This is just a note of warning so you don’t get heartbroken by the turn of the year. It’s one day until Christmas, and for many families across Nigeria, what used to be a season of joyful sharing has become a season of begging, queuing for palliatives, and deaths. This new reality is assuming a monstrous status.
I cannot remember exactly how the word palliatives found its way into our political lexicon, but without a doubt and with blistering speed, it has ascended to the top of the political conversation. I dare say that, for many Nigerians, the word PALLIATIVES means GOOD GOVERNANCE. The two are synonyms for so many Nigerians, especially those born after 2000. They don’t know the difference. Once you are giving palliatives to your people, you are delivering good governance. You are a leader with capacity.
Palliatives in this sense are not just rice and noodles and condiments, I mean even boreholes, solar street lights (aka china rechargeable lamps), three days health outreaches, bursary inside envelopes, keke and okada etc. These are all palliatives. They are not permanent solutions. They are meant to palliate not to cure. That is why they are called palliatives. Palliate means to disguise. They are all stop gap measures to target symptoms of the problem and not to bring a cure or solution.
Sharing food is a palliative that cannot replace the need to prioritize food production across the country. Boreholes are emergency water supply measures, they cannot replace the need for clean water reticulation and distribution to every home, industry and irrigation. Solar powered lights are rechargeable lamps strapped on aluminum poles, they are a palliative. They cannot replace the yawning need for electricity generation and distribution to power our streets, homes and industries.
Putting cash in envelopes as bursary, and distributing to students is even an insulting palliative. Sharing exercise books with pictures of donors and pencils to pupils cannot suffice for the need to equip our schools with modern learning and instructional materials and hire teachers to make the children globally competitive. Long term, well structured and well managed scholarship schemes are more sustainable than political scholarships.
Three days of health outreaches cannot replace the urgent need to rebuild and equip our primary health centers, stock them with essential medicines and fix the general hospitals for secondary care, while massively registering our people on health insurance schemes. Sharing keke and okada to people to navigate non motorable roads in rural villages cannot take away the more sustainable need to construct motorable roads to those communities to open them up for development. But hell no, those who are supposed to bring this governance, are rather bent on giving us its new synonym, palliatives.
That’s why I am warning you to save your hope and keep it where it will be safe. Don’t waste it. There is actually not up to a handful of those in power currently who are thinking of how to govern Nigeria properly. Their driving force is what to take from the system. Conversations around how Nigeria can develop bore our current leaders. When they go for those lavish meetings, it is not development that they discuss, it is sharing. How to share what is available. Once a conversation advances into thinking out details of long term plans on development, they become immediately bored and disinterested. So nothing is about to change in 2025 or anytime soon. It’s a circuitous rigmarole.
Our government at all levels, have taken over the job of NGOs and charities, full time. They have relinquished governance to citizens to provide their individual security, welfare, water, education, roads etc. The only thing the government can offer us now is palliatives and we have accepted our fate. So in 2025, the pallia-thieves will continue to share palliatives to Nigerians across the country until 2027, when I fervently hope that people will have some sense and vote for leaders that can think out sustainable solutions that will develop this country. Maybe by then, we will be sensible enough to zone our votes this time, to development. But until then, keep your hope in a safe jar. Don’t waste your hope on palliat-hieves.
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.
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