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More Billionaires Boost the Number of Beggers
Our billionaires crave and create many hero worshippers. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with many of us who could not match their greed and opulence. Behind their so called success is a pack of cards tumbling down at the sight of discovery. The message we want to send to the coming generation is to aspire to the level of majority of our hard working people.
The fear is that our university dons will not be thrown on the streets. Majority of them are stuck in the university because of the amount of investment they made in their careers, the joy and love of teaching future generations. You can notice them from a distance, with that old ties and collar faded shirts, in suits they could afford in good times.
Out of these are those who sell copies of their books, photo copies of books and handouts to students so that they can survive. Those who were once middle class, try to avoid the class of destitute. They saw good times and remembered how they used to change their cars every four or five years. They visited other places once a year or travel out on international or on exchanged stipends.
When universities dried up, some went to private universities and when they realized, they were being exploited, some took appointment anywhere but in Nigeria. With higher fees than in public universities, some became glorified private secondary or primary school tutors. A few of them even got lucky with donated brand new cars, from one or two students that have made it good!
So, we complain too much. Others may be happy that we are half baking some billionaires around us to create jobs for our jobless graduates, farmers and poor folks. If you see what they have done for our teachers: building private schools or universities at the expense of existing ones while damning us with sumptuous parties, one may wonder what else they could have done to boost middle class.
We must share the blame. Some of these were the brains of our society who the military boys exploited to propagate their greedy ideas. They did not force any military leader or old student to give them anything but they gratefully accepted. Realizing their needs, it was speculated that some rich older students know how to secure good grades by being generous to their teachers. The problem is the brush of a few corrupt ones, are usually painted on law abiding citizens.
There are many people doing very well in Nigeria without stealing or resorting to the ignominious culture of the day. Men and women work hard selling and buying variety of products, open small businesses, in bukaterias and transportation. Out of these, they maintain good families and send their children to schools like other places around the globe. As more honest hard working folks are overwhelmed by the increasing number of the desperately poor, we dismay in fear of our future.
There are some members of our extended family and friends you dare not call beggars because they ask you for money, ask you for their children’s school fees or clean out the food in your houses. That would be offensive. If you want to avoid that selfish label, our culture calls for generosity from one rich person in the midst of the poor. Africans are supposed to be our brothers and sisters’ keeper.
However, if you are not well connected for continuous loans, contracts and too scared to steal, you may not have enough for even your immediate family. This is what throws extended family members into the begging in form of going to your friends with complaints hoping something would be given to them. It could be embarrassing to say the least but might be worse if people see your relatives on the street begging. If they are engaged in odd jobs, there is dignity in labor.
Those who paid their dues and are suppose to be the exemplary standard of our society. What we have instead are people who focus on being billionaires by whatever means necessary. Instead of spreading out the riches of the land, they limit it to a narrow circle of family and friends who lack expertise needed for the development of the Country. Money that should be used to build infrastructure, productive businesses and manufacture products are crowded out by a few people who already have jobs, positions and power.
Consequently, they wipe out our middle class. Many of them went from teachers and graduates to working class and then descended to joblessness. There are different types of beggars in-waiting; it is when the center cannot hold that they rolled downwards into the streets. Even then, not all the people you see on the streets are beggars. Some of them are planted by deft manipulators, some stake out people for robbers and some are states’ limbed rejects, to mar other states.
Without adult care our children like Asian children, fall back to toxic dump sites at great risk to their health scavenging discarded garbage of the rich for ores, coke bottles, plastic and batteries. These children are in most cases bare footed with no mask or respirators. Both grown people and children wade through hot dunes and swamps contaminated with oil spills and gas flare hovering above them. Some make more than minimum wage from the middle men. Man must wack!
Many have gone to bed wondering why they were so unlucky or why they were not at the right place at the right time. Some of us were in the same buying and selling of the same materials but somehow they managed to secure better loans from the same banks we deal with, get better positions even when we know they were dummies in schools or make miraculous profit out of selling the same pins in the market. Wonder shall never cease. |