Nigeria is stressing the homeboys and gyals, and we are not having it. To ask a Nigerian for their average queuing hour in these Buhari times, you have to contextualise the queue; the one for buying PMS/petrol at N350/litre or the one to withdraw their money?
Everyday guilt pleasures like cookies have become impossible to afford, as necessities like menstrual pads are now becoming out of reach.
When you ask who should be held responsible for the financial violence, you’ll get conflicting answers like Aisha Buhari’s brother, Godwin ‘Meffy’ Emefiele, bank managers, or even the everyday Nigerians who have POS businesses.
Why is petrol so expensive and why can’t we get some? You will have to ask petrol marketers, filling station owners, or perhaps, Rexxie.
The Nigerian presidency’s tone-deaf approach to handling this crisis shows that we are on our own. Nobody wants to be responsible for Nigeria’s woes, not even President Bubu, who doubles as our petroleum minister.
To top it all, all this ba la blu hullabaloo is happening just weeks before Nigeria’s election.
Election era
Under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, we’ve been in our #EndSARS era, Supreme Court governors era, and eight-month ASUU strike era, and it’s time for our bye-bye to Bubu era
Despite young Nigerians making up to 39% of registered voters, the process for collecting their Permanent Voter’s Card has been so scandalous that some people can’t find theirs at INEC offices, even though the portal says it is ready.
Many who want to collect theirs are stuck in school and are begging the Nigerian Universities Commission and other bodies to free them for their PVC collection and eventually to vote. Now that the PVC collection era has passed, they can only hope that those who have gotten their PVCs are not forced to be in school, away from their polling units, on election day.
Why is it difficult for schools to close for one week to allow young voters to participate in the voting process? Are they not the ones that will spend eight years in school if a bad government is elected?
Likeeee????
Anybody can collect
Nigeria’s bad governance and anyhow behaviour are like sand; they will touch everybody. What this election era is showing us is that nobody is safe and anybody can collect.
Politicians like Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna State gov), Yakubu Dogara (fmr Speaker House of Reps), and Adams Oshiomole are now entering the media to tell us that some party members are plotting against their party’s flagbearer not to win the election. It’s the acting as if it’s not their party that has been clowning Nigeria for the past eight years for me.
Not Femi Gbajabiamila (current speaker HoR), whose escort killed a newspaper vendor coming out to tell us who to vote for because Nigeria is currently a lawless state. But Mr Lawmaker’s security is shooting shot with innocent lives.
Please rest
As if it’s not all of us suffering in this pandemic, some people are now trying to blame gen z for not knowing ministers who have added nothing to them.
When we live in a nation where you are deprived of basic education on your country’s history, where our principles are guided by who you know and less by what you know, it becomes difficult to blame people for being indifferent.
The internet, however, provides a space for people to catch up and learn. It’s why you should follow Zikoko Citizen to become a baller on Nigerian politics. You should also subscribe to Zikoko Citizen’s Game of Votes, to get updates on the 2023 elections. But we can’t fix decades of problems in one week’s editorial.
We continue to implore young Nigerians to vote in the coming elections and decide who they trust enough to lead them. But stop acting like they are the reason you can’t buy petrol in your car.
The government has to take responsibility for its failure, and where it can’t, the citizens step in by voting to fix it, as we will do on February 25, 2023, and March 11, 2023.
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