The tragedy was however not her failure to deliver; the real
catastrophe was actually the pedestrian intellection unwittingly exposed
within a spell of creative drought.
In the said Punch column entitled “Why are Nigerians still so poor?”,
Adelakun resumed her pillory of just any institution, idea – just
anything Nigerian, other than her own fancy. The raging Coronavirus
pandemic would seem to present yet another opportunity to mercilessly
pound her favorite of all – the Buhari administration.
In the service of mischief, facts can, of course, either be
creatively twisted or exaggerated mindlessly. The more outlandish the
easier to hit a target. So, an official directive to the Central Bank
that a category of importers be denied forex allocation for food staples
on which local farmers were thought to have achieved market saturation
was generalized audaciously by Adelakun to mean a national claim of
total food security!
Well, such has to be established as the theoretical foundation, however ramshackle, for a premeditated bombardment.
Her entire fulmination can, in fact, be winnowed into two broad
submissions. One, she pounced upon the latest reports of “hunger in the
land” within three weeks of lockdown of a section of the country, to
boldly underline the falsity of her earlier self-manufactured claim of
“national food security“ in an orgy of brazen intellectual masturbation.
Hear our emergency economist playing to the gallery thereafter: “How
did we go from a country that said it had achieved food security to one
where thousands of Nigerians are now unabashedly slamming their bank
account number on social media and begging for alms from strangers? We
have always been a poor country, that much is certain, but how did
things get this bad for us?”
Seriously?
By the referenced pedestrian claim, the columnist only succeeded in
giving herself away as utterly bereft of the real issues. At a time when
even kindergarten pupils are forced to stay at home on account of the
rampaging Coronavirus that has disrupted the pre-existing social order,
how amazing that a supposedly informed columnist fails to realize that
what is at play is the telltale sign of economic shut-down.
The art of wealth-creation consists of the exertions of both skilled
and non-skilled workers, all things being equal. Lockdown means
demobilizing the engine that creates wealth. Even secondary-school
Economics students know this.
So, if Adelakun truly hears and understands the mob she is so eager
to incite in Nigeria, she would know that the cry is essentially about
empty pockets, not scarcity of food. Which is not surprising for a
national economy still operating at the subsistence level. Most folks
live from hand to mouth. Added to this unfortunate population are the
unemployed, the beggars and others. So, not having the chance to eke a
living means they are no longer capable of the means to purchase goods
and services available.
Against this backcloth, it therefore becomes easier to recognize the
gravity of the danger posed to society by the propagation of falsehood
or misinforming the multitude. The kind constituted by those willfully
inflicting their point of view with the zealotry of the biblical
Pharisees with virulence as deadly as the dark pathogens of Covid-19.
By the way, Adelakun is known to be ensconced in faraway United
States, from where she regularly launches her missiles against moving
and immobile targets in Nigeria.
In what looks more like act of commission than oversight, it is
observed that, in this particular literary misadventure, the columnist
uncharacteristically avoided drawing foreign parallels. (An obsession to
often relativize Diaspora and homeland without regard for cultural
contexts simply to validate pre-conceived notion of fatherland Nigeria
as “hopelessly useless”; a fixation shared unfortunately by a countless
others offshore who, in truth, are actually afflicted by a neurosis that
can be diagnosed roughly as acute inferiority complex arising from
sustained neo-colonial brainwashing.)
But one can, at least, assume that the columnist has access to
television or internet to view the world from whichever part of America
the ongoing lockdown caught her. One then wonders how she will classify
the over 26 million Americans who had already filed for economic
benefits (at this writing Thursday, April 23) within the three-week
lockdown? Or the growing food queues all over the acclaimed “God’s own
country” for that matter? Would Adelakun also interpret that to mean
“hunger” or the end of “food security” in America?
