In the last 20 of my over 30 years of sojourn in the United States, I’ve always made it a duty of sort to visit my hometown of Imesi-Ile, and my birthplace in Ibadan, at least three times a year. Engulfing challenges all around the world in the last three years, however, have forced me to stay back in the States until a few weeks ago when a resurgent heart-cry rejiggered my calendar. As part of our obligations to God and man, and from our paltry resources, my wife and I decided to hit a few places in Nigeria feeding hapless Nigerians who are unable to feed themselves even once a day.
What I experienced in Nigeria this time around was different from what I had encountered aforetime. The poor in Nigeria are ballooning in numbers. People are more desperate now to clutch on to any kind of rod of survival even if it means hurting somebody. Crime has gone up. The death toll among the sick and hungry is rising. Unemployment continues to hit our youth hard. And men who once were able to provide for their families are now roiling in pestering penury. Friends, there is biting hunger in our land. This is a tormenting tide. I urge the blessed ones among us to step up to help stem this evil tide.
My journey blitzed through Abuja where a bally lot ride in Prado jeeps, exotic Tesla, and Lamborghinis. In Abuja, many who reside there don’t know what poverty looks like nor smell the scent of it. In Abuja, it is a rich men’s business-as-usual chateau. And the same God who created men fattening up in prosperity is the same unchanging Creator whose moulding hands framed the poor and breathed them into existence. This world is unfair. Better still, as the street lingo, “This life no balance!” This is not peculiar to Nigeria. Nations around the world are splintered into two inchoate groups- the rich and the poor. You find this dichotomy of communities everywhere. But the gulf between the poor and the rich in Nigeria is widening. The bite of hunger in this blessed and rich land is harrowing. And I blame it on a systemic stench that has encapsulated the Giant of Africa for decades and shoved her shamelessly in the valley of hunger and poverty for an immeasurably and noisomely long time.
On this mission trip, we stormed a city called Epe in Lagos State. My wife hails from there. She knows a lot about the town where, as a young girl, she once hawked garri for her grandmother for the family to survive hunger. She remembers all of her bitter experiences growing up there and the struggles they had to go through to raise their heads above water. She’s always narrated the story to me since we met. When she told me that her heart thirsted for her hometown to help feed the hungry, my heart embraced it.
Close to 500 people, old and young, stormed the small stadium we used to distribute bags of rice, semovita, and garri to total strangers. We felt upbeat as we first spread the word around town with drumbeats and blowing trumpets to create awareness. The people thronged the spot as we gathered them under a huge canopy. My wife spoke to the crowd telling them about her upbringing in that town. She encouraged them that she too was once in the trenches of struggle in the same city urging them not to lose hope.
An encounter I had, however, stuck with me. An elderly woman (maybe in her 80s) came to the site after the foodstuffs had all been given out. We had nothing else to give but prayer. But how do you pray for any hungry person, old or young, who had hoped that whatever they got from the distribution centre would keep their family for the next week? You can pray the Psalms upon the hungry and invoke words in the books of the Prophets and Gospel upon the poor. As far as I’m concerned, the most potent and effectual prayer that the hungry need is FOOD. My friends, don’t forget to feed the hungry. If you do this, you will have prayed for dying souls without moving your lips. It is the prayer that touches the heart of God.
The old woman now said to me: “Pastor, mi rounje gba ooo”. (Pastor, I didn’t get food).
My heart dropped. I was raised by my grandmother. And the intestinal love connection I had with my dead granny came back alive as this old woman looked me in the eyes expecting something. She was not prepared to leave the place empty-handed. She shouldn’t. Then, I dipped my hands in my pocket and gave her N500 to help buy some food. She broke down in tears! I asked why she was crying? She said she had never been given N500 in a long time. I almost burst into tears. But I controlled my emotions. It is so unfortunate that a paltry N500 gift could make an elderly shed tear in Nigeria. I pulled the woman to the side away from others hanging around, dug my hands in my pocket, and emptied the last bunch of N500 notes on me. I don’t know how much it was. Maybe N20,000! She took the money and mumbled some prayers. For a woman who could cry at the sight of N500, that money was a lot. Then, she scurried away from the site. N500 gift ($1) shouldn’t make anybody cry in a blessed nation like Nigeria.
Nigeria is unable to amply feed her hungry because of greed and corruption in the corridors of power. People now serve to steal. One woman who once ran the petroleum resources ministry was a one-woman treasury-wrecking machine. Jewelry seized from her is estimated to be N14bn. Houses seized estimated at $80 million. Just one woman; and many hungry Nigerians litter our streets. And Nigeria’s corruption stories stretch from coast to coast without a glimpse of a hopeful end to the menace. Only God knows the depth of corruption that will be revealed when the current regime is out of power. The truth is that in corruption, Nigeria lives, and moves, and has her being, no matter what party rules. Where there is a will, they say, there’s a way. Power problems, damaged roads, ravishing hunger, youth unemployment are all problems within a striking distance resolution. But they are unsolvable today because our collective will has evanesced.
One man in power recently suggested that Nigerians should speak well about Nigeria, and that bad things people say about Nigeria are wrecking the nation. I agree with him. People should watch and wash their mouths. But when people are angry and hungry, when roads are bad and not motorable, when the old and young die before their time because health care service is decrepit, and when all these anomalies are kept alive because there are pillaging thieves among us in positions of power, people will always express themselves out of frustration and bitterness of heart and soul.
As long as the powerful in Nigeria do the unthinkable, the powerless will continue to do the unbelievable. Bad people in power have nothing good in their human armaments. And until ordinary Nigerians make demands of their leaders for good and humane leadership, there will never be a supply of good governance. As for me and my household, we will keep feeding people our paltry resources can feed, help those our meagre measures of talents can help, and hope that in my lifetime, Nigeria will have the desirable servant-leadership across the board that will sincerely put the people first.
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