2024: We were FASTING while they were FEASTING... GoodNight, Okenwa
ike muo
2024 was a year in which the gap between cost of living and the standard of living widened frighteningly because of what Peterside called the ‘Hike Economy’. The government, with a Zaccheaus Mentality and claiming to have inherited a dilapidated economy, believed that the price of everything MUST be hiked and in multiples of 100%. There were hikes in the prices of fuel, cooking and industrial gas, exchange and interest rates, transportation, food, power and all these led to an inflationary rate ( 34.8%)that had not be seen in the past 3 decades. It appeared as if the government deliberately engaged in a policy of mass pauperisation and for politrictians, this made the weaponisation of poverty, a more attractive strategy. As the year ended, everything became ONLY for the rich: Flight is for the rich, medicare is for the rich, fueling a car( not just owning a car) is for the rich, feeding ( whether 1or 4 or 5 square meals daily) is for the rich and now only the rich can make calls or be online. Even road transport is for the rich. It cost N70000 to return from IgboUkwu to Lagos in the first week of this year and that is who many of my compatriots are still at home, when the Christmas season has expired. As one jokist lamented, even the cost of ‘I love you’, which used to be ‘I love you too’ has been hiked to human hair, rent or iPhoneQ. Few are EXTREMELY rich, indulging in sinful opulence but most are EXTREMELY poor, barely able to keep body and soul together… and the gap is widening ferociously. We have become a nation of 200 millionaires and 200000 million beggars, both direct and indirect! And as Thomas Hardy( Mayor of Casterbridge), the master story-teller mournfully rued in 1880s, Nigeria has become a replica of Casterbridge of yore where for most people, happiness is but occasional episodes in the continuous drama of pain and deprivation
