By Femi Kusa
WHETHER ATIKU Abubakar and Rotimi Amechi will contest the Presidential election next year is not worth losing a night’s sleep or a heart beat over. All things being equal, they will run. By “all things being equal”, I mean two things.
ONE: Atiku and Amechi will run irrespective of a court ruling last week which knocked them out. Their axing was ill timed, and may stain cleanliness of the election. However, we cannot blame the High Court Judge for doing his job the way he deemed fit. His lordship at the High Court has done what all judges are trained to do. They are meant to be isolated from society, like an ostrich which buries its head in the sand and is unaware of what is happening round it. Even President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would not like the court judgement, for it may unite the Opposition, including Atiku and Amechi, behind Peter Obi and Kwankwaso. Nevertheless, I expect the judgement to give way to pragmatic, if not better and logical reasoning.
TWO: Justices, elder brethren of Judges, have a different way of looking at this matter. They sometimes, if not always, align themselves with the unwritten” Law of probabilities”. They shy away from unbalancing society if their acts would cause amagedon in 1983, did we not hear them, against the run of logic, say that “two-thirds of 19 States is equal to 12 two-third states”, even where, logically and legally,one State is an indivisible legal person? Do they, thereafter, not also say that this judgement of the Supreme Court of Nigeria should never be recited as precedent by Lawyers and Judges? Shehu Shagari was favoured to become President. Anything short of this judgement would have taken that year’s Presidential election to its logical conclusion of electoral College decision where Obafemi Awolowo could have defeated Shagari… and Northern Nigeria may have convulsed and exploded on Nigeria.
What I consider more important than the Atiku-Amechi problem is the degeneration of the 2027 Presidential election campaigns towards intangibilities of poverty and hunger rather than well structured, cogent projects and infallible strategies for achieving them. As a follower of Obafemi Awolowo on principles, planning and strategies, I owe Atiku and Obi no apologies if i say they have been merely criticising and not critiqueing the cogent plans President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has placed on the table, and that they have not shown the electorate any cogent plan and strategies for achieving them, if they have any. Accordingly, they jare trying to drag us into the quicksand and minefields of “poverty” and “hunger”in which they themselves may politically sink and politically perish.
GINKGO BILOBA
Before I dwell more on this possibility and on the real causes of poverty and hunger, and say neither President Tinubu nor Atiku nor Obi is responsible for today’s poverty and hunger, and add that the PARABLE OF THE FEAST by the Lord Jesus shows that beggars filled the streets in His days, I would like to mention the herbs I added to my diet last week to shore my reflexes in this season of enlarging threat to sanity. These herbs are GINKGO BILOBA, GRAPE SEED EXTRACT, AMALAKI( AMALA) and COCOA. You may wish to double check their health benefits, especially for the brain and nerves. In the thirty or so years I worked for an average of between fifteen and eighteen hours in a day, including personally driving myself about town, Ginkgo biloba was my star remedy against free radicals and oxidative stress in the brain. Somehow, i forgot about it in the years of retirement from active knock-about occupations. I often mention on this page how Dr Rita Levi Montalcini discovered that grape seed extract can heal mangled and damaged nerves, and of how Dr Rays Strand eulogises it in his fabulous Book, WHAT YOUR DOCTOR DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT NUTRITION MAY BE KILLING YOU. An Alma? One fruit,about the size of a lime or a big garden egg, has between 11 and 20 times more Vitamin C than an orange, depending on variety, whether dry or wet e.t.c. This and other anti-oxidant nutrients make it good for the brain, the eyes, immunity, fatty Liver challenges, wound healing e.t.c. And Cocoa? Is good for memory, depression, diabetes and high cholesterol management, restful sleep, heart and blood pressure health, among several other benefits. With this combination in food or soups, one should safely navigate this political campaign seasons which is very treacherous to radiant health. You need to listen to political programmes on radio or watch television to appreciate what I am saying. Sometimes, you may angrily switch off a programme as a I do with presenter ESTHER NWACHUKWU and jingoist Barrister Darlington on VOICEVOF THE PEOPLE (VOP) radio station in Lagos.
POVERTY AND HUNGER
I worry about how the 2027 election campaigns can mangle thought and the brain. Apolitical persons may be undisturbed as politicians destroy fundamental grains of truth to win votes. Two of these distortions caught my attention between the last presentation in this series and this one. In the first, the Opposition to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election is trying to say (1) Many Nigerians are poor and hungry,
(2) President Tinubu caused their poverty and hunger.
President Tinubu would not let them pin poverty and hunger on him. He is fighting back, and saying something like …”No, I did not cause poverty and hunger. you fellows cause poverty and hunger before I became president. I am only trying to clear the rot you caused in the economy”.
