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

A BLANK DAY: MY MANY THOUGHTS AND I

Since I got into the office this morning, I have been seated at my desk trying to whip up a good blend of topics and also deciding on which to write upon but the clash of topics in my head have restrained me from doing justice to any of them so as an upshot, I would say ‘blank’ is my companion at this very moment.

Too many topics!

Today would have been the late OJB’s 50^th birthday but he chose to celebrate with the angels in heaven and so on my way to the office, I stopped by his place to get some of the branded shirts for his candle light procession billed for later this evening and as soon as I stepped into the premises, behold, his pictures and the condolence register were the first to be seen and then reality sets that truly our very own OJB is no more.

So should I still say “happy birthday Jigga”? All the same, ‘happy birthday Jigga’. I guess that would do.

Then the issue of the ban on street hawking in Lagos took me off the thoughts of OJB for a while and then I am forced to ask nobody in particular “is street hawking our biggest problem or challenge”?

These hawkers do not have alternatives otherwise they wouldn’t be on the streets. Please nobody should get me wrong by thinking me the ‘devil’s advocate’, no, not at all.

However my take is that if these people are taken off the streets completely, what would they fall back on as many of them peddle their wares as a means of livelihood? I kid you not, if there were other jobs, these people wouldn’t be found on the streets because from all indications, street hawking is no lazy man’s job.

Yeah, no lazy man can go ‘street hawking’ as he or she has to bear the burden of running after vehicles under the very sometimes unfriendly weather. Often I feel really bad when some commuters or drivers make the hawkers run after them haggling on price and at the end of the day, do not buy the item. Mtcheew, mean isn’t it? Well sometimes you lose or win some.

Even at that, the hawkers are undaunted as they keep, keeping up on a daily basis, hoping “e go better” one of these days.

Now that ‘means’ is about being taken from them by the government. What is the plan for them? Like someone asked on a lighter note “if they are caught, will they not feed them in the prison for the six months”? A ‘begging question’ there, right?

My take on the ‘hawkers’ issue is that, the government could give them the option of hawking in certain areas and at specific times of the day. But then, who am I to proffer solution? My opinion though.

Another clashing thought is the issue that government is taking over one of the new generation banks today and  news have it that it’s the first of nine banks  intended to be taken over as the times go by.

 

Hmmm! Can it get any worse for the bankers than it has been these past few years, months or days? Maybe, just maybe, it could be a turn of a good era for the bankers so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Finally, trying to remember the other thought.

Aha! Now I get it. What is with the fight on social media?

Well, I’ll leave that topic for another time as my head is beginning to settle in to work again.

And so, it’s back to work, even as I get ready for the Candle light procession which starts in a few hours.