Emefiele’s CBN is spitting at us. Joyfully. Commercial banks, either on the counter or via ATMs, are not paying in new notes. Just what we are supposed to do with the old notes at the expiration of the validity as legal tender eludes me. How to get through the approaching weekend without money, as traders are rejecting the old notes, is something I have not been able to work out.
The Minister of Petroleum Resources (née Jubril of Sudan), the NNPC and Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN, for short) are treating us with the dignity of yesterday’s garbage. At home and at work, IKEDC pisses on me, supplying power in staccato fashion. These actions are, for me, dignity-sapping.
I find “these are not the best of times for X or Y” the lamest, infuriatingly formulaic openers to journalistic reports on when situations go tits up for a person or institution. But this morning, nothing else describes my situation better.
Yesterday, I bought fuel at N310 per litre at a petrol station with an unimpeachable reputation for shafting buyers. There, pump attendants preened Cristiano Ronaldo-style. I felt like a castrate. But it was the only one I found selling in kegs. The others I visited dispensed only into car tanks at much lower prices, but that would be after waiting on a queue the length of River Nile.
It does not seem like the government understands it has a duty of care. Its indifference is simply breathtaking. It seems to be working assiduously to strangulate us. This has gone on for too long. It cannot, should not and must not go on. There has to be a limit to our endurance of malevolent indifference.
– Bamidele Johnson
