The Armageddon is Here!

Asked how he was faring in a crunched economy, my cousin last week took me through a harrowing tale of what it means to be a worker and have a family in Nigeria.
Among others was a tale of buying a bag of rice at the cost of N18, 000. I was still trying to digest the news when in an emotionally flat tone he added that as soon as he came back from the market he changed position of the rice from its normal cupboard in the store to his private bedroom. He might not have known how that got me thinking as I heaved: ‘The Armageddon is here.’ My cousin is a worker and within the extended family circle, he is one of those who occupy first position in financial responsibility. What it means is that many of my relatives will naturally and always heap their cry for daily bread on his financial desk. But here is a man who can no longer guarantee food for his family. Changing the position of the rice is nothing but a last kick of a dying man. It is just a precaution against now an ‘unnecessary’ charity to the trooping relatives and perhaps against excesses of maids. Recoiling to ‘self’ is the last response of a man in face of scarcity. Hunger strips our humanity naked. The story of my cousin is the story of average Nigerian family. Minimum wage in Nigeria is the magic N18, 000. This magic amount pays house rent and puts food on a family table of a worker. This magic salary pays school fees and caters for the medical needs of a family. This is the money that will pay taxes and cater for transportation to work. This is the money policemen and otheragents will line up like logs of wood to extort from a worker on our high ways. This is the money that pays bills for power he will never have. This is the money that pastors brainwash a worker to surrender ‘just 10 percent’ if he really wants to go to heaven. Don’t forget that government workers are ranked as either first or middle class Nigerians. Don’t forget too that only 4 percent of the populace works with government. Don’t also forget that in my ownstate, Ebonyi, only 1 in every 1000 person is a government worker. In fact my own village is blessed to have one government worker. This is the middle class complaint. The natural question is: “If gold can rust what williron do?” Can one now understand that we have no political agenda when we harp on government’s excesses and insist that the hungry masses be fed as a matter of priority?
Can we now be understood when we insist that SUVs are too luxurious at a time familiesare dying of hunger? Does it make sense when we kick against multiple taxes imposed on poor and hungry peasants for government extravagances?
We have our respect for government but hunger is no respecter of any man. Hunger has no party, no ethnicity and no religion. What a hungry man needs is food. Insisting that the hungry must be fed is no politics when evidences of hunger hover around us. The first way to prove critics wrong is to bring all the hungry into social economic algebra. Make poverty a history and give no loopholes for criticism.
Great leaders make their reputation unassailable because reputation is like a football; no matter how neat it is, once on theground anyone can kick on it. Surely, we cannot make a list of good writers. Government has dried the ink of our best brains. We do not have the grammar but we have a message from the heart. An angry man does not edit his words as long as his message gets across. Our clime has become a living hell; foods others take for granted are not within the reach of a common man again. If there are answers to our problems they are not within the reach ofour present crop of leaders; they are deaf to people’s cry. The answer is now with the masses.
Amidst complex correlations of social injustice, poverty, unemployment and other stresses, it looks simplistic to insist that a singular factor provokes a populace to revolution. But from another perspective, there is a broad connection between high handedness of leaders, demand for justice and true democracy on one side and hunger which is the inevitable consequence of bad governance at another side. History cannot be refuted that hunger sets off a revolutionary atmosphere. For the West, the Arab Spring uprisings which swept through Tunisia, Egypt and Libya was a democratic movement. How wrong the West is! Reducing Arab uprising to a democratic movement is cosmetic and a ‘fell good’ kind of explanation.
We have to note Arab uprising coincided with global food price spikes. There was hunger and there was indication that soaring food prices would soon permanently get above a level which a common man would afford. It all began on December 17, 2010, when a 27-year-old unemployed Tunisian graduate, Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in response to the confiscation of his wares- watermelons. The hunger, harassment, brutality and humiliation of the municipal taskforce and the police offered Bouazizi no hope to live longer; he burnt himself. In a socially tense atmosphere, simmering public anger and sporadic violence greeted Bouazizi’s death. That was how President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ended his 23 year-old reign on January 14, 2011.
The spillover blew away political hippos in Tripoli and Cairo. Enter French Revolution and understand that amidst complex interactions of financial, political, economic, social and cultural factor, it was hunger that finally forced people to put an end to ancient dictatorship. Before the revolution, the population of France was about 26 million, ofwhom 21 million lived in agriculture as poor peasants.
The land was in the hand of the nobles which constituted an insignificant percentage. This forced the 90 percent of entire citizens to take on extra work as poorly paid labourers on larger farms. Added
to their poor salary, only the peasants were burdened with ruinous high taxes to support luxurious monarchy, the sumptuous and often gluttonous lifestyles of the aristocrats. Besides, there was also a compulsory tithe to the church by the peasants. The bishops were all members of the nobility and canons were all members of wealthy bourgeois families. As an institution, the Church was both rich and powerful. The upper echelons of the clergy had considerable influence overgovernment policy.
With food in their mouth the church could not talk. The nobles claimed immunity from the taxes and were well off. Every attempt to initiate a reform failed. The commoners had naturally given up their aspiration as Louis XVI, his ministers abandoned them. At that time, bread was the main source of food for the poor peasants.
The primary responsibility of the king was to provide bread for the poor. In fact the king was affectionately nicknamed lepremier boulanger du royaume (prime baker of the kingdom). But of what used was the king who could no longer feed them? They little they got were collected through tax. At the waiting hand of the hunger were Enlightenment thinkers who challenged commoners to denounce a mentality that had held them hostage.
With that, people broke away from thinking that their plight was an ordained act of God and promoted a society based on reason. The victim was the entire regime as the king and his nobles were brought to guillotine. Why this rehearsal? Nigeria is not different from the Ancient France. We are about 160million but power and resources concentrate in the hands of less than 100,000 Nigerians.
The poor peasants with no access to benefits of office pay taxes to sustain the gluttonous lifestyles of leaders and cronies.
The three arms of government have sunk to the cesspool of greed and corruption with remedy in sight. Whoever thinks we will forever remain this way need to reread some historical books.
Joshua ben Sirach wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. History will follow its natural route and no army of a king can stop it. Leader beready to reap the whirlwind whose seed they have sown.
The Abakaliki prison break may not be an isolated event. More trigger off events are happening- signs of Armageddon.