Fueling Poverty: The Nigerian Malaise By Wale Bakare

If you have watched the short
documentary “Fueling Poverty” by
Ishaya Bako you must be smarting in
disbelief as to how we have managed
to deteriorate as a nation with an
abundance of resources at its
disposal; how in a short time we
have been infected by an incurable
syndrome with an unknown therapy.
We have built an empire of filth-laden
conglomerates of failed states called
Nigeria. We’ve lived with an
indoctrinated psychic to believe and
accept poverty as a natural
phenomenon peculiar to the infamous
black race dubbed ‘The giant of
Africa’. Poverty is raining heavily in
this part of the world; we have
mastered the art of pettiness to
become a pawn in the land of
abundance. Corruption is a mega
business established in this province
with many branches to fuel and
sustains its survival. It is saddening
to see people who swore an oath
during the fuel subsidy probe by the
house of representative only to be
compromised in the course of their
duty by their lack of self discipline
and greed.
This tells the tale of the modern
Nigerian we live in. Our government
is currently catnapping while we seek
refuge from our highly exploitative
religious leaders who maintain a
distant relationship with the state of
the polity. Same ideology we’re
expected to have as followers, the
creed reverberates on our mind daily,
we are made to understand that it is a
sin to meddle the affairs of this
earthly world with the “Divine world”.
We can hardly question our leaders
on issues of national interest; our
voices have been long suppressed.
They have succeeded in their
brainwash. Distractions of different
magnitude are part of the daily dose,
our attention has been shifted from a
genuine fight against government
tyranny, instead, we bomb, kill and
maim ourselves- preferring to turn
the sword to our fellow brother in the
sight of a common disagreement
because we have opted to stay
divided along the ethnic by-line.
It is quite a disheartening observation
that a ‘thinking’ proportion of the
population have resigned to fate
when it comes to our expectation of
the government. Don’t blame our
pessimistic nature; we’ve lived in
perpetual poverty for decades and
trusted successive government over
the years. In all of those years our
hearts have been broken, our dreams
shattered and aspirations reduced to
a ruin. We live for today and worry
less about tomorrow; that’s the only
way to remain sane in this kind of
society pregnant with uncertainties.
The majority sees government as
non-existing. The people provide
their food, shelter, security, electricity
and other basic necessities of life by
themselves, toiling hard day and
night to keep their business afloat
evidenced by the interview conducted
on the market women in the short
documentary film.
I was taken aback in the video as I
watch Professor Wole Soyinka’s voice
quaver with some degree of
discomfort as he announced that the
federal government have wasted
$7Billion in 2011 alone. The
Jonathan’s government has spent
N2.5Trillion on fuel subsidy in 2011
against the initial N245Billion
earmark. Yet with impunity and
hubris in the petroleum sector, the
government continues to further
agitate for a total removal of the
remaining subsidy. This staggering
figure indicates a scarcity of sincere
leadership in the present government.
The Oil marketers, NNPC, PPRAA and
other agencies fingered in the
subsidy scam report are yet to be
prosecuted. Billions of Naira
expended to sustain fuel subsidy, yet
our refineries are non functional, the
queues have not disappeared at our
fuel stations and we are forced to buy
PMS above the pump price.
The Senate leadership of David Mark
has failed in its over-sight function;
His cameo role during the
OccupyNigeria protest and lack of
courage to act further on the fuel
motion scam raised on the floor of
the national assembly shows how
timid he has become with time
despite the fact that the motion was
raised by one of his legislator,
Senator Bukola Saraki, who took the
extra gauntlet to align with the
masses to champion the fuel pump
reversal to its original price of N65
per litre. The individual and collective
roles played by the three tiers of
government in the wake of the uproar
generated by the motion raised and
subsequent discoveries will forever
remain fresh in our memory.
The decision by the government to
ban the Fuelling Poverty documentary
that exposes the rot in our society
and how poverty has overtaken
virtually every aspect of our nation
again confirms the military self-styled
leadership practiced in Nigeria. This
government has metamorphosed into
full time autocracy, they loathes
criticism hence journalist are arrested
like common criminals at intervals.
They are quick to divert citizens’
resources for their personal use and
the common wealth to oppress its
people. They have embarked on an
operation to silence the film, the
filmmaker and its roots on all media,
alas; the Nigerian twitter space went
viral with condemnation of the
government action while the
documentary continues to enjoy more
views globally. Ours is a totalitarian
environment where mediocrity is
openly celebrated, the corrupt rich
evade punishment while injustice is
meted out to the poor who bears the
brunt of the societal maladies inflicted
by the greed and carelessness of the
government. Successive government
has not been able to transform our
human, ecological and mineral
resource into economic fruition.
Just like the flash of light,
government after government comes
with its own policies and agenda that
do not meet with the yearnings of the
people. We have remained stagnant
as a nation renowned for making the
news for all the negative reasons.
How did we get here? Is our main
resource a curse on us? Our
dependency on oil for economic
sustenance has cost us more harm
than good. The oil booze has birthed
political violence, ethnic rivalry and
infrastructure decay. We have not
been able to use the oil wealth to
resuscitate the dead sector of our
economy. We ought to be ashamed as
a country in perpetual hysteria, with
the realisation that our oil was
discovered 10 years earlier than
Dubai discovered theirs, as far back
as 1956. Today, despite the
abundance of mineral resources on
our land, we are still dancing in a
circus while Dubai has used the same
oil money to change the fortune of its
emirates, shifting from an oil
producing state to diversify its
resources on tourism and trade
investment. We need to take a cue
from the modern Dubai
transformation to begin our healing
processes.
Often times than not, it seems that we
are the bane of our predicaments;
why do we recycle under achieving
leaders? Is it so much of a rocket
science to identify and vote in leaders
with clear vision that can propel us
on the road to progress? We can
engineer our escape from poverty if
we are determined. It is time to take
the looters down to the cleaners. We
know that endemic corruption in the
system is the most challenging
problem facing the country today, yet
much is not done to rescue the
situation. The freedom of information
Act should be used to proactively
fight and eliminate the scourge from
our system. Our destiny lies in our
own hands but more importantly, the
onus falls on us to participate and
monitor our votes, and it is cheaper
and more economical to partake in
elections at a Local government level
where changes can easily be affected
than waiting on the judiciary-of-the-
highest-bidder to reclaim our stolen
mandate. The change we desire starts
with me and you, we must get our
leadership right if development is to
berth on our shores.

Follow @waleflame on twitter for
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