Just recently, I took a stroll to a neighborhood store, to get some batteries for my radio. The batteries were given to me, and as I paid for them, my money was returned to me; can you guess why? The money I paid was insufficient! The battery I used to buy at N80 per pair has now risen to N120 per pair; 50% increase! I asked the woman, madam, how comes the price of this thing rose so high, from N80 to N120, is that not too much? Guess what the woman’s reply was; she said, in her own words “na change na, shebi una say we dey the era of change, na the change be that.”
You will agree with me that the cost of everything in this country has gone very high nowadays. Or maybe things are still normal in the part of Nigeria where you are. As an enterprising young Nigerian, I just set up a computer training center, and I need to buy some more computers and other things to equip the new office, but I can’t! I can’t, not because I am bereft of cash to get the things I need to buy, but because the prices of the things I need to get have gone unimaginably high. What if I buy today and Dollar falls tomorrow? But if I don’t buy now, and keep waiting for Dollar to fall, the office will not take shape, and my rent is counting; and the rent is not penny. It’s a delicate one, very frustrating! Everybody is complaining, things have become difficult for people. Today, somebody I had a chat with remarked that we have never had things this difficult in this country, as far as he is concerned. A bag of pure water is now N150; infact, sachet water manufacturers are currently on strike, just as bread manufacturers are currently on strike owing to the high cost of their production stuffs. When some of my friends murmur to me against how difficult things have become, I do say to them, “it is the change you wanted.”
The focal point of this article is not to criticize anybody or the government of the day; far from it. As a Political Science student, it behoves me to lend my voice to issues of national development, through any medium that is easily accessible to me. Moreover, I have the constitutional right to hold opinion. Like I said, this article is not meant to criticize the government or the president. I know it is not easy to govern a complex society like Nigeria. Moreover, the administration still has a long way to go. So, I want to believe that things would take shape with time. But I want those that crucified Goodluck Jonathan to realize how unfair they were to him. It was very excruciating that Nigerians would associate everything that was going bad about Nigeria with the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan. It is only the bad aspects of Jonathan’s presidency that such Nigerians chose to see; they condemned this man till they eventually brought him down, and they enthroned ‘change’. The day he lost the election, I almost shed tears. One of my lecturers confided in me that he lost appetite and couldn’t eat for about two days following the defeat. Today, we are really seeing the change you clamoured for, or aren’t we? Have you really taken time to compare and contrast the times of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, and these days of Buhari’s presidency? Goodluck Jonathan is one of the best presidents that Nigeria has ever had; I say this without equivocation or fear of contradiction. In 2010, I followed his earliest presidential campaigns with great passion, and then I was living in Kaduna where Namadi Sambo was governor before Goodluck picked him. On 18th September 2010 to be precise, I listened to Goodluck Jonathan’s declaration speech, and I saw a man who had lofty dreams and intensions for Nigeria. I saw in Goodluck Jonathan; an intellectual, a core gentleman, a true democrat, a statesman indeed. This man employed intellectualism in his style of leadership, and he engaged the best hands in his administration; this is as far as I am concerned. Yes, we must submit to the fact that he got surrounded by a lot of self-seeking elements whose influence derailed his administration. But, it was very painful that many Nigerians chose to focus attention only on those deficiencies of his administration, turning blind eyes to the numerous good ones; when we all know that there is no saint on the face of the earth, when we know that there is no perfection in anybody and there is no perfect leadership anywhere. Today, we are seeing change; we are really seeing change, aren’t we?
Thanks for reading this article.
Kingsley Onwuka (onwukavoice@gmail.com, +2349086585050 – sms).