At this writing, the Trump administration was proposing fresh $1
trillion for small businesses aside another $2.5 trillion already
appropriated in a massive stimulus package to save businesses and jobs
as a result of unprecedented challenges brought about by Covid-19
pandemic.
The second leg of Adelakun’s diatribe was to discredit in its
entirety the social investment programme (SIP) including the
“conditional cash transfer” to the aged and poorest of the poor.
By her own warped notion of economic re-engineering, beneficiaries of
Tradermoni and Marketmoni ought to be financially fortified by now to
be counted among those beyond the “hunger” unleashed by Covid-19
lockdown.
Hear our economic guru again: “By that calculation, those that were
given N10,000 loan in September 2018 should have had their lives
significantly improved enough to be repaying a N30,000 loan by now.
Their standard rate of living should have, statistically at least, gone
up by 200 percent and that should have had an appreciable multiplier
effect on the rest of the country. Yet, here we are, people are too poor
to adhere to a pandemic-mandated lockdown for even a few days. How come
our system cannot withstand even a month of disruption?”
(Again, it is unknown what Adelakun will tell us why America where
she is holed, often touted the biggest economy with understandably one
of the highest incomes per capital in the world, therefore a giant
compared to the ant misnamed Nigeria, too unraveled within the same
time-frame such that over 26 millions had fallen on the dough.)
Of course, nothing can be more reflective of a poor understanding of
the SIP idea and the succor intended to bring to the most vulnerable in
the society. For clarity, what inspired Tradermoni and Marketmoni from
outset was a thought to proliferate and drive entrepreneurship. While
sums ranging from N10,000 to N100,000 may be peanuts to the likes of
Adelakun, it is a quite a big deal for lots of folks out there without
property or asset to put down as collateral to loan sharks.
Ultimately, the objective of the programme is to spare the petty
traders such ordeal. Note, contrary to the estimation of the likes of
Adelakun, the process of lifting a vast number from crushing poverty is
unlikely to be completed within one election cycle.
History teaches that such lofty aspiration can only be realized not
just through the honesty of leadership but also policy consistency over a
reasonable time-frame.
From Muhammad Yunus we learnt the power of micro-credit loans. The
Bangladeshi banker began by offering as little as $20 (less than N8,000)
loan to local people, mostly women, to begin a trade in the 80s,
propelled by a vision to “create economic and social development from
below”.
With consistency, the scheme succeeded in transforming vast number of
hitherto excluded, if not complete destitute, into entrepreneurs,
thereby helping to transform the communities and banish poverty. So
transformative was Yunus’ effort in birthing a new generation of
entrepreneurs that he was found worthy of the award of Nobel Peace Prize
in 2006.
But in their desperation to throw the baby away with the bathwater,
intemperate enemies of Tradermoni and Marketmoni like Adelakun fail to
proffer a viable alternative given our very peculiar circumstances, as
against the option of sustaining the old culture of pocketing the
national budget by a few.
Of course, no sane mind would entirely dismiss Adelakun’s concern
over the integrity of the list of beneficiaries. Let a national
conversation continue with a view to formulating a mechanism for a more
scrupulous oversight. But from the insights provided recently by Mrs.
Maryam Uwais (Special Adviser to the President on SIP), we should, at
least, recognize that among those bad-mouthing the SIP all along are
those who had failed in their bid to parlay the power of the legislature
to force its handlers to “carry them along” (euphemism to share the
money or be allowed to name those to benefit in their constituencies).
Indeed, these are extra-ordinary moments in human history when
patriotism should compel national solidarity to proffer workable
solutions against a common enemy. We have, so far, seen worthy examples
of sacrificial contributions and public spiritedness from all walks of
Nigerian life, both in the public and private sectors.
Contributions to this national effort should however not be material
alone. Freelance mischief-makers peddling falsehood and career hate
entrepreneurs can also join the ongoing national effort by simply
engaging in one civic rite: either resting their hyper-active dane guns
in the rafter or quarantining their mouths from the public space.
