Sweet taste of low price

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

Some years ago, I entered a small pharmacy on Kaduna’s Sultan Road. Behind the pharmacist’s counter, impossible for any customer to miss, was a boldly printed message neatly encased in a glass frame. It stated, “The bitter taste of fake medicine will linger long after the sweet taste of low price is gone.”

It was a warning to those who patronise patent medicine stores, where drug prices are lower. But come to think of it, was it also serving a kind of advance warning to Nigerian society as a whole? For example, the bitter taste of deregulated fuel price will linger long after the sweet taste of low petrol price is gone. For fifty years since the Oil Boom landed on our laps in the early 1970s, Nigerians guzzled and burnt cheap petrol at a rate faster than geologic formations could form crude oil deep under land and sea. It turned out that the biggest beneficiaries over the decades were not Nigerian motorists who happily filled their tanks and drove off but the smugglers who took whole truckloads of subsidised petrol across the borders. Plus, “fuel importers” who shuffled fake documents through the agencies and collected hundreds of billions in “subsidy refund.” Not to mention the killing that some people must have made from “under recovery.” Since fuel subsidy ended, the number of vehicles on our streets has dropped and the nation’s daily fuel consumption has dropped by millions of litres.

The bitter taste of vehicle maintenance cost will linger long after the sweet taste of owning a cheap tokunbo car is gone. Thirty years ago, a middle-class Nigerian family was lucky to have one car.  But in recent times, a middle-class family wants a car or two for the husband, one each for the wife and every adult child, plus a car for school runs. Something must give way. A Beninois man standing by the roadside in Cotonou once asked some Nigerian traders a question: “Is there any space left in Nigeria? Since when I was small boy in this Cotonou, everyday I saw a long line of vehicles heading for Nigeria. I wonder if there is any space left in Nigeria.” There is still some space left, thank you, but we see the effect of what the Beninois man said in some Tokunbo vehicles belching smoke like so many chimneys because the owner can no longer afford to change piston and rings.

For those who were privileged enough to get it, the bitter taste of unified currency exchange rate will linger long after the sweet taste of artificially fixed “official” dollar price is gone. The kind of mansions you see springing up overnight in some Nigerian cities, imported furniture, lavish shopping trips to Dubai and London, going on “religious pilgrimage” every year, buying the latest iPhone and Mercedes cars, plus endless medical tourism and sending kids to expensive foreign schools, were mostly attributable to access to cheap dollars.

The bitter taste of youth unemployment occasioned by the virtual collapse of our industrial sector will linger long after the sweet taste of imported cheap Thai parboiled rice, canned juices, frozen fish, wines, shoes, textiles, tyres, battery heads, bicycles, razor blades, toothpicks and pencils has gone. Many things that were manufactured in Nigeria forty years ago stopped being produced locally in favour of cheap foreign imports. Okay, when the dollar hits 1,000 naira soon, go and bring razor blades from China and see how many people can afford a haircut.

The bitter taste of potholed federal highways will linger long after the sweet taste of demolishing toll gates is gone. We thought President Obasanjo did us a favour in 2004 when, overnight, he ordered Zonal Offices of the Federal Ministry of Works’ Highways Division to demolish every toll gate in sight. He said government will get more money from increased petrol prices than from toll gates, but an NLC general strike led by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole stalled the fuel price hike. Motorists and passengers therefore had the best of both worlds, no toll gates and no petrol price hike. Instead, we got trench-sized potholes on our highways.

The bitter taste of deplorable public infrastructure and welfare services will linger long after the sweet taste of tax evasion is gone. Tax authorities have long pointed out that most Nigerian adults stand outside the tax net. Only workers in government and organized private sector employ regularly pay PAYE. Since the late 1980s when Babangida replaced poll taxes with VAT, government revenues have improved but are still far short of optimum. The bitter taste of poor infrastructure and services is one result.

