Without doubt, Nigeria is presently walking on the straight and narrow<\/p>\n
way. It is being led on this tortuous walk by President Muhammadu
\nBuhari; a leader providentially thrown up to rescue a sinking nation
\nfrom the atrophy of decay wrought by past corrupt, incompetent and
\nmisguided leaders. The straight and narrow way is torn-strewn. It is
\nbumpy. It is uneven. It is arduous! It is laden with grit and stress. It
\nexerts the full manliness in whoever elects to take it. Conversely, the
\nbroad way is smooth. It is well paved. It is even. It is well marked. It
\nis stress free. It is so easy. It is alluring. It is attractive. It us
\nsexy and touch\u00e9.
\nBut the straight and narrow way is the way that leads to salvation, as
\nJesus admonished his disciples in the Bible. You may wonder why one
\nwould chose a thorny and crooked path over a smooth and well paved path
\nbut then, the narrow way is straight and the smooth way is not. There is
\nno joy in taking a straight and narrow way. There are no comforts on
\nthis road. But as its name suggests, it is straight and provides better
\naccess to the promised land. The narrow way leads to salvation while the
\nsmooth, broad way leads to perdition. That was what Jesus taught and the
\nHymnist was to drive this further home in the ageless hymn; Loving
\nShepherd of The Sheep, when he prayed ‘suffer not my steps to stray,
\nfrom the straight and narrow way’. So the broad and smooth way is
\npopular but it does not lead to salvation. The straight and narrow way
\nis not quite popular but it is a sure route to salvation.<\/p>\n
Oh yes, Nigeria is on that tacky straight and narrow way at present; no
\nthanks to our past prodigal leaders who ensured the country is drained
\nof all resources to make our present smooth. The providential oil bounty
\nhas percolated leaving Nigeria a raped and badly tossed victim of its
\nhumongous side effects on our body politic. Just the other day, we were
\nat the peak of the dry season. Oil was gushing and meeting the appetite
\nof a combustible world for oil became a lucrative task which drove oil
\nprices above the ceiling. Petro-dollars flowed ceaselessly. Oil went for
\nas high as $120 per barrel and there were enough to go round the vicious
\ncult of sybaritic buccaneers that people the Nigerian government, their
\nhirelings and fawners and enough handouts for their enablers and
\nprocured caterwaullers at every rung of the society. As the dollars
\npoured in, official stealing exacerbated and the tone assumed a
\ngeometrical proportion. Money was not the problem for them but
\ncuriously, the poor got poorer and increased in wide proportions.<\/p>\n
As the oil dollars flowed, our politics became an arcane pastime as it
\npoached the ramparts and all manners of philistines whom it empowered
\nagainst the increasingly poor majority. Our politics became a deadly
\nfight for advantage where all manners of deadly means were employed to
\nseize power and its many accoutrements . It was an era that was marked
\nby high degree of questionable opulence, high level of nihilism and a
\npondering degree of prodigality and waste. From nowhere, dubious cronies
\nof those in government invaded the seats of power in Abuja and walked
\naway with fatuous bounties.<\/p>\n
Dubious contracts that ended up not being done but enriching fatuously
\ntheir beneficiaries, became the order of the day. Wild parties dotted
\nthe landmark. They became czars of mind boggling properties in choice
\nlocations within and without Nigeria. They became proud owners of
\nprivate jets, state of the art automobiles and several expensive but
\nsometimes useless toys that advertise their arrival in the world monied
\nclass. They became proprietors of private universities and dubious
\ncompanies. They had no known businesses. They had no traceable
\ninheritances and no means to which their wealth could to traced. They
\nbecame the new celebrities in town and with a president and government
\nthat glamourized that rootless access to wealth, the sky became their
\nlimit in plundering the resources of the nation. Those in the Jonathan
\ngovernment looked at this scenario, smiled and back slapped themselves
\nthat they have created a rich and prosperous nation!<\/p>\n
But as these were going on, the citizenry wallowed in unmitigated want
\nas their basic needs became elusive. The middle class withered off thus
\ncreating a big economic chasm between the few dubious super rich and the
\nincreasing legion of the poor. The haves took the center place and
\ncelebrated their good fortune while the poor wallowed and sulked in
\nhelpless penury. Meanwhile the Jonathan government spared nothing to
\ncelebrate these suspiciously rich. In fact, it continued to pander to
\ntheir insatiable crave for more pies as it latched open the country’s
\ntreasury for all manners of politically- connected rodents to feed on-
\nto the sorrow of the despairing poor.<\/p>\n
The continued inflow was assured as the oil dollars cane in torrents;
\nbuoyed by increasing global appetite for our oil. Multi billion dollar
\nscandals became a common trademark to the conduct of governance as more
\nand more ghouls tapped new frontiers from stealing what belongs to all
\nand leaving the poor famished. Hard work and appropriate reward for
\nlabour became a story fir the gods and the tone for the moral debasement
\nof the nation was cast in gold! To compound issues, Jonathan was to
\nspark off an embarrassing alibi for the unrestrained stealing going on
\nunder him when he argued that stealing is not corruption. It was a blank
\nlicense to steal and his minions ensured they wasted no opportunity to
\nmake their kill from the<\/p>\n
As this honeymoon was going on, the government played deaf and dumb to
\nthe caution to save for the rainy day. All advice to build the country’s
\nreserves were ignored and to even compound issues, the hefty foreign
\nreserve left by the Obasanjo regime at a time oil price was going at a
\nlittle fraction of the high price it commanded under Jonathan, was
\nraided and plundered . There was no critical investment in the critical
\nsectors that drive the economy. Regenerative capital was a no-go area as
\nrecurrent expenditure became a dominant feature of our national budgets
\nin this era. Power blinkered to darkness, the roads decayed, health and
\neducational sectors went down. Security deteriorated and unemployment
\nsoared to such deadly height that it became a national embarrassment.
