Stomach
infrastructure has come to stay for now, we cannot do much about it
until around the year 2023 when I hope our poverty rate would have
reduced to less than 20 per cent of the population. Having said that,
stomach infrastructure is not going to just disappear from the horizon
of our politics except we work out ways to achieve that. First, let us
look at the reality of the SI and the morality around what I consider an
unfortunate reality in the continued oppression of our people. For the
purpose of this piece, consider the SI for those at the foot of the
poverty ladder as rice even though it could come as beans, sugar, salt,
kerosene, bread etc.
You can spend 10 years learning how to be
a governor at the Harvard Kennedy School, spend another five years at
Cambridge and an extra five years deploying your ideas on the ground.
When it comes to running for public office in Nigeria today, if you do
not make out plans to share food with the electorate as part of your
campaign programme, you are likely to lose. Governor Ayo Fayose would
want to lay claim to the phenomenon of stomach infrastructure in
Nigerian politics but that would be delusional. I have known about this
SI phenomenon since I was a child. The governor is better off laying
claim to the rigging tape that emerged just weeks ago. He is not
responsible for the SI; he is only yet another beneficiary of the
pervasive poverty that has enslaved most of our people. He is not alone
on that front, everyone who has governed this country has benefitted
from it. It is the culture of sharing the national cake and those who
receive the “benefits” of the SI do so with the understanding that they
are at least getting something, albeit little, out of the national cake.
There are levels of the SI. Some assume
it is limited to the poor but that is not true. The SI cuts across the
different strata of society. Getting an oil bloc to support a
presidential candidate is a kind of SI but that is SI at another level
entirely. Some journalists get their SI in a different form; other folk
get theirs by being allocated land (Abuja especially), cars or even
houses. The size of the SI that accrues to you depends mostly on how
rich and influential you are. A former president will probably get three
ministerial lots and a couple of oil blocs as the SI. All na Stomach Infrastructure.
But the SI in focus here is one that focuses on the poor, as that is
the one that is given in exchange for the dignity of those who receive
it.
Most of our politicians have lost every
sense of shame and irony so they do not even understand that SI exists
simply because they have refused to create a conducive environment for
the masses to cross the poverty line. If we didn’t have a system that
carefully orchestrates a poverty development programme, the PDP in
short, no pun intended – as state policy – we would not be discussing
the SI in 2015. It is an indictment on the morality and sense of purpose
of a governor who has been in power for four years who finds
himself/herself returning to share rice to the same neighbourhood s/he
shared rice about four years before. It simply means your work as
governor had little or no bearing on their lives. As for the receiver,
it would be okay to collect rice from all the candidates who deliver the
same to you, but you would have deserved another four years of poverty
if you collect rice from a governor who shared rice to you before they
became governor, got voted in and still left you where you were four
years before while they have enriched themselves and their gang while
leaving you the same way. If you are so in need as to collect their
rice, you should at least be smart enough not to vote for the same. If
they failed you before, they will fail you now they don’t even need your
vote to become governor after another successful campaign.
One is essentially saying you should
never vote for an incumbent who tries to entice you with the same gifts
you were enticed with four years before. It is like mocking you for
having scammed you successfully.
Being poor at the bank shouldn’t
necessarily translate to being poor in your mind. Poverty should never
deprive one of the sense of dignity. Most people who are rich today used
to be poor but only that they were not poor in their mind. Poverty in
the physical state is a bad thing but it is nowhere close to the poverty
of the mind. You can be forgiven for being physically poor because that
is curable as long as your mind is not poor. To have yourself fooled
again by someone who has governed you for four years without changing
your life is to confirm your poverty is of the mind. If not cured, that
sort of poverty is likely to leave you poor for your entire life,
exchanging your destiny for rice with the same scammers every four
years. It only takes them to do it five times to see you’ve wasted 20
years of your life directly and at least another 20 years indirectly by
virtue of the residual cost of bad governance.
Fellow compatriots, don’t get it twisted,
our votes now mostly count. Those who tell you your votes do not count
are the same people who want you to exchange a small bag of rice for
your child’s education and your household’s fortunes over at least the
next four years. The SI is a trade-off; if after collecting it you do
not vote with your own interest and that of your children in mind, the
poverty development programme will continue to be your lot. They will
come baring gifts but those are not really gifts, those are a trade-off.
It becomes a trade-off when you vote based on who gave you the biggest
bag of rice rather than vote based on who’s got the best and most
practicable ideas.
Stomach infrastructure is a reality we
have come to accept because with some 112 million poor people in our
country, food becomes a life-or-death need of the society and whoever
brings food at this time brings life. But you see, that food can only
last you a few days at most. I will not tell you to reject their rice
and beans, collect them; collect from all the political parties and
politicians that bring to you. As long as you are collecting stomach
infrastructure to live and not living to depend on it, then you must
vote the sort of candidate that’d ensure you don’t live to depend on
stomach infrastructure when the next elections come around. I won’t even
tell you Nigeria deserves better, you deserve better. These elections
are first about you before they are about Nigeria and for every
politician you vote for on the basis of what foodstuff or even kerosene
they share with you, you would have lost the right to complain about bad
governance. It is literally in your hands now. Do the right thing, or
else, this poverty development programme will only continue to be your
lot.
- This Piece was written by J.J Omojuwa. - @omojuwa
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