By Tony Ochelebe II
First, it was news that Nigeria was the poverty capital of the world. Men and women of power shouted themselves hoarse in rebuttal. Why can they not do so when they live in grandiose, in affluence. Many of these men and women have not seen poverty before. In fact, poverty to them is stranger to them than how we sleep at dusk and awake at dawn. They lack the understanding of the concept of poverty the way some of us cannot understand why our mother's are women and our fathers are men. So they shout collusion, collusion, collusion and or conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy when they hear anyone labelling their dear Nigeria as the poverty capital of the world. But that's all they do!
And then, we were told, just days ago that Nigeria is the sixth most miserable country in the world. Again, we have been told by highly erudite Professor and other government goons that enemies of Nigeria were at work and those who manufactured that report are dunces where Nigeria's economy was concerned. Of course, this was implied. Now the Professor was quick to let the general populace know that the nation has leapt in about fourteen places in the Ease of Doing Business. But the bad guys in the opposition who easily pass as enemies of Nigeria are busy asking impact of such quantum leap. While they are at It, another damning report is out. And someone would say 'na only us waka come?'
We have another report that should make 'enemies of Nigeria' grin from ear to ear like bemedalled athletes. We made it to the list of seven hungriest country in the world. But what are our people doing? While those who should do something seem to be lounging and the majority of the hungry ones of us are 'shuffering and shmiling' apologies to Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
We continually spend billions of dollars in arms acquisitions because of the unrest in nearly all parts of Nigeria. We are contending with insurgency, farmers and herders clashes and, cattle rustling in the North, the resurgence of of the Indigenous People of Biafra, kidnapping, armed robbery and rape in the South. But what we have not been able to do is connect our security challenges to hunger, joblessness and general deprivation. In solving these issues, Uganda comes in handy.
In 1987, Joseph Kony, the self acclaimed prophet founded a group called "The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)" whose ideology in principle was on a multi-party democracy with the aim of ruling Uganda using the Ten Commandments. But of course that was in principle as the group's operations were far from the Ten Commandments. The group was accused of murder, serial rape as it's its leader had over a dozen young women attending to his sexual needs. Yet, people gravitated towards the group because of entrenched poverty in Northern Uganda. When the government of Uganda became serious, it invested massively in infrastructure which was in deficit and gave out some form of palliatives to cushion the effects of decades of deprivation while at the same time weaning the people off the promises of an Eldorado by the LRA. Need I say the war against that 'terrorists has been largely won today.
I dare say hunger and deprivation are the Siamese twins responsible for most of our woes as a people. Governments at all levels, if since sincere enough can use the Ugandan model to avert the gunpowder that will soon go off and blow our buttocks into several splinters.
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