Column No.6: Just imagine what some readers are saying!

I usually bide my time till seven or eight installments have been published before I choose from reader responses to run, but this time around there are some particularly strong emails from readers that made me rethink the duration of my retrospectives. While they vary in length and strength, I found them all to be quite thought-provoking, hence my decision to share. Please give them a read. – Abdulkareem

Re: Now that Sallah has come and gone

I read your column of the above title thinking it would be the usual treatise on festivities that mark the period. I’m glad, and sad, that I was wrong. You spoke many home truths that I may have thought but never had the guts to voice out. One of those truths is the fact that there is hunger in the land, and it seems like the government at various levels is doing too little to mitigate the massive social disaster that is bound to follow it. If I sound like a doomsayer, it’s because the doom is facing us squarely as a clear and present danger.

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I recently went for a work-related programme in Katsina, far into the rural areas. While we all think we know what ‘rural areas’ mean in Nigeria, nothing I ever saw or knew prepared me for the level or depths of poverty which I witnessed. It is so bad that I feel it would be disrespectful of me to mention details. These people are Nigerians, for all that it is worth, but are not enjoying anything that that fact should entail. Schools, hospitals, roads, drainage, or even decent housing, are all zero there. Don’t even mention potable water, or I’ll recall how I offered a thirsty-looking kid a sip from my bottled water and a mini melee ensued as he and his little friends rushed the plastic container.

When in your column you mentioned hungry and miserable faces, I could immediately relate your expression to what I saw in that little, sleepy village full of smiling people, but devoid of true happiness, the kind that can only come from being well looked-after. While it seems like things are very bad right now, even in urban areas, there is an all-too-real possibility of things getting much worse, and possibly spiraling out of control. The only solution is for those who should take care of these things to do so. While things have already gone extensively bad, for these kinds of situations, it’s never too late.

Mukhtar M. Bello, Kaduna

Re: Who will pay the ransom for our country?

While I will begin by saying how delighted I was to find out your birthday is the same as mine, my actual reason for writing is to express even more alarm at what is going on in the nation currently. You might have mentioned that you ‘irrationally’ thought of the idea of hiring [foreign] mercenaries to help us with our bandit/kidnapper/terrorist problem, but I honestly don’t think it’s irrational. The way things are, it looks like that may be the only way out, or we will continue to wallow in despair. The Goodluck Jonathan administration actually engaged them, and was recording good results. Why can’t this one do the same too? We are running out of time, and space to these bloodthirsty criminal.

Kafayat Jimoh, Ilorin.

Re: ‘Corporate begging’, ‘showing love’, and new Nigerianisms

You are absolutely right about the wider implications of the desperation many Nigerians exhibit these days, even if for just a token. Especially the average Joe on the street who is jobless, or even the employed one whose entire monthly salary is the cost of lunch for two at a mid-level restaurant in Wuse II. Yes, the behavior of some of these people may be tagged to low or no income, a forever-sagging economy, or even bad governance, but I think you may have left one crucial factor out: poor upbringing. I was born into the most humble of backgrounds, but my father and mother did their best to raise us to be upright citizens who never ‘put their eyes’ on that which does not belong to them. Ihad a tough time working and schooling at the same time, earning peanuts, and going to bed hungry many times, but I never harassed anyone for a tip or handout. Yes, they are people, with dreams and aspirations. But so are the people they harass.

Daniel Hassan, Jos.

Re: Nigeria’s unfortunate ‘rock stars’

When you said the electorate are only darlings of Nigerian politicians when it’s time for votes to be cast, or times when optics are badly needed, you were right. But when you added that the electorate is many times a willing victim to exploitation, I had to disagree. We’re talking of the Nigerian politician here, that snake-like creature which only takes and takes without giving. Yes, not all of them, but you have to agree that it is most of them. I want to say we need to start holding them accountable to the rubbish they deal out to us, but that’s already a cliché. By the way, I’m processing my Canadian citizenship as I write this. No shame in being an ‘Andrew’ at my age. At least I will be an Andrew who is earning a decent living in a society that works.