BY CHRIS GYANG

President Trump has just signed an Executive Order directing landlords in the US not to evict tenants that are unable to pay their rents.

This is obviously in response to the debilitating effects the COVID-19 pandemic is having on the American economy which has also led to unprecedented job losses. As a result, most laid off workers and other citizens living on the fringes of society can no longer meet their most basic needs and commitments.

In fact, all over the world, governments are working round the clock looking for ways to ameliorate the enormous socio-economic and existential burdens that have been foisted on their citizens as a result of the lockdowns and other drastic measures that had to be imposed to reduce the spread and effects of the virus.

But even those other national governments (and there are very few of them) that have not been able to pass such laws that could protect and offer sucour to their citizens have never contemplated increasing the costs of basic and essential commodities, services and amenities.

Rather, they are arestrenuously struggling to keep them at pre-COVID-19 levels so that their peoples can, using the meagre resources at their disposal, afford the barest necessities of life that can sustain body and soul.

But, unfortunately, the reverse is the case in Buhari’s Nigeria of today. And this is because, we dare say, Nigeria has become a country that is perpetually adrift because Buhari lost control of the reins of power a long time ago; in fact, right from his ill-fated first term.

To be sure, Dr. Farooq Kperogi has consistently confirmed this assertion (for which he has been ruthlessly demonised) which has almost turned him into a puppet in the hands of the self-serving aides, individuals and the motley array of ethnic and religious jingoists that surround him.

Which is why his closest cronnies, appointees, aides, ministers, departments and other government agencies have become the proverbial reckless, vicious bull in the China shop – a telling symbolism of today’s Nigeria. They act with so much whimsical bragadacio and ease because they know that no one is standing watch over them.

That was why the other time Lai Mohammed, the information minister, had the audacity to singlehandedly circumvent the array of well respected professionals in the NBC Board, summarily changed existing legislation and proceeded to slap a fine of a whopping N5 million on a radio station for what he reckoned to be “hate speech.”

In today’s unfolding saga, the key actors have become their own directors because the main man has gone coomatose. Nigerians are now caught in a dangerous web in which the leading lunatics have taken over the asylum.

That’s why some of the people down the rungs of governance who, for instance, regulate the cost of petrol, electricity, etc, can afford to simply wake up one day and impose cut-throat price regimes that will definitely add to the pauperization, depression and desperation of a citizenry that has already been brought to its knees by President Buhari’s legendary lack of a rudimentary grasp of the basic handles of national economic policy.

For the records, the price of petrol in Nigeria has been arbitrarily tinkered with three times in as many months – all of these at a time citizens were grappling with the devastation the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked on their lives.

It’s laughable and ironic that, just yesterday, the president’s spin doctors put up a statement to the effect that Buhari was saddened by the current spike in the costs of food stuff all over the country.

Now, have the president’s men not confirmed our assertions that their principal has completely lost touch with reality and is a stark ignoramus as far as the basis dynamics of national economics are concerned?

Obviously, in all honesty, the president does not appear to understand that the arbitrary increase in the cost of fuel and electricity tariffs (most especially at this point in time that COVID-19 is still running riot), is bound to make the already high cost of food stuff shoot up through the ceiling!!!

Apparently, Mr. President doesn’t know that Nigeria has the largest number of poor people on earth and that inflation, unemployment and many other despicable indeces of underdevelopment are at their peak in this country today. Yet, the key players in his government are having a field day remorselessly shoving noxious policies down the throats of helpless, impoverished citizens without the slightest compunction.

And the bottom line is that, because the man who is expected to oversee this China shop had long since dozed off, the bulls shall continue to have a field day. This means that Nigerians may have to brace up for even more government policies that will make their lives even more unbearable.

However, things may go a little bit differently if citizens can muster the courage to insist that our leaders treat us with some modicum of compassion and and the understanding that the government’s main constitutional responsibility to cater for the welfare of citizens.

But we must, first and foremost, unite, bring down the imposing walls of the dichotomies of religion and ethnicity that have been deliberately erected to separate us – the majority of Nigerians that are now reeling helplessness from the battering onslaught of the inordinate hike in petrol prices and increase in electricity tariffs.

That’s the only way to end this torment from these bulls and stop them from continuing to have a free reign in this China shop – Nigeria – whose keeper had long fallen into deep slumber.

(chrisgyang01@gmail.com)

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ANOTHER FUEL PRICE HIKE & INCREASE IN ELECTRICITY TARIFF: VICIOUS BULLS IN THE CHINA SHOP