To hammer home this point, he has asked Atiku Abubakar to explain how, as Vice President of Nigeria, he had money to build his private University on 2,500 acres of land or 15,000 plots. Originally named ABTI in (2003-2007) but renamed American University of Nigeria, the cost is unknown, students enrollment may hit about 1,500. Fees are highest for engineering, law and nursing at about a little over ₦3 million for a student per session. Atiku retired as Deputy Controlller of Customs in 1989, thirteen years before AUN in 2002, as an up-building on ABTI Academy, founded by him in 1993, four years after his retirement.
The question is about dates and where investments funds came from. Atiku retired from the public service in 1989, said he began ABTI investments in 1993, four years later.Where did the money come from? President Tinubu is asking. Atiku said he became a businessman. The President could ask how much money he earned and how much tax he paid. This may be Atiku’s glass house.
Later, Atiku investments in Dubai, if he has any, may be talking-point. There may be eruptions in the electricity sector. It is widely alleged that the Obasanjo Administration invested 16 billion U.S. Dollars but with no tangible results. If Obasanjo, indeed, placed the economy in the hands of Atiku as Vice President, Atiku may have to explain why the project failed. Poverty and hunger are broad quicksand and minefield for all politicians. Couldn’t the emotional rustic population Atiku is courting cheer on and demand to know all that Atiku earned in his job as a Nigerian customs service officer before he became Vice- President, and ask if all of it is enough to generate his financial network today?
PETER OBI
President Tinubu said Obi could not erase gully erosion in Anambra State, whereas, he arrested Atlantic Ocean surge in Lagos and even built the smart EKO ATLANTIC CITY over the subdued invasion. Obi’s mockery is exaggerated because, reportedly, he invested about five hundred million Naira in a World Bank Project to fight the menacevwhich, undisputedly lungers. later, Obi may be de-marketed as an importer of consumables unable to promote manufacturing to create jobs. We may hear that importers of second-hand clothes, for example, killed textilw manufacturing in Aba and Logos.
BACK AND FORTH
This arguments will not eradicate poverty and hunger. For neither President Tinubu nor Atiku nor Obi caused poverty and hunger. There were cries of poverty and hunger between 1979 and 1983 under President Shehu Shagari whose in-law and Transport Minister, Umaru Dikko, said no one ate from dustbin. A 50 kilogramme bag of rice sold for ₦32, yes ₦32 (not 32,000 Naira) compared with about ₦60,000 today. Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle (rtd), a hero of Nigeria’s Civil War, was linked with the 5 July 1984 kidnapping, drugging and crating of Umaru Dikko in a wooden diplomatic baggage in London for forwarding to Nigeria aboard a Nigeria airways aircraft. The project was foiled by the United Kingdom custom service. The Buhari- Idiagbon government wanted Dikko back home on charges of stealing billions in oil money.
FROM BALEWA TO TINUBU
Every government since Nigeria’s Independence has battled poverty and hunger. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa imposed AUSTERITY MEASURES in 1963 to raise money for the first national development plan (1962-1968). Finance Minister Festus Okotie Eboh urged Nigerians to live according to their means. In 1982, President Shehu Shagari brought Economic STABILISATION ACT when crude oil price fell from 40 U.S. Dollars to 9 Dollars. Gen. Buhari and Idiagbon brought WAR on INDISCIPLINE, retrenched workers, closed borders, restricted imports,traded crude oil for goods e.t.c. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida introduced STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMME (SAP),devalued the Naira, removed oil subsidy in phases. President Obasanjo sold state-owned businesses such as NITEL, split NEPA into 18 companies, reformed banking, increased petrol price in bits e.t.c. President Goodluck Jonathan raised fuel price, sold 18 NEPA companies for 3.3 billion Dollars. In his second coming, President Buhari devalued the Naira,banned 41 items in FOREX, introduced TSA account system. President Tinubu removed fuel subsidy wholesale, removed electricity subsidy for BAND A consumers and embarked on re-federalism projects to decentralise policing, electricity generation and petrol refining e.t.c.
ANSWER TO POVERTY
What causes poverty and hunger always? The answer is in the answers to these simple questions: (1) Does man form his environment or does his environment form him? (2) What makes an identical twin a rich person and the other a very poor person, when their bodies came from the same egg and they spent nine months together in their mother’s womb, were raised in the same circumstances and probably still live in the same neighbourhood? (3) What about two medical students who studied under the same circumstances, graduated at the same time, setup their practices on the same street, one is very successful and the other crawls around?
I do not put individual differences down to DESTINY. DESTINY means “destination”. We came from somewhere and to that destination we are bound after earth life, irrespective of our experiences. I see KARMA at play. Karma does not just seize any-one, anyhow. The Universe is well ordered by Natural Laws to prevent such things, otherwise the Almighty Creator we all acknowledge to be Just and “faithful”would be a partial God. Which same person believed God is erratic and partial? The cause(s) of poverty and hunger have to be sought elsewhere …on how every-one of us conducts his or her life. The government was not present at our creation, nor would it be present at our judgement.
