Let us pray…
Our ‘fada’, who art in the Rock, pathos is thy love, thy government’s crush. Thy pain is killing, as in your predecessor’s government. Relieve us this day, our daily woes. And forgive us our foolishness, as shown in those who voted for you. Lead us not into deeper woes, but deliver us from death by hunger, thy will is our command, forever and ever. Amen!
There is no denying the fact that Nigerians are going through a lot this season. The pain in the land is palpable enough that one can comfortably slice it with a kitchen knife. For young parents and struggling Nigerians, January is a telling month. After the expenses of the Yuletide, there January bills await. A little wonder that the month is considered the longest.
But Nigerians have reason to be thankful to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, our ‘compassionate’ president and ‘fada’ of the masses. Looking down from the opulence of Aso Rock Villa, President Tinubu decided to have compassion on the hapless citizens. His government, we were told, would be doling out the sum of N75,000 each to 70 million Nigerians!
A compassionate father like Tinubu deserves our veneration. I read the report, and I marvelled at the ‘generosity’ of our president and his father-figure composure at all times. The ‘Spirit’ came over me like the Day of Pentecost, and I was inspired to compose the opening prayer – a parody of the Lord’s Prayer – in appreciation of our dearly beloved president. When a matter goes beyond weeping, my elders counsel that one should weave a joke around it. Like they say on the streets, I cannot come and kill myself by myself!
The Lord’s Prayer, otherwise known as Pater Noster or Our Father, is the prayer template given by Jesus Christ to His followers. The beauty of the model is that it contains everything mortals can ask from the Creator. Bible scholars note that the prayer contains seven petitions. This is the season of fasting and prayer by the Pentecostal world. I commend suffering Nigerians to the petitions contained in the Pater Noster. When a man knows where the affliction comes from, he needs no genius to proffer solutions. President Tinubu needs our veneration; he is giving us palliative to soothe the pain he inflicted on us the very day he took the mantle of leadership!
If I were to present a paper in Oral Literature, I would write on the topic: “Tinubu and Ajelójúonílé.” For those who are not familiar with the name, Ajelójúonílé is a tiny rat known in my local parlance as Eku Edá. Modern Yoruba usage gives it the descriptive name: Ajelójúonílé (He that eats in the presence of the house owner). It dares the owner of the house to do his worst!
The description illustrates the boldness of the rat which betrays its miniature figure. You find it in virtually every home. Very audacious, Ajelójúonílé crawls out of its burrow to eat the stocks in the home. It cares not if the owners are around. In fact, Ajelójúonílé comes out to eat the family patrimony when least expected and walks back majestically to its hole before the owners know what has happened.
The most striking peculiarity of Ajelójúonílé is its ability to bite without the victim realising it. It does that when the victim is deep asleep. It bites, blows air to soothe the pain and peels off the victim’s skin around the heels. The victim wakes up to discover blisters around the heels, which look inconsequential in the first instance. The victim only feels the pain when it attempts to walk.
Incidentally, killing Ajelójúonílé is not an easy task. The rat moves fast into the nearest closet. Most ‘hunters’ of Ajelójúonílé end up inflicting further pain on themselves, especially when the family engages in group ‘hunting’. Its tiny nature allows it to manoeuvre easily. How do people eradicate Ajelójúonílé, the rat that inflicts pains and applies soothe?
Nigerians should ask themselves this question at this crucial moment in the nation’s history. How do we navigate the current pain in the land? How do we ensure that in the next round of elections, the nation does not fall into the hands of incompetent leadership again?
As we ponder on this, we should not forget that our current husband is as wise as Ogungbe, the marksman hunter. Ògúngbè’s target, Àyáá (a species of monkey) is equally smart. In the game of wisdom, Àáyá limps, to deceive the hunter about its acrobatic agility, while Ògúngbè also stoops to cover up his height and ability to shoot high (Àyáá gbón, Ògúngbè náà gbón; Àáyá tiro, Ògúngbè náà lósòó). Who wins?
The government of President Tinubu has all the characteristics of Ajelójúonílé. It crawls on us all without knowing, bites us off and blows air to ameliorate the pain. We only wake up to discover the damage the rat had done to our heels over the night. And before we could complain, the government throws another talkability at us! With Tinubu, it is obvious that we have taken our promiscuity to Danimo’s house (A ti d’óko dé’lé dánímó)!
How many are we in Nigeria? I mean, what is our real figure as a people? We have had population projections in the last three decades or more. There is no demographic delineation that shows our social stratification of the poor, the poor-of the-poor and the rich and the-rich-of the rich. The only thing close to that is the recent revelation of President Tinubu, who, on a national media chat, said that the economic woes of his 19-month administration had reduced Nigerians driving five Rolls Royce to driving Honda. The only stratification the President forgot in the media parley is the rest of us who had Toyota Corolla, 2003 models, but who now use ‘Foot Wagen’.
When the righteous is on the throne, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people mourn, the Scripture records in Proverbs 29:2. Preachers of all Faiths ascribe the quality of listening ears to the Almighty. The same goes for President Tinubu, our ‘fada’ in the Aso Rock Villa. Like Yahweh listened to the cries of Israelites in the land of Egypt, President Tinubu has decided to listen to our wailing.
