A little while more, a couple of days more, all things are difficult before they come easy, no pain no gain….phrases of this kind have been running through many minds, including mine, on the much expected change we voted for in just a dozen months ago.

Just like Buhari have been unconvinced to devalue the naira, i remained also so stubborn on believing that the change we voted for needed just some little more patience and a plenty more of understanding. 15 million votes, 180 million people, 200 election violence deaths, Nigerians expected for once, a loving president, a caring vice president, a passionate senate and hardworking governors. In recent history, Nigerians had never been as passionate to get this country truly working like they did during the last presidential election. Even with a relatively low election funds available to APC, lesser coverage of their campaign rallies, they still had everything because they had the true love of the masses. The love and unity I have never experienced amongst Nigerians in all 34 years of my life was behold before me. People voluntarily painted their cars and houses in APC colors, many enthusiastic ones funded several blogs and online publications to sensitize as much Nigerians as possible to be part of the change fever, many were constantly online and on every available website refuting every wrong claims of the oppositions, many made flyers and many also joined in adding to the many campaign theme songs available. There was no effort too small, none wasted and hence the efforts of every Nigerian involved cannot be adequately enumerated on paper. People sacrificed everything they had, everything they’ve saved – financially, physically and otherwise, everything they’ve hoped for, to make this change a reality.

My pride as a Nigerian was at its peak watching millions of Nigerians keeping a united vigil, while many thousands slept overnight at polling stations just to make our dream come true. Had never been as proud a Nigerian as that very special moment.
Those moments all came, we witnessed it all, we cheered loudly as much as we could and the moments have passed away.

12 months after, I feel just the opposite. In fact, deeply the opposite. How would a government that had understood how it really is down here now quickly becomes such a vicious one whose policies have been nothing joyful but hardship in every area of your daily lives. None before now has enjoyed such tremendous support, patience and understanding as this present government has, but despite these unusual benefits, they keep on rolling out unusual policies to kill you even more.

A government that came on board and sacked almost every serving, well experienced staffs at almost every MDA, at almost the same time enforced strict bans on importation of many essential commodities for the masses, at almost the same time embarking on new reforms in every other MDA, at almost the same time gave us exchange rates double what they met when it is well known that just almost everything its masses consumes are totally imported with even the few local producers importing their raw materials and machines as well, at almost the same time enforced the stamp duty on the already impoverished masses, at almost the same period caused the masses to pay double the cost of petrol than they met: with some masses not so lucky and had paid with their lives trying to get the unavailable petrol, at almost that same time encouraged and forced the state governments to vigorously increase their internally generated funds: such that those governments, especially from their same party, closing up so many local industries, harassing them, hugely penalizing them, seizing up their properties and in some cases even jailing them, just to squeeze out from them a sizeable amount of their already depleting capital, this same governments at almost the same period have done zero major infrastructural projects this year, haven only signed the budget with half of the year gone doing nothing major for its people, but many worth mentioning for its own personal agenda of recovering funds looted before now, a real pitiless government who have at about this same time announced a 145 naira official price of petrol, when one of their major highlights of campaign and reasons voting for them was the way at which they vehemently claimed that there was nothing like petrol subsidy and that no Nigerian should have bought petrol for any price more than 70 naira. Lai Mohammed gave countless interviews to this claim that any petrol cost above 70 naira per litter is fraud on the Nigerian people and now the same Lai Mohammed, same DNA, same blood, but different status says a 145 naira per litter cost of petrol was “unavoidable”…

Seriously! What is wrong with this people

Now what do we have down here, Millions of Nigerians have been laid off from their work and many more have been threatened as their employers try to adjust to the hardship they face in this government, so many small and medium scale local industries have closed down, relocated from the country or suspended its production here, cost of transportation have increased significantly for the masses for the past 4 months, hundreds of millions of already poor Nigerians have become poorer, insanity have increased with the Nigerians that couldn’t bear up the hardship anymore, the costs of every commodity, when I say every, I mean 100% of everything the masses buys and uses everyday has increased to almost double what they were, a new militancy group has been formed to add to our national database of concerns, children have stopped going to schools, parents have an increasing debt profile to argument a decreasing income to the family, hospitals getting worse, roads getting rapidly worse, electricity supply so irregular with a regular shooting up of tariff, people loosing their homes every single day when they just cant afford the house rents anymore, bad loans are on a steady rise up the curve in the banks, salaries are not been paid which directly means artisans and contractors have had a few or nothing to do for many months now, etc.

