Life is wasted, at every turn… concrete-carrying women… the road-side mechanic at Itu…slum dwellers of Ilasamaja, Nyanya, New Kuru, One man village… Ogoniland… eighteen thousand minimum wage… but eighteen million comfort allowance for national Assemblyman

–Ekundayo Simpson in The Act, 2019.

Professor Ekundayo Simpson former Commissioner of Education in Lagos State and a renowned Interpreter of United Nations’ reckon transited on May 26, 2023. In his novel, The Act, he treated the theme of oppression in Nigeria that started since 1960 of Independence till this time of his transition. His father was a great civil servant in the era of the colonial masters before entering into ‘independence’ Nigeria in 1960. He marvels at the degradation of humanity and human life occasioned by politicians and the Military which sicne remains unabated, and craves for a collective resolve by the poor masses to usher-in a new era of respect for human dignity. Unfortunately the SDP he once belonged to which was expected to usher-in the new era had been absorbed by either PDP or APC for further widening the gap of the poor and the rich, expressed in N18,000 minimum wage and N18 million allowance for the politicians.

Farouk Lawan and Femi Otedola saga opened the eyes of poor Nigerians to what is happening to them; still, no government in power has been able to stop the leakage, instead they prefer to prevent the poor people from even “picking the crumbs”, quite dehumanizing as it still is. Just like the currency re-designing of the CBN was expected to target the rich, it went on to discriminate against the poor and landed great damages to the poor, including even the not-so-poor who had died hanging around banks to beg to have access to their money, and leaving out the rich who operate in dollars. The current removal of fuel subsidy is likely to land more damaging effects on the poor, living out the rich and even getting the rich to get richer. Licensing the rich to import refined fuel as anticipated is going to be like “import licence” regime of Joseph Sanusi time in CBN when, according to reports, importers were siphoning Nigeria’s hard earned foreign currency only to import cargo filled with sand in the name of importing goods. It is still the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor. Cement became costlier as it turned out a “monopoly” in Nigeria swallowing Togo cement factory and Nigeria – Benin cement factories in Benin Republic, either by, deliberately, orchestrating their death or promising redundancy dividend to those poor countries, even when they expect such partnership venture involving Nigeria to thrive for excellence. Refined fuel is not far from suffering such fate in Nigeria even when it is known that the PMS that is intended for the poor to help in generating power for their informal trade is just a marginal item out of the myriad of items that comes out of a baril of crude oil; and crude oil is Nigeria’s comparative advantage natural resource that…