The crumbling Nation! by Romanus Chukwunonso

“Mummy, please, can you buy potato. I hope N2000 worth will not be too much ooo! I don’t want them to decay,” I had told my wife in the market then, on noticing that we had run out of yam tubers.

I know very well that yams have now become an exclusive reserve of the rich.

On seeing the quantity she came home, I had queried her; “where are the N2000 potatoes I told you to buy now.”

“Look at them nah,” she replied, pointing at the middle size insignificant quantity on the flour.

“This is the N2000 you told me to buy nah. You didn’t believe me all these while I have been telling you that foodstuffs are very costly in the market,” she replied me, smiling mischievously.

I had stolen glances at the potatoes again and again to wake up to the realities on the level of the cost of living many hapless Nigerians are struggling and battling to cope with.

I knew that things are very hard, but I never imagined that it has gotten as bad to this. Little wonder marriages are facing threats of upkeep.

“Potato of all foodstuffs? A very small size of it, even less than eight in number, going for N2000? So, the country has deteriorated to this extent?” I thought aloud.
But, wait ooo, if the rich should be crying now, what would the poor then do? Go and steal to survive, or starve everyday?

I tried to hinge the cost and rest my hope on the usual excuse that it may not be the season, but she was quick to remind me: “which season, Daddy, how many people planted potato this year, did herdsmen even allow farmers to cultivate anything this year?”

It was then that it dawn on me the magnitude of food crisis Nigerians are currently facing. And did I hear the immediate past Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, telling us not to allow anyone to deceive us that there are grains in the silos across the country because there are none?

If it is true that beans is now costlier than rice, bread is now out of the reach of common people, then the future, is regrettably, looking even bleaker than we thought.
My father once told me a vulture forklore.

He narrated that the fledglings had complained to the mother vulture that the rainfall was too much, but she advised them to brace up because the storm is just gathering for heavier rain.

Where shall we run to, where will our help come from, who will save us from the impending doomsday and if it is going to come from this Tinubunomics, is it these legs that the cattle will get to Umuahia, as Igbos will say?

But, if it took us 20 years to prepare for this madness how long are we going to suffer the afflictions.

Ihe emebigo mu…! Odi egwu oooo.