And that government really think they have done so well gathering billions of naira in stamp duties, billions of naira in custom revenues, millions of naira increase in internally generated revenues, billions of naira from deliberating not importing as much PMS as required by 180 million Nigerians. They are quick to grant interview and call all those “blood money”, savings by the federal government. What kind of government records a massive increase in internally generated revenues with a poorer people and a high rise of bad loans in the bank? APC governments are killing the masses harder by day and all they focus on is how much is saved? Really?

I did a 27 minutes video for this government, with all my might, as a support to make this change come alive, just like some millions of Nigerians out there have done at that time. Every single person that voted on March 28, 2015 believed he/she was relatively poor, needed more infrastructures and wanted a good future for the children of this country. They voted solely because they wanted a better life, wanted an increase in income and decease in expenses. As at this day, almost every of those voters are even poorer than they were on March 28, 2015, their expenses have rapidly increased and their income have rapidly decreased, the are struggling to meet up their usual obligations as brothers, sisters, parents, neighbors and members of the society. Your policies have all been to sniff out the remaining hopes from their lives, making the some embassies experiences much more applications to leave this country than has even been seen in many decades, making people jobless and some dieing everyday to this all round hardships.

Nigerians loved this government and supported it, because we believed none other understood what it was like down here, we want a change for the better and not the other way, we want a reduction in our expenses and not an increase in VAT or a forceful collection of 50 naira per transaction from our already low income streams, we want a government that loves her people more than its policies and systems, Nigerians want new jobs, new opportunities to excel better, wants better conditions and protections of their of lives and properties and its really either the APC government wakes up or have this cherishable love towards them fast turned into hate.

Experience is absolutely key and this government should seek it as much as they can, irrespective of where the experienced hands are camped. The country moving forward should be the aim, not the supremacy of APC or the downfall of PDP. Nigeria is dying and many more would die if this continues and not retraced very quickly. Even our former national focal Babatunde fashola’s efforts have almost been invisible in this current setup and that is enough to point it out that our new APC federal government really lacks the required experience and are not going wise about it at all.

Nigeria was like a large water supply centre which has been grossly mismanaged for 16 years by the former administrations, it supplied water to 36 communities but the pipes have becomes so old and has hundreds of patches at almost every part of those pipes. The water supplied was not pure and caused a lot of people in each of the 36 communities to become very sick and feeble. More than 40% of the water sent for supplies never got to those communities because the pipes leaked seriously and some corrupt and powerful people were using those leaking patches as their own source of stolen wealth. Many people died for lack of water and the whole 36 communities were struggling to live well with a short water supply to a fast growing population. Then the APC government was formed to proffer that change that would make pure water, replace all the old and outdated pipes, eradicate the corrupt and powerful officials and make the water supply to each community more than enough for their communities. Then that APC government sacked all experienced water engineers without creating enough time to understudy, in real situations, how to effective take over from this long serving engineers without causing hardship to any or all of the communities. They brought down all the 36 pipes with the plan to replace all 36 pipes at once with new ones; they overhauled the whole water production process with the view to create a new, better one with larger capacities. Now, the water scarcity have even become worse, people die even more, the little available water was sold at double the price the masses had been buying from previous administrators, the chiefs of each 36 communities had lower revenues and resolved to even finding every way to tax their people even more like never before. People in these communities became poorer, some had no jobs anymore due to lack of resources and so many people died or went insane from the great hardships they faced under the new government’s policies.
Despite the fact that the APC government had the best plans for those people, was creating a better water system and working to build brand new 36 pipes to the 36 communities, their policies and actions were killing the people and giving them more hardships than ever before.

Having the best motive is not usually enough and may even be unwanted when handled as illustrated above.

No parastatal or group would be able to withstand the wrath of a dying people when they are pushed to the wall, therefore the APC’s politics of trying to get more bodies and parastatal to supports its policies would be a waste of efforts.

Many are dying down here, physically, emotionally, financially or generally since this APC government took over, this was not what we wished for, worked for and believed in and many more would die, if this government keeps getting carried away with their ideas.


Antar Adewunmi
Omole Estate, Ogba, Lagos State.
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Every Nigerian is feeling the heat but pretending like its what they want. hardship has multiplied by 6 since apc took over and because it was a government everyone fought hard to make win, everyone is now suffering and pretending like its better.
If jonathan had done half of dis, Nigeria would have been in flames. apc is manipulating nigerians against other nigerians and forcing everyone to keep quiet and they also are looking like mumu using all their salary to enta moto and chop finish, the ones that have few change for the salary, nepa people collect the remaining and they say they dont support strike.

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