The bitter taste of blackouts in hot weather will linger long after the sweet taste  of not paying electricity bills is gone. Power consumers gleefully post videos on social media of themselves using dogs, machetes and stone-wielding children to chase away Disco officials who climb the pole to cut their power supply. Community elders turn a blind eye when their youths vandalise transformers. Most blame for this country’s deplorable power supply situation must go to government, Gencos, TCN and discos, but consumers also have their own share of the blame.

The bitter taste of crowded lecture halls, congested dormitories, chemicals-bereft laboratories and forever-striking lecturers will linger long after the sweet taste of free tuition fees in public tertiary institutions is gone. Right now, there is a howl of protest that public universities are increasing fees for various services, though they are cleverly not calling it tuition fees. Middle class families have since taken to sending their children to private universities, where facilities appear to be much better, while upper class families send their children to school abroad, for which they pay through their noses.

The bitter taste of high meat prices occasioned by the ban on open grazing and transformation to ranching and RUGA will linger long after the sweet taste of cheap beef and ponmo is gone. Every Nigerian wants to slaughter a cheaply grazed cow for his wedding, naming ceremony, birthday party, graduation ceremony or acquisition of chieftaincy title. Now that subsidy on meat has been withdrawn in the form of the ban on open grazing, the bitter taste of expensive beef and ponmo will linger for centuries to come.

The bitter taste of desert encroachment, gully erosion and climate change will linger long after the sweet taste of cheap firewood is gone. For ages, Nigerian firewood sellers went into the bushes, chopped as many trees as they pleased, shipped them on carts, donkeys and pick-up trucks into the towns for sale, as if they owned those trees. Thirty years ago, I read in a small booklet that Kano City alone consumed a million tons of firewood a month. In the olden days of the Native Authorities, one needed the Sarkin Daji’s permission to go into a forest and cut firewood. In recent times, under the very noses of the Local Government Forestry Departments, State and Federal Ministries of Environment, most of the forests are gone. The bitter taste has just started.

The bitter taste of parochialism, provincialism, religious zealotry, ignorance and secessionism will linger long after the sweet taste of social media chatting, tweeting, music sharing and Instagram posing replaced the reading culture. Any young lad or lady who spent all his youth tweeting, Facebooking, What’sapp-ing and Instragraming will ultimately discover that the real cost is not the cost of data. It is the missed opportunity for broad education.

The bitter taste of self-serving political leadership will linger long after the sweet taste of selling your vote is gone. During a previous election circle in Nigeria, some voters placed neem leaves on their heads to indicate that they were for sale. Ok, the politician who sourced millions of naira and shared it to you the night before election day, is he a fool, not to seek to recoup his investment in the form of lavish allowances, inflated contracts and corrupt oversight functions? Nigerian voters collectively redefined a legislator’s functions from law making to securing jobs for constituents, sharing fertilizer and irrigation equipment, sponsoring pilgrims and distributing motorcycles to constituents. Where do you expect him or her to get the money? 

The bitter taste of coups, instability, insurgency, hard drug and small arms trafficking in our neighbouring countries as well as dangerous migration through the Sahara and Mediterranean will linger long after the sweet taste of Nigeria’s ignoring their plight is gone. Despite our boasts since the 1970s of “Africa being the centerpiece of our foreign policy,” “Concentric Circles in foreign policy” and “Concert of Medium Powers,” we never heeded what the late Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman said: “Nigeria must plan on a region-wide basis because if we prosper and our neighbours don’t, the Ghanaians will come! You can’t stop them!”

The bitter taste of collapse of social values will linger long after the sweet taste of Facebook replacing grannies as the source of stories laden with wisdom and values is gone. Who will listen to a grandma these days telling stories about the days when hyenas used to enter the village market, when you can watch Beyonce and Madonna on YouTube? The bitter taste of collapsed values in the form of a headmaster abducting and killing his pupil, of two sisters faking their own kidnap in order to extort ransom from their mother, a soldier selling arms to insurgents and a young student trying to rig her exam score and rubbish a national exams body, still linger long after the sweet taste of social media chatting is gone.