By Habeeb Olokooba
Who will tell the president? That Nigeria’s hope is not renewed. Who will tell the president not to turn a blind eye and a deafening ear to the cries of the masses? The streets are frankly bleeding. Surging ebulliently on the hem of the Giant’s street lies the biggest famine the globe is yet to witness.
In Nigeria, we don’t rest after working out a crisis, we land in another. That’s the Kismet here in Nigeria. In the words of a fast-rising Afrobeat singer, Cazulee, in his hit single –Only Way– “Since I was born, Na e go better we Dey hear. Although we’ve been yelling, our government no dey care…” Well, I agree with him since that has been the anthem for more than two decades of my existence. And from what we read, it’s getting close to a century. Yet to what good is yelling when it falls on deaf ears? Futile.
Have you walked in the street of Orile-Idemu Axis? Have you been stopped by any street beggar under that bridge? Have you been observant of the misty sockets there? If you do, you can imagine the desperation in the eyes of a starving Nigerian. Poverty is hitting hard on different streets of this federation. From Magama to Rujin-Sambo in Sokoto; Down to Gambari and Bolanta in Ilorin, Kwara state, the rhyme is the same. The stomachs are empty, the economy is bad, and light oscillates like a toy telltale.
It was both sad and funny, this week when Mom brought the news of someone who stole half-done food from the blazing coal port. Such a tragic-comedy happens only in the Jubril Aminu hostel at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. Not in any home where a family is trying to put a modest meal together. It reflects the rate at which hunger bites. I was on the street of Ajibesin, a suburb of Ilorin West LGA of Kwara State, on Monday, meandering through houses that used to provide light when the recalcitrant NEPA –as we famously called electricity distribution companies– failed to bring light. The homes, when the chips were down and IBEDC wasn’t forthcoming and served us with a few hours of generator light, were all in darkness. No explanation is needed. Petrol is an expensive commodity. The Nation’s streets are completely in pain, basking in the cesspit of penury.
The street might revolt, but I don’t know when. The hardship is biting and Nigerian hopes are not renewed. Beyond the mealymouthed promises, paper assurances, and rehearsed presidential addresses, desperation is the other, once rich but can no longer be called so, and the poor need a new name to qualify personalities who loll in the apex of destitution.