Poverty and hunger are as old as the human society. The Bible tells us Lazarus, a poor man, fed on the scrumbs from a rich man’s table right at his gate. The Lord Jesus told the PARABLE OF the Wedding banquet to which the poor, crippled, maimed, the blind and strangers were invited when the original prosperous guests failed to turn up.
Poverty and hunger are resultant of several variants which include karma and spiritual indolence. Parables of THE FIVE FOOLISH VIRGINS and of THE WASTED TALENT point to SPIRITUAL INDOLENCE. The FOOLISH VIRGINS with no oil in their physical lamps were sleepy, indolent and dependent souls. Creation abhors dependence. So where the servants who did not invest talent loans their Master gave them. When we have babies, spiritual ignorance foracloses spiritual enquiry about who they are and what they have come for. The names of the Lord Jesus and of John the Baptist were sent before their birth. Today’s parents named their babies without qualms, giving weighty, over-seize names to some and suffocating, tight names to others. Yet, the name is power, and the wrong names can cage and imprison the soul, making it unable to spread its wings to fly. Who is to blame? The parents or the government?
I have short story of my own experience to tell in the descent towards poverty and hunger, and of how I was able to raise if only my head above the quagmire. Only persons who understand the conception of re-incarnation will accept the role of karma or retributive Justice in poverty and hunger. There is no one on earth today who has not lived on it before now. Many were in the position to use the resources entrusted into their care to make earth-life beautiful for others. Many persons suffered penury under them.Now, they have to live in the same circumstances they once thrust on other persons. If they awaken inwardly to the guilt and gratefully begin to become of good volition, they may become helped to overcome the yoke.
Sometimes, we confuse drab or squalid physical appearance and investments inexperience with poverty and hunger. I once sat down a woman who sold roast corn to educate her that she was not poor and hungry. She paid ₦5 on every maize cob she brought from a farm, spent ₦5 on its transportation, ₦5 for charcoal and kerosine and ₦5 on public relations for KICK AGAINST INDISCIPLINE( KAI) official who may wish to bounce her off her road side business. Her investments was ₦20 on each cob of maize which she sold for a minimum of ₦100. That was ₦80 per cob or ₦8,000 profit in one day on 100 cobs sold. She lived in a single room apartment. Who would know she could earn ₦240,000 tax free in one month? That was five years ago. When last did I earn that? Yet she saw me as a more prosperous person and herself poor and hungry because I spoke better English language, dressed and looked better and cleaner than she did. In the food market, could I stand nearby when she priced Titus fish or chicken? The internet, AI and robots are making people who understand them prosperous and those who do not poorer and hungrier. Whose fault is this? Certainly not the government.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I lived a little above the bread-line before Gen. Abacha shut down THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER for one year on Sunday 14 August 1994. I was Director of publication/ Editor in-chief. My salary was impaired. My wife, a senior lecturer at Lagos State University( LASU),earned no salary because lecturers nation-wide were on strike and Gen. Abacha stopped their pay. We had three children. Our first child scored about 90 percent in Lagos State common entrance examination to Secondary School. We had no ₦5,000 to secure the offer of admission to MODEL COLLEGE, KANKON, the best school for years in Lagos at that time. Mr Akin Soname, a family friend whose two daughters were in the school, knew my wife and I had no money and would not beg for it. He visited us and gave my son a gift of ₦5,000 for his performance. Next day, my wife and I went to KANKON with the money to pay up. I awakened from slumber. What were other poor Nigerians doing that I could do for legitimate income and be happy like them? I dropped down from the corporate cloud into the informal market on the street. I sold ice blocks, from our kitchen, poultry eggs, frozen chicken, chewing stick, coconut, palm oil, rice, vegetable, honey, herbs, reared rabbits but could not kill them for meat or sell them, and from three female pigs (sows) and one make( boar) I raised about 300 table-seize pigs and piglets in one year. At today’s price, that could fetch me more than ₦30 million every six months.
My poultry egg business grew from 25 crates every week to about 300, bringing about ₦30,000 profit every week, or ₦120,000 a month, about double of my corporate salary. Ice blocks cleared school fees. I began to dream of buying land and building a house. Could I have such a dream on my salary? Had I not awaken from spiritual slumber, I would have blamed Abacha. Where I may blame the government is in the absence of a MINISTRY OF IDEAS. This should be outside the hold of the MINISTRY of information or the National Orientation agency(NOA). The MINISTRY OF IDEAS would study profitable legitimate pursuits of successful formal and informal sector of Nigerians, critique them and post feasibility reports on them on a national website accessible to all Nigerians. The efforts may awaken sleepy and sluggard Nigerians and remove POVERTY and HUNGER from the front burner of Presidential election campaigns. what the candidate should tell us are strategic projects for growing the economy, the ways and means for achieving them without causing financial hurts among the population, not the abuse of the persons of the opponent. I do not blame President Tinubu for joining the Opposition bandwagon in their game. Who would be so vilified as he has been that he would stay silent, when silence is admission of guilt which is the goal of the opponent?
