Mounting socioeconomic problems point to the health of any system. It is a wakeup call to those in the system that something be done to arrest deterioration and to ensure good health. Nigerians do not shy away from calling attention of public officials to symptoms and signs of malfunctioning in their system.
IN their professional capacity, the Department of Meteorology would predict flooding and attendant consequences only for the rains to come with rivers over flowing their banks, farmlands and plantations as well as settlements washed away. Harvests of crops are swept away with the flood every season and the people starve, while food prices keep climbing. Academic infrastructure becomes outdated and inadequate while those who bring such reports to government are branded saboteurs, sponsored by opposition.
UNEMPLOYMENT is mounting by the day, the youth in the prime of age when they are supposed to be contributing to national economy are redundant. Public and private establishments are not engaging new hands. With declining supply of power from the national grid, cost of production is ever rising such that it pays manufacturing companies to migrate to neighbouring countries in West Africa to do business. And for the most part of 2020, the Federal Government could no longer tolerate her neigbours taking undue advantage of the economy in violation of ECOWAS Protocols on customs by locking up her borders and damming whatever the consequences are.
THE economic situation in Nigeria is biting. Crime rate is rising and cybercrime is on the increase. This clearly constitutes a major challenge to the government. The Economic Financial Crime Commission cannot do it alone, as such, the police had to carve out a special squad to go after the criminals and restore sanity. Meanwhile, police personnel like other Nigerians are not spared from economic hardship in the land. Such survival strategies they have devised include extortion of unimaginable proportion and extrajudicial murder of suspects.
SIMULTANEOUSLY Electricity Distribution companies refuse to meter consumers. The minimum token for customers is two thousand naira and they connived with unscrupulous public officials to increase tariff having claimed to be running at a loss but preventing representatives of the people from looking at their books. At this time, that the coronavirus pandemic has crippled economic activities worldwide, the Federal Government could not think of something else other than increasing pump price of Petroleum Motor Spirit can only communicate insensitivity to the people.
THE HOPE recalls that the security situation all over the country has been grave while government has been disinterested in taking any serious step to correct the situation. The presidency seems to be more comfortable with a lineup of security chiefs from the same region and religion, retaining them even in retirement when the people are not secure.
THERE is therefore an overwhelming evidence of intelligence failure. Rather than trivializing issues involved, we think the media must moderate itself in line with national interest. It is futility to concoct socioeconomic problems as ethnic or regional conspiracy. To want to make traditional rulers turn issues of policy making into local propaganda is to miss the point. For a long time government has been unconcerned with the welfare, security of its people and defense of territorial integrity of the land. It must bear in mind that only proactive measures intended to bring about a resolution of various socio economic problems would work.
GOVERNMENT and the youth have met in the market place. It is a forum to keep open and not engage in under hand tricks. It must be taken as an opportunity for trust and candour. Afterwards, government can begin to demonstrate that as figurative as ‘leader of tomorrow’ is, ‘tomorrow’ does not refer to eternity.