The covid 19 pandemic has made us refugees. Though we are not in refugee camps.
We are glorified refugees displaced by an unseen enemy with a potent force. We are modern refugees who stay at our homes, wait for food. Sorry, they call it palliatives. Our leaders say so. They say they are aiding the vulnerable in our midst.
The coming of coronavirus pandemic has also changed the narrative or discourse.
We no longer bombard our public office holders with issues bordering on governance or legislation. All we want now, are food and incentives, to keep body and soul together as we wait the end of the lockdown.
Politicians have turned the lockdown as campaign tools for future political purposes. All those who are eying one public office or the other, are now sharing food items this period, ostensibly as a campaign tool to seek for votes in 2023.
If any politician wants to get enough votes when he or she aspires for elective office in 2023, all he needs to do now, is to share yams, bags of rice, bags of salt and other palliatives to his people during the lockdown and expect considerable support when the time for election comes.
Any public office seeker who fails to give out rice, Indomie and salt to his people this period, will never get attention in three years time. When we approach 2023, the campaign jingle will no longer be issues driven but rice and beans motivated.
I have also watched with keen interest how those we elected into various offices, particularly in Imo State, are outpacing themselves, sharing food items to the locals in the hinterlands all in the name of cushioning the effect of the lockdown because of covid 19. I never knew our public officers could become such emergency humanitarian agents.
Before covid 19 broke out, the citizens were never in the plans of these emergency humanitarians. Our legislators and government officials who are now giving out food items never cared a hoot to build or renovate hospitals or schools, provide or put in place basic amenities to improve the lives of the people.
One had expected these “emergency humanitarians” to fix hospitals or put up isolation centres in their domains, and provide test kits for the virus, in the event the covid 19 pandemic finds its way into the State. They will never indulge in such.Doing so will not yield any political dividend now or in the future, so no need for that.
The food items will not have electoral value now. It will in the future, three years from now. A man who takes care of another man’s stomach remains an unforgettable friend. That is how they reason and that is the motive behind some of the food gifts in the first place.
If those in public offices could translate the speed they used in buying and distributing yams and bags of rice to the people over the covid 19 lockdown, to fix water, electricity, provide basic education and healthcare for the populace, our people will not wail over bad governance. There would have been no need for the so called vulnerable to queue for rice, beans and tomatoes in the first place . Only those in refugees camps do so.
The covid 19 pandemic has exposed the deceit of those who govern and who are governed. It reveals how low we have sunk. It has indeed exposed our flaws. May God help us.
“Any public office seeker who fails to give out rice, Indomie and salt to his people this period will never get attention in three years time. When we approach 2023, the campaign jingle will no longer be issues driven but rice and beans motivated”
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