Money's Vengeance & the Obi Factor

(Warning: Long article. Don't start if you're allergic to reading!)

I was listening to damning economic and social statistics of Nigeria from the lips of Peter Obi and froze inside. By jove that man is an encyclopedia of national facts and figures. How does he do it? He's not just at home with them, he's fluent and articulate on these subjects, so versed he's more engaging than a new cell phone.

I said to myself, why do you wonder, the man is a philosopher. Every word he speaks underscores that fact. "An unexamined life is not worth living," he says. And, trust me, the man has examined Nigeria inside out.

Before he jumped their sinking ship, he was addressing members of the PDP Board of Trustees, some of whom had their hands to their jaw and looked lost as he delivered his frightening speech. In fact, at the end of his apocalyptic homily, one member who had the misfortune of receiving the microphone from him did so only tiredly and bemoaned, "I don't know what to say." Listen, it's worse than that. They don't know what to do, either. That is why after hearing the precarious state of the nation, they still went ahead to make a bazaar of their primary elections. These people are stiff-necked.

For sixteen out of the sixty years they threatened to rule Nigeria, the PDP put the nation's neck to the knife and nearly bled it to death. They have no clue how to use political power to rescue a nation. Their clone, the APC, forcefully aborted the sixty-years threat and began its own cutting and cutting, leaving only a weak artery connecting Nigeria's head to her body.

As is their habit, it is election season again, and they're singing new songs. We don't see their hearts now, but their past fruits give us an indication. The nation is gasping and jerking on a precarious breath, it is dying, and that is what Obi saw standing before PDP's Board of disTrustees.

Listening to him I could only come to one conclusion: the spirit of money is finally on a vengeful mission to Nigeria to exact its pound of flesh.

When wealth is not backed by work or value--when it flows from the tip of a politician's pen, when it is mined from a laptop sitting in a darkroom, when it gushes from the nozzle of a gun, when it is conveyed by a cheque written in human blood, when it floats out of the dubious space between the multiple exchange rates of the national currency, what economists call round-tripping, when it is delivered by a mother called 419 and a father called corruption--its spirit is ultimately vexed.

The spirit of money is on rampage in Naija, and it is taking no prisoners. We're all getting tied to the stakes. Nigeria needs an exorcist.

Yes, Nigeria has been dealt fatal blows. The truth is, more often than not, when we regard Nigeria--nearly all of us--what we see is a free lady to be had for a one-night-gig, not a daughter to be raised into a virtuous woman. Hear from Peter Obi what has been inflic

ted on her.

Nigeria has climbed to the top of the list of the world's fragile and failing states, Obi said to the BOT. That's true. Max Weber posits that a measure of the fragility of a state is when it loses its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Nigeria has become a notorious illustration of that. She is currently rated in the RED ALERT (highest) category of the global Fragile States Index (FSI). A complete collapse will be calamitous, not just for Africa but the whole world. We can't afford it, but who is heeding the alert?

Obi says Nigeria ranks number-3, after Afghanistan and Yemen, amongst the world's most terrorized nations. As a matter of fact, terrorism exposure weighs heavily in the twelve indicators of a nation's FSI. Terror is spreading like cancer across Nigeria, and its latest direction is Aso Rock itself. Who ever thought of terror growing such audacity?

Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, Obi's running mate and another statistical guru, says before 2015 the average Nigerian was about 20km away from an illegal firearm. Today we're less than 2km away from an illegal AK-47. Now the hitherto comfortable rabbits of Abuja are crawling out of their holes in broad daylight out of fear.

Yet what's happening is child's play, I think. Alongside these dire developments, our population is exploding and putting severe pressure on our infrastructure. With only 10% of the land area of the USA, Nigeria's production of humans will outstrip the USA's in two or three decades. That's worrisome to me. One thing we excel at is giving birth to children, the laziest mammalian preoccupation. Even animals do that.

Here in the South, droves of young, uneducated, unskilled Nigerians arrive from the North daily to push carts of steel scraps, and ride commercial motorcycles and kekes. It is the clearest presence of the danger of social insecurity, a monster lying in wait for our jugular by the time our tens of millions of children grow into jobless men and women.

