The indulgencies of the season reached their peak in the last couple of days. Many airlines had a busy period as people made last ditch efforts to travel in order to spend time with their loved ones. Resorts were full as revellers trooped in to celebrate the season. Clubs and Event Centres warmly embraced our diaspora youths for Detty December which brought serious traffic in places. Gift, Flower and Souvenir shops hoped to make up for a lost year as many kept their doors open till late in their attempt to make an impressive end of year sales. Supermarkets also had a field day as shoppers milled round in hundreds hoping to find something affordable for their loved ones for Christmas. Yet, for all the motion especially in the cities, Christmas came too early for many Nigerians. Affordable has been the operating and defining word these days as people struggle with survival. As desirable as it might have been for parents to want to decorate Christmas trees and place season’s gifts around them, the reality has been different. It has been an extremely tough year for many and thus hard for them to stretch their earnings to cover Christmas gifts. Gone seems to be the days when people fed on the fat of Christmas knowing the lean month of January would be taken care of. There just didn’t seem to be any fat this Christmas. If there was anything to suck, it was bone marrow for those who could even find the bones. It seemed another lost world where workers got the 13th, or even 14th month in December courtesy of their employers. Now, those who got their November and December salaries were the lucky ones. The economy is harsh, as harsh and uncomfortable as the weather we are currently experiencing. Every purchase brings a groan. It is so hard to stay alive- literally - because the cost of even the commonest drugs is not affordable for many Nigerians.

The word ‘affordable’ has developed a political hue however in America. The current President used this word on the campaign trail when he promised to make the economy affordable for the average American as President. But the year has been anything but affordable for an average American with tariff and inflation taking their toll. Many Americans are finding the cost of grocery and daily purchases unaffordable. And the polls are screaming in protest. To deflect the backlash and its likely effect in next year’s midterm election, the word has become politicized. Affordable has become a welfarist, if not socialist word to be used against Democrats by Republicans while Democrats are using the word as inclusivity to gain political capital. Yet what an average American, like their counterparts in Nigeria and elsewhere, really want is to be able to afford the basic things they have been used to. Devoid of semantics. Or politics.

The word affordable reared its ubiquitous head again two weeks ago when Africa’s richest man accused the CEO of the country’s petroleum regulatory body of sending his children to expensive schools in Switzerland. How, he wondered, could someone who has spent all his working years as a Public Servant able to afford an excess of five million dollars as school fees annually? In a defence, which Engineer Farouk Ahmed has apparently delicately disowned, it was stated he had been a top player in the oil industry for years rising meritoriously up the ladder of success. The defence claimed a very comfortable remuneration as CEO in addition to a trust fund his father had set up for his grandchildren, made those fees affordable. His children it said, were also on 40, 50% scholarships. All these are plausible defences when the searchlight is beamed on any Public Servant who seemingly overreaches themselves. Even if it is affordable for him, and no sacrifice is too great for one’s children, why go to the more expensive schools in Switzerland? He can get quality education for far less in Europe and America assuming he can find a moral justification as a Public Servant to do so. Engineer Farouk comes from one of the poorest States in Nigeria with one of the highest out of school children. He is, in a country of quota, vicariously representing his zone. My problem therefore, is with a mindset that distances some people from their local circumstances. A mindset that makes them feel eligible and entitled to live like a lord with all the accoutrements of royalty in a land filled with poverty and squalor. This is the feudalistic and elitist mindset that is very common among the successful in the country. The one or two percent of our population that is seemingly responsible for the over 400 billion dollars taken out of the country since year 2000. I have issues with that mindset.

The real elephant in the room though, in the feud between Alhaji Dangote and Engineer Ahmed is the way Dangote Refinery is being treated. One accuses the other of siding with the enemy in matters relating to fuel importation while the counter accusation is that Nigeria’s richest man was used to a monopolistic business model and he was merely trying to protect the country’s larger interests. But what business model favours importation over local production? What nationalistic fervor puts hurdles in the way of a local industry? What message goes out to prospective international investors when our country lacks the will to protect an indigene who invests over 20 billion dollars in his country? I am old enough to know how a business model which favours importation over manufacturing sent manufacturing companies out of the country while turning factories into places of worship and our children into unemployment. Now, almost everything including toothpicks, is imported leading to the current exchange rate where almost everything is unaffordable.

Engineer Ahmed and his likes should know that not everyone can afford to educate their children abroad and keep them there. Or find lucrative jobs for them in politics or public service in Nigeria. Ninety percent of Nigerians need public institutions like schools and hospitals to function well. They need local manufacturing to employ their youths, strengthen the naira and make goods more affordable. Doing this will also stem the Japa syndrome. Not improving the quality of our schools and hospitals because our elites find going abroad affordable and not protecting our local manufacturing because some people favor cheaper foreign goods is economic sabotage. It is akin to funding jobs for foreigners while our youths wallow in unemployment.

Those fat cats in the oil and gas industry who decry monopoly should come together to fund their own local refinery and compete. The more, the merrier.

• Muyiwa Adetiba is a veteran journalist and publisher. He can be reached via titbits2012@yahoo.com

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