By Moses Oludele Idowu
The contempt and extreme disrespect that Nigerians experience daily in the hands of their government and government agencies in particular and even corporate business organizations in general must rank among one of the most unfortunate and stark realities of modern life.
The gross disdain and absence of even human compassion and consideration with which the rulers treat Nigerians ought to amaze anyone who has a power of observation.
The contempt and arrogance exhibited in both speech and conduct is simply unbelievable. It is like a master – slave relationship or worse. It is a proof that Nigeria is captured.
State capture is a reality that we must now contend with. The sad thing is that this capture has been by the worst and most retrogressive and debased elements of the kleptomaniacal segment of the ruling class.
They move in arrogance and speak with contempt because they are children of pride. Unfortunately, government officials and civil servants have learned this art and imbibed this perverse reasoning of citizen contempt from their leaders, the politicians and now revel in it.
Corporate organisations and private establishments now having learned this and seen the way Nigerians are treated have also taken a cue and followed in the same manner treating Nigerians with contempt and utter disregard.
Our Banks
Let us begin with our banks. I would not even go into their excesses of multiple exorbitant charges and illegal deductions through which they steal from their customers. They know that most Nigerians don’t know and won’t complain.
Even if they want to complain to whom would they complain? Someone paid money to my account and the transaction is reflected in my Statement of Account yet the money was not reflected in the balance – a substantial amount in six digit for that matter. I never got the money till today.
I have complained and written and they will always promised that their auditor will look into it. And till tomorrow they are still looking into it. If this would happen to me think of the average Nigerian and what he goes through in this Wilderness called Nigeria! I was with a senior colleague years ago and he was examining his Statement of Account and discovered that his bank has illegally deducted amount totalling N500,000 in sundry charges from his account for the year.
Let us leave that for a more pressing issue now. It is few days to Christmas and it is difficult getting cash from our banks. Few days ago when I personally visited banks for transaction First Bank was paying N10,000; GTBank was even worse because it paid only N5000 and Ecobank paid N20,000 to their customers regardless of the amount you wish to draw from your own account. Not loans, not overdraft but withdrawal from your own money that you banked. CBN is saying the banks have money and banks are saying they don’t have. It is depositors’ money who came to deposit that are being used to pay customers.
No consideration, no regard or explanation. No apologies for loss of time that will never be regained. ( I waited for more than 1 hour in First Bank to be paid N10,000 out of my own money) Citizen contempt. Yet the POS operators have money and you can buy from them any amount. Who gave them?
We still use money to buy money. Now I understand when someone said he would continue from where Buhari stopped.
Driver’s license
For several months now we have paid money for renewal of Driver’s License with the Federal Road Safety Corps. Renewal not issuance of new document. They already have the information of every driver on their data base or should have had it anyway because they did the biometric capture too before. So why the delay? Several months have gone and many told me they haven’t been issued the license even after payment. No explanation, no word, no apologies. To make it worse their operatives will stand at highways, street corners and road junctions and intersection like witches preying on motorists and asking for the same particulars that their inefficient and incompetent organization have refused to issue by their indolence after several months.
National Identity
How many years and months did we wait for NIMC after submitting our details to have a National Identification Number issued to us? At last they didn’t even issue the card they privatized and commercialized it. You have to go to a business centre and pay thousands of naira to be issued the card. What then is the purpose of government? What is the purpose of the budgetary allocation made to you year on year? Now those details have now been compromised as their data bank has been hacked due to negligence. Our details have fallen into the hands of wrong people, hackers who could use them for nefarious purposes.
No word, no apologies, no explanation. No consequences. In the land of impunity and immunity. In the words of an old poet:
“A land of darkness as darkness itself,
A land where there is no order
And where the light is as darkness.”
No one is punished for misdemeanor or misbehaviour except those without godfather or who sinned against or stepped the toes of top members of the ruling class like Godwin Emefiele.
