Strange Christmas with no rice or stew
How to cook your favourite Christmas Jollof on a budget
Table spread of Christmas Jollof
I woke up December 17, 2024, and was in a rare prayerful mood and I began by playing the worship songs of American singer and pianist, Mr. Don Moen.
His most popular track which understandably is the one in which he titled “God will make a way”, turned out as my most favourite track for my morning devotion.
The aforementioned song was a soothing way of consoling myself about the possibility that millions of Christians preparing for next Wednesday’s 2024 Christmas celebration will do so without the traditional rice and stew. I know it as a fact that the increasing poverty situations afflicting hundreds of millions of Nigerians which are pathetic and unprecedented today, will make it inevitable that millions of Nigerians will experience a harsh Christmas.
This Christmas of zero rice and stew, of course, is because the Nigerian government of the day introduced some poorly implemented economic policies that have unleashed massive, absolute poverty and heightened the cost of living. Today, more Nigerian households are trapped in absolute and multidimensional poverty than at any other times, and, as we know it, Nigeria now ranks as the country with the single largest population of multidimensionally poor households. Millions of Nigerians have lost their jobs because many companies have folded up due to harsh operational environment induced by the extremely unacceptable economic policies of President Bola Tinubu’s administration that, for instance, has made petrol one of the most expensive items per litre worldwide. Millions of Nigerians can’t even move around in derelict buses in search of daily bread; so millions now eat from the refuse dump sites, and many have become beggars. It is a horrible year and a distasteful Christmas season.
The year 2024 is the first time Christmas celebration is happening when the cost of living crisis has reached a frenetic height with the November inflation rate standing at 34.60 per cent. Banks do not dispense cash and even electronic transfer mechanisms are poor. Banks now sell cash to POS operators who now sale cash openly. The exact reason that has taken away rice and stew from the lunch tables of millions of this year’s Christmas celebrants is the unaffordable costs of rice. Proteins such as chickens, goats are extremely costly just as other essential food items such as tomato and pepper are not affordable anymore since the emergence of the current political dispensation. The situation is looking very badly.
The story is that an average bag of rice (foreign product) which hitherto stood at less than N30, 000 just before President Tinubu was sworn into office on May 29 last year, sadly, today, the same bag of rice is N125, 000. A bag of beans is also way up there just as the popular staple of the commoners which is garri is also not affordable by millions of Nigerian multi-dimensionally poor households.
Meanwhile, the new minimum wage for the less than five percent of Nigerians that are employed in the formal and informal sectors is N70, 000. This means that for everyone who is earning the new minimum wage, there would be the challenge of being unable and incapable of affording a bag of rice. Housing is despicable. Public transportation system is wayward. Hospitals are collapsing and crimes are getting more frequent and sophisticated.
The poorly crafted and implemented economic policies by the Nigerian government at the moment have seen the naira plummeting to the lowest value since it was introduced as the national currency. Naira is rated as a near worthless currency globally just as a dollar which was just N400 before Tinubu came as president, is now N1,700.
Besides, the other intriguing Christmas related bad news is that half of the population that traditionally travelled to their home towns for yuletide celebration cannot do so this year and there is only a week left before Christmas.
This inability to travel for Christmas festivities is due to the incessant hikes in the price of petroleum by the Nigerian government.
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The prevalent high insecurity also means that so many Nigerians who live in the cities cannot travel to the country sides due to the fear of the unknown in addition to unprecedented high cost of living.
For instance, one of the few privately owned airlines, Air Peace, has also started hiking its ticketing fairs to the South-East, especially to an extent that the costs of ticketing last year Christmas is now quadrupled. It’s simply not practicable for most people making a living legitimately to buy a two- way tickets from Abuja to Owerri and back at N700,000. Such a callous air fair! For instance, a family of four would need like N3 million just for air tickets only.
So, the fundamental cause of the imminent celebration of this year’s Christmas with no rice and chicken is poor leadership. The general economic climate is tied down to bad governance, lack of accountability and transparency, especially at the national and also at the sub-national levels. The state governors are some of the most corrupt public office holders now. To make matters worse, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission operate like political organs of the ruling All Progressives Congress. So the institutions of checks and balances are hijacked, including the legislature and the judiciary, and the trouble keep expanding.
Professor Chinua Achebe of blessed memory saw all these coming many years ago when he authored a tiny book, The Trouble With Nigeria, in which he argued thus: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership”.
Achebe gave one illustration thus: “On the morning after Murtala Muhammed seized power in July 1975 public servants in Lagos were found ‘on seat’ at seven-thirty in the morning. Even the ‘go-slow’ traffic that had defeated every solution and defied every regime vanished overnight from the streets! Why? The new ruler’s reputation for ruthlessness was sufficient to transform in the course of only one night the style and habit of Nigeria’s unruly capital. That the character of one man could establish that quantum change in a people’s social behaviour was nothing less than miraculous. But it shows that social miracles can happen”.
Professor Achebe continued: “We know, alas, that that transformation was short-lived; it had begun to fade even before the tragic assassination of Murtala Muhammed. In the final analysis a leader’s no-nonsense reputation might induce a favourable climate but in order to effect lasting change it must be followed up with a radical programme of social and economic re-organisation or at least a well-conceived and consistent agenda of reform which Nigeria stood, and stands, in dire need of.”
As if he saw what Tinubu would now call economic reforms which are simply spreading cocktails of poverty, hardships, misery and deprivation targeting largely millions of ordinary citizens, Achebe in that illustrious book stated: “I am not here recommending ruthlessness as a necessary qualification for Nigerian leadership.
Quite on the contrary. What I am saying is that Nigeria is not beyond change.
I am saying that Nigeria can change today if she discovers leaders who have the will, the ability and the vision. Such people are rare in any time or place.”
Then another public affairs analyst and a respected academic, Dr.Chris. M.A Kwaja, summed up the Nigerian situation thus: “Nigeria is listed among the world’s most corrupt countries. This socio-economic malaise is pervasive and has not spared the country’s security sector. Transparency International (2015) ranks Nigeria’s defence and security sector as one of the most corrupt in the world. Dating back to the era of military rule, the problem is most prevalent in the area of fiscal finance, operations, procurement and personnel. This, according to Page (2018a), has not only hollowed out the military and security services in Nigeria, but it has also rendered them unable to effectively combat Boko Haram or address ethno-religious and communal conflicts.”
He continued: “The scope and scale of corruption in the security sector are humongous and, as will be discussed in a subsequent subsection, its impact is colossal.
My dear readers, when you see your Christian neighbours not able to share rice and stew around as was traditionally done on other Christmas celebrations when political leaders were not as ruthless and wicked as the present day political leaders, please excuse their poverty of rice and stew. Perhaps, when Nigerians elect a good Federal Government and humane governors in the nearest future, our nostalgically lovely and richly prepared, garnished rice and stew would stage a triumphant return to our lunchtime tables. For now, let us enjoy our Christmas festivities the best way we can. Be happy.
*Onwubiko is head of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria and was National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria
