Pray, what exactly does it mean when they say ‘the President approved money, but the money has not been released’?
Can someone explain that sentence to ordinary Nigerians because it sounded satanic in my ears in 2003 when I first heard ‘no cash backing’ and it sounds even more demonic, satanic, mean today, 23 years later.
Approved by whom? Held back by who? Delayed by who? For what purpose?
If the President has said yes, who is powerful enough to say, “Not yet”?
I am angry.
Not mildly irritated. Not disappointed. Just annoyed.
There comes a time when silence becomes an accomplice and I am not willing to be an accomplice to any evil. There comes a time when one must stop dressing incompetence in fine grammar. Today is one of those days. We cannot continue to call it “bureaucratic delays” when human beings are paying the price of sluggish files or slugs moving files with their lives, dignity and sanity.
Okay, let me back up to the story behind my anger.
Unless a miracle happened while I was sleeping, about 700 Nigerians in South Africa are reportedly stranded because funds approved for their evacuation or repatriation have not reached the airline that is saddled with the job of ferrying them back home. The deadline was June 30, yesterday. Many of these Nigerians in South Africa have already vacated their apartments because they were told they were coming home. Some have packed up their businesses and resigned from their jobs. They have sold whatever little they had left. They are living in uncertainty because somebody in one office has decided that a file should sleep on a table.
These desperate-to-return home cannot sleep but the file that will give them peace is sleeping. Every hour of delay has consequences. Every day of delay stretches hope thinner and while those files are moving from one desk to another, two more Nigerians were reportedly killed over the weekend. Those were somebody’s children, somebody’s parents. Their lives cut short because somebody or some groups of public officers think the lives of others can be kept in files.
This is where my anger boils over.
When public officials want to loot public funds, bureaucracy suddenly discovers how to sprint. Close your eyes and try to recollect, add up the zillions of naira that have been reported missing, stolen, misappropriated over the years.
Miraculously, the documents to facilitate their disappearance are signed overnight.
Approvals fly. Payments move with Olympic speed. Accounts are credited before cockcrow. Contracts that won’t be executed are packaged while you and I are sleeping.
It is an evil culture that did not start today. Those who have been part of it know what I mean.
It is only when it is the money meant to rescue ordinary Nigerians that bureaucracy suddenly develops arthritis.
Suddenly there are procedures and protocols. Processes and observations that are suspended for ‘paperwork to be done later’ show up with a lot of notes of ‘please clarify.’
Tell me, are those people delaying this money not indirectly playing with human lives? Has this negligence not become cruelty? At what point does official indifference become violence?
You may not have pulled a trigger, but if your deliberate delay leaves innocent people exposed to danger, what exactly should we call it?
Every public office exists for one reason: to serve Nigerians.
Not to frustrate Nigerians.
Not to punish Nigerians.
Not to remind us that government offices belong to a mysterious brotherhood where some people can cut short, delay, ruin other people’s lives and dreams.
This is why Nigerians have lost faith in our institutions. It is not because institutions cannot work. It is because too many people inside them have forgotten that behind every file is a human being.
Behind every memo is a family.
Behind every approval is somebody praying that government will finally remember that they exist.
Sadly, this same story leads us into another conversation that has dominated public discourse.
Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, in a call to encourage entrepreneurship, skills acquisition and support for small businesses, ran into a storm recently. Not because those harassing her do not understand the message she was trying to pass across. They know because they are educated. They not only understand English, they have a good command of the language. Which is why it was easy for them to twist everything out of shape. They do not like the messenger, so the message cannot be good. They do not like Mrs Tinubu, so her messages cannot be liked.
I like locust beans, iru, and I buy them in bowls of one thousand naira (1,000) each. I buy either in Oja’ba in Ibadan or Igbona in Osogbo. I had never seen a stack of 50 (which will be N50,000 at selling price) in front of my customers. Imagine if I give her 50k to add to her capital. I also like ‘ponmo’ (that is the spelling, please note) and I buy that in bulk too. N50,000 is a substantial addition for those traders. I am a farmer and I assure you that N20,000 ewedu from the farm is a good start. Seven crates of eggs at N6,000 is N42,000. It looks small but a housewife already getting 20 crates supply per week with 50k grant can and will be able to increase her weekly esusu.
There are grants being pushed from different bodies that I know of. As Yoruba elders would counsel, ‘E ma fi ote ba ohun to dara je.’ Let us not use conspiracy theories to spoil a good thing. Let us not get so emotional that we throw out the baby with the bath water.
