WHY THE POOR WILL REMAIN DESTITUTE

At the conference on Nationalism and Economic Justice, A.G.A. Bello (with many supporters) thinks that resource control ends the socio/political and security problems facing Nigeria. Some renowned activists/scholars also are of the view that giving us quality education will end our entire dilemma; this is because education will lead to man’s liberation. Long before the International Conference on Nationalism and Economic Justice, these issues have been topical themes in the Nigerian polity. The question remains: “why is the status quo still the same?” If we are to take the statistics, up to 80% of Nigerian if not more, will make recourse to the government. I will tackle these issues one after the other:

Education: Let me put it more bluntly in a way we could all understand.  Is it humanly possible for the oppressor to teach the oppressed how to be truly free? Like the slave-master morality of Nietzsche, the freedom of the slave becomes a source of worry for the master because power is only relevant where there are subjects which serve as outlets to vent such power. The freedom of the citizens threatens the existence of the bourgeois. It is a situation where the awareness of the proletariat endangers the bourgeois as increase in their awareness decreases their capacity to be trampled upon by the bourgeois. How can they exercise their lordship over the vast majority by dictating how to run the resources of the state if they are allowed to go through progressive education that liberates them? If you know that the master reasons this way, then you should be aware that no master will genuinely send you to school to become liberated since your liberation sends them to hell. There is need for some sort of mental emancipation that will disturb the old equilibrium; a level of genuine ideological war that reverses the reasoning of the elites and the trampled majority, so as to bridge the gap that has long existed between both groups of people in the African society.

Resource control: the question of the various percentages that should go to oil producing communities has lingered pendulously from one administration to another. But I do not wish to bug you with such intricacies as it is absolutely secondary to my endeavour. I want you to note that when Nigerians engage in a particular struggle, what preoccupies their minds is the fact that they are interested in the immediate and magical change of their problematic situation; as such the present moment is what is most important. Thus, a rich politician knows the psychology of the average Nigerian that when he gives him/her some handsome sum of money, he wins ticket to a political office. When we go back to history, we should be aware that African nations that sought to be independent and ethnic groups that sought to have their independent states engaged in such struggle because they were marginalized. But that on its own hasn’t put an end to the fight of marginalization. People are more disintegrated when they fight each other than when they fight common enemies; the more the limitation of the quest, the higher the chances of national disintegration. That is the exact story of resource control. Give an oil producing state 100% control over their resources and they will kill themselves daily; at this point the fight will be brother against brother.  It is so clear that when we talk of resource control in Nigeria, the first thing that comes to mind is crude oil/Niger Delta communities. The question of resource control is a conceived ideology by politicians to lure various groups toward violent agitations all for the good of the political elite, yet with little or no benefit to the greater majority who are the victims of dejection. It therefore becomes the projection of the will of a few unto the whole. But we still ask ourselves if these people are being marginalized and our answer is yes and they also have a right to a fair share of their resources, but to imagine that it automatically curbs violent agitations is erroneous.

Here is my advice to actors (misguided masses) who play the script of politicians: you can never be a director in your own movie, because the more you align with the political elite, the better you are taught the rudiments of being disqualified from existential situations which are to serve as real solutions to your plight.