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| A Ghetto In Nigeria |
By Jaye Gaskia
With the
look of things across the country it does seem that Nigeria’s light fingered
ruling elite have found their collective answer and solution to the ‘Poor
question’, that is to the question of what to do with the poor, as a way of
dealing with poverty.
This will
not be the first time in history though that a ruling class has collectively
decided on a solution to very persistent and nagging questions, that is issues
of existential developmental challenge that they are unable to, or incapable of
resolving in any other way.
The Nazis
under their supreme leader, the Fuhrer in the first half of the 20th
century also arrived at their final solution to the problem they had dubbed the
‘Jewish question’. And what was the Nazi’s final solution? Exterminate the Jew!
So what is
Nigeria’s ruling class of the 21st century’s final solution to the
‘poor question’? Eliminate the poor! Ingenious isn’t it?
Every time
the treasury looting elite gets up boastfully, beating its chest as to how
under its watch we have become Africa’s largest economy, and the world’s 26th
largest economy; or as to how a Nigerian man is Africa’s richest man, and the
world’s 25th richest, while a Nigerian woman is the world’s richest
black woman; etc, each time it goes on this euphoric grandstandings, the poor
and poverty keeps popping up to burst the balloons of lies and puncture big
potholes in the tarmac of falsehoods.
So yes we
are Africa’s largest economy, but we are also home to the largest concentration
of poor people in Africa, and the third largest concentration in the whole wide
world.
Yes 15 of
Africa’s 40 richest are Nigerians, but 112 million Nigerians at a poverty rate
of 70% live in poverty.
And whereas
Nigeria’s rich own some of the choicest properties, the overwhelming majority
of which are empty and not being lived in across Abuja, in Lagos, in PH, in
Europe and the Americas, and in Dubai; yet the country suffers a 17 million
housing deficit. The implication of this at an average household size of 6, is
that nearly 90 million Nigerians are living in subhuman housing conditions are
simply homeless.
And so it
seems that as the country has grown in wealth, the lot of its ruling elites has
improved magnificently while the conditions of living of the overwhelming
majority of citizens have largely regressed or at best stagnated engendering a
precarious existence for them.
And yes GDP
has grown steadily since 1999 at more than 6% annually, nevertheless so has the
rate of unemployment; with general unemployment growing from 8% in 2004 to 24%
in 2013, and youth unemployment topping 54% in 2012.
And in the
midst of this grinding, crushing and alienating poverty and misery that is the
lot of the majority, what has the thieving ruling elite been upto?
Every year
in the last 5 to 6 years at least, outside of the annual budget of more than
N4tn, the country’s ruling class has expropriated extra-budgetary funds to the
tune of at least on the average $8bn from the Excess Crude Account annually,
and at least another annual average of not less than $10bn from the External
Reserves.
The
implication of this is that at least in the last 6 years, on the average
Nigeria’s ruling elite have had access to and claimed to spend on the Nigerian
economy at least the combined sum of N4tn [annual national budget] plus N4tn
[combined annual budget of the 36 states] plus N2tn [being additional withdrawals
from both the excess crude account and the external reserves] on a yearly
basis. That is more than N10tn each year, and more than N60tn over the 6 year
period.
This is in
exclusion of the untraceable stolen resources that simply disappear into the
bottomless pockets of these gangs of treasury looters. Take just one instance,
that of the so-called crude oil theft. If we take the lowest but clearly
understated estimate on loss of 100,000 barrels of crude oil daily to theft, at
$100 per barrel this amounts to nearly $10m per day over 6 years.
Additionally
since celebrating with fanfare our debt free nature after paying back in excess
of $12bn at once in order to be forgiven the remaining $18bn of debt in 2005;
our external debt profile has since climbed back to just below $10bn, growing
by about 40% between June 2013 and July 2014 alone.
Where have
all of these monies gone? Is it a mere coincidence therefore that a mere 10% of
wealthiest Nigerians now own more than 40% of national wealth, while the bottom
20% of the population own a mere insignificant 4% of national wealth?
And so how
have they addressed the poverty question? Well we have 17 million housing
deficits; what to do? Demolish the houses of the poor and evict them from the
urban cities.
We have such
a high unemployment rate; what to do? Criminalise the livelihood of the poor.
So you ban street trading, ban okadas, ban buses plying some routes; harass
street traders, okada riders, bus drivers, sometimes chase them to their
deaths, sometimes destroy their equipment, and oftentimes arrest and jail them
and absolutely provide no alternatives.
Then to
hasten this quick fix solution, ensure that hospitals are either nonexistent or
not equipped and staffed and charge exorbitant fees. That way when the poor get
sick from your harassment, they can die quickly.
Obviously
therefore it seems that to this clueless, irredeemably greedy, light fingered
treasury looting elite, the solution to poverty is not to curb their humongous
appetite to steal, not to drastically scale back the historic scale and scope
of their corruption, and certainly not to punish the impunity that drives this
piracy; but instead, it is to eliminate and eradicate the poor from the face of
the earth.
Our bounden
duty is to chase this inhumane and inconsiderate treasury looting ruling elite
from power before they get the chance to fully realize their final solution to
poverty and the poor.
Only by
waging a war against this thieving ruling class can we end their war on the
poor. And we can do this only by taking concrete steps to Take Back Nigeria.
(Follow me on Twitter:
@jayegaskia&@[DPSR]protesttopower; Interact with me on FaceBook;
JayeGaskia& Take Back Nigeria)
(Jaye Gaskia Is National Coordinator
Of Protest To Power Movement [P2pm] & Co-Convener Of Say No Campaign [Snc])
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