Is it not true that the only thing you can build from the top is a grave? What do we have against small beginnings? Do we prefer the option of loan sharks to grants? Is it not high time we encouraged SMEs since government jobs are almost all gone? Shouldn’t we take second looks at the choices we make as elders and encourage young ones to make? Yes, things are hard now. It is even harder to find a soft option for anything anywhere anymore. But caught between the Nigerian rock and other hard places of the world, shouldn’t we look at our options carefully, wisely?
Predictably, those who dismissed Mrs Tinubu’s grants’ message with cynical laughter may think 50k is not elegant. They may sing: “Who wants to stay in Nigeria? Everybody wants to leave this damned country.”
Really?
And how is that working out for us, with hundreds risking everything just to become undocumented migrants abroad, including on the African continent?
People selling ancestral lands, families contributing life savings, mothers emptying their esusu accounts only for one member of the family to arrive abroad and become a street sweeper, dishwasher, sleeping four to a room. For not having all the facts before boarding the Japa plane, an only son is now a construction labourer hiding from immigration officers or someone who cannot visit a hospital or report abuse. The first university graduate of the family is now living permanently in fear of deportation.
Is this the dream?
Please don’t misunderstand me.
There is dignity in labour.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with sweeping streets. The problem is not the broom.
The tragedy is destroying everything you own just to hold that broom under circumstances that strip you of dignity and freedom when you had the option of starting something small with a quarter of what you paid to become a cab driver in a foreign land.
Many of these migrants were not poor before they left. Some had decent businesses. Some owned shops.
Some drove cars.
Some were respected artisans.
Some had thriving farms.
Then they listened to beautiful stories from
London, Toronto, Johannesburg, New York and Paris.
They imagined streets paved with dollars.
They forgot that every country has poor people.
Every country has unemployed people.
Every country has people sleeping under bridges.
Every country has those struggling to survive.
So they borrowed money at impossible interest rates only to discover that reality has no respect for fantasy. Now they cannot come home because returning empty-handed is considered shameful.
So they remain trapped, working endlessly, living invisibly, sending carefully selected photographs home while hiding the tears and loneliness.
Meanwhile, back in Nigeria, the same amount spent on visa fees, agents, flight tickets and processing could have started something meaningful: a tailoring shop, a bakery, poultry, transport business, a salon, a phone repair centre, a fashion business and so on.
Does that mean every business succeeds?
No. Business carries risk all over the world.
But so does illegal migration. Illegal migrants always end up paying too dearly for leaping before looking.
However, those with genuine opportunities overseas should go, learn, work, invest, prosper and represent Nigeria proudly.
The world belongs to everyone but let us stop romanticising suffering simply because it happens on foreign soil.
Poverty in pounds is still poverty.
Homelessness in dollars is still homelessness.
Exploitation in euros is still exploitation.
Illegal status remains illegal whether it is in Europe, America or South Africa.
Our tragedy is not merely that Nigerians leave. It is that too many leave without preparation, without legal pathways and without realistic expectations.
Then government compounds the pain through incompetence.
Imagine escaping Nigeria only to become stranded because your own government cannot move approved funds.
Imagine surviving xenophobia only to discover that paperwork from Abuja is now your greatest enemy.
Imagine packing your bags because your government told you help was coming.
Then help develops wings but refuses to fly.
This country exhausts even the strongest optimist.
Yet we must not surrender to hopelessness.
Nigeria has hardworking people from brilliant young entrepreneurs to resilient farmers and creative artisans. We have
Innovative technology founders, women building businesses from nothing and young men creating wealth and jobs outside of their university degrees instead of waiting endlessly for white-collar jobs.
These are the Nigerians government should empower, support and protect.
If we create an environment where enterprise thrives, fewer people will gamble their futures on dangerous migration routes.
If government keeps its promises promptly, fewer Nigerians will feel abandoned.
And if public officers remember that delay can kill, perhaps we shall stop mourning people whose only offence was believing that their country would not forget them.
As I write this, somewhere in South Africa, a Nigerian family is watching the calendar nervously, praying that government will do what government already approved.
Nigeria does not always fail because of lack of money. Our system fails because of the people standing between approval and action, those invisible hands that slow everything down with files and red tape.
These emperors of delay may never appear on television, never campaign for office but every day they quietly determine whether Nigerians live with dignity or despair.
And that, perhaps, is one of the greatest scandals of our public service.
A nation cannot move faster than its bureaucracy and when bureaucracy refuses to move, it does not just delay progress; it buries hopes and dreams.
Sometimes, tragically, it buries people.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
