Permit my choice of medium to communicate with you. However, you will agree with me that as an ordinary everyday Nigerian, there is hardly any other option open to me.
First, the daunting task before you was not created by you nor can we blame you alone for the rot that has become the lot of this nation, but you share a huge blame in the declining fortunes of this country, and you must brace up and be prepared to roll up your sleeves and face the job before you.
Clearly, from your experience, so far, you will now agree that the easiest part of becoming a president is the campaign and elections. After these, the real job, Mr. President, is governance. That is where you are now; you will not be excused for failing; you will be judged by the promises you made during electioneering and the manifesto you presented to the people while you were going from region to region to sell your candidacy.
Mr. President, if I tell you that Nigerians are famished and dying in installments, it will only amount to stating the obvious. The nation is in dire straits. Hardship and the pangs of hunger are getting more menacing by the day. The ranks of beggars are swelling by the day and people living in tipping positions are ready to snap at the slightest provocation. Again, you are not entirely responsible for this but you have a responsibility to at least arrest this nation’s slide into the abyss of corruption and deprivation.
The optics are not good, Mr. President. The only reason we are where we are is as a result of poor leadership, poor fiscal and monetary policies, and discipline; bloated cost of governance, executive recklessness, and emasculated judiciary and legislature; increasing budgetary allocation for concurrent expenditure at the expense of capital expenditure; doubtful borrowings for consumption rather than production, to mention but a few. Mr. President, it is a wonder how Nigerians are still hopeful and patient in the midst of biting and excruciating hardship. However, this patience is growing thin by the day. For how long can we hold out amidst the opulence and lavish lifestyles of political officeholders? I do not know.
Today food inflation is currently over 30 percent, and over 71 million Nigerians are extremely poor, according to the World Poverty Clock. The National Bureau of Statistics classifies 133 million people as multidimensionally poor.
Nigeria has the unenviable distinction of being the world capital of poverty. To contextualise it, millions of people will wake up every day having no idea when or where their next meal will come from, and many will go to bed today without eating anything.
Nigeria’s annual inflation rose in September to its highest level in about two decades at 26.72%. The September inflation rate rose for a ninth straight month from August’s 25.8%, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said last Monday, that millions of Nigerians are impoverished due to the impact of your administration’s reforms. Food inflation, making up the bulk of Nigeria’s inflation basket, rose to 30.64% in September from 29.34% in August.
Similarly, the effect of the withdrawal of subsidy on petrol, which we all agreed should go, has left the cost of transportation extremely high, and given that our economy is road-driven, the concomitant effect is that the cost of everything is now sky-bound, while the standard of living of Nigerians is nose-diving.
Mr. President, the implication of this is that the prices of goods increase on a daily basis. For instance, one can buy a kilogram of gas for N800 today only to return the next day and be told that the price is now N1200. That is how dramatic the survival experiences of Nigerians are on a daily basis.
Mr. President, we have been told that you are not a magician. That much your dear wife, Remi, has told Nigerians. But we are worried, that even though we do not expect a magical transformation of the situation of the people, the least we expect is that you do things differently from what subsisted in the past which has seen the people languishing in abject poverty while a few of the political class live in opulence. Sadly, you are not. That is why we are worried. The very same reckless financial lifestyle that has put us where we are is still prevalent today.
