This tale of two cities

THE news of the poverty and extreme deprivation coming from various parts of the country today is, to say the least, depressing. To put it mildly, the condition of the average Nigerian today is soul wrenching; it is akin to the unacceptable condition of the proud people of Ghana in the days of Ignatius Acheampong.

Ghana, at the height of its economic depression occasioned by bad government and the cluelessness of the leadership of General Ignatius Acheampong, the Ghanaian head of state of the union government infamy, forced its citizens out of the country in droves as refugees in Nigeria and other African countries. They deserted Ghana by sea and by land as illegal immigrants in search of any means of survival, no matter how risky or how demeaning.

Ghana, brought to its knees by ravaging economic misfortune, witnessed shortages of all manner of essential commodities in the late seventies. If you saw queues of desperate citizens anywhere in Accra in those days, they were not queuing up to buy any tangible things. They were on line to buy sticks of matches, not packets of matches. Or cubes of sugar, not packets of sugar. You cannot believe it but I saw it because I was there in 1978. It is not a story to be retold here with glee; it is not a situation to wish even your worst enemy.

Ghana has since then recovered, thanks to the ingenuity of the people and the visionary leadership it has enjoyed since the inglorious Acheampong days. Under the guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, IMF, the twin Bretonwood brothers, Ghana launched its Economic Recovery Programme in 1983 to reduce its debts and improve its trading position in the global economy. It was Ghana’s equivalent of our own Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP. With a lot of give and take and some large dose of IMF’s bitter pills, Ghana became the IMF’s poster boy of economic liberalism, an example of what good leadership imbued with clear vision can do to change the fortunes and the conditions of its people.

In fact, as a result of positive impact of the structured economy, the country celebrated 10 years of uninterrupted power supply and Nigerians of means, in turn, moved there, in droves, to acquire choice properties and engage in all manner of businesses. Whatever problem the country’s economy faced much later, it can be said of Ghana that it did not go under; the level of corruption there did not go through the roof. Ghana may not be the largest economy but it did not acquire the dubious status of a failed state.

Despite all our own home grown problems, we have not reached the level of Ghana of 1978 and nobody, for sure, has been caught or accused falsely of scavenging to survive. But my fear is that we are not far from such a grim spectacle. Sample: Newspapers are awash with stories of oddities arising from unremitting poverty and the attempt to come to terms with it from day to day. If it is not poverty what would push a young couple to sell off their six-month-old baby for N500, 000? The father of this innocent human commodity said the idea of hawking the baby was the mother’s. With no tinge of any qualms in their narrative, they said they needed the proceeds from this shameful transaction for survival. Baby, the gift of God, now became a valuable commodity for sale to keep the rest of the family afloat.

Whatever other problems that might have bedevilled an Omu-Aran family in Kwara State, you cannot remove the pernicious effect of poverty from the dastardly action of the father who took the law into his hand and roasted his own son to death. Honour killing, you may call it. But it is a human tragedy which, like so many such human tragedies before this, will for long remain unravelled except to call it for what it is, in pure legalistic jargon, murder. Or, the work of the devil or an act of God.

Daily Trust on Sunday and The Nation on Sunday that carried this report generously, did not, however, volunteer any other motive other than to say that the victim, 22-year old Sola Akangbe, who plied his trade as load carrier using the wheel barrow, was accused of stealing money from road side beggars. His irate father, a commercial motor driver, possibly driven by a flagrant dishonour to the family name and the urge to restore that honour, took his son to the bush, tied him, hands and legs, and set him on fire. He was rescued alive by passersby who then rushed him to the hospital where he died, but not before he volunteered that his father was the culprit.

If you read this pathetic story one more time, you would see, if you didn’t before, the hands of cruel poverty in this bloody business. Men and women driven by disability and incapacity to fend for themselves have taken to begging to eke out a living. The wheel barrow pusher, not making sufficient money from his menial occupation, possibly because there are no loads to carry as a result of the economic downturn, decided to help himself from the daily takings of the beggars. But death, dressed in his father’s robes, has dealt a deadly blow to his life. The price for his iniquity!

There are so many other Nigerians today looking for what to sell off to survive from day to day. And the rich among them, as it now turns out, also cries. Haven’t you heard the other news? That rich men in Abuja, to be specific, are offloading their exotic cars in the second-hand car market to survive the pangs of hardship. They are not doing so to mock us, we, the people who are at the lowest rung of the ladder. No. They, too, are beginning to feel the heat. Hear the news.

The Punch last Sunday reported that Abuja residents, the rich among them for sure, have resorted to auctioning their exotic cars to raise cash for survival. The report did not quite say whether they included those who are returning money to the Economic and Financial Crime Commission EFCC. I doubt if they are in the category of those selling cars to survive. The quantum of money they have been accused of taking or receiving, so said President Buhari, cannot finish in their life time or the life time of their children.

They cannot, therefore – and God forbid a bad thing – fall into the category of those who, buffeted by the viciousness of the economic meltdown, have been pushed to the wall and seeing no other way out, have decided to sell off a baby or two or one car or two or steal money from the beggars to survive.

Except that within their own exotic club, these big men of dubious means, can still, if they are so minded, outsmart one another to the tune of billions of naira simply for the heck of it, playing kalo kalo at the local Tombola or in far away Las Vegas or at the Dubai variant of the gamblers’ joints. Yes they can, because they have no other visible means of relaxation.

In this same week, in this same country where a poor couple have had to hawk their baby to put food on their table or get their surviving kids back to school, in the week in which a poor wheel barrow pusher had to die a callous death for, of all crimes, stealing some miserable amount of dirty naira from roadside beggars, some of the aforementioned big men are quarrelling among themselves, disputing the exact figures they got out of the looting machine also known as the arms bazaar. And they ask: Is it a hundred million naira or more or less? Or was it delivered in dollars? Who gave and who received? Some, because the amount they got is obscene, might be going in search of chartered accountants and auditors to help them tidy their figures.

Such a headache! Such unnecessary wahala! Such a monumental scandal in this tale of two cities. And yet this show of shame continues.

Quote