NIGERIA AT CHRISTMAS: CASHLESS, CASHTRAPPED, FUELTRAPPED AND FOODTRAPPED SOCIETY

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Once again it’s Christmas all over the world. A time for joy and laughter, that’s why even though it’s a special time traditionally for Christians all over the world to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, it has also become a time set aside for many at the end of every year for merriment as it has now been accepted by nearly all as a special holiday period for even very large numbers of non-Christians across the globe.

Many save up to make trips to spend time with loved ones from one point to the other especially those who have not had time all through the year due to the everyday life’s hustle to make ends meet, hence Christmas for such people is a “catching up” time.

Christmas, a time you feel so much love in the air as no doubts gift shops all over the world are right now packed full with last minute buyers and of course with the many sales ongoing in virtually all the stores across the globe, you are bound to find gob smacked attendants on their feet all day attending to customers’ needs including unending questions from big-buying’ as well as the window shoppers or ‘time-wasting’ ones who will end up picking a lot less than what they must have troubled the attendants over. But then, that’s one of the challenges in working in such stores.

For us in Nigeria too, it’s Christmas again and a time typical for petroleum marketers to make their ‘end of year killing profits’ at the detriment of the masses. Therefore, we are once again like a couple of years before now at Christmas, faced with the recurrent fuel scarcity thus leading to long queues at the stations where people have to wait for long hours as though expecting the second ‘coming of Christ’ just to get a few litres of fuel and the most mind boggling part is that many sleep at the stations just to ensure they get to buy as soon as these stations commence sale yet some of these ones leave disappointed  without buying even after the horrid hours spent waiting.

This time around, we are not only faced with fuel scarcity which has led to the crazy hike in transport fare by over a 100% thus hindering some families from travelling for the yuletide season, we are also faced with long queues at ATM machines in all the banks in the country including the ones in the rural areas where on a good day would barely have more than two persons waiting to use those machines. People can’t collect their money from the banks to even buy food talk less of buying the fuel which the ‘black’ marketers are selling at very outrageous and exorbitant prices.

We have not only become a cashless society but have moved on to a ‘cash-trapped’ society as we now have to wake up very early and rush off to queue up at banks just so we can collect our own money which was saved in these banks.

In all of these happenings, it’s still the masses who are affected as those who steal us ‘red’ on a daily basis in their various leadership positions, still have their way around getting all their needs met at this season from ‘the backs’ including the scarce fuel as well as cash from some of  these banks’ officials who are sometimes even willing to make delivery to the respective homes of these ‘top shots’. While the rest remain cashless, ‘cashtrapped’, ‘fueltrapped’ and even ‘foodtrapped’. What an irony of life!

Gosh! Nigeria is beginning to choke one up more and more by the day. We seem not to be getting out of the woods anytime soon.

Nevertheless, let me still use this opportunity to wish everyone in Nigeria including all those lucky ones in diaspora a merry Christmas even as the rest of us here endure the season of a  ‘cashtrapped’ holiday taking place all over the country at this moment.

God help us all!

STELLA ENE-INYANG

WHY WE ARE THE WAY WE ARE

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For most part of this year 2017, I have had to commute to work and a few other places by public transport not because I do not have a car to run around but because I decided not to drive for most part of the year given some reasons including trying to keep my sanity having being attacked in broad day light in traffic right in front of a military cantonment and nothing was done by the patrol team who went into the building the hoodlums ran into. Another reason was until Governor Ambode sent those “special people” in uniforms off the streets who were frustrating drivers and car owners thus making driving a nightmare as no matter how hard you tried to keep your car documents together, they would always find a fault or two so as to give you a fine which many times do not come cheap. Unnecessary traffic in some areas was also a big “NO” for me including some other reasons which are best known to me alone. in this city called Lagos.

On some of these commuting by public transport, I would run into a couple of friends and foes alike who would ask me questions such as “why didn’t you drive? I saw you at so and so bus tops, what where you doing standing on the road waiting for a bus when you could have easily driven? Including a host of other cynical questions. My replies usually  included “oh I didn’t feel like driving too far today” or on the days when the car had a small fault “I took it to the mechanic” or was it when I was still battling with road safety for my drivers’ license? Too many instances when I had to be asked questions upon questions on “why did you not drive”?

On several occasions, some of these ‘concerned people’ would say “you like to stress/suffer yourself sha” and my immediate reply would always be “shey before we started owning cars and being driven around town, many of had to move around by public transport until God started blessing us with the wherewithal to buy cars?

Where am I going with all of these?

Dear reader, let me not bore you with long stories anymore.

My point is, we are where we are today as a people and as a nation because of the mentality of “what would people say” so many of us do things that we would not naturally do because we do not want people to talk.

