Everyone knows the dreaded terrorist called Kwashiorkor. The mere mention of his name causes mind tremors to millions of people who are forced to remember his past escapades. We remember those days when little children looked pregnant. It was always a pregnancy laced with tragedy because more often than not, the outcome was death. We remember those days when everything was food including cassava leaves, lizards, rats, all kinds of birds and insects. I heard the story of mothers who cooked sand in a pot of water and gave their children the water as food. This is exactly what this country is heading to right now. The Naira is getting more and more worthless.
Most of us have been conditioned to buy everything from the market. The wise men and women that planned our education system saw to it that we valued our clean fingers to the point that we dreaded and hated touching the ground in the name of cultivating any crop. We left that unpleasant task to the foolish few who did not have the sense to acquire our type of education. Now we have to buy everything from the market. As it stands today, the money we require to buy things has more than doubled and inflation is still on the rise. The staple foods are fast going beyond the reach of the average person, while the poor has to make do with eating his favourite meals in the dream.
Kwashiorkor is knocking!
It does not go alone. Marasmus always accompanies it. So does anaemia, beriberi, rickets, and so many others. The entire family of malnutrition is setting up a mighty abode in Nigeria. They are coming to abide with us and make our lives miserable.
The warning has gone forth. A dollar may be worth one thousand Naira by December. A bag of rice may get to forty thousand Naira by December. Everyone is apprehensive but no one stands still when another approaches with rage, threatening to kill them. No! The normal reaction is desperation. These actions and inactions of government, these strange negative policies that are anti-people have only succeeded in putting the average Nigerian in the desperation mode. Our young people will try to survive by any means possible. Some will get some of their needs by stealing from others. Many will lose their lives in the hands of an angry mob for stealing phones, soap and maybe an underwear. No prophet needs to tell us this. The trend is very predictable. More and more government officials will get involved in corrupt practices since no one is sure of the next month’s salary. The corruption that this administration set out to fight will get even worse than ever before. The situation will create more poverty in the land which also translates into more deaths than ever before.
The terrible situation we are facing today underscores the importance of good leadership in any society. The leadership factor has been lacking in this nation since the very beginning. There is no kind of natural resource that is not found in abundance in Nigeria. Our land is superb for agricultural purposes. We have vast forests and grasslands in all the geographical zones. We have mineral resources of all kinds. We have very intelligent and gifted human beings as citizens. Leadership is that all important factor that should bring all these aspects together and manipulate them to produce wealth which will be evenly distributed for the general good. It is this leadership that we are lacking.
Kaduna, Taraba, Bornu, Benue, Kano, Ebonyi, Enugu, Nassarawa and some other states produce rice in large quantities. Their rice has been rejected by Nigerians because unscrupulous business men intentionally measure out stones and mix into the rice to multiply profit. This inimical action fired the desire for foreign rice. No state government stepped in to stop this ugly behavior at the right time. Again, farmers who produce this rice have been neglected by the government. They have to beg and wait for necessary inputs to no end. The governors of these great states have never really seen the need to show interest in helping these farmers to produce more rice and other crops. They never really saw the need to ensure that the rice they produce measures up to international standards. The government did not heed the farmers’ pleas that importation should be restricted to allow the local rice flourish. Why should a country that has the capacity to produce more rice than Indonesia be in this mess today where a bag of rice goes for as much as twenty five thousand Naira? Leadership crisis.
Nigeria has the capacity to produce cocoa, cotton, groundnuts, cocoyams, yams, tomatoes, pepper and virtually every food item we consume. Not only do we have the capacity to produce enough for local consumption but for export to other less endowed nations. Lack of credible leadership has made it impossible for us to maximize our potentials. I know of a community in Abia state where the natives produce cocoa in a reasonable quantity. The people really work hard to produce cocoa and other crops but there is no road to bring their products to the towns for sale. I am talking about Ubibia and environs around Itumbuzo. Anybody that has been there will attest to the fact that going there is taking a big risk. This is a classic case of criminal and unforgiveable negligence in a country that produces crude oil in large quantity. If nothing else, our petroleum resources should serve to give us infrastructural development which will compliment and facilitate agricultural productions. That is the path to progress.
Nigeria should not be getting ready to welcome Kwashiorkor once again if not for the shameful failure of our leadership to galvanize all factors of production to achieve success, especially in the area of food sufficiency. A situation where the ministers in charge of various ministries and parastatals are not experts in those areas is a national embarrassment.
The fact that appointments are made based on ethnic interests rather than competence is also despicable. At this critical time in our national history when hope has taken flight from the hearts of many Nigerians, what we need is to shun nepotism, tribalism and all selfish sentiments, put the right people in charge of various aspects of our economy for fast recovery. That is the only way to keep kwashiorkor and marasmus away from our country for good.
Nnenna Ihebom
