Tunde Chris Odediran
If we accept that design matters in erecting great structures, then the economic hardships facing Nigerians right now is their own making.
Nigerians, as collective designers of their democracy, have been poor in vision and execution and must take responsibility for erecting the leadership, political and economic mess that everyone is now an expert at moaning about.
Architecture in nation-building is a continuous exercise, each generation adding its own verse to the grand symphony.
As challenges evolve, so too people respond creatively.
From adapting to economic changes to integrating new ideas or electing responsive leaders, citizens as designers remain at the forefront, ensuring that the structure mirrors their desire.
There is an intrinsic power in the choices we make.
What we do or accept shape the realities around us, such as, well, elected representatives who ravish the treasury at a time when the people are neediest.
Nigerians as designers of the national framework, have been terrible.
That includes you and me. We created it and moan about it daily.
While many complain, they also call those who are ready for change as unpatriotic or miscreants.
Just check the social media.
Who can count the number of do-nothing contents on Nigerian WhatsApp groups that are roads to nowhere?
Even in the darkest days of military rule in Nigeria, I doubt if lack and hunger was this ravaging, widespread and excruciatingly painful.
In a reversal of fortune, as the naira fell weekly, and a bag of rice sold for ₦70,000, a common front is emerging about confronting the rising cost of living, unleashed by the double whammy of oil and foreign currency subsidy removals
The crash of the national currency has exposed many to an economic reality that is unbearably harsh.
It is so bad that the middle class is caught in an economic tornado familiar to the poor.
The middle economic class has been consumed by the selfish satisfaction of its wants, such as the weekend parties, leaving the vulnerable to their predicament – and they are welcome to the club.
In a reversal of fortune, as the naira fell weekly, and a bag of rice sold for ₦70,000, a common front is emerging about confronting the rising cost of living, unleashed by the double whammy of oil and foreign currency subsidy removals.
With the middle class caught in the trap of the lower, everybody feels the pinch. The nation cries to its politicians, in the hope of getting crumbs from the master’s table. None is coming.
As ordinary people get crushed by the weight of inflation, what do we get from the politicians? The disappearance of funds allocated to alleviate their sufferings.
Why do political leaders need to care?
They have paid in advance for these sufferings, if you really think hard about it.
I hope I am not the only one who remembers how the people collect cash for votes.
Let’s face it – the politicians have paid upfront and are not required to reimburse just because of inflation.
The dysfunctional democratic structure is not a problem created during the 2023 general elections.
It’s always been there.
The economic crisis is both a culmination of deep-seated failure of citizenship, which has created a monster of a government, and the greed of leadership.
Our government is a multi-story monstrosity designed and constructed by the people!
It is only managed by politicians who have to pass through the sewer of Nigerian party system and are full of dirt.
Crooks have been training newer crooks for far too long.
We are now at a point at which the political party system has morphed into the beast of no nation – the monstrous government, the intolerable that unleashes transgressions upon its people, which Fela Kuti described in his 1989 song.
While people scramble for garri and bread, our politicians buy themselves bullet-proof ₦165 million automobiles protecting them from angry opponents or protesters.
When the people go hungry, politicians and their families eat fine food and drink expensive whiskeys behind their gated communities or villas abroad.
Bob Marley deacribed the scenario in the 1974 song, Dem Belly Full (but We Hungry).
The leaders are cut off from the people.
They blew the bridge up, such that they could not even figure out how to alleviate the sufferings of their people. But Marley also wrote that an hungry man is an angry man.
Nigerians are becoming angry these days. People are looking at their conditions and questioning if there is indeed a government.
The government they installed is filled with people who cannot feel their pains. They’ve created tin gods of the political class.
The leaders are dishonorable, unprincipled and disreputable.
These are the kinds of leaders who take financial allocation to the black market to line their pockets, causing the naira to plunge in value as the people groan.
An analysis by the BusinessDay newspaper provided a statistical insight into the connection between federal disbursements and the value of the currency.
We are now at a point at which the political party system has morphed into the beast of no nation – the monstrous government, the intolerable that unleashes transgressions upon its people, which Fela Kuti described in his 1989 song
The people serve their leaders.
They give them all they have.
They encourage them to steal. They do not make any demands. And they are paying a price for what they built.
Blame not the politicians. The problem is of our making.
The people built this. Those who collected cash every electoral season.
They made bad investments. Those who support politicians with bad records made this happen.
And those who make no demand on leadership are as guilty of being bad architects.
Nigerians have neither been frugal no shrewd in making political choices.
The political class has mastered the people but the people are too gullible to know that politicians have no love.
Politicians are not trading anything just because the naira is falling.
They are not accepting lower salaries, allowances or emoluments in order to reduce the cost of governance.
They still live in luxury.
They give up nothing for the people.
But the people now have to trade everything to support their fat leaders.
For some it is a meal or two per day, or fewer hours of electricity, reduced trips, smaller entertainment expenditure or kids sent to worse schools.
Nigerians are innovators. We are better than anybody at inventing various ways of suffering.
The only thing we are poor at is in creating a good society we deserve.
Ask a typical Nigerian to organize with others to agitate, they become antagonistic or fatalistic.
They would not accept Nelson Mandela’s reasoning that all changes seem impossible until it’s done.
Politicians will not change Nigeria on their own; neither will they become all of a sudden caring and loving.
The people will have to wake up, organize themselves strategically and make demands on power.
God will not come down to tie anybody’s show laces.
Social design and architecture are deliberate; not mere embellishments.
The people have to weave the fabric of a strong national structure for a sustainable future.
Now.