In his generosity and kindness, 70 million of us are going to get N75,000 each to cushion the effects of hardship caused! Tinubu’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, first disclosed this penultimate week while appearing on the Arise Television’s programmes, “The Morning Show.”
The minister said that the government intended to share the largesse in all the 36 states of the Federation using the National Identity Number (NIN). And he was not joking as he reiterated that President Tinubu’s target “is that we should target 15 million households. And an average household is about 4 to 5. We are discussing here roughly about 70 million households with about N75,000 per person this year.” The aim of President Tinubu “is to combat severe poverty and establish a more comprehensive social safety net including the project.”
What President Tinubu intends to do with his N75,000 palliative is exactly what Ajelójúonílé does to its unsuspecting victims. It is not funny that the man whose administration caused the “severe poverty” is the one trying to combat its creation through the N75,000 palliative, with focus on the “poorest of the poor!”
“We are doing the data capturing, but for now, the poorest of the poor that we have in our data is only 1.4 million with NIN. We are working with NIMC, deploying resources, and conducting training. NIMC has brought in more devices under a program with the World Bank to assist us in data capturing for those without NIN numbers.” Those are the ‘reassuring’ words of the minister.
When Minister Yilwatda mentioned that the money would be distributed using NIN, and that was also parroted by Aliyu Audu, Tinubu’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, I was tempted to ask which NIN? I recall that in the last six months, I had had to either go to my bank or my telephone service providers to register, re-register, or correct my NIN. I also know that a lot of Nigerians are having issues with their NIN either for bank transactions or telecommunication purposes. A check on the pages of all dailies will show how many Nigerians pay for Change of Name adverts daily all in the name of wrong NIN! It is the same NIN that Yilwatda and Audu are projecting as a flawless system.
But that is the way of this government and its immediate predecessor. We cannot forget in a hurry that during the COVID-19 epidemic, when all schools were shut down because of the nationwide lockdown, the Gaskiya government of President Muhammadu Buhari spent billions of Naira to feed school children!
Mystery and deceit are the Siamese twins’ children of this administration since the All Progressive Congress (APC) took over power in 2015. If Fela Anikulapo were to be around, he would have done a remix of his album, “Government Magic”. It was that same magic that the APC deployed in the build up to the 2023 elections when it announced that it had registered 45 million members across the country.
The Governor Mala Bunu Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Committee (CECC) of the party which made the disclosure on May 27, 2022, said that it achieved the feat by raising the membership figures from 11 million to 45 million. But the cookies crumbled for the party when it went to the 2023 February presidential election and its candidate, now President Tinubu, won the election by 8,794, 726 votes. That figure shows that a whole 35,205.274 APC members did not show up on election day to vote for their party’s candidates. My elders warn that we should not argue with a man who cultivates 200 heaps of yam but announces that he has 400 heaps. The day of harvest will expose who the liar is!
So, while Nigerians are worried about how the Tinubu government would be able to identify the 70 million would-be beneficiaries of the N75,000 palliative, they should be consoled by the fact that a party that could concoct membership figures will conjure anything. Nobody should query if the methodology to be adopted will be scientific enough to erase any doubt. Ours is a nation in self-deceit, a nation of anything goes.
But for Senator Ajibola Basiru, who put a lie to the bogus APC membership figures of 45 million when he queried: “If we have that membership of 45 million, how come we went to the poll and got votes of less than 10 million? In line with Amilcar Cabral’s doctrine of ‘tell no lies, claim no easy victories’, that has exhumed the lie”, the APC and its members would still have believed the lies they told themselves.
Already, the Hallelujah orchestra of the government is at work to hail the N75,00 initiative of President Tinubu. The President is being described in some quarters as a kind-hearted president who feels the pain of the people. It would not matter who inflicted the pain in the first instance. It would equally not matter that the President is taking from our patrimony to ‘give’ to his imaginary “poorest of the poor”. The wisdom of Owó Àbú ni a fi ńse Àbú l’álejò (we use Abu’s money to entertain him) will not suffice here. Many don’t even care if the intended exercise would not be like the ones before it. Many of us, in the name of party loyalty and ethnic solidarity, are ready to accept the most unthinkable.
If President Tinubu recognises that there is a crushing poverty in the land, what is he expected to do? How come that the man that was sold to us as an expert in dermatology would leave leprosy to treat ordinary ringworm? What is more commonsensical between addressing the cause of the poverty in the land and giving palliative measures to cushion the effects? When the would-be beneficiaries exhaust the N75,000, what do they go back to?
The vocalist, Wande Coal, waxed his 2015 Mushin 2 Mushin Album, with a track which is equally a question: Se Na Like This. In that popular track, Coal asked: Se na like this we go de dey. Artistes, like poets, are philosophers and prophets. Wande Coal was philosophical in that album and track as he traced the trajectory of Nigeria from affluence to poverty! I join him in asking again: Se na like this we go de dey?
