This weekend in many states across Nigeria, anti-government protests kicked off. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that this is taking place. As Nigeria is currently facing one of its worst economic catastrophes that have ever been seen within the country. The quality of the average Nigerian (which was not even good in the first instance) has become much worse over the course of the last year.
The truth is that Nigerians are fully aware that our government does not actually work for us. If anything, Nigeria manages to function in spite of our government in many ways. The amount of corruption, and general incompetence present in many of our governing institutions, has meant that most Nigerians discover ways to survive on their own. Most people know that if you were to sit around and wait for the government to do pretty much anything, you would be waiting for an eternity.
Our politicians are so corrupt that our governments fail to provide even the most basic infrastructure needed for normal life to function within the modern day. Things like roads, running water, and electricity are not guaranteed for most people within Nigeria. So many of our public institutions are in shambles, barely functioning. There are so many communities within Nigeria that continue to fall victim to the insecurity that has rocked so many parts of our nation.
However, our politicians are always among the wealthiest people in our country. Our politicians do not enter politics because of any ambitions of improving the lives of Nigerians. Pretty much all of them are in it for their own personal gain. They see nothing wrong with spending public funds in ridiculous ways while their own constituents are suffering. They have no problem awarding themselves exorbitantly high salaries, while in the same breath lamenting how the government lacks any funds to invest in infrastructure.
That kind of reasoning is what had been put forward by the Tinubu administration when they had removed the fuel subsidy. The claim has been that the subsidy cost the government too much money, so it had to go. This move by the Tinubu administration completely upended the lives of so many people. The huge levels of inflation and economic hardship we have seen around Nigeria have been unbearable to most within the country.
Yet this same administration that had said there was not enough money to maintain the subsidy, would go on a spending spree on vehicles and housing for the first lady’s office and other members of the cabinet a few weeks later. We would even learn about millions of US dollars being allocated towards the purchase of a presidential yacht for President Tinubu.
This is how the Nigerian government operates. Our politicians see their high salaries and all the perks that they give themselves using public funds as being essential, while the needs of their constituents take a back seat (if they ever even get addressed at all). Their first mandate is to themselves and themselves alone.
Another poignant example of this had been the recent clashes over minimum wage within Nigeria. It is truly insane to hear from governors and senators earning salaries in the hundreds of millions to tell people that a 100,000 Naira minimum wage for workers is “too high.” In their own kind of messed up way, these politicians do not see anything wrong with that. Eventually an underwhelming 70,000 Naira per month minimum wage is what had been agreed upon by Nigeria’s labour unions.
This comes as incredibly high levels of inflation have been hitting Nigerians. Nigerians have seen the prices of food items doubling, even tripling over the last year, yet the government was unwilling to pay its workers any kind of real minimum wage. So while government officials live a life of luxury with the use of public funds, their constituents, who they are supposed to be serving, are struggling to afford food.
That is why we are seeing such anger boiling over in the streets around Nigeria right now, in what has been dubbed the #EndBadGovernance protests. People have been voicing their grievances with the current economic reality for months, yet the government’s line has always just been to claim that they are doing a good job on the economy. If government officials are to be believed, it is actually our eyes that are deceiving us and things are actually going well across Nigeria.
In truth, the sad reality is that there is likely little that would be achieved from this current round of protests. The government doesn’t care that they are extremely unpopular. The Senate President himself, Godswill Akpabio, reportedly said himself that “you can protest, but we will be eating.” There likely won’t be any resignations or reversals or any acknowledgement of wrongdoing on the part of the government.
Nigeria truly has the ability to be a much more prosperous place for Nigerians, it is just our government that has seemingly done everything in its power to prevent that from happening. The widespread mismanagement of our public funds that has gone on for decades cannot continue like this. Perhaps the only positive thing coming out of this protest is that more and more Nigerians are willing to speak out against the bad governance across our country.