\nInflation went haywire and the national currency crumbled against other
\ncurrencies. Curiously trillions of Naira were voted each year for the
\nsectors but they end up in the pockets of those that laid claim to
\naffinity to the government.<\/p>\n
All of a sudden, the oil dollars refused to flow in again as the world
\nseemed to have found a cure for its appetite for oil. Demand for
\nNigerian oil plummeted and the pangs resonated in the Nigerian polity as
\nsoon as this dawned. The rainy day met us stark naked and we were
\nterribly beaten by a rain that was forewarned. There was no shock
\nabsorbers to take even the minimum impact of this negative development.
\nIt came straight as the funds to play with dried up. States found it
\nhard to even get take-home allocations each month, as their allocations
\ndried up. Because the Nigerian government behaved like the pampered
\nsluggard, there was no fallback to the impact of the fall in oil
\nrevenue. The specters of social crisis lit up in states which found it
\nhard to meet even minimum demands for workers salaries and contractual
\nagreements. It was a hard bounce to reality!<\/p>\n
Every hope that the outgone government will straighten its acts and
\nrescue very little mileage from the rampaging oil price drop was lost as
\nthe government spared nothing in the ensuing general election to unleash
\nunimaginable resources to purchase an added term. The Jonathan
\ngovernment went out of its way to mop every resources to deploy to its
\nre-election quest and thus ensured that, as at the time President Buhari
\nemerged, the treasury was stark empty, looted to the bones and the
\nprices of oil has continued to dip; much lower than even the budget
\nbenchmark. It was certain that Nigeria was in serious trouble and needed
\na person of President Buhari’s demeanor to re-take from looming eclipse.<\/p>\n
For the five months he had in power, President Buhari has unleashed a
\nrescue agenda that will take Nigeria through the delicate brinks of
\ncollapse. If Nigeria must come round, it must walk frantically away from
\nthe smooth paths that is leading it to mayhem and find its way to the
\nstraight and narrow way. This, Buhari has done and it is exerting far
\nreaching impacts on Nigerians. Nigerians have no choice than indulge in
\nthis critical walk for there are no alternatives to the scars of the
\nwasted years before Buhari’s coming. By far, the greatest impact of thus
\nwalk is rescuing the moral soul of a nation long stranded in sybaritic
\nprodigality and untamed corruption. This also involves curbing the
\ngargantuan waste that has been cultivated to drain the resources of the
\ncountry thus capping the wellheads of official graft and corruption.
\nToday, the seat of power has ceased to become the beehive of idle
\nhustlers and hunters of fortune. The dubious rich is lying low, has
\nstripped himself of the trappings of dubious unearned wealth. Those that
\nsee politics as means of self enrichment have been put out of business
\nwhile in each and every sector, the rat holes through which the
\ncommonwealth was purloined have been sealed off and the rats chased
\naway. It is an all-encompassing revolution that stands to steer the
\nrescue of Nigeria from a deep moral crevice that has hobbled the
\ncountry. It is legendary. It is historic. It is remarkable!<\/p>\n
There is no doubt that the Buharu reform will inflict temporary
\nstrictures on Nigerians across board. The free, stolen cash are no more
\nflying around and Nigerians are learning to live on their just wages.
\nHonesty in conduct of official business is a given in the new social
\norder. Of course, it means that much illicit cash are no longer fueling
\nwhat was, to all intents and purposes, a phantom economy that was rooted
\nin mindless consumption and nothing more. President Buhari is cracking
\nthe whip on those that raped the country when the going was good to send
\na message that no one should steal. The cult of rapists that fed fat on
\nall of us has gone to the holes from where they sponsor distractive
\nmessages and noisome outcries of how much Nigerians are suffering, so as
\nto get a reprieve from Buhari’s whips but Nigerians are assured that
\nnothing will derail the cleansing going on today. Of course, Nigerians
\nknow the straight and narrow way will be initially bumpy when they stood
\non the unflagging demand demand for a walk on that lonely road to elect
\nBuhari to power. They know that making an omelet involves the breaking
\nof eggs. They know that the payoff from the present bumpy trek is
\ntremendous when they massively voted Buhari to dethrone the era of rot
\nand graft his regime succeeded.
\nAll said, Nigerians need to firm Buhari’s hands in his present effort to
\nrecover the years the locusts that are mounting syndicated distractions
\ntoday ate. Nigerians must not, for anything, be deceived to wish for a
\nrecreation of the present with the rule of vandals and ogres that
\nBuhari replaced just the other day. Sure, there are deft efforts to make
\nNigerians look like the headless Israelis who would rather they were fee
\nwith the meat of slavery and bludgeoned to disgraceful servile death in
\nEgypt than endure the strictures of exodus from slavery. But Nigerians
\nmust put down the pedestrian inclination of the displaced locusts to
\ncash in on the aftermath of the present effort to rescue the country
\nfrom their waste, to sow doubts on our minds. We must show that we have
\nlong outgrown their wiles and antics even beyond the post March 28 level
\nwhen we sent them to the dung heaps despite their wily ways.
\nPeter Claver Oparah<\/p>\n
Ikeja, Lagos.<\/p>\n
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Without doubt, Nigeria is presently walking on the straight and narrow way. It is being led on this tortuous walk by President Muhammadu Buhari; a leader providentially thrown up to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n