Whenever and wherever the word ‘miracle’ is mentioned, the mind readily races to the time and life of Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of the Christian faith. Miracle was and still is chiefly associated with Him because He did extraordinary and welcome things that were inexplicable by natural or scientific laws. He healed the sick, cured diseases and even raised the dead in ways that could not be explained.
It may sound strange to say, especially outside the Christian faith, that miracle still happens in today’s world several years after Christ. Many, including some Christians, still doubt this. But nothing could be truer than that. And Nigeria is one country where it is proven that miracle happens on daily basis.
Unarguably, there is an unseen hand controlling the affairs of all Nigerians because theirs is a country where unusual and mysterious things happen, threatening their lives and existence yet they survive and even live long. What keeps them going must have been caused by ‘a god’ because it does not follow the usual laws of nature. That is miracle and it is hugely manifested in the lives of the people.
Situations and events that take place in Nigeria are mind-blowing, some of them are practically unimaginable. This is the only country in the world where people live in want and woe, poverty and penury, yet they survive and carry on with life as though living in lack is a natural course.
The list is endless, but it is amazing that people live in a country with challenges in virtually everything including healthcare, education, housing, security, and even right to basic things of life such as food, movement, speech, association, etc.
Nigeria has no healthcare services where citizens with life-threatening health challenges could get treatment and cure. Government does not subsidise healthcare. Brigadier Sani Abacha of the Nigerian Army who announced the military coup that ousted the then president, late Shehu Shagari in 1983, mentioned healthcare as a major problem in the country then, describing the existing hospitals as mere consulting clinics.
Thirty-six years later, the situation in the country’s healthcare system is not any better and it is such that Aisha Buhari, the wife of the president, Muhammadu Buhari, once shocked the world with the revelation that there was neither syringe nor tablet in the National Hospital, Abuja.
The government which her husband superintends is not doing anything to change that story but would rather jet out of the country for medical attention at the expense of the rest of the citizen while many of the ordinary citizens who cannot afford such overseas facilities die in the dysfunctional hospitals here.
There are no emergency healthcare services. Many Nigerian heroes, especially footballers who spent their youthful years in the service of the country, are dying hopelessly and needlessly. Many, for reasons of inability to pay hospital bills at home or raise money for overseas medical attention, have become social media beggars, pleading for help to raise money for treatment of one ailment or another.
In the last four years, life and living in Nigeria has become a huge risk with high level insecurity which is escalating and reducing the value of life in the country. Many agents of intimidation, harassment, frustration and death, operating as armed bandits, armed herdsmen, Boko Haram, kidnappers, political thugs and sundry criminals have made the country a danger zone, too difficult and scary to inhabit by citizens. Kidnapping has become big and profitable business. People are kidnapped, huge ransom is either paid or they get killed. The country is today at a critical and precarious stage where life has become so worthless that it is valued less than that of a cow.
It is a very dangerous turn of events in the country today that citizens dread security agents. In the past, if someone whose life was threatened or in danger found a policeman, he would be relieved, but no longer so today. “It is difficult now to differentiate a genuine policeman or soldier from the fake because both wear the same police and army uniform,” noted Kazeem Olukoya, a Lagos resident, who was attacked by ‘uniformed officers’ where he was stranded on Airport Road, Lagos.
Good and quality education which is supposed to be an inalienable right of every Nigerian child has become an exclusive preserve of the rich. Successive governments have allowed the education sector to collapse. Examination malpractice seems to have been legalised with the approval of special centres for the children of the rich who can afford what it takes to go to the best schools.
“It is God. If not for God, those us from poor homes would have been barred from going to the big and good schools in the country. Going to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) remains a miracle to me because right from the JAMB exam hall through the post-UTME, I was praying to God, asking him to see me through. Some of my mates from rich homes never did anything, yet they were getting along,” Anthony Chibuike, a graduate of Micro-Biology from UNN, told BDSUNDAY.
Chibuike’s story became all the more pathetic when he disclosed that his father, a struggling man, died in accident the very year he entered into the university, leaving him with an equally struggling mother and five siblings who were all in school. “But mine was not an isolated case and that was where one drew both inspiration and encouragement. There were many of my course mates in worse situations and that is why I believe that God really works miracle in the lives on many Nigerians,” he posited.
In spite of the apparent wealth of the country, citizens provide everything for themselves. There is no government presence in the day-to-day lives of most citizens who provide virtually everything by themselves including electricity, water, housing and, in some cases, roads for themselves.
After billions of dollars investment in the power sector, electricity is still a luxury in the country and it is affecting every facet of the country at individual and institutional level. Energy cost for most homes and industries is in the region of 20 percent and 30 percent of their household income and operating cost respectively.
As important as housing is as one of man’s basic needs, it is still inaccessible and unaffordable to majority of Nigerian citizens. Many of them live in squatter accommodation. Some others who cannot afford to live in shanties, find homes under the bridges, at motor parks and garages in big cities like Lagos.
For South Africa’s 3million housing units, Nigeria has 17 million which is the official figure. It is much more than that. Available record shows that over 80 percent of Nigerians live in rented accommodation, spending over 50 percent of their income on house rents. Most of the people that make up this 80 percent of the population are low income earners. Until recently, the working class among them earned N18,000 per month. It is from this salary that they pay house rent, school fees and settle other bills and commitments, meaning that, on permanent basis, these people are under pressure.
Government housing policies have never worked and, from the look of things, may not work in the near future. A couple of years ago, the Buhari government came up with a very robust roadmap on housing. This was one of the early policies and programmes of the which Nigerians, especially those in the low income class and still in the housing market, welcomed with high expectations.
The roadmap, which focused on home seekers who are in the majority and those who are most vulnerable, placed much premium on planning which, the government reasoned, was key to successful execution, requiring a clear understanding of those who houses are to be provided for.
“The roadmap was well conceived and conveyed by the minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, but like anything in Nigeria, it is always easier said than done; here government finds it hard to walk its talk and this is why we don’t get anything done,” said Yemi Madamidola, a real estate manager.
As if Madamidola was a prophet, that roadmap has only served as a pointer to what the government was planning to do but never did. In the next three days, Buhari’s first term will come to an end and, unless a miracle happens, that roadmap may be ending with Buhari’s first coming.
Nigerians are resilient people with strong capacity to endure pain. They are also a people ruled by hope, but very docile which is why, against Wole Soyinka’s well considered postulation, “the man dies in him that keeps silent in the face of extreme provocation,” Nigerians remain calm and comfortable with the rape and brazen assault on their collective sensibilities.
CHUKA UROKO
