By Sonnie Ekwowusi
You may have come across on the internet the reports of two bizarre incidents that speak volumes about the grinding poverty ravaging Nigerians. The two incidents allegedly occurred in 2018. The first incident was how a poverty-stricken mother of six living in Ilesha, Osun State, traded off her eldest daughter for a basket of garri. This mother allegedly went to the market one day with her eldest daughter to buy garri. After the garri seller had told her the price of the garri, she had no money to pay for it. Thereafter she deceitfully told the garri seller that she was leaving her eldest daughter whilst she rushed home to bring the money and pay for the garri which she was taking home with her. Never did the garri seller suspect that this poor mother had ingeniously traded off her daughter for the garri. After waiting in vain for this mother to come back and pay her for the garri as she promised, the garri seller quickly invited the police into the matter if not for anything to avoid being accused of kidnapping the girl. When the police arrived, they ordered the girl to take them to the home of her fleeing mother. On getting to this mother’s home, the police met her and her remaining daughters feeding on the garri. Before the police could interrogate her, she opened up and told the police that her family had been starving for days and consequently she had no other option but to trade off her eldest daughter for the garri in order to avert the death of her whole family. Unworried that the police might arrest her for false pretence and stealing, she pleaded with the police to allow her eldest daughter to join her and her sibling in eating the garri because she too had been starving for days. The Police wept. Thereafter they went away. Case closed.
The second incident is similar to the first. A certain poor Warri woman (Warri no dey carry last) was arrested for exchanging her child for a mudu of garri under the pretence of buying garri. This woman went to the market with her child. After the garri seller had delivered the garri to her and was expecting payment, the woman told the garri seller that she was leaving her child behind with her in order to quickly go to the other parts of the market and buy other things and thereafter would return and pay for the garri and pick up her child. But after waiting for hours and hours and not seeing the woman return as she promised, it dawned on the garri seller that the Warri woman had traded off her child with the garri. To cut the long story short, after the woman was arrested by the police, she made the following confession. “It’s President Buhari’s hard administration that caused it. I and my family and I have been starving for a very long time. I have 5 children, I decided to exchange one of them with a mudu of Garri.”
The aforesaid incidents may sound apocryphal or like fairy tales but they are negligible compared to the woeful poverty-related stories being told these days in Buhari’s Nigeria. I don’t think the Warri lady was too uncharitable or inconsiderate in tracing her predicament to President Buhari’s failed administration. The truth of the matter is that the economic hardship in the Buhari administration has led to the death of many Nigerians. I don’t know about you but I must tell you that I come face to face with the poorest of the poor in Nigeria almost day by day. For example, last week my intervention was needed in a certain hospital in Lagos (name withheld) where a middle-aged housewife was being detained for the inability of her husband to pay the outstanding balance of her hospital bills. The lady underwent a complicated surgery at the hospital. Her husband, a retired civil servant, was only able to offset half of the bill leaving a gargantuan sum of N2.7 million unpaid. Sobbing uncontrollably in front of me, this man claimed that God had told him that his wife would survive the surgery and live for a long time because he (the husband) did not steal government money while he was in government service. Moved by his faith, honesty and simplicity, I went to the hospital proprietor and told him to look at heaven and release this daughter of Eve from false imprisonment. He did. The poor lady regained her freedom. Her highly-elated husband took her home. Sad stories of this nature abound in Nigeria today. For the first time in the history of Nigeria she has become a suicidal country. Today Nigeria is ranked fifth in the world among countries whose citizens are most prone to commit suicide.
The most tragic is the simmering soaring prices of foodstuffs in Nigeria at the moment. When was the last time you went to the market to buy foodstuffs such as garri, rice, tomatoes, tubers of yam, egusi, pepper, egg and so forth?. A mudu of garri that sells N400 today could sell N1,400 tomorrow. Ordinary sachet of “pure” water now sells for N10. Meat is no longer affordable. Ditto for fish. A bag of rice now sells between N18,000 to N22,000. Nigerian farmers are in agony. Some of them have lost their farmlands to the ravaging Fulani herdsmen. The crops of others have been uprooted by the cows and cattle of the Fulani herdsmen.
President Buhari should look at heaven and have mercy on his fellow Nigerians. Taking care of the sick is a religious duty for all Muslims. Allah will not have mercy on anyone, except those who give mercy to other creatures. What does it profit Mr. President to be junketing to and fro London every three months for expensive medical treatment at the expense of tax-paying Nigerians who are dying of poverty in Nigeria? Meanwhile the World Poverty Clock has named Nigeria the poverty capital of the world with statistics showing that 87 million people live in abject poverty in Nigeria. It is no longer news that Nigeria has overtaken India as the poverty capital of the world. What perhaps is news is that Nigeria’s frightening poverty statistics, instead of diminishing, is increasing day by day. About 152 million Nigerians live on less than $2 a day, representing about 70 per cent of the country’s estimated population of 200 million.
It is wicked to think only about one’s welfare or one’s health. Obsessed with his Fulanization Policy and the open grazing right, President Buhari hardly spares a thought for poor farmers whose farm lands are consistently being destroyed by the cows and cattle of the Fulani herdsmen thus resulting in acute food shortage in Nigeria. This is sad. Life is live and let live. Whatever a man soweth so he reapest. When maximum dictator Sani Abacha was busy stealing government money and inflicting injuries on many Nigerians little did he know that he would die one day. This is it. This world is not our home. We are all wayfarers. Sooner or later all of us would one leave this world in answer to the call of our Maker.
In consideration of this timeless truth, Mr. President should lessen the worsening hardships and living conditions in Nigeria before it is too late. First, Mr. President should stop the Fulani herdsmen from destroying the crops and farmlands of farmers. The Buhari government should stop uttering the meaningless phrase, ” lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty” . Why? Because the phrase is a hoax. It is just a convenient catchphrase to give the impression that the government is doing something when in actual fact this government has been slumbering in the last six years. Amid the plummeting oil prices, the government should deploy millions of idle Nigerian young to meaningful mechanized agriculture. Instead of deceiving God and man with the dodgy phrase, ” lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty” the Buhari administration should within the next few months marshal out some concrete plans on how to intensive agricultural activities capable of raising the abysmal low level of food production in the country and by extension reducing poverty in Nigeria.
