Nigeria: Hungry but not angry By Bolaji Akinyemi

Carpentry of corruption has produced a cross that should be too burdensome for the masses to bear. But trust my country and her citizens. We are simply impossible. Things don’t just run the way they do in other countries. A hungry man is an angry man, because he has many mouths to feed, says the English adage. Though Nigerians are hungry but not angry. If they were, they would have responded to the Senate President, who recognised that Nigerians are hungry but they may have to keep skipping their meals till the President has all the comforts required of his office in the “air”!

With the ground comfort of the President and his Vice President guaranteed within their first year in office, and on water, comfort secured with a Yacht of ₦5bn. But the President hasn’t travelled by water from Abuja to Lagos.

Akpabio reminded us that while Nigerians can’t feed, food security is not the priority of the Senate and the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the life of the President is more important for extravagance style because he is no longer an ordinary citizen. Though the election of Mr President, Senate President and their cohorts in power were by ordinary citizens. The election has conferred on them extra ordinary rights and privileges! Done with their comfort on the ground, and on water, it is time to move to the air with an additional Presidential Jet for Mr President who was rumoured to have borrowed his friend and our contractor, Mr Chargoury’s private jet to make it to South Africa.

The Senate President is concerned that extraordinarily good life must be served the President in the air with 5bn of tax paid by ordinary citizens. A class of ordinariness to which by our votes the President no longer belongs, while the hungry should wait, I guess till they are angry!

Not even the news from the New York Times and the provocative response of Chief Bayo Onanuga could provoke hungry Nigerians to anger.

A revelation of the concealed mission of All Promises Cancelled(APC) in power was laid bare on our national dinning table with no meal served, those who have come in expectation of food should be contented that it is not the fault of Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration, but the inherited dead economy from Sai Baba!

Hungry Nigerians aren’t like any hungry people throughout history!

Nothing should satisfy those who are truly hungry, but we are served excuses in exchange for meals. Are we really are ok!

The French revolution was caused by just ONE careless talk! The poor in their hunger had cried to the Monarch on the rising cost of bread, and a princess was said to have said if they can’t eat bread they should eat cake!

Bread is not just the only thing the masses in Nigeria can’t afford. There is nothing that is within the reach of our hungry but not angry masses! But if you think Akpabio was careless in speech, wait until the Prince of Speech at the Presidency responds to the New York Times!

That Nigeria’s economy is currently at its worst level is nothing but the truth. Empirical data speaks to that fact, beyond data are the miseries that living in Nigeria have become to all except those who are in government, their cronies and relations. I am therefore not surprised at the response of the Presidency for maintaining that President Tinubu inherited a DEAD ECONOMY from Buhari!

One of the promises made to Nigerians by Tinubu was his commitment to continue where Buhari stopped. Now that the Presidency has admitted to the fact that Buhari handed a DEAD ECONOMY to Tinubu, the continuation of death is burial, so to expect anything other than the burial of the economy is to be unfair to Mr President. Nigerians should therefore brace up for what lies ahead!

In the build up to 2023 presidential election, Mr Tinubu in reaction to rising concerns about his failing health had said; “if you hear them saying, can I do it? I am not applying for the job of a grave digger. I will not let Nigerians down”.
Now that Buhari according to the Presidency, killed the economy and performed the job of a grave digger, a duty for which President Tinubu didn’t apply. Nigerians should understand the commitment of Mr President to take over from the killer and the grave digger!

Is APC not an ‘undertaker’ company? I had thought that on the shoulders of President Tinubu rests the resurrection of the Nigeria economy, which I had prayed for him. But this revelation has laid it all bare. The economy is dead, the grave is dug and the burial service has commenced in fulfillment of the promise to continue where Buhari stopped!

Arab Spring was a product of citizens’ anger! An anti government movement that began in 2009 but climaxed in 2010 in Tunisia, finally sparked on the 18th of December in Sidi Bouzid following Mohammed Bouazizi’s self immolation like our own #EndSARS in protestation of police corruption and ill treatment. Little wonder, the Tunisian President Kais Saied wasted no time in sacking his religious affairs, Brahim Chaibi, following wild spread criticism after death of dozens of Tunisians in the holy land of Mecca.

Arab Spring jumped over national boundaries and It spread from Tunisia to Morocco in demand for political reform, particularly reform against police brutality, political censorship, electoral fraud and high unemployment. All that Moroccan Muslims rose against in anger are not enough to get Nigerian Muslims angry. Religious hypnotism and bigotry!

One thing Northern Nigeria shared in common with North Africa is religion. Both are predominantly dominated by Muslims but our is a nation where purpose is denied anything to serve whatever intention our elites class reinvented them for, religion included. Christianity we have for capitalism and Islam for terrorism. We can be angry for harmless comments on a class Whatsapp group and burn the commentator to ashes in the name of blasphemy against the dead. But blasphemy against us; the living are allowed to pass. The man who said your life or your ancestral land; is alive among us making money with WWB in hope of another careless statement.

From far away Saudi Arabia came the protest of no less a person than the Governor of Niger State who wondered why Nigerian Pilgrims should be hungry in Saudi with a whooping N90 billion under someone’s authority to make the pilgrims comfortable. Yet no query has been raised and no head will roll. For our citizens who died doing Hajj, it’s a privilege to die unholy death in the holy land.

The plight of Nigerians have gone beyond endurance, it is now long-suffering!

Is ours a nation bewitched? How are we hungry and not angry, if not by the power of a spell? How are you in the face of hunger able to maintain a smiling face? Suffering and smiling the government splashes N14 billion to renovate a guest home in Abuja and N4 billion on the one in Lagos!

Should we continue to endure while N21 billion is splashed on renovation of the new VP house in Abuja to which they found the semantics “reconstruction”, to rebrand corruption! Extra N2.5 billion was still found to renovate the old VP house (the Aguda house). Then another N3 billion for his guest house in Lagos.

Nigerians should endure while you splash N10 billion to build car garages, to complement the 57.6 billion already spent on the purchase of SUVs for Lawmakers!

If only Nigerians were angry “in” their hunger, Dem for no gree for anybody!

Dr. Bolaji O. Akinyemi is a Lagos based public affairs commentator