BEFORE dwelling into this week’s piece, I will like us to fully understand the subject of this write-up, which is Palliative. According to a modern dictionary to ‘Palliate’ is to reduce the intensity or severity of a disease or to ease the symptoms of a disease without curing the underlying disease itself. This entails administering pain-killing drugs to a patient to downplay the pain. Another meaning reads, to “palliate” in everyday language may also connote “to cover an error or an undesirable situation by use of excuses and apologies”. If you ask me, nothing best delineates the Nigerian way of palliating more than the above meaning. I will get there in a while.
Another meaning reads, generally speaking, a palliative is an action intended to make the effects of a problem less severe but does not actually solve the problem. However, a scheme offered as a palliative for economic pain might harm the intended beneficiary. Another meaning of the Nigerian palliating.
I will give you a brief of how we got here (this palliating days) in the first place. The Federal Government adopted some economic policies to reposition the country on the right trajectory following what was considered the ‘locust years’ of the immediate past administration.
Some of these policies had to impose untold hardship on the entire population, particularly the removal of oil subsidies and floating the naira against the dollar. Prices of goods and services skyrocketed. External loans, debt burdens, and suffocating conditionalities from creditors have almost brought the Federal Government to its knees. The entire nation bled, and the situation was made worse by rising insecurity across the country.
The Federal Government then decided to provide palliatives to 15 million households to cushion the effects of subsidy removal. In Nigeria today, Whenever crises like these erupt, the same mechanism is repeated to share palliatives which most of the time doesn’t reach the persons intended, like that of COVID-19. The government has made it a habit to share palliatives as if it’s doing some great favor to the citizens, Being boastful even.
Many states without a proven and established framework for social intervention and public distribution systems were saddled with the duty of targeting and onboarding beneficiaries and managing, storing, and distributing food palliatives across their states. Despite the existence of a credible state-managed social register that feeds into the national social register, many state governments choose to be random and unorganized in their delivery approach, which is fueling distrust and agitation among the citizens and in some cases deaths.
Before I go on, To be clear, palliative is a good initiative. However, having recognized that it is only a temporary succor and not a permanent solution, it becomes imperative to seek other complementary options. There are more sustainable alternatives to sharing palliatives in times of crisis or economic downturn than what we are witnessing today. And to add to my annoyance, just recently I read about a western-backed donation of 25,000 tonnes of wheat from Ukraine in February via the World Food Programme, which has justifiably sparked a debate over the optics of a war-torn country donating aid to a nation nominally at peace, is this not a joke?
This grain distribution has brought nothing but chaos and trouble – it’s human nature to have struggles and rush when too many people are expected to queue up for something that is barely enough for all. This whole idea of distributing palliatives the way they are distributed is a big recipe for disaster – stampede to be precise.
The government or companies can put in place a mechanism or structure that could cancel out queues and rush – it could be a door-to-door drop, or getaway drops, or mosques or churches pick-up – anything but this gathering of people rushing for palliatives that are barely enough for all. If you ask, that’s an insult to humanity and a slap to the self-pride of those involved. Nigerians demand permanent solutions to this food crisis.
It started with the Nigeria Customs Service, which sold off bags of rice confiscated from smugglers at a quarter of the market price resulting in chaos which left seven people dead at the regional headquarters, Lagos. And since then all we have heard is a warehouse or a vehicle looted or in some cases stampede and deaths during a palliative distribution in one location or the other which has sparked fears of a breakdown in law and order.
I think it’s high time someone tells the government the truth; putting the right structures and systems in place to address the economic challenge is the only palliative we need right now. The government promised that their administration was initiating policies and programs that would bring about long-term empowerment to the people of the state rather than short-term palliatives. We’ve been waiting for that and are still waiting.
There is nowhere in the world that the government does everything for you. We understand and accept that and are getting involved in businesses. Taking advantage of our skills, and that way, adding value to ourselves despite the dollar hike that makes a small business owner almost lose faith in business.
So please for those at the top, offering palliatives is not a workable solution to the economic hardship in the country and never will be, the government is even seeing it as an effort to make it look like they’ve done something by sharing palliatives that barely last a week or more for most families.
So please this is not the palliative we need; we want a stable economy, we want a good healthcare system, we want an improved power, we want security and we want want a working education system – at least let’s see signs that we are headed in that direction even if the whole package ain’t here and ready yet. I will Like to end my piece with a saying of a great progressive leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo once said: “The children of the poor you failed to train and educate will never allow your children to have peace”.
And in today’s Nigeria, the repercussion is not just a disruption of the peace of the children but the peace of the parents too.
Kabara, is a writer and public commentator. Her syndicated column, Voice, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays. She can be reached on hafceekay01@gmail.com