Passport
It used to be a tug of war to get an international passport. Everything connected with Nigeria and government is always harzardous and with much pain. You have to wait several months even after capture of biometric details. But if you have money and can pay you can get the same document even within a week. So it is possible, if it can happen for one it can happen for all too.
I am told however that Immigration is undergoing a positive change and people no longer wait for several months like before. The last time I visited I saw the very dignified manner and courtesies and respect with which they treated Nigerians even though they are also men and women in uniform too. This is commendable.
Police
Need I talk about our friend, the police? You must have some status to merit respect from Nigerian police. You can’t blame them for this because it was originally a Colonial Police. So when they treat Nigerians with contempt they are acting more in tune with the spirit and motive of their establishment and origin. “I will shoot you and nothing will happen,” is a sentence many Nigerians have heard and some have actually gone to the grave based on the threat.
There was a pandemonium at Dugbe, Ibadan one afternoon when a senior police inspector and a junior officer had an engagement with me. I had challenged the senior officer for maltreating an Okada rider and he turned on me with his assistant.
“I will waste your life and nothing will happen,” he told me holding my suit. I was greatly annoyed by that insult and statement and I dared the two of them to try it. Ibadan loves trouble, it is the oxygen that lubricates its blood. A large crowd had gathered around the three of us. The policeman continued to threaten that he would shoot and nothing would happen.
Think of the contempt in that statement. That you would shoot a citizen and you are sure that no consequences would follow. And I also dared them to try it, that they can’t.
To their credit they didn’t assault me or raise their hands at me.
Possibly they wondered what kind of a man or civilian would be bold enough to challenge police threat and they too became careful. Reason prevailed and they left holding my suit and I left.
Sincerely, I love the police and even respect them. They know the job and they can do it if rightly motivated. But there are some bad eggs among them. In all my journeys across the nation travelling with plenty of books only policemen among all the several para- military organs on the road have ever asked me to give them books.
That means something to me. How many Nigerians if offered a choice between money and books would choose books? That is why I respect the police. With the right orientation and good leadership Nigerian Police can be reformed and turned to a veritable instrument of crime fighting, busting for national development.
Nigerians will remember the days of old NEPA and the old Nigerian Airways. We were told that with privatization NEPA ( or its variant PHCN) would suddenly change and do marvels. Today it is clear that privatization is a failure. The contempt of this privatized group for Nigerians is even worse than that of old NEPA.
Nigerian Airways
Nigerians would remember the days of old Nigerian Airways, how citizens even after payment for the ticket to travel abroad would still not be allowed to travel until after bribing the officials. It was worse for the ladies as they have to use their bodies to settle senior officials even after paying for the ticket.
Yet sometimes the planes would fly half-empty thus causing financial haemorrhage for the nation. Today Nigerian Airways is dead. Mark anywhere human beings are maltreated, oppressed and traumatized there is no future for that organ. Nigerians don’t know this yet.
The private airlines are not completely free of this malaise even till today. If you have traveled even at domestic level you will understand what I am saying. Flights are routinely delayed, outrightly cancelled without any apologies from anyone. People wait for hours. The sad thing is you may not get your refund due to flight cancellation. Bola Bolawole is yet to be refunded even after 8 months by Dana Airlines. No consequences. Nigerians are fair games.
Telecommunication
The worst form of insult and contempt actually comes from the telecommunication companies especially the MTN. It is like there is no regulation in this country and we are a nation of lawlessness.
Every day the citizen is bombarded by unsolicited messages, adverts, bumps on his number harassing the user to buy an item or use a product. It is an insult. It is a waste of my time to send me product I did not request or bombard me with messages that are of no relevance to me. It is also a drain on the battery of my set and data.
Where in the world does that happen without consequences? MTN would dare not do that in South Africa its home place because there is a Government in South Africa. They know the implications. They do it in Nigeria and engage in many abuses of the citizens because they know Nigeria has no government or anything worth the name. They know with free airtime for the men of the National Assembly and officials of the regulatory commission they are covered. And they certainly are.
