UNHINGED By Ben Efe: ‘In grass we eat, in God they trust’

Last night a middle-aged woman and her daughter of about 18 years stood in front of a local store debating what the N500 they had could buy for them.
From the look on the woman’s face it was plain to see, she and her daughter had been without food all day and they may have gotten the N500 from some hidden corner of their home or was forgotten in a jeans pocket. They finally settled to buy N300 bread which was as light as a feather…  it could barely feed a two year old. With the N200 change left they bought one sachet of milk and one sachet milo and that was the end of the note story. Where will another one come from tomorrow? For most Nigerians that is a question for God only to answer.
Millions of folks just like the woman her daughter are living on a prayer, God has been merciful to some who believe. But for the more desperate ones, selling their newborns or toddlers is the only escape from poverty. These are hard times and there seems to be no reprieve and more so, more desperate citizens are being ushered into the gulag of want and deprivation daily through loss of jobs, soaring inflation and high cost of living. It is no joke, a good number of citizens are suffering and who can relieve their pain? For now they practically eat grass and sleep perhaps on a bed of nails.
Whatever happened to many poverty alleviation programmes pushed by the government, the employment and empowerment schemes, they seem to be only cosmetic approaches to a deep rooted social malaise. Schemes that end up enriching the very people who initiated and implemented them. Does it sound like ‘tradermoni’ or the school feeding programme? Yeah spending N999m on a daily basis, yet all the Children get if they even get it all is a piece of bread a stray dog would even look the other way and ignore.
Between June 2021 and April 2022 the government released N11.9bn for  pupils of public primary schools to eat meals that can hardly give them nutrients they need to grow. It is just all a fluke, a grand deceit to make people believe the government is working to alleviate the suffering of its people.
It has been argued that the Covid’19 pandemic impacted on global economy and cost living, and presently the Russian/Ukraine war has also been blamed for the global inflationary trends and rightly so, top nations are dishing out palliatives that will cushion the effect of rising cost of living. But how far have the governments in Nigeria and sub Sahara Africa gone to ensure that their citizens do not feel too much pain. Not even a yard so it seems.
It should be noted that even before Covid’19 ravaged the nations, life in Nigeria has been hard. The basic necessities of life and living were out of reach for the common man and members of his family. Quality education was non-existent, health, housing, power supply and transport were a luxury for those who can afford to make their own arrangements for these little comforts of life.
In the UK before the change of government, there was a 150 billion pounds cost of living intervention so that the citizens would not feel the effect of rising cost of living. In America people can afford to quit their jobs because of the government’s handouts and more high paying job opportunities elsewhere. Employers had to increase pay in some cases to keep their work force intact. Agreed, these are advanced economies and wealthy nations. The thing is, these countries never stop thinking about how to improve or move from point A to point B so that life can be meaningful to their citizens. Why wouldn’t they halla in ‘God we trust,’ in the USA when they don’t have to break their backs before they can have a 100 dollar bill on their hands.
Governments in sub Saharan Africa need to stop paying lip service to social economic development and take concrete steps to formulate policies that will impact on the of life citizens and also integrate themselves into the global economic scheme of things.
 Nigeria with its vast potentials can take measures that will grow its economy and then see a retarded growth in pervasive poverty. Rather than borrowing money from China to pay workers there should be huge investment in infrastructure that can stimulate growth in real per capita GDP rates. Investment in power, transport, health, housing, roads and wait for it Education. ‘ASUU’ lay your bed so shall you sleep on it!