When the Nigerian President, Tinubu, came into power, you could have sworn they were trying desperately to kill us all. As if the situation isn’t dire enough! They brought out a whole arsenal of political incompetence; hunger, tax, unfair business policies, excessive government spending on presidential boats, and the list goes on.
They began their onslaught with the ridiculous dollar policies, the CBN was all over the place trying to make sense of what it was saying itself, they were supposedly trying to help the NGN (Naira) rise against the dollar, of course it backfired, and the Naira and dollar gap widened so much it was rising at almost N100 a week.
With Nigeria being a major importer of most of its products, this affected the prices of literally everything overnight, phones, gadgets, electronics, bags, shoes, and clothes, all became more expensive. But Nigerians managed, and sort of adjusted.
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But then the administration wasn’t finished, it was in fact, just whetting its appetite, it moved on to halt the nation with the minimum wage saga, which thankfully ended up being increased, but without even taking a closer look, you will find that its purchasing power is worse than the previous minimum wage of N30,000, you can buy a 50kg bag of rice with a salary of 30k back in 2019. But right now, with the new 70k minimum wage, you can’t buy a bag of rice nor pay for transport.
That leads us to the next fumble by our patriotic politicos, the orchestrated rise in the price of fuel. As a so called ‘oil-producing nation’, it congests my head to think how we manage to sell fuel at outrageous pump prices. The price of petrol tripled in a matter of months. But we move.
Now, the next thing they did really started me thinking that “they are definitely trying to kill us”, because it was the mother of all bombs, it was the Hiroshima to our deflated minimum wages, I am talking about the ‘rise in food prices’. The market crisis and food crisis that ensued killed off small businesses, and families.
Our Nigerian politicians probably took it personally to see everyone suffer, they achieved that by simply being incredibly irresponsible.
We are not even going to go into the nonsense new VAT tax, and how it could spell the end of an economic civilisation in the country, or talk about inflation and how things jumped more than 100% of their normal prices.
I knew all of this was coming for us, what else would one expect from politicians? But boy was I not expecting it to hit this hard and this fast.
You have to understand I am not trying to criticise the current administration, it is a fact that the previous administration fumbled up everything on their way out too, so did the previous ones before them.
So no, this is not about administrations or political parties, I am criticising the system that enabled them, namely capitalism, it made it possible for inhuman policies to ‘pass as bills’, and be voted upon by a confederate of dunces. Capitalism is not the answer to the human condition, whether economically, politically, or mentally.
Edit TemplateCapitalism doesn’t serve the people, it serves the unnatural gluttony of the top politicians. But you know what system serves the people? Islam does, God does.
And if we want a just system of governance, where there are no artificial inflations and ridiculous tax policies, one has to work from without the system, and not from within it. Because the current system is too broken and corrupt for even the most saintly among us to become elected with the intention of bringing about useful or impactful change.
Change has to come from without, not by colluding with these braggadocious Nigerian politicians. Take Barry Marshall as an example—a doctor whose research on ulcers was rejected by medical institutions. Instead of relying on the short-sighted medical institutions of his time, he drank a bacteria concoction to prove his theory and then cured himself.
He did this without institutional support or funding, showing that real change can happen from the outside of the system.
Change is possible from without, you don’t need persons bent on destroying you. That said, at least we got a new national anthem for our obituaries.
