It is tempting to see what happened last Sunday at Odogede area of Igede Ekiti, Ekiti State at about 1.30 p.m. as something that provided comic relief; that is something to just laugh over. But to do that will be glossing over a potentially explosive issue; to do that will be missing the point and the import of the larger implication of that singular incident.
It was supposed to be a holy day; one in which Christians are expected to be as holy as the angels. But that was a day when a woman, said to be a teacher at Ekiti Baptist High School in the area chose to steal the pot of amala from her neighbour’s kitchen.
The teacher had apparently taken her time to
watch the neighbour preparing the amala and praying that she would at least get up from the kitchen to do something inside. As soon as this happened, the teacher went into her neighbour’s kitchen and carried the pot and the amala to her own apartment where she and her children began to eat it with palm oil. When the neighbour returned to the kitchen and could not find her pot and amala, she was shocked. Eventually when she saw her neighbour (the teacher) and her children eating the amala with palm oil, she was so touched that she went back to her kitchen to bring soup for them.
This is a serious matter; it is poverty of indescribable proportions. I know some food items can flow with palm oil; like yam, for example. But amala with palm oil is not a good combination. I doubt if it was worse than that during the civil war when some of my Igbo friends claimed they rejoiced anytime they had lizard to eat. That was at a time when bush meat and ‘home meat’ (rats and all) had been exhausted. It was lizards to the rescue. That is why many of them keep wondering why the new generation of Igbos is reawakening Biafra.
Things must be so bad for people to ever dream of the idea of eatingamala with palm oil, and for the food to flow. Ordinarily, it should get stuck in their throats. How they perfected that art is still confounding. And to think that such a thing happened in Ekiti; south west Nigeria! One, Ekiti people are naturally proud. Two, they are so well-read that some people now think that is their bane, considering the things they do these days. Well, nothing suggests that the woman teacher is an Ekiti; but that is not important. Even if she is not; the characteristic Ekiti pride should have made her (as one who lives in an Ekiti town) to rebuff stealing, which was what she did; even if with an explanation, as they sometimes say in court.
The incident reminded me of a similar one that occurred to me and my fellow youth corps member, Olaitan Olubiyi, who was the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) public relations officer for Gongola State for 1984/85. Olubiyi and I shared the same pot of soup; our rooms were adjacent in the five-bedroom flat that five of us (corps members) shared then. Both of us had been classmates since our days at the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos.
What happened was that, on December 31, 1984, we had cooked what was supposed to be our New Year delicacy and had hoped that we were going to start 1985 on an exciting note (after a not-so-exciting George Orwell’s 1984) with the choice soup, specially prepared for the season. But alas! By the time we returned from the cross-over night service, our pot and its content had disappeared, without trace! They had crossed over to God-knows-where!
That was back then. As serious as the matter was, we took it with philosophical calmness. As a matter of fact, we were grateful to God that we were out of the house when the thieves struck because such people would not mind to kill to steal even a pot of soup, especially considering that people were just putting the Maitatsine incident behind them in that part of the country at the time. For the younger generation who do not know Maitatsine, (like the pupils in an Ikenne, (Ogun State) primary school who did not know Chief Obafemi Awolowo and indeed mistook him for Obafemi Martins (Obagoal), it was another Islamist fundamentalist group that unleashed mayhem in that part of the country in the early ‘80s.
Incidents like these should jolt our leaders to the tasks ahead of them. They are more of a wake-up call for them to think outside of the box. President Muhammadu Buhari might not have caused the problems on ground; but he has to do more than ever before in this second year of his administration. So far, the cavalier style of his administration does not convince me that he knows some of these issues on ground ought to have been solved as early as yesterday. That is my problem with his government; and that is what many people feel and that is why they are also saying the era of excuses is over.
But this is not a challenge for the president alone. Governors too have a lot to do to steer their states away from the monthly handouts from Abuja. As they say in Yorubaland, Olorun o pa enikan lekun (God has made enough provision for all). I do not know any part of this country that is not blessed. Why would everyone be waiting on Abuja for handouts? It has been said now and again that the present structure in the country is unsustainable. Why would the entire country collapse simply because oil prices have crashed or because some militants decided to be fighting for God-knows-what? It doesn’t make sense.
The point is; by and large, governments in some of the states can do with far less number of people pushing files in their ministries. Many of them may regard this as an unkind cut; Labour union leaders may hit their heads on the ground; but that is the simple truth. How can some states pride themselves as ‘civil servant states’? What does it mean? What do civil servants produce to require the huge number of workers that gulp 60 to 70 per cent of the revenues of some of the states monthly?
Let the workers strike till thy kingdom come, the fact is that unless the economy improves, workers in many states will no longer get their pay as at when due again. Strike cannot bring out the money that is not coming as it used to be from Abuja. Ekiti State governor, the darling of his people, Ayodele Fayose of the ‘New Awada Kerikeri’ fame, has turned the strike in his state to a wall-clock joke by saying he has joined the workers on strike in solidarity! Show me any other governor who has exhibited such outpouring of love.
Now that there is no money to pay the civil servants in Ekiti and many other states, reports say many of them are now returning to their villages to farm. That is the way to go. Before the discovery of crude oil in the country, we were making some progress; each region according to its ability. It was the soldiers who came and truncated all that. They brought us to the situation where we have a monster centre that is consuming unproductively and cannot sustain itself without the oil from the Niger Delta. A centre that was supposed to depend on its constituents parts, with true federalism, is now the one dishing money to those parts. It is a misnomer and that is part of the reasons why we are all now catching cold because the oil that we rely on is being threatened not only from without (falling prices) but also from within (militancy).
But what is happening in the country right now with the multitude of workers not getting paid for months should be a blessing in disguise. Yes, we may be able to solve the problem with the militants once again, if their issue is not about the government stopping its anti-corruption war. But that should not be an excuse for states to remain complacent and do nothing to look for money elsewhere for their survival. Those calling for the creation of all manner of states will stop their agitation once they know they have to look for money to run those states. Whatever truce we get now with the militants will as usual be temporary.
It is high time state governments began to think of life without crude oil. We did it before; we can do it again. Where laws have to be tinkered with; let the legislators begin to do that right away. Many countries had used this kind of hard times to turn their fortunes around. We can do it if only we are able to see that oil is not just the answer. As a matter of fact, diversification alone is not. Let’s return to federalism; or true federalism, as our politicians call it. Apparently we have been having problems because we have been operating falsefederalism! Otherwise, ultimately, all so-called ‘civil servant states’ will die naturally, or be annexed by healthier ones. It is a matter of time.
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