Walking down the streets of Nigeria through the corners of nations which the white man called tribes, the sight of a pig iron extracted from an iron ore is crystal clear. The cloud of hear-say and superstition has thickened over the roofs and even a thicker cloud of corruption emitting through greed, nepotism, imperialism and bad governance as Chinua Achebe identified in his ‘the trouble with Nigeria’ has showered heavily the dew of inflation, the lightening of high interest rates, the thunderstorm of the devaluation of naira, does that stand in for why coins has gone extinct or account for the disappearance of one naira note from the market?

The sound of flood that sweeps off the ability to process raw materials and deliver finished goods to the market invites over dependency on importation as though the land is void of natural resources. However, the manual of constitution and the fiscal policies wrapped in government regulation is projected on the lectern like in the news but with covered lids, the coat of unity and progress are often betrayed by poor infrastructures so for health sake, citizens in the bourgeoisie class will go through the Atlantic ocean to regain good health and proletariat dwell in the overcrowded government hospitals relying on faith. The kingdom of the mixed economic system which capitalism reigns over has become the home of exploitation, to have filled barns at the expense of another’s one tuber of yam or one grain of corn. Fuel could be sold at one hundred and forty four naira and if you ever pay one-fifty or one-forty-six naira, you forfeit six naira or four naira but one cannot purchase this black gold for less or hire-purchase. Exactly how did we get here today in Nigeria? Why have the basic necessities of life become luxuries that one has to be above the lower class to feed three square meals without in between meals, have good change of clothes, good roof over one’s head and then begin to nurture the idea of better mobility and having a data connected smartphone which have in this era become attached to daily living. These militants have our economy sailing swiftly into the Atlantic Oceans, perhaps every Nigerian needs to become a soldier to fight these militants, sail ships to gather from the ocean our treasures and metamorphose to miners with a furnace that will turn our pig iron to refined gold.

Inspired by Aunna Onyekwere’s ‘the Nigeria economy and factors that militates against it’