For a truly happy new year

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IT is New Year Day 2024, and naturally Nigerians are in a celebratory mood, however muted. For one reason, at least in the African context, witnessing a New Year offers an opportunity to be thankful to the Almighty God no matter the circumstances. As a deeply religious people, Nigerians hold “cross-over” services in worship centres. Many indeed ushered in today with prayers and good wishes, and that is just as well. Given the decidedly lacklustre performance of governments at all levels in 2023 when Nigerians ushered in new administrators at all levels of government but saw no improvements in their overall fortunes, Nigeria’s long-suffering populace would be well within their rights to expect a radically different turn of events this year. This expectation is particularly salient because, for all practical purposes, 2023 was hellish and nasty for the majority of Nigerians who watched politicians huff and puff without the slightest abidance by the most basic of standards in official conduct and commitment to people’s welfare.

Regardless of the celebrations thrust upon them by the Yuletide, it is a fact that Nigerians are suffering terribly under leadership ineptitude. Life is hard for most Nigerians, who woke up on May 29, 2023 to hear that their government had removed fuel subsidy without any countervailing measures put in place to stem the deleterious effects. The shell-shocked populace long trapped in appalling and asphyxiating conditions did not fare well before that date, but things have grown exponentially worse ever since. Following the subsidy removal, the prices of goods and services spiked and the exchange rate, now at extremely scary levels, has doomed Nigerians to a subsistent existence even as the political class, as exemplified by the National Assembly which ordered bullet-proof SUVs valued at N160 million each for all the 360 members of the Green Chamber and the 109 members of the Red Chamber, engaging in needless travels in first class cabins while the people on whose behalf they supposedly took office literally scrounged and starved.

If Nigerians are beginning to see their leaders as congenital liars, it is because that, precisely, is what they are. Through the electoral system, they merely use the people to legitimise their heists. Indeed, there is no arm of government that sees any relationship between its existence as an entity and the comfort of the public. If legislators shy away from issues with direct impact on the masses— for instance, a living wage that guarantees workers some dignity— judges increasingly use their positions to launch deadly assaults on the same constitution that gave them a job. Indeed, the feeling in the streets, accentuated by the public commentariat, is that justice is now for sale as judicial bandits seek to truncate people power and become electors of members of the executive, trampling any vestige of non-partisanship.

To be sure, some of the things that need to be done to give the country a turnaround was highlighted in the Christmas message of Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto. Kuhah wrote: “Our injuries are not invisible. Very many national conferences have been held to chart a way forward. The trove of grievances and hopes are there and all the government needs to do is to dust them up. No need to re-invent the wheel or attempt some new diagnosis… The problems of Nigeria are deep seated and they are based on a culture of corruption that has become the foundation stone of governance. This evil structure has to be dismantled. Nigeria’s problems will not be resolved by palliatives. The problems are deep and structural… These senseless killings, abductions, extortions and kidnappings have to end and the sacredness and sanctity of human life restored. Blasphemy laws have no place in a democracy. ”

It is difficult not to see a bleak future for Nigeria and Nigerians this year going by the level of tardiness and visionlessness characterising the running of public life in the country. Those in charge of governance are not scandalised by the infamous standing of Nigeria as the poverty capital of the world. Rather than this negative standing spurring the so-called leaders into taking concrete remedial actions in the recognition that human beings are necessarily social beings whose satisfaction and comfort rest on what affects them as a collective, the reality has been an expansion in inequality, with the rulers attending only to the satisfaction of personal interests. It is instructive in this regard that the World Bank recently disclosed that another set of 24 million Nigerians joined the poverty bracket in the last six months. There is a clear nexus between the intensification of poverty in the land and the policies of the government.

This is not the year for politicians to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth. It is time for sober reflections. There must be clear and concrete positive changes through deliberate governmental efforts. The current trend can only breed further hopelessness that would trigger unchecked negativity. We hope that the government will make positive changes in the interest of all. Governments at all levels must address poverty and inequality. They must recognise that there is a cost of living crisis, that wages have become meaningless, and act accordingly. That is the way to guarantee a truly happy new year.

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