The movie ‘2012’ has a strong theme but I think the most apt is summed up in the words of one of the characters that ‘we lose our humanity the day we stop caring’. Global warming, Armageddon, nuclear threat and all will not matter if we keep up like this, it may come and find us all tearing each other up or been torn by the revolution that is bound to come as history has shown.
To say that an uncaring person is like an animal is an insult to some animals. Indeed, those beasts sometimes show uncommon devotion to their fellows even at the risk of their own life. Sadly, we the older cousins in the animal kingdom demonstrate so much apathy to the plight of the poor that our spirituality is made a mockery of great proportions.
Poverty is inadequacy. It is lack: the inability to do some things that one may like to do but cannot because in some way, you are incapacitated. In the extreme, it is inability to do the things that you absolutely need to do. Adequate and nutritious food, clothing, housing, clean water and health services are some of these basic things. What is basic elsewhere is not so basic in Nigeria and what the materially poor among us ask for is quite simple – ‘a place to lay my head and food in my belly.’ Even that proves too much in a society that is fast losing its humanity.
We all love to avert our eyes when those little Hausa (Fulani?) kids come begging but do we really need to kill our conscience by using all sorts of platitude to justify our thriftiness? Keith Richards, writing in his Business Day Newspaper column once said in his column that he invariably does not give money to beggars on the street...maybe he felt exempted by the CSR of Guinness Nigeria in supporting charity but I wonder if any of these people have ever read the classic treatise ‘HOW TO BE RICH’ by one of the world’s richest men of his time, J. Paul Getty who said that wealth comes with the responsibility of using it to help others to build better lives. He said that it is not enough to be wealthy if you cannot use it to better the lot of the poor. Wealth is a God-given responsibility to be used in helping those ones who are not rich, not by their own making but because we simply all cannot be rich. If only some of our prosperity gospel ministers would take time to educate their flock on this twist to financial prosperity.
The standard of evaluation in our society is how rich you are. You are judged by the amount of money you earn, the type of car you drive and what your account statement looks like. Money commands the respect of everyone from area boys to Gov’t officials and even health workers who will not attend to you promptly except you are willing to part with some cash. The language we speak is money and it is indeed the god we worship. Lagbaja sang about it in a track called ‘Mamonney’; Chris Rock joked about it that we all worship at its temple and I’m sure he’s right.
Don’t you work faster when there’s a money incentive somewhere? Don’t you wish you had more than the next man does? Isn’t your ‘amen’ a tad bit louder when the pastor prays for your financial breakthrough? Isn’t your zakat done with the aim of reaping a larger reward here first and then as an afterthought, maybe in the hereafter? We worship money; o yes, we do. And use all sorts of clichés to justify ourselves: ‘man must wack’, ‘money is the vehicle of the gospel’, ‘Abraham was rich’, ‘it is money that will be shamed if this thing isn’t done well’.
A long time ago, we are told, that the world was about the survival of the fittest. The weak lost out and the strong reigned until people evolved into societies and thought to set up leadership. That was the foundation of Gov’t which has its golden rule in protecting the weak from oppression by the more privileged. Sadly today, Gov’t is becoming more about the rich than the poor. Structures seemingly made to benefit the poor are converted into tools of oppression – hospitals are supposed to run free health programmes but the contract for building it made a rich man richer; the drugs supplied made another person richer; the opening of it made an events person richer by the inflation of contracts. The staff of the hospital seeing so many become rich off this hospital therefore try to also get rich by stealing free drugs and declaring scarcity. The supplier though won’t complain because it means he gets to supply more and since it is Gov’t that is paying, it’s all good. Till Gov’t which had turned a blind eye to all of these problems declares that it can no longer continue with free health for the poor and turns the hospital over to a private company. It is indeed the wedlock of the gods – Money and Power and in the reception feast, no one remembers the poor. The rich though can take care of themselves; it is the poor who need protection.
Anyone can be poor and Gov’t owes it a duty to protect them. Why do we have queues? It is so that the one who would otherwise have been crushed to death in a melee or who would never have had his time in the sun otherwise can do so. You can have all the money in the world but if you can’t get a kidney for sale when you need it then all your money means nothing to you. The third King Richard would have given his kingdom to get just one horse in the Battle of Bosworth Field. The poor one is the one who is unable to do a thing that he should do for any reason. Even helplessness can be a form of poverty and so we are all poor at some point.
In Nigeria, there seems to be a battle been waged against the poor. Everyone conspires to take something from them. Since they are in the majority and democracy is about majority rule, the Gov’t which they at best voted for or at worst derives its power from their sovereignty is directly responsible for their welfare. Capitalism is just as bad as Karl Marx described it in Das Kapital; it may be reasonably argued that in doing so, it was he though who saved capitalism by warning that except a capitalist state takes care of the poorest of its citizens, it would face constant threat of revolution. It was this submission that guided the capitalist soul of the West and brought about concepts such as welfare, social security and the provision of basic amenities for the poorest of its people.
In Nigeria though, we have a conspiracy of rich and rule to oppress the poor. How can any responsible Gov’t invite and partner a private outfit to build a road only to help it collect toll for the next 30 years? If such a Gov’t were not shameless, should it not simply abdicate its rule and let that private company take its place in power since it has no idea what to do with the increased IGR it claims? Furthermore, what is the tax those people pay used for if Gov’t cannot undertake such things as building a road? The same Gov’t though rode to power on the back of populist ideology but it seems though that its main arrowhead is elitist at heart.
It is not only at one level. Those who should provide basic infrastructure in our tertiary institutions are busy awarding university licences to private cartels and religious houses to further fleece the people. If the green leaves wither, what hope is there for the dry ones? How can the poorest among us have access to education when those who benefited from Gov’t scholarship and free education turn around to say that qualitative education cannot be free?
Everything is commercialised under the guise of Public-Private Partnership but the Gov’t who should defend the interest of the poor have taken sides with the multinationals and super-entrepreneurs to devise more ways of exploiting them. Yet in Nigeria, it is anathema to be without religion and all religions advocate taking care of the poor. Islam has zakat as its third pillar and sadaqqa is strongly encouraged. The former is obligatory while the latter is voluntary. The Qur’an strongly encourages charity and constantly reminds Muslims of their moral obligation to the poor, orphans, and widows.
In Christianity, Christ told the disciples when he was anointed by a woman that they would always have the poor among them in order to give to them but we had Him only for a while. He also said that whatever we do for the least of his brethren we are doing it for Him. I wish we would be able to look our maker in the face at anytime and not blush and weep when we find out He was the blind little boy we passed on the road and looked away in disgust.
It was a certain Pastor Martin Niemoller who after initially believing the lies of the Nazis eventually expressed his regret that he did not oppose them earlier; it was he who said ‘in force the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent – I was not a communist. In force they came for the trade unionists, I remained silent – I was not a trade unionist. In force they came for the Jews, I remained silent – I was not a Jew. When in force they come for me, they will be none left to speak out now that the communists, the trade unionists and the Jews are no more.’ The time to speak is always now. Now before the electoral deceit starts. The people must rise against any Gov’t that lip-serves the ideals of Awo but sacrifice the poor in order to develop and claim afterwards that they are ‘collateral damage’ – the necessary ones to be sacrificed in the quest for a megacity.
