I have always known fact and fiction as separate words with distinctive identities. However, Professor Akachi Ezeigbo’s seminal book Fact and Fiction in the Literature of the Nigerian Civil War presents a compelling critical diagnosis of fact and fiction in the literature of the Nigerian Civil War. The war has provoked more honest and misleading narratives in competing parallels than any event in the history of the country. While some accounts are real and objective, others are mere propaganda with distorted chronicles. The book provides insight into propaganda as a lubricator of governance machinery put to good use during the Nigerian civil war. Today, while many Nigerians know the facts of the war, its fiction, unfortunately, captures the imagination of a deluded polity given the magnetic proclivities of false narratives. While a few people identify with facts, many people sadly cling to fiction because it satisfies a yawning void for knowledge in their impaired mental process. An unconscionable government conceals fact from the people but relies on propaganda and fiction to hoodwink the populace while pursuing inordinate, self-serving, undisclosed objectives.
Armed with a concise understanding of fact and fiction, the enlightened mind is flummoxed at the rate at which Bola Tinubu’s government has put fiction to good use while suppressing the facts in Nigeria. Regrettably, millions of Nigerians have reconciled themselves to the deceitful actualities in the country even if these conditions operate at cross-purposes with their daily experiences. While the current administration has succeeded in polluting the psyche of Nigerians with the fiction of improved living conditions, sometimes with manipulated economic indices, the fact is that since the inception of the current government, Nigeria’s inflation has progressively hit an all-time high.
The cost of living on the streets of Nigeria has grown astronomically while many families practically starve as they negotiate their way through survival. Alas, a procession of defeated consciences shamelessly makes excuses for the government, urging Nigerians to adjust themselves to suffering because tomorrow will be better. The same disastrous procession queued up behind Mohammadu Buhari until he successfully inflicted his ruinous intentions on Nigerians after eight years. A similar calamitous procession is at it again, singing praises of the current government, painting a façade of wellness while the ordinary people are lacerated by inflation. As of March 2023, shortly before Tinubu came to power, Nigeria’s inflation was 22.04 % but today Nigeria’s inflation is 34.80%. This is a fact, not fiction.
Any attempt to redefine or present fiction as fact must be recognized as a primitive departure from the circles of equitable conscience and responsibility. As my Mbaise people would say, let fact be fact and fiction be fiction because like twin palm nuts, they are primordially separated, each with its identity. It is a fact that Nigeria’s debt profile has hit the roof since Bola Tinubu came to power. It is more worrisome because he removed the oil subsidy to save funds for sundry financial needs in the country, including infrastructural establishment and renewal. Unfortunately, while the oil subsidy is gone, the government has mindlessly continued to borrow funds from willing global financial predators.
Jonathan paid the oil subsidy, yet left a debt of 12.12 trillion naira. Buhari paid it and left a debt of 87 trillion naira. But Bola Tinubu removed it to save money, yet Nigeria’s debt after less than two years of his administration stands at 142 trillion naira. Mind-boggling, isn’t it? The president’s claim of clearing Ways and Means is misleading because it was securitized and the debt transferred from the government to Nigerians. By securitizing the debt owed CBN, the government is allowed to borrow more money, further plunging the country into the abyss of debt. These are verifiable facts, not fiction.
Since Bola Tinubu came to power, poverty saunters into homes, violating families, and dislocating the fragile existence of Nigerians. Poverty in Nigeria is inexorably palpable forcing many homes to compromise their fair standard of living. The situation in the country has completely collapsed the middle class given the anaemic purchasing power of the naira. The exchange of the naira for foreign currencies, especially the US dollar is ridiculous. Today, 1$ exchanges for N1650, a far cry from the exchange rate of 460 naira before the inauguration of the present administration.
Prices of goods and services have increased by more than 400% across the country and millions of Nigerians are groaning under the crushing weight of poverty. But because Nigerians are experts in covering up their woes, presenting a pretentious visage, the government’s fictional propaganda machinery capitalises on these situations to shout ‘it is well’ at the rooftop. In the face of bleeding poverty across the country, the government embraced the elementary tactics of shearing rice and stipends to Nigerians which cost the country billions of naira. Such short-term cosmetic measures reveal a government that drinks from the trough of desperation and confusion. Today, poverty is the biggest masquerade on the streets of Nigerians and this is a fact, not fiction.
It is a fact that the current administration has surreptitiously sought to burden agonising Nigerians with increased taxes. Although Mr President has pretended to save Nigerians from high tax levels, the people are wary of his penchant for increasingly taxing impoverished Nigerians. The recent hike in phone calls, SMS, and data rates by 50% following the approval of new tariffs by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is insensitive to grovelling Nigerians whose purchasing powers have been drastically reduced by a declining economy. Although telecommunication firms had requested a 100% tariff increase citing a harsh business environment which has increased their operating cost by 300%, Nigerians are more disadvantaged following the gradual but steady devaluation of their currency. Under a favourable economic climate, strong purchasing power, valued currency, and various layers of favourable economic conditions, these increases may not matter much. However, under subsisting unpropitious economic conditions where the people wallow in an excruciating cesspool, increase of any sort is like driving a nail into the skull of a healthy person. The current administration has demonstrated a lack of empathy for the people in its policies and programs. This is a fact, not fiction.
The Bola Tinubu’s government is barely two years on the saddle but Nigerians are worse than they have ever been since independence except perhaps, during the war. The administration has succeeded in instituting a mechanism of fictional tales which conceal the facts of its two years in power but Nigerians are not deceived about these realities. The continual eulogy poured on the administration for removing the oil subsidy grates at the rhythm of people’s collective heartbeats because it is unjustified and lacking in reason. Removing the oil subsidy has not stopped the government from borrowing more money, it has not stopped the country’s debt profile from hitting the roof, it has not halted inflation, and it has not restrained the marauding beast of poverty. These are facts and not fiction. So when the cheerleaders of this administration irrationally orchestrate a symphony of diseased continuities as progress in the country, one wonders about the infirm existential matrix which produced such characters. It appears the current government has other intentions besides improving the people’s lives. This is a fact. We are dealing with a perpetuating culture of an all-conquering president who will be remembered more for his bulldozing political tactics and fragmentation of all social communes than anything else.
The current government has a chance to redeem itself by enacting people-friendly, mass-oriented policies that would revive the waning confidence in the administration across the country. It is foolhardy to continue to treat Nigerians as a conquered people and Nigeria as a vanquished fiefdom. Bola Tinubu can write his name in gold in the historical annals of the country by saving Nigerians from tipping over the economic chasm. The current wave of self-immortalization by naming institutions after the president is an escapist attitude because legacies are not forced but earned and created.
While the current government and its officials have frolicked in profligacy and excessive material obscenity, the people have lived in abject poverty, denial, and frustration. This is an incontrovertible fact, not fiction. Any economic recovery as parroted by paid news mongers that does not reflect on the lives of the people or the prices of basic living items in the open market is a ruse, an unforgivable infantile fiction that must be corrected by reason. The economic facts in Nigeria are on the streets and in millions of homes. The fiction in Nigeria is an intangible, abstract embodiment of the government’s scrabbled impulses. Kindly save the fiction and give us the facts. Nigerians deserve better.
Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University
X: @drpee4