But today that 1,000 naira will probably fetch Benin Republic’s equivalent of five kobo, so how would Victorin come to Nigeria.
Victorin Housin, you won’t know him, you can’t. It is not possible that your paths cross. He’s not one of the big names around. He is a young gentleman, a lowly Beninois who migrated from Benin Republic in search of the golden fleece in Nigeria. He was trained to cook in the French style and he’s very good at it. He was hired as a steward by a comfortable family in the estate I once lived in Lekki, Lagos. Victorin, we called him Victor commonly because that suits us as Nigerians, thought I was a bigman though I was not. I was only in the estate of the rich courtesy of a friend who bailed me out when I lost my accommodation in Ogba, Ikeja. For those who get close to me I was only privileged to be in that place, so Victor and I are on the same level though I was older than him and was not serving anybody. I was a constant visitor to their home because his employers were a very kind family. Victor was trusted in that home like a son. He was very honest, never took a kobo that did not belong to him, even he refused to keep the ATM card of his madam. He won’t accept to go and withdraw money from the ATM except madam goes with him. He also drove the family. He lived his life carefully. He has a wife and they both have two girls. You will think these girls are daughters of Victor’s bosses. Victor was a committed member of a big church denomination in Nigeria but despite his love for God and that church, Victor will still not return to Nigeria because “my country is better for now.”
I left the Choise Garden Estate before Victor. I had to because my time was overdue. I never thought Victor will ever depart from his madam. He did everything for her including supervising the building of a house for her. The madam had been losing money to Nigerian artisans until Victor took over and was sleeping at the site. That was when the cement of the madam stopped to disappear. But Victor left and I was disturbed. Later i discovered a minor disagreement which I tried to mediate but was unsuccessful. Eventually Victor had a minor accident and had to go back to his country, Benin Republic to look after himself. He would be coming back, I thought and we can resume the reconciliation. But that is doubtful and that is this story for today. Communication continued on WhatsApp with Victor. Then Victor looks like he is overstaying at Benin Republic. When are you going to return to Nigeria? Victor replied: “My country is better for now.” That was not really a surprise but it left a cause for reflection over the situation of Nigeria. Once a darling of its neighbours in West Africa and just within a few months, Nigeria has become a country that these neighbours consider less attractive for them and they shun her like a pariah.
I was worried about the situation of our artisans in Nigeria. Artisans from neighbouring Benin, Togo, Ghana and even Niger were preferred by Nigerians who build in Lekki, Lagos. Why? Our West African neighbours are better in skill than our own artisans. Our artisans are said not to be honest. They cannot be trusted. As a pastor I had some Nigerian artisans who came to me to pray for them to get jobs. Just to fulfill all righteousness I prayed for them but I knew prayer was not what was needed. I knew what was needed was their skill and their character. No matter how I prayed nobody will give a job to an unskillful man who also lack character. But now Victor who was making so much money in Nigeria and was putting up a building in his home town in his country does not need Nigeria again, he is not coming here again. His expression, “my country is better for now” speaks volumes about the decadent and economic woes in Nigeria. The naira has fallen and it’s still falling and it is no longer attractive to any foreigner again. If Victorin, a lowly worker rejects Nigeria with such immense disdain as he wrote on WhatsApp, what then is the hope of more sophisticated and highly qualified technocrats and businessmen and women from abroad. What is the hope of these foreign trips of President Bola Tinubu and his ministers? What is the prospect of such trips? Why does Victorin not want to return to Nigeria again?
Victorin has probably heard that the price of a ‘kongo’ of garri called mudu in the North is now 1,200 naira. He has heard that his earning which fetched him extra money after he took care of his home to build a house in his town can no longer sustain him in Lagos again. “My country is better for now,” Victor has heard of the nakedness of Nigeria: the government of Bola Tinubu does not care. As long as those who constitute the government with him are taken care of, he only thinks of the ordinary Nigerians as objects to fund the lavish lifestyle of the leaders, “my country is better for now.”
Victorin had a motorcycle that we call ‘Okada’ in Nigeria where it is used it for commercial transport. Victorin deployed his okada on part-time and was making so much money from it. He once told me that he made an average of 20,000 naira daily but today he probably has heard of the draconian hand of Governor Babajide Sanwoolu, the helmsman in Lagos State and so “my country is better for now.” Nigeria is no better place for him now because he has heard that fuel costs 1,000 naira per litre and that the price is uncontrollable and you may have to pass a few nights in a filling station to get a little to buy or grease the palms of the attendants. He has heard that all attempts to manipulate the naira/ dollar rate has failed and would continue to fail to the advantage of the dollar. So, “my country is better for now.” No matter what he made in naira in Nigeria when it is changed to CFA it will not worth tissue paper, so he won’t return to Nigeria, “my country is better for now.”
And that reminds me of an escapade my friend and I once made to the Republic of Benin in the days when Nigeria was awash with petrodollars, when it had not become the Federal Republic of Tinubu. We were in the university and a friend who worked in the Immigration Department had invited us on an Easter holiday to visit him at the Benin/Nigeria border. The friend gave us 1,000 naira which when we changed to CFA became instant millionaires in CFA. We lodged in an hotel and the way we spent money lavishly invited the attention of the owner of the hotel who came to greet us. A bottle of Benin beer was equivalent of Nigeria’s six pence, the five kobo of today. But today that 1,000 naira will probably fetch Benin Republic’s equivalent of five kobo, so how would Victorin come to Nigeria. That will be suicide, so again, “my country is better for now.”
Better for Victorin who has a country to run to and stay for now. For Wasiu ( not real names) he is not as lucky. He is a very skillful bricklayer but a very stubborn boy. Rather than practice his trade, he followed a notorius gang leader in Ibadan, a notorious hoodlum so made by politicians who used him to harass opponents and rig elections. He became so notorious that the people of his area called him Kabiyesi, i.e the king whose authority cannot be questioned. Wasiu became a member of this gang earning 3,000 naira daily. He won’t earn more that this in his trade and this comes regularly. He only had to obey the boss and be as brutal as he can be. They could kill anybody at the order of their boss, one of the elders of the area told me.
But nemesis caught up with the boss who was cut down in a hail of bullets by security agents and then his third-in-command too was killed. At that time money stopped flowing to the members of the gang and Wasiu had to take to burglary. In one act, he was arrested, tried and jailed where he spent nine months in prison. He came back home with sores all over his body to meet his wife and their toddler daughter. He suffered so much in the prison that he swore never to take to crime again. Even as his extended family doubted him, he immediately began to look for a job to do. His boss that trained him took him to Lagos but the increase in the price of cement to 10,000 naira a bag ensured that they had no job to do. Even in rich Lekki, nobody is building again. Wasiu is from very poor parents who could barely feed themselves not to talk of taking the additional burden of a wife and daughter. Wasiu has no country for now. Nigeria is supposed to be his country but Nigeria and Tinubu and his governor in Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, care less for his likes. Except he can get to MC Oluomo in Lagos who heads the unofficial army of the Lagos politicians, Wasiu will have no country like Victorin. And if Victorin will not return because “my country is better for now,” forget about the multinationals staying in Nigeria, forget about foreign investors coming no matter how they are begged and forget about the naira rising. And here comes Armageddon in “my country for now.”
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
The Ovi 