
The first hallmark is the geometric cost of virtually everything. If our country had not stagnated over time, sachet (packaged) water popularly known as “pure” water would not be an essential item today. It is a symbol of underdevelopment and environmental degradation that it has almost replaced public water supply. From N5 it had sold before the advent of this administration it now goes for N10 and likely to hit N20 per sachet, according to latest market intelligence report. This also explains why a governor will celebrate the sinking of a borehole in his state in this age!
The Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, recently alerted us to the fact that a bag of rice would be sold at N40,000 next month (up from the pre-Buhari price of between N7,000 and N11,500—depending on the brand and quality. In confirmation of that, the price has been galloping to that projection!
Tricycle tyres that used to go for between N3,500 and N5,000 two years ago now cost N10,000 for one. Have you noticed the meteoric rise of the cost of bread and other staple condiments? The standard (family) size custard container of crayfish that was bought about two months ago for N1,200 now goes for N4,000 at Oyingbo (Lagos) market. A tablet of antiseptic/medicated soap that sold for N120 two months ago is now N350…the list is endless! The unfortunate aspect of it all is that these prices are unlikely to come down in our time, if ever.
Meanwhile, closure of companies, below-capacity operational challenges, institutional low productivity and corporate job losses have become a routine even in sectors that were hitherto considered impenetrable. These days, upward salary adjustment/review is an anathema in the conflict of job security. Of course, unemployment is no longer an issue as it has become a way of life here. Finance Minister Mrs. Kemi Adeosun will gleefully tell those who are interested to listen that it is “technical recession” that will soon give way for El Dorado. For anyone gainfully employed or self-engaged today, there is, hyperbolically, a retinue of beggarly dependants and potentially multitudinous assistance seekers.
In the milieu of pangs of hardship and shrinking personal income, relationships between the sexes are no longer dignified as everything now boils down to finance. It predates humanity quite all right, but the level of lasciviousness induced by the stark realities of the day is such that even housewives nowadays openly solicit for liaison without any qualms. In the same breath, spinsters now see monetized affairs with men as a survivalist imperative!
No man runs after any lady these days—what is required is just “body language” or display of peanuts. Indeed, the capital of one of the South East states is known as a haven for free girls with brothels dotting ubiquitously as hotels! Again, before 2015, you could count the number of “slaughter houses” in the town under reference. Other states, too, are not immune to the decadence.
All the obfuscating jargons by Mrs. Adeosun, Information Minister Lai Mohammed, who was virulently critical of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency and the PDP government is now the prevaricate master of double-speak amid amplified gobbledygook by our man Femi Adesina since he crossed to the other side have all neither ameliorated our circumstances nor served any palliation. Nobody in government has really come out to constructively tell us why things are the way they are and what government is doing in the intervening period if only to soothe our frayed nerves while the challenges subsist. Their communication is like the masses are the cause of our own meltdown and should, therefore, bear the consequences and hardship occasioned by the Buhari experimentation going on for two years!
Last Friday, I bought a bag of lime for the treatment and purification of my borehole water in the absence of the usually irregular public water supply for N6,000 after much haggling. In April 2015, this same purifier cost me N2, 800. From my interactions with the dealer, this same item may hit N10,000 next year. According to the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, a bag o rice will cost as much as N40,000 next month! What are we expected to do with the national minimum wage at N18,000 monthly? Let us all relocate to our villages and leave the cities for government “pikins”. All these officially –engineered perilous times made me to use “fatalism” here last Monday where I was supposed to have employed “fatalities”! It took an eagle-eyed reader to correct the unusual slip.
Let me end this lamentation by strongly declaring that Nigerians will face the worst of times in the next two years (2017-2019), particularly with regard to the cost of living! However, with faith in God, unmerited favours and divine solutions await us. Whether the times ahead will be tough or not is no longer the issue—but by what magnitude and to what extent?
My candid advice: be prayerful, diligent, alert and optimistic in the face of all odds which are largely a function of inept leadership, maladministration and poverty of governance.    The real change will come in 2019 if we, hopefully, survive the current obnoxious profile suffused in callousness amid concomitant perilous times!. Those anonymous readers who send me cowardly feedback of stupefaction should post such to Alhaji Lai Mohammed and Otunba Femi Adesina.