For long now, Nigerians have known true poverty. With the swell in the ranks of those for whom poverty has become a companion has come the evisceration of Nigeria`s middle class. With their disappearance, what now obtains is the top rungs, and then the bottom rungs of Nigeria`s feeble wealth ladder. The middle rungs have since disappeared leaving a steep disconnect in the country.
Inequality in Nigeria has been around for as long as the country has existed. At once, it is both economic and political with many Nigerians sidelined, economically, as well as politically.
For the discerning, it was in 1914 that the dice was cast for the dire straits Nigeria is currently mired in. It was in that year that Lord Lugard, ill-advisedly lumped the southern and northern protectorates together to birth Nigeria. With the benefit of hindsight, if that birth had turned out to be a still-birth it would not have been such a disaster after all.
But, no. Because the British, ignoring their own difficulties back home, the hideous avarice of the 1886 Berlin Conference, and the uncertainty of the future, preferred the convenience of short sightedness, two diametrically opposed protectorates, bearing strikingly little in common, were forced into a marriage of convenience that was doomed from the beginning. Today, it has birthed a problem child – an extremely irritable one at that.
The sulking was no secret. It has continued in spite of the fact that oil came to quench the thirst of a struggling country. Once the British handed over power in 1960, the cracks of the marriage, long papered over by oil and a feigned decorum at the presence of strangers, widened uncontrollably.
Inane and infantile power struggles stoked by ethnic suspicion were soon to convulse a newly independent country. Like hyenas in heat, Nigerian soldiers, showing masterful opportunism, were to abandon their barracks, move in and take turns in ruling the country, doing incalculable damage in the process. It was not long before the Nigerian Civil War ensued in 1967, tearing apart what little stability a thoroughly troubled marriage had found.
Things have never been the same since then. With howls of secession, rising from sections of the country, and drawing reply howls from other sections, things appear, at this point, irreparable.
In today`s Nigeria, a severe power imbalance is worsened by savage corruption. Two major political parties, the ruling All Progressives Congress and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party hold sway, determining who occupies what office. In that time, some parts of the country have been ignored by the parties in their twisted power sharing arrangements while aging politicians with embarrassingly little to show are recycled with glee.
Corruption has ensured that economic opportunities are severely limited. The little that is available is used as stakes in Nigeria`s egregiously exclusionary economics of corruption. The vulnerable underserved have especially felt the strangulation of man-made poverty.
Because unemployment is rife and education poor, because infrastructure is poor and social security practically non-existent, being poor is a kind of living death. This is even without taking into consideration the spectacularly obnoxious capacity of public officers to abuse power for their personal gain.
So, for many of Nigeria`s poor and unequal – and they are many – the striking Orwellian observation of some animals being more equal than others rings true, trapping entire generations in intergenerational cycles of poverty.
Then, with poverty and inequality come jarring realities: law enforcement kowtows to wealth and power; so, does education; so, does healthcare; so, do employment opportunities. Even insecurity. Even the crumbs falling from the children`s table are denied the hideously emaciated dogs of Nigeria`s inequality.
Today, those who live in the rural areas have become baits in banditry`s baleful blood game with their hitherto simple, deprived but tranquil living – fortified by what little farm produce the elements allow and a sense of community – ruinously complicated by bike-riding criminals with the shameful cheeks to advise relations of their victims to sell their farm produce to raise ransom.
Nigeria was founded on a very shifty foundation. Today, a gulf has opened up in that foundation and many have fallen and are being scorched by the searing flames of poverty. Their tortured wails haunt every waking moment of those who have conspired to widen the gulf or have done nothing to close it.
For those who because they are in position of power think they are safe, the gulf is widening and very soon, no place and no one will be left untouched.
Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com
