Newsie Events:- #Opinion By Caleb Onyeabor
Events of the past few days where people invaded warehouses and homes of political leaders to forcefully take away what has been referred to as hidden COVID-19 palliative points to a gloomy state that Nigeria has deteriorated into. Although there have been unfortunate reports of attacks on private warehouses stocked with items that are unconnected to the distributed palliatives, the other story about the discovery of actual palliatives hoarded by political leaders are actually true and worrisome.
The belligerence with which people invaded these places, in most cases, in defiance of security personnel, points to the fact that there is hunger in Nigeria. You can choose to call them hoodlums or looters or irresponsible citizens, hunger is no respecter of grammar.
Years of incompetent leadership has plunged Nigeria into a state of economic chaos. With the kind of unemployment and poverty level in the country, hunger has become a Nigerian endemic. People with no jobs cannot afford food, people with jobs cannot afford food as the prices of food are outrageously on an all-time high. A hungry man is an angry man.
Corruption in Nigeria is like a food chain. With the federal government at the top of the chain and the local government and traditional rulers at the bottom of the chain. In connivance, they eat up even the crumbs that are supposed to fall from the table to the masses. One day, When the masses will be fed up, having no food to eat, they will eat the politicians.
Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb with this unprecedented level of hunger among its citizens, what we just saw is a pinch of what will happen when a hunger inspired public decides to take back what’s theirs and what has been taken from them from members of the political class and their cronies. A hungry man will fear no death, no barrel of the gun can stop him, no soldier, no police can make him retreat when it is matter of survival already. There is hunger in Nigeria and when this explodes, there will be nowhere for any of Nigeria’s political leaders to hide.
Caleb Onyeabor is a Nigerian intellectual, an avid advocate for political justice, social justice, and economic justice. Author of Diary of a Messed Up country. Follow him on Twitter via twitter.com/caleb_onyeabor
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