How to exterminate the masses
Mama Sunday could hear the pandemonium in the background. Her toddler son was with her kindly neighbor, a Muslim from Nigeria’s northern area, till she returned from the construction yard in the highbrow area of Abuja, where she has this ‘thriving’ Mama put business. She netted a profit of about N4,000 almost every working day, […]
Mama Sunday could hear the pandemonium in the background. Her toddler son was with her kindly neighbor, a Muslim from Nigeria’s northern area, till she returned from the construction yard in the highbrow area of Abuja, where she has this ‘thriving’ Mama put business. She netted a profit of about N4,000 almost every working day, almost enough to send her three other children to a public school, and put food on the table for all the family, including her husband, who had since lost the plot in the wonderful capitalist (thanks to IBB and co), country called Nigeria. Baba Sunday was now permanently drunk, and an unparalleled philanderer. Mama Sunday didn’t know what to do with the man, but as an African woman, she just had to stick to her husband. It was the kind of fate her ‘chi’ dealt her in this life…
Confusion! Where to run to now. She could no longer concentrate on the business. She let out a wail, and her customers turned to look at her in unison. She sat abruptly on the floor, even as her scarf fell around her waist. ‘Eeewoo…! Dis people wicked oh… where we go come dey stay now oh??!!’. Her kindly customers enquired what had happened, and in the middle of sobs, she explained that her house in Mpape had been demolished and her measly properties thrown out in the blinding rain of Abuja. Like his predecessor, Mallam El-Rufai, the new Federal Capital Minister had chosen to deal a blow on the masses by demolishing their houses in the thick of the rainy season. El-Rufai had said very clearly “Abuja is not for the poor… If you are earning less than N50,000 per month, return to your village!”
The new Minister had trodden that elitist path, forgetting that very few companies, least of all government agencies, pay the kind of wages that can afford the supersonic rents of Abuja. El-Rufai had asked the complaining poor people to ‘move to Mpape’ in his time, but even that has now turned perilous. Like it happened in Kubwa some 7 years ago, families are left in the drenching rain, their mattresses on their head, newborns and toddlers shiver perhaps not only from the cold, but from the sheer insensitivity of the so-called leaders of the country to whom fate, or is it God, had sent them to forage for an existence. Mwaah! Mwaaaah! Mwaaaaaaah! The tiny little babies wail to the heavens… “Oh Heavens, why did you do this to us?” Sorry little children, the elitist rulers of Nigeria needs land to further expand their fiefdom. For them, life is all about ‘prime property’, ‘choice lands’, ‘mega mansions’, ‘shopping malls’. Who needs the poor anyway?
Down at Mpape, people ran helter skelter on the streets, not knowing where to turn to. Total bedlam! It was all pointless. People stood on the street, transfixed and confused, the government had not given them notice. At least they thought they had two weeks to leave. Many dashed into their rooms, with the bulldozer bearing down on them, just to find and rescue whatever little item they held most precious. Many cursed the day they were born. “Mobile” policemen stood guard, guns cocked ready to blaze away. Poor men did damage to poor men, under the instruction of rich men who were far away. A man narrated away to a TV crew, how he had just returned from burying his mum at his native Akwa Ibom – with his last savings and some borrowed money as is usually the Nigerian case. Now he wonders how he will send his children to school, or find money for another rent. Surely more destitutes are expected to roam the streets. Too many poor people just gave up the struggle once again. Nigeria, good people, great nation indeed!
The poor! Mscheeew! The poor!! Who needs them? What purpose do they serve for anybody? The people who run the world, the mega rich capitalists think they are too many, especially in Africa, and that rather than help them to live a better life, it is better to work towards their eradication. After all, the poor do not have ‘purchasing power’, so they are just an unnecessary waste of space! Some of these super-rich individuals have since been sponsoring surreptitious programmes – so-called immunizations, that are really aimed at reducing the prowess of the poor to reproduce. No one bothers to educate the poor, on the need for them to limit the size of their family.
The poor?? The masses?? Even the Nigerian politician will need them less. They used to be useful in times of elections, when the Nigerian politician shows his face and tries to connect with them – from a distance. The Nigerian politician does not bother to mix with the crowd like Late Atta-Mills and Barack Obama walked among the crowd in Ghana a few years back. Even at campaigns, their rostrum is about 200 yards away, with stern looking policemen and soldiers, providing a wide buffer between them and the masses whom they claim support them. In these days of Boko Haram, the gorge has expanded more. And after the politician is ‘elected’, he shuts himself in bullet-proof, heavily-tinted SUVs, and with the people’s monies, purchases himself the most exotic convoy in the world. Woe betide any poor man who tries to stand in his way. Under the yoke of PDP – “the largest political party in Africa” – new devices have been perfected to manufacture the needed electoral figures and totally ignore the masses. Even the President said recently, very matter-of-factly and cavalierly, that State Governors manipulate their State Electoral Commissions! He offered us another peep into the workings of governments in Nigeria.
So how to exterminate the masses? Ehmm… Ok. First ensure you make no provisions for where they would live, and when they provide for themselves, move against them and demolish their shanty properties without any notice or alternatives. Tell them your glistening little cities are ‘not for the poor’. Don’t bother to educate them about hygiene. Let them catch diseases and underfund healthcare. Make sure the budget for security is thrice that of education or health. Don’t provide public toilets, and watch them from your tinted little SUVs as they urinate and defecate by the sides of your expressroads. Don’t make any provision for pedestrian crossings, but watch them gleefully as overspeeding motorists kill dozens of them. Ok, when they take the case of pedestrian crossings to the Public Complaint Commission, go and borrow some money from the World Bank to build them some… sloooowly… Such projects should be completed in 10 or 15 years.
Don’t show the poor any dignity, or the path to dignity. Just ensure your own children look like oyibos, beautiful, resplendent, spoilt! Give your own children all the appurtenances of royalty, and prepare their minds to lord over the poor and unfortunate. Oppress the poor, disdain them, and when you are tired, oppress them some more. Let crazy foreign companies use them for experiments. Perhaps they will learn their lessons and not be poor in their next lifetimes!