Lawrence Egede engraves the media fear of economic woes in the history of Nigeria, emerging from the rising poverty level and the price hike of commodities in the markets in the country these days.
Those of us who struggled single-handedly in business ventures succeeded a little but were thrown far into a state of transaction backwardness in the process, saw hell with price hikes and poverty in a condition of disrepair for a very long time now. It has been a threat to life as one in a cage without a vent.
We were neither carried away by business superiority sense of success, nor corrupted with an inferiority complex in the field of transactions, but due to the circumstances surrounding an unexpected failure, we lost out in the competition all along.
What is happening now in the economic relationship, between people and money has shown that Nigeria did not prepare for the rainy day beforehand. We lived in a home of vanity and fantasy, not well organized.
Because of a lack of organized national development strategy in preparedness for unforeseen eventualities, the Inflationary ropes of importation businesses from the global transactions became a stop pin on the life wire of the economy of Nigeria, and it has created deadly public poverty.
When I look at poor Nigerians in their troops I weep inside my heart. It gives me terrible pain.
The more painful part of the whole thing is that inflation of prices on goods and services doesn't give people any breathing space for comfort and relief in local business transactions.
A rich country with a very large spread of high levels of poverty epidemic, threatening people's lives has lost her nationhood.
Under the such ugly circumstance, how can there be patriotism in a nation that wallow in corrupt ways, gross ignorance and self-damage? No way is the reply.
Can't we see it that Nigeria is under terrible siege by poverty, with all the riches highjacked by individual lords of selfishness?
The kind of poverty in Nigeria is man-made, and that's why it will not be possible for the creditors to allow the nation not to pay back with deadly conditions.
Even those regarded as rich people can't relax their minds because of pressure from all angles, demanding pounds of red flesh from the wealth they have individually acquired.
That's where we are today with the new generation in trouble of what they didn't know about in the economic history of Nigeria, where there's a blanket eclipse enveloping the businesses of the day. History is alive to it.
Archive history revealed to me that Nigeria started borrowing assisted funds from the outside world, ever since Okotie Eboh was the first republic Minister for Finance between 1960 and 1963. The borrowing was to foster the new republic into fast self-development growth.
Despite all the efforts made by genuine economists in Nigeria to build, grow, improve and then sustain the life of the economy it continued to end in borrowing more and more, and climaxing in squander mania or lavishing spree. The economy crumbled.
Since then till today Nigeria's economy has gradually, silently, systematically and unknowingly become moribund and hollow in the open field of judgement.
Because of this open secret and side effects, we have a very tiny adjustment that cannot be the remedy to the leprous level of injuries that Nigeria already has sustained in her unguarded sickly state of the economy. It is very sordid and frustrating.
There was never a time that Nigeria formulated any strong domestic and foreign economic policy, to strengthen the money value and purchasing power in the global open marketplaces.
Patriotic economic planners for a developing nation check what comes in as an import, make it equal to what goes out, to balance the purchasing power of money on the value of forex trade movement plans.
But the domestic system of running the economy in Nigeria was only based on how free the money value could be tamed to the tree of exhaustible stock of consumer strangulation trade policy. Inflation has to reign.
At a time Ostentation, Luxury Comfort and Waste of useful resources became a lifestyle, with all the flamboyance in it, coupled with pride and big title-loving appetite growing wild in the nation's economic grip and which weakens productivity.
That's how poverty began to blow Nigerians below the belt and turned out to be a deadly epidemic, which has no cure.
Only ten per cent population of the people in this country would proudly boast of untold riches.
Eighty per cent population of the people swim in complete abject poverty without rivals.
The remaining ten per cent population of the people see small rays of light for survival.
That's why when money is mentioned anywhere people turn their faces there quickly because that's where their means of survival treasure is based. No further alternatives.
That's why the money bags bragg their shoulders high and above the reach of the height of the poor. There is no equity.
Money-making mongering is the matchmaking mannerisms of the present society in Nigeria at diverse nooks and crannies.
That's why all criminal bids are mainly aimed at how to be very buoyant and escape poverty.
It is either by violence, or by tricks, or by deceit, or by way of falsehood, or cheating, all of which belong to cruel criminal activities. That's the problem.
A lot of people struggle to get what may not be necessarily enough for them, just to make sure of being relieved of aches and pains as a fast measure.
Some other ones go to the market for what they can afford to buy, not necessarily how far their purse can take them.
I am neither rich nor poor but have tested the cooking pots and tasted all the puddings by eating of the sad situation.
Assuming poverty pushes poor people one day to riot what will the rich ones do?
Assuming the rich has got not have enough to defend themselves, what will the poor get from the rich? There's vexation of both.
A common adage says that a hungry man is an angry man, to the extent that a hungry and angry society can be hostile.
The hostility is now here with us producing assorted harmful criminal tendencies, beginning from fraud, robbery, terrorism, and banditry to kidnapping crimes in the character of people and there is no remedy found yet.
That's why this topic sighted Poverty and Price hike as the Hell Fire in Nigeria. It is a man-made problem without a cure.
With the above analysis, do you think that Nigeria will be free again from the problem in her economy, due to the history of the nation's battlefield in the relationship between price hikes and poverty as a rare solution?
*To God is the glory forever.*
Lawrence Egede is our guest writer and public affairs analyst.
