nigerians have a common problem.
it is not caused by hunger, and it is not caused by strife, it is simply caused by many years of helplessness. it is called short term memory loss ("STML" for short"). STML affects individuals who were born from around 1979 when things began to go really bad, and strikes the nervous system by triggering a full release of more red blood cells into the part of the brain necessary for storing information and life experiences for long periods of time.
so today, i was minding my own business when i stumbled on the following news report: Senators in Nigeria earn 19 million naira per month, while house of rep members earn 10 million per month. now, as always, i can write 50 pages on the flagrant insensitivity of the present day politicians especially in view of the many strikes that we have been plagued with in recent times. in many states of the federation, the civil servants have been asking the governments to give them a minimum wage of 18,000 naira per month, to no avail. i can go into the general whining about how we have no schools, roads and healthcare centres and how it is a slap in the face of every tax-paying, right-thinking nigerian, to have this sort of arrangement shoved in our faces.
unfortunately for all of us, these revelations are not exactly new. it is not exactly surprising to know that a tailor who fought and struggled to become the speaker of the house of reps, did everything she could to hold on to power even in the face of public outrage and ridicule. it is not a shock that each regular nigerian has to earn every cent by sleeping without electricity in the blazing heat of the harmattan nights, waking up to put on unironed clothes and elbowing his way into public transport, having his phone stolen in the struggle for the bus...only to follow the same process to get home after work. every. single. damn. day.
and it is no surprise that whenever the chambers of the national assembly is shown on television, all the seats are empty. some of the senators have never moved a single motion to our hearing, and sometimes i suspect that some cannot read or write intelligently. and yet, because they were able to fight, to push, to cheat, to rig and even sometimes kill, all of which the average religiously-inclined and well-educated suit-wearing young nigerian today is unable to do, they have earned the right to the insanely disproportionate salaries that they collect today.
but i choose not to be carried away by the general sentiments fueled by sensational media reporting. i choose not to look at the figures without context and scream blue murder. i often hear the phrase often said: "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance" and i think that this saying is apt in the circumstance. democracy is getting too expensive a form of government to continue to operate in our nigerian context, but the logical question is, "what is the option to democracy?".
and this is where i think that the general disease being suffered by nigerians, has kicked in. in the midst of the fray and the hue and the cry, we have begun to question the very thing that we spent half our national lives fighting for. we have started to question the wisdom of a form of government that so many of our fathers died to birth. we suddenly forget, that for the first time in a long time, we have the freedom of reporting, enough to expose the discrepancies in our society at the highest levels of national leadership. who were we to blink when the babangidas and abachas held sway? how many people did low level riff-raff army officers beat on a regular basis and get away with? how many people were detained for no reason at all? how many people died?
and so, once again as i had said many blog posts ago, this country is not civilized enough to operate democracy in an intelligent manner. the people are not educated enough to understand the limits of civil co-existence (niger delta militants, endless kidnappings come to mind) and their leaders do not understand the concept of trust, fiduciary responsibility, and accountability. far be it from me to wish for the return of the military, but seriously, are we actually any better off now?
see y'all around peeps!
it is not caused by hunger, and it is not caused by strife, it is simply caused by many years of helplessness. it is called short term memory loss ("STML" for short"). STML affects individuals who were born from around 1979 when things began to go really bad, and strikes the nervous system by triggering a full release of more red blood cells into the part of the brain necessary for storing information and life experiences for long periods of time.
so today, i was minding my own business when i stumbled on the following news report: Senators in Nigeria earn 19 million naira per month, while house of rep members earn 10 million per month. now, as always, i can write 50 pages on the flagrant insensitivity of the present day politicians especially in view of the many strikes that we have been plagued with in recent times. in many states of the federation, the civil servants have been asking the governments to give them a minimum wage of 18,000 naira per month, to no avail. i can go into the general whining about how we have no schools, roads and healthcare centres and how it is a slap in the face of every tax-paying, right-thinking nigerian, to have this sort of arrangement shoved in our faces.
unfortunately for all of us, these revelations are not exactly new. it is not exactly surprising to know that a tailor who fought and struggled to become the speaker of the house of reps, did everything she could to hold on to power even in the face of public outrage and ridicule. it is not a shock that each regular nigerian has to earn every cent by sleeping without electricity in the blazing heat of the harmattan nights, waking up to put on unironed clothes and elbowing his way into public transport, having his phone stolen in the struggle for the bus...only to follow the same process to get home after work. every. single. damn. day.
and it is no surprise that whenever the chambers of the national assembly is shown on television, all the seats are empty. some of the senators have never moved a single motion to our hearing, and sometimes i suspect that some cannot read or write intelligently. and yet, because they were able to fight, to push, to cheat, to rig and even sometimes kill, all of which the average religiously-inclined and well-educated suit-wearing young nigerian today is unable to do, they have earned the right to the insanely disproportionate salaries that they collect today.
but i choose not to be carried away by the general sentiments fueled by sensational media reporting. i choose not to look at the figures without context and scream blue murder. i often hear the phrase often said: "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance" and i think that this saying is apt in the circumstance. democracy is getting too expensive a form of government to continue to operate in our nigerian context, but the logical question is, "what is the option to democracy?".
and this is where i think that the general disease being suffered by nigerians, has kicked in. in the midst of the fray and the hue and the cry, we have begun to question the very thing that we spent half our national lives fighting for. we have started to question the wisdom of a form of government that so many of our fathers died to birth. we suddenly forget, that for the first time in a long time, we have the freedom of reporting, enough to expose the discrepancies in our society at the highest levels of national leadership. who were we to blink when the babangidas and abachas held sway? how many people did low level riff-raff army officers beat on a regular basis and get away with? how many people were detained for no reason at all? how many people died?
and so, once again as i had said many blog posts ago, this country is not civilized enough to operate democracy in an intelligent manner. the people are not educated enough to understand the limits of civil co-existence (niger delta militants, endless kidnappings come to mind) and their leaders do not understand the concept of trust, fiduciary responsibility, and accountability. far be it from me to wish for the return of the military, but seriously, are we actually any better off now?
see y'all around peeps!
Comments