Most parents know the disappointing look on the face of a child after they have returned from a trip without a gift or tsaraba. I am still haunted by the look on my young daughter’s face after returning from a gruelling 24-hour trip with Obasanjo to Sierra Leone. I had thought I was creeping in at an ungodly hour only to be confronted by an expectant child waiting for a tsaraba from Freetown. It was such a crammed trip that nobody had the chance to purchase anything.
Bringing gifts unlocks the hearts of children, infusing them with the evergreen memories of a caring parent. President Muhammadu Buhari is a caring father who knows how to bring good gifts to us, his children.
As the president joined world leaders at the most fabulous unofficial plane fair in Glasgow, he was thinking of what to bring for over 200 million citizens as they approach the end of the year with trepidation. A big announcement of how the year 2022 would go might deflect the darts of wicked journalists from exhuming incredible details of what the president and his team would spend the money borrowed to finance the 2022 budget. Press reports are salaciously tinted to give the impression that our rulers care more about sustaining their lavish lifestyles than making life easier for the poor. Alhamdulillah! Only wailers think this way.
The president knows the importance of mingling with those who damage the stratosphere with their customised planes; fry the atmosphere with their long convoys in order to secure the best deals for tradition of their citizens to ride fuel-guzzling big cars. Our president knows that when a car has run its environmental-friendly life elsewhere in the world, it is reborn to a fresh life on what is left of Nigerian roads.
Nigeria may not have partaken in the shameful act of roasting the world with coal fumes, but we are beneficiaries and enablers of the fossil fuel conundrum. Buhari knows that from Daura to Okeagi, the rural dweller needs kerosene, but he has not supplied. He knows that the forests’ flora and fauna depletes with wood burning but does nothing to curb or stop it. Buhari knows that while city dwellers decry the ever-increasing price of domestic gas, all that rural dwellers ask for is kerosene to light their bush lamp and for the trendy among them, to light their stoves. More so because the magic stoves paid for by the Goodluck Jonathan regime died with his exit along with the deposit.
When Aso Rock was just a pipe dream to Buhari, he had promised to build us one refinery for each of his first four-year mandates. That could have saved the vanishing forests. Today, we all know that Buhari’s promises are mere invitation to treat.
As our president became the most expensive tenant in Nigeria, he found a good reason not to keep his promise. His street cousin, Aliko Dangote, was building the largest refinery in Africa. We know that when government touches good business, it ruins it. So our petroleum minister reneged on his promise and even abandoned the plan to revamp existing refineries. That plan, it must be said, is the longest in the world. It started with the president’s hero, General Sani Abacha. It has defied every logic or plan.
In Glasgow, Buhari knew he’d do nothing to fight climate change. No bakatsine balks the Sahelian heat. Instead they leave such a pastime to Plateau indigenes whose weather is close to Europeans. Our president gave a smooth speech, pumped powerful hands, knowing that acting the script might bring him a slice of the Glasgow financial windfall that real leaders were promising.
He found a good reason to stop over in Paris just to impress the French to bring business to kidnappers, bandits and insurgents. Having abandoned the prospect of bringing the Naira to par with the greenback, this president has embraced the free fall by which one dollar now exchanges close to N500. Since banditry is the most lucrative business in Nigeria, one kidnapped French tourist could bring better fortunes to a kidnapper than the abduction of 300 school children.
When the Glasgow trip was all done and dusted, our president returned home pondering over what tsaraban Glasgow to give his citizens. He hit on a good idea – increase the people’s agony by withdrawing the petroleum subsidy that you once described as a scam, and then grease the palms of 40 million Nigerians with a cash gift of N5, 000 transport allowance.
As his motorcade sliced through Abuja traffic, the president called his finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, to announce the latest scam. The latest gimmick is like inflicting a deeper wound in order to stop bleeding.
Like a good emissary, Madam Ahmed announced our Christmas and New Year package with gusto, reminding us that this is not a loan, just a grant in furtherance of government’s unofficial welfare policy. Madam Ahmed is a veteran of these bluetooth distributions. We’ll never know who got Tradermoni but we know that our country is now a global trade hub. Under her watch, COVID-19 palliatives were distributed via bluetooth.
As ASUU gives notice of another strike over the dilapidated structure of tertiary institutions, Buhari announced a grant for students. The beauty of the Nigerian welfarist policies is that it is never audited. Its phantom beneficiaries have neither bank accounts nor fixed addresses. The other is, the loans are taken for future governments and unborn generation to repay at a time when fuel, our only export, would no longer be relevant. This is the best planning!
Of course the president is aware that the poor do not transport themselves anywhere. As a matter of fact, a huge chunk of Nigerians have never owned or entered a vehicle in their lives. This scam allowance should have been named trekking allowance except that it would not sound attractive for a regime that wants to showcase itself in excellence.
At a personal level, this is Buhari’s parting gift to his fan base as he approaches the 2023 electoral calendar. In Goodluck speech, this president does not give a damn except that if Tradermoni could spin votes, transport fare could do even more as the nation approaches another campaign and election season.
Wailers could whine about how building four extra refineries, in addition to revamping existing ones, could have saved us this embarrassment. But according to the Glasgow Declaration, fossil fuel is doomed. However, chopping down more trees exacerbates desertification, increases gully erosion and sparks floods and fires everywhere. The logic is that nothing induces the milk of human kindness from donors better than man-made disasters. The world rose to save Ethiopians and Somalians from famine; it is rising to save Afghanistan from man-made disaster.
For a country with uncontrollable population growth, there is no better way to better health than resuscitating the ancient craft of trekking. If Buhari could vow to bring back cattle routes, what prevents him from retracing the Trans-Sahara trade routes? It would bring back the camels, horses and donkeys, and save those beasts from the avaricious appetite of Chinese merchants.
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