Corporate organisation
This brings me to the concluding part of the essay. Corporate organisations abuse Nigerians and hold them in contempt because the rulers of Nigerians themselves do the same. It is the way you sell yourself and your people that outsiders would buy them. They see the way the rulers themselves talk about Nigerians and to Nigerians. With disdain, absolute disregard and even spite. They see the way the rulers belch out their orders with contemptuous cynicism and aristocratic arrogance.
At the news of the Ikeja bomb blast in 2002 where more than 1000 died the President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo came to see for himself. The people having lost so many loved ones became unruly and clamorous as should be expected. And what did Obasanjo say to them: “I don’t have to see you.. I am not supposed to come here…”
What a word from a leader to a grieving people.
As the bomb blast ripped through Nyanya, Abuja killing scores and sending several to hospitals where was the President, the one and only Goodluck Jonathan? He was no where to be found. He was far away in Kano on the campaign train dancing skelewu. While his people moaned to death.
At a time of widespread fuel scarcity across the nation Muhammadu Buhari had no good word for Nigerians except to castigate the youths as being “lazy and indolent.” Strangely, it was during the same period his own son who has never done any work to earn a salary was riding his power bike and broke his neck. It is the father of this lazy youth who was blaming the poverty of Nigerian youths for laziness.
Tinubu
Recently the new Hegemon of Aso Rock told us without mincing word that Nigerians had been living a fake life, underserved life before. That it is now we are living reality. How about that, from the mouth of one of the leading political profiteers of this nation.Has Nigerians ever known the good life? Have Nigerians ever witnessed comfort and comfortability in the last 40 years?
They have always been getting by, just making ends meet as a resilient people. But now someone is saying that even that little comfort of being able to afford fuel and driving a car by the middle class is a fake life. That we do not deserve it, that good life does not belong to us and to our races. That the present suffering is the normal life that our economy deserves.
Only Seyi, Folashade and Oluremi and their cronies and minions deserve the good life. That is why they have been buying costly vehicles as if there is a car rental services in Aso Rock and embarking on wasteful projects running into billions while telling the people to endure their sufferings.
You know a leader by his heart and also by his heartlessness.
Nigerians are clamouring to leave Egypt, the land of bondage. Not so soon. I can’t see a Moses on the horizon or even a Joseph or Joshua. What I see is a succession of Pharaohs changing baton.
Our leaders
When you carefully listen to the words and actions of Nigerian rulers you will understand if you can discern that they are the same and of the same kind of heart. They may be different in manners, styles, brain functions etc., but they are basically the same and with the same kind of spirit – the spirit of taskmaster.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; so you can know how a man thinks by how he speaks and what he says.
I am afraid that from Jonathan period Nigeria has fallen into the hands of her enemies not friends. People who actually hate her and have no regard for her now have charge over her. This is not defamation, it is an opinion freely given.
First it was to Niger Republic, now it is France and Washington. And who knows where or which direction it goes tomorrow?
NNPC – that most opaque and secretive of organisations that runs like a secret society, – now refines fuel locally. Isn’t that a reason why it should sell to local consumers to reduce the cost and lift pain from Nigerians? After all it was public money that was used for the turn-around maintenance. Now they will export to sell to outsiders. We are still paying the same cost as for imported fuel even when in Nigeria and we have the oil and now a refinery. Can you believe that?
Nigerians now pay more for fuel than people of Atlanta as Farooq Kperogi made clear some days ago. It is unconscionable. This is collective dispossession.
It is wickedness and enemy action. Nigerian rulers seem to derive some sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain on their citizens.
This is the contempt that I speak about. What can we do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
But there is a God in heaven who has said : –
“When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.”
Cries are going out to Heaven against the Pharaohs everyday by Nigerians due to unbearable sufferings. Children are crying to sleep every night because of hunger. And someone said this is the normal life. That even the little comfort of the past was fake, that we do not deserve it.
God will intervene soon. He definitely will. He can humble the children of pride.
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