The 2023 Yuletide began on a gloomy note for Nigerians as news filtered into ears that the nation was losing roughly 65 lives in stampedes occurring where free rice and other food items were being distributed at Ibadan, Okija and Abuja. These were incidents that got mentioned in the media. Others might have gone unnoticed.
It is not unusual for gifts to fly to and from various corners at times like this, when the world gets into an infectious festive mood of Christmas which is a period of fun. What came as the unusual was the arrest, by the police, of an Abuja-based Catholic priest and some other church officials involved in the distribution of rice and food gifts which have come to be romantically known as palliatives.
In Ibadan, the police also went for Prophetess Naomi Ogunseyi and two others who, on Tuesday, Dec. 24, were remanded on the orders of a Chief Magistrate’s Court. Naomi, in her usual characteristics, had organised a children’s annual funfair for children which ended in a devastating stampede that resulted in the loss of 35 of the children.
The word palliative sprang into limelight in recent times in Nigeria during the COVID 19 era, when the world panicked over a strange and controversial disease that practically strangled people by denying their lungs of precious oxygen, leaving sufferers gasping for breath. Governments world over restricted citizens to their homes and international flights halted except in very essential cases. It was all in an effort to avoid spread of the deadly disease. And to give citizens incentives to remain indoors, governments and humanitarian organisations offered people free food.
Palliative, therefore, means something that palliates, something that moderates the intensity of pain, hunger, dispute, or disease, a placebo of sorts. It follows that the palliatives, the free rice and noodles we flock to collect at our peril, are not the real cure for the pervading hunger inflicted on the nation by profligate rulers. It is necessary to emphasize that these rulers in the class of Nebuchadnezzar who have refused to be leaders like Moses are the real enemies of the society, having prepared the grounds for the extreme hunger that is ravaging the nation.
As earlier pointed out, the frenzy of Christmas is not without exchange of gifts in love and conviviality. So has it been in countries more developed than Nigeria. Here today, the gifts have transformed from gifts exchange to handouts from the haves to the have-nots who literally pine away in penury for the reason that all is not well with the politics and government in the land. It’s been converted to palliatives which the hungry lot scramble for and in the process, the weak get trampled upon by the strong among them.
If the governments and non-governmental organisations in Nigeria are looking at palliatives as a means of poverty alleviation, the recent happenings have given them a different piece of information about the exercise. Palliatives, handouts and baseless philanthropy breeds a lazy lot. Nigerians now spend valuable time in the church and crusade grounds praying for a daily Father Christmas. Those who act otherwise, who are willing to eke out a living, are hampered by some draconian policies of government that impose higher and multiple taxes on the populace, discourage enterprise and offer little security for the honest earners in the society.
At the risk of plagiarising Peter Obi, it is necessary to point out that the only solution to poverty in this land of plenty is to quickly move the nation “from consumption to production.” It is a scenario that, if attained, is capable of allowing every Nigerian to retain his or her dignity and stop scrambling for palliatives whenever they find them.
Cases have been reported where bags of rice in warehouses belonging to private merchants have been invaded by a mob that dubbed them palliatives from government. Government should indeed realise that it is an institution meant to regulate rather than pose as a philanthropic body using state funds at its discretion. The politics of palliatives which the present administration prefers to emphasize over and above preparing grounds for enterprise in the land is to say the least insulting to every Nigerian. That is why it pained so much that the federal government chose to use billions of naira to distribute rice and noodles that hardly got to their supposed destinations instead of repairing the refineries that oil our economy at the moment.
Palliatives politics, at best, gives impetus to the feudal system of rulership being introduced in the country by the present ruling class. Feudalism could be the culture in the north, or could be a prerogative of people in a certain faith. It should be kept far away from the modern state we seek to create of Nigeria where equal opportunity abounds.
Not all of the citizens are comfortable with the situation where those who capture the state apparatus by hook and crook climb up to their penthouses where they gaze derisively at those flocking around at the base in search of crumbs falling off the hands of the master and his family. And the little they decide to dish out to the famished multitude seem to them like Mother Teresa lives in their being.
Nigerians should learn to view situations from other perspectives than the pedestrian. Some time, a video went viral where some Ghanaian youths chased away some politicians and their bags of rice which they came with to distribute at a campaign ground. The youths plainly told the politicians in the video what they wanted instead of rice. It’s time Nigerians woke up the such realities.
As for throwing innocent sympathisers into jail for attempting to help out in the inadequacies of our government, it is not easy to think out a better definition for callousness other than that. If the government is made up of honourable men and women, they should be voluntarily walking into jail, one by one, rather than harass reverend fathers, prophetesses and owners of humanitarian foundations bailing Nigerians out the little way they could.
In other words, the real criminals in this matter are the politicians who have made Nigerians a laughing stock in the world, having denied the common man of his patrimony, making him hungry in the midst of plenty and converting the able-bodied to beasts at the sight of rice and noodles.
Dr. Odu can be reached through dirimrich2018@gmail.com or SMS 07016722929
