By Samson Abanni
I have never been on the Senate President’s chair; it is not designed for the poor and not even for the poor’s imagination, so it is hard for me to understand the views from that perch of power. From that vantage point, the hunger and suffering of more than 200 million people sounds funny. The tale of woes about families struggling to feed makes for good comedy when enacted in the red chamber and where fuel queues are picturesque. Distinguished senate president, I guess it’s funny from where you are standing but from here, we miss the joke.
Perhaps it’s not the Senate president’s fault. While standing in this scorching economic heat, nothing can be funny – we used to live on thin margins, but now the margin is nonexistent. The cars are now parked at home because the owners cannot afford fuel, and the millions of households that have to treat essentials as luxuries to be set aside…we have thought about it and still don’t see the joke.
We understand that we live in two different worlds. We know that while each member of the hallowed chamber will take home hundreds of millions, the poor will take home eight thousand naira – sorry, even that handout has been withdrawn because we did not show appreciation.
No one says the palm trees closer to the oasis should not look fresh but should not mock the struggling shrubs in the rest of the desert. We understand, and so we are quiet. From his ride to and from the sprawling assembly chamber, through the tree-lined national capital – the part where senators live, the senate boss met no crowd of protesters asking why they have to pay for our economic recovery with their breakfasts, why they have to give up watching African magic because a liter of fuel has become a pint of blood.
There is rarely anywhere in the world where two hundred people will remain mute while receiving an economic lashing for crimes committed by those doing the lashing. The poor understand their place- if the poor anywhere else do not, the poor in Nigeria can only fart their frustration on social media- they have accepted the job of diffusing anger online before it threatens the corporate peace. So why will Senator Akpabio not let the poor be -why will he mock them?
But again, it is possible that the senate president, sitting in that seat of power – was only joking. Can’t someone, even though that person is the president of the senate, joke about the suffering of the economically broken, even though the policy machinery broke them of their own government? Many great speakers will rise to defend Mr. Akpabio, and they may be right. After all, senator Akpabio has always been privileged and wealthy, and the rich privileged have a different sense of humor from the poor – just like a white slave master who invites a slave, after his day’s toil, to dance and entertain him believes that it makes the slaves happy.
The senator was born into privilege, his grandfather was a warrant chief, and his uncle was a minister in southeastern Nigeria. One of the first positions Senator Akpabio occupied was the petroleum and natural resources commissioner in the oil-rich Akwa Ibom state. Senator Akpabio is privileged, and there’s nothing wrong with being privileged; it only gives one a different worldview and, perhaps, a distinct sense of humor.
I supposed we shouldn’t make such a fuss about the senator mocking the poor. We may have to ask if he understands what it means to be poor. If he understands what it means for a hard-working man, who endures 5 hours daily to commute to work, not having enough to feed his children, having to spend hours awake thinking about this under sweltering heat and mosquitos because he cannot afford fuel, because his country has the least power supply in west Africa. We will undoubtedly be jumping into conclusions if we don’t first enquire whether the distinguished senator understands, even through imagination, what it means for a man to have a wife in labor for his first child and not have up to one thousand for the hospital card.
For a man to consistently come last in the race of life because his country is a rope around his waist and weight around his neck. Should I bother to talk about the ordeals of the millions of the unemployed, I will be lettering these pages with tears and dark brown slime of human suffering; I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t ruin the days of my readers. It was Chimamanda Adichie who said that privilege blinds…it does indeed.
But none of these is the senator’s fault- not the accident of his birth; besides, no law says you must understand the plight of your people to be their senate president. You don’t have to be good at feeling their pulse, but the senator can spare himself the discomfort of going into the quarters of the poor, even intellectually- he should let the poor be. He can call for the ayes and nays without turning over those who have carefully chosen the positions that will quieten hunger-those who have dimmed their lives to save fuel.
It’s unfair to call a man from the outer darkness of political irrelevance and humiliate him when he offered no resistance to your stripping him of his bare existence. For these poor, those I meet daily on the street on their commute to what is left of their bare existence, the only thing left to take is their life. So the senator should let the poor be. Perhaps he misses our grumbling of helplessness, but we have not been idle- we have been busy slipping into the poverty line.
Now the question is not how many Nigerians are dirt poor but how many are not. While we struggle to find our niche around the poverty ecosystem, the Senate president, please, let us be.
