Purse Versus Pulse Debate[1]
29.11.2015
The worst has not been told in Ebonyi; it will be clearer in 2019 as the war has begun. Typical of us, all Ebonyians are converting to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and abandoning the election-winning machine called the People’s Democratic Party, (PDP). It is neither easy nor a lesser evil as calculated by those concerned. There is no escape route.
Freedom and sovereignty are twin institutions that are non-negotiable as rights of the people. Freedom here is when you allow the will of the people to determine the destiny of the generality while sovereignty is when you allow people’s will to determine their own destiny upon themselves.
Freedom cannot come unless the code of knowledge is unlocked. The code cannot be unlocked unless some persons are willing to do so. Every person in Ebonyi has been crying for freedom but it seems no one is granting it. Rather politicians exploit our cry every four years and fool us at the end of it. And when they do so, their supporters will make those who oppose them look like enemies of the state.
Mahatma Gandhi once wrote that an error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained. This is what Ebonyi political fanatics need to keep in mind anytime their paymasters come under media scrutiny. It should be noted that their defence which runs across party divide holds no answer.
I have consistently maintained that the problem with Nigeria is that of followership. If leaders are corrupt, the people are often worse. The problem with Ebonyi may not be more of leaders than masses who roar approvals to leaders who don’t deserve them. These foot soldiers of political rascality are ever violence-ready, always attacking those who criticize their master’s position. Ironically, out of office, these fanatics look frustrate and will even want to join those they have attacked to criticize their successors.
More often than not, I get those stupid questions which if not for the civility’s sake would have elicited some verbal invectives; but the prudence of the age has meant that we respond to them with every sense of respect, with journalist equanimity.
What answer, for instance, would I give to those ignoramuses who occasionally berserk my Facebook wall with questions of why am I interested in politics? If by stretch of imagination they think that what I am for them forbids political commentary, then, they have to know that what I am with them compels me to do so. For them, I am a priest; but with them, I am a citizen of this country, begotten not bought. We have to be good citizens of the world before becoming citizens of heaven. If I cannot live well in the city of men, I cannot live well in the city of God.
To keep our common destiny in focus, wherever the pulse of any Ebonyian is felt, there must be a collective response to diagnose the pulse. Where it has mattered most in the recent time is the introduction of tax regime in Ebonyi State. Before it came to public awareness, I had warned in an earlier piece entitled I See Matches I see Blood that any attempt to enforce taxation more so an arbitrary one in Ebonyi will be met with stiff resistance that will see some tax officers pay the supreme price. That warning was ignored and one consequence took the appearance of another and before government could begin the process to rescind its decision or lower the tax rate, much blood had dropped.
Rescinded or adjusted, there is nothing that has given the current administration in the state bad name than an enforcement of tax regime. The logic behind it was too tyrannical. In introducing it, the government had appealed for understanding of the dwindling revenue allocation to the state arguing that when allocation improves, government may reconsider the rates.
What is lacking in that argument is that when revenue falls, the economic power of an ordinary man is made worse. Shortfall in allocation is felt at every level. It is felt when government cuts workers’ salary. It is felt when we are made to buy fuel at higher prices. It is felt when the cost of imported goods goes up.
When people through no fault of theirs are led to this economic impasse Nigeria is witnessing today, a responsive government ought to feel the pulse of the people and not just get so fixated on how to increase the purse of government. A responsible government needs to feel the impact of the dwindling economy on the purse of workers who go home with paltry sum as salary. It is wrong for the state to think only the government, the purse, how to squeeze the purse of the masses without gauging their pulse and emptying them into government purse.
We admit that Abakaliki urban has received a facelift since the current administration took over. We admit too that ongoing flyover projects, whether a priority or not, has been moving at great speed. We also admit that if only talk is costly, the state governor is passionate to transform Abakaliki urban. But the effort of the government to achieve at short space does not detract the folly of their insensitivity in imposing multiple taxes on an Ebonyian man who has been serially raped of economic future.
A state must not be forced to grow when it is obvious that economic logic is calling us to pause. Currently, Nigeria has a shortfall in revenue accruing to it and that has affected federal allocation to the state government. But the matter is not as bad as different governors present it to the people. Even this is not an opportunity to force people augment allocation through tax imposition.
Even the Bible says that a man reaps from what he sows. If one wants a robust IGR generation in Ebonyi, one must prepare the people for that age. The government in Ebonyi must understand Ebonyians before demanding that Ebonyians understand them. I disagree with the propaganda that Ebonyians must understand what the government is passing through. If the government wants to be understood, it must first and foremost be willing to understand.
I am glad that for the first time, Ebonyians spoke their willingness to return to the period of O waa tax, O waa rate. They sent message of no words and it was taken. The reason is that leadership insanity wants to destroy, wreck and burn Ebonyi humanity. For the first time, Ebonyians moved to use humanity formula, and threatened to use mathematical formula to solve this illusion.
The massive condemnation of the tax regime shows that Ebonyians are ready to take their freedom automatically. The knowledge they lack and the knowledge that is unlocked is empowered by the refusal of some voices to yield to the voice of insanity. When a system parades the greatest abuse of both individual and union voice, chartered by law, then such situation silences voice of justice.
Fortunately, leaders should know that freedom has been given to Ebonyians. They should know that freedom of Ebonyians is for Ebonyians irrespective of where they are domiciled or which party they are affiliated. If freedom is knowledge and it is unlocked by letting the people know their right, the knowledge which Ebonyians have can make them willing to change decisions that impede against their freedom, by so doing they become wise.
If Ebonyians remain wise, leaders will no longer abuse the people with impunity. The knowledge people have acquired in the last political dispensation is awake in their sub consciousness; no one can take that away from them. This invariably translates that Ebonyi people are becoming more intelligent than the leaders.
The Ebonyi leaders have been masters holding the whip all the while, but with the process that began with the turnaround in the last elections, revolt against tax regime, and many are underway, this same whip will be taken away from the leaders and handed over to the people. As it is the leaders will be whipped heavily because they have stupidly, foolishly, disgracefully and gullibly brought shame to the Ebonyi kingdom. Since the spirit of the greatest are awake for war, the era of leadership rascality will be soon end in Ebonyi.
[1] Published on November 29, 2015