Well, I’m sorry to be the one to re-echo that “no matter how hard you try, or what you do, people will always talk” so no point killing yourself just to please anyone amongst the crowd out there that think or care nothing about you.

Our leaders will continue to steal us “red” because even when the good ones are elected into power/positions, they are put under pressure by family, friends and those around him to steal from the ‘big government pot to prove that they have arrived’ even when they never intended to do such.

The incumbents look at the lives of predecessors who did not steal while in government and how society has all of a sudden forgotten them as they seemingly have nothing to offer being out of government. Their children are mocked and told such lines as “your father was in government for so and so number of years yet he couldn’t do this or that for himself yet see Mr A and Mr D who held the same position for just a few months, their properties, this that and so on all around the place but your father can only boast of that single flat you all live in at the moment”.

After such remarks, tell me why the next person will not steal when elected into power? That’s if he/she is not self-willed against all odds?

It’s really a terrible world we live in. where evil is applauded and good shamed!

The life that many of us live today is not what we ordinarily want but for the sake of society and what the next person would say, we tend to live our lives for people.

Dear reader, that kind of lifestyle must stop.

As 2017 grinds swiftly to an end, take time to access your life and decide upon how you want to run with 2018. If you want to live a simple life, by all means go for it and save yourself the brouhaha of trying to meet up with the bandwagon of those who want to live their lives to please others thereby killing themselves in the long run.

The awful part of joining that “bandwagon” is that if you drop dead today, many of them would not even notice that you are gone and even if they notice, they wouldn’t even attend your funeral. The least most of them would do is type ‘REST IN PEACE’ on your social media timeline for others to read when they visit your page and thereafter everyone would move on without you.

So dear reader, think about 2018 critically and run it at your pace.

Peace!!! 

STELLA ENE-INYANG   

NIGERIA AND OUR PRESENT STATE: WHAT DO YOU PRAY FOR?

Times without number, a lot of people have embarked on turning great business ideas into reality with a mindset of succeeding at all costs, believing that with a  large circle of friends and family members, the business will definitely succeed.

Alas they are disappointed 70% of the time because the same circle of family and friends would rarely patronize them and even when some of them do at all, a large number of that group will either want it for free or for a token and also  many a times give the attitude that they are just doing you a big favour for even attempting to buy into your idea.

Alright, let’s assume the business eventually sees the light of day, you would be shocked to realize in the long run that your loyal customers are people you never knew or thought would even give your business a thought or two at the time you conceived the idea.

Apart from the human factor, the many other necessities such as unavailability of constant electricity  supply, lack of good road, insecurity and most importantly the many stringent and unfriendly business Government policies on the other all add up to frustrate businesses in this county.

What is responsible for the above scenario?

 Life is complicated! Really complicated therefore, it is impossible to get all the answers to the countless “whats, hows and whys”.

Sadly, it is the same “we” who make the life as complicated as it is. We need no ‘rocket science’ to hit that hard-truth nail in.

Just yesterday, I watched on one of the local stations as a 37 year old man from the eastern part of Nigeria who now lives in Doha was being interviewed about his life in Doha and why he left Nigeria in the first place. I was totally disappointed and deeply hurt to hear the first statement from him was “Nigeria is a killer of destiny”. Those words cut really deep.

I wasn’t disappointed at the man who is now doing so well in Doha that he said those words without any apologies, I was disappointed because our government pushed the young man, a Nigerian University Engineering graduate to that point and I was hurt because the man reminds me of the reality once again that I’m also a Nigerian thus makes me scared that I may one day, if care is not taken, be pushed to that same level of saying “Nigeria is a killer of destiny”. Gosh! May God not let it get to that level for the rest of us even as we pray for a better Nigeria.

We pray for a better Nigeria where the gap between the rich and the poor will get so short by just an arm’s length.

We pray for a better Nigeria where our leaders will think about led positively before policies are made and actualized.

We pray for a better Nigeria where entrepreneurs will be encouraged and not be frustrated out of the country  seeking  greener pastures only to die in the desert, at sea, sold as slaves or killed in places such as Libya amongst others.

We pray for a better Nigeria where every family would not need to toil so hard to put food on their tables, clothes on their backs or shelter over their heads.

We pray for a better Nigeria where the era of “brain drain” will be over thus our great and excellent professional doctors, teachers, scientists, lawyers, sportsmen/women, engineers and more will be well taken care of so that they would not need to leave home to go work in other countries thus leaving Nigeria as wrecked as it is right now.

We pray for a better Nigeria where immorality will gradually become unfashionable, eventually fading out completely as every Nigerian becomes comfortable hence they would be no need for so much atrocities.

I could go on and on as the list is endless!

What do you pray for? Yes, I mean you, dear reader!

STELLA ENE-INYANG

Pray! Pray!! Pray!!!

Nigeria must get better!