If the current narrative doesn't change, if we don't start right away to lay the foundation for a productive and job-creating economy and control births, the AK-47s will get as close as our doors!

Obi told the BOT that Nigeria is now the world's capital of poverty. I tried to comprehend that, so I researched it. I googled 'poverty capital of the world 2022.' Kpoom! India and Nigeria popped up, and I said, "Obi na winch." 70 million Nigerians, 33% of its population, live in extreme poverty, compared to India's 6%. We have also overtaken India in infant mortality.

Obi was relentless. 50 million children are out of school, he announced. Of that number more than half have never been to school at all. Can a nation develop without education? Nah way O!

Hear this, Between the PDP and APC, Nigerian students have cumulatively lost about 60 academic months to ASUU strikes. That's 5 yrs of lost learning!

On the Stress Level Index, Obi said Nigeria is the most stressful country to live in. I didn't bother to search that because I know he knows his onions. You only need to step out on a Nigerian street to feel that. Thank God for giving us an abundance of the grace to suffer and smile. But the danger of getting used to suffering is that we may become like those beautiful maggots in the bucket latrines of old. We gambol in it and see it as a way of life. Suffering species cease to think. The suffering eclipses their faculties. 'God will help us' has become our national mantra, as if God is our little slave. What did He give us brains for?

Unemployment in Nigeria is now 33%, Obi said. Combined with underemployment the figure creeps to 55%, out of which half are young people in the productive stage of their lives. As I said before, we are grooming a monster. When it is unveiled, we shall all run for cover, trust me.

We don't fare better on drugs either. The global Drug Prevalence Index of the world is 5.8. Nigeria's is 14.9, more than double the global average!

But what nearly stopped my heart was when Obi said we spend 98% of our revenue to service debts, and that our entire earnings will be insufficient to service our borrowings by the end of 2022, mere months away! And our current leaders are doing nothing? Shuo! Will Nigeria soon become the subject of an international receivership? Are we gravitating towards bankruptcy? Do we still have a country? Perhaps 'God will help us,' won't He?

Is it surprising that we're grappling with a runaway inflation that currently stands at 18.3%? Which institution or market will offer you that today as investment interest? What this means is that your Naira savings are actually moribund, getting increasingly useless in your accounts.

But there's hope, I think. It is possible to read men. When I listen to Obi, what I hear is the voice of a man with courage, passion, and a patriotic vision for his country, a man on a mission whose spirit is yearning to change things. I don't see a charlatan or self-serving politician.

He's not yet President and has already visited thirty countries in search of solutions to Nigeria's problems. With his own money! I would give him a chance. Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Who else has the wisdom to execute your survival recommendations but you?" God gives solutions to the person who sees the clear perspectives of a problem. He opens their eyes wider.

The eyes of the other major contestants can't see a thing. Their brains are as cold as left-over food. They're in the race for the glamour of the office, not the work. And, boy, is there work to do!

The task before Obi-Datti is quite scary. There're no quick fixes. I don't expect a sudden miracle because it is Obi. I wish I could. What I expect is a sincere best performance from them to set the stage for moving Nigeria forward. We'll have to get out of this dung alley by taking progressive good steps, one at a time. That's all.

The starting point is to make our PVCs Peter's Voters Cards come 2023. It seems to me that the battles he fought to become Governor, and his travails while on that seat, were God's preparation of him to confront the more serious task of getting Nigeria back on track.

Let me tease your conscience. If Nigeria were your personal company, which of these applicants parading themselves would you employ to be its MD? Would you think about their tribe and religion? Would you be disObi-dient to your cherished values? Would you rather not consider their competence and integrity? Look, a clear message from the OBI-DATTI campaign is that one can be clean and still play politics in Nigeria. It is a welcome paradigm shift.

I'll leave you with an admonition from the Bible at Isaiah 1:19-20: 'If ye be willing and Obi-dient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword.' Did you hear that?

And there's another name for the rebellious: 'men of the last days.' Here's God's indictment of them at 2Tim 3:1-4, 'You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disObi-dient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.'

You see, Nigeria has been shepherded to her last days by evil leaders. Who is going to extend her life? I agree with those who say we've prayed enough. It's time to add superior thinking to our prayers.

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