The Poverty They Pray For: How Nigerian Leaders Invest In Your Suffering And Call It Empowerment

 

By Samuel Ashiwel

They do not want you rich. A rich man cannot be controlled with a bag of rice. They do not want you poor enough to revolt either. They want you exactly where you are — managing, begging, surviving — because a man who is busy surviving will never have time to question why he is suffering.

The Business Model

Poverty in Nigeria is not an accident. It is a business model.

Look at the pattern. Every election cycle, the same people who refused to build factories suddenly remember how to share sewing machines. The same people who refused to fund schools suddenly share exercise books with their faces printed on them. The same people who killed the hospitals suddenly pay hospital bills for cameras. This is not generosity. This is maintenance. They are maintaining the poverty that keeps them relevant.

A leader who builds industries will create workers who can pay their own rent. Workers who pay their own rent do not need to kneel for stipends. And a citizen who does not kneel is difficult to rule.

So they choose the cheaper option. Do not build the industry. Share the rice.

Why Your Pain Is Profitable

A poor community is cheaper to govern than a prosperous one.

When the road is bad, they will come and grade it two weeks to election and you will clap. If the road was good, you would ask about the airport.

When the school has no roof, they will bring zinc and you will thank them. If the school had computers, you would ask about jobs. When your child is unemployed, they will give him 10,000 naira to shout their name at rallies. If your child had a job, he would have no time to shout for anyone.

This is why empowerment in Nigeria means giving a young man a wheelbarrow instead of a skill. A wheelbarrow cannot make him independent, but it can keep him busy. And a busy poor man is a safe voter. They have turned suffering into a currency. And every election, they withdraw from it.

The Mind Culture Gap: How They Think Different From Us

This is the most powerful weapon they have, and it is not money. It is mindset.

The masses and the leaders in Nigeria no longer share the same culture of mind. We live in the same country, but we do not live in the same reality.

The average Nigerian thinks about survival. How to pay school fees today. How to buy fuel tomorrow. How to manage NEPA this night. His mind is trained to think short-term, because poverty does not allow long-term thinking. When you are hungry today, you cannot plan for next year. You plan for the next meal.

But the leader thinks completely differently. He thinks about preservation. How to preserve power for the next ten years. How to preserve his name for his children. How to preserve the system that keeps his family above the law. His mind is trained to think long-term, not because he is smarter, but because wealth gives him the luxury of time.

That is why they can sit in a meeting and plan how to keep 200 million people poor for the next election, while the people they are planning against are in traffic, worrying about how to buy data.

There is also the culture of entitlement versus the culture of endurance. The leader believes the state exists to serve him. He believes public money is his birthright. He believes his children deserve to school abroad because they are special. This is the entitlement mindset. It was learned in the corridors of power where no one ever says no.

The masses, on the other hand, have been taught endurance. Endure bad roads. Endure no light. Endure police extortion. Endure hospitals with no drugs. We call it patience. We call it being a good citizen. But it is a mind culture that was installed to make oppression bearable.

And finally, the culture of investment.

When the poor get small money, they are forced to spend it. Rent, food, emergency. Their money goes out. When the powerful get small money, they invest it into more power. They buy a journalist. They buy a youth leader. They buy a traditional ruler. They buy the next election. Their money comes back with interest.

So the poor stay poor not just because they have no money, but because they have been conditioned to spend their pain, while the leaders have been trained to invest in your pain.

That gap in mind culture is what keeps those in power in power, and leaves the poor masses exactly where they are. You cannot win a game when the other person understands the rules and you do not even know you are playing. Until we change how we think, we will continue to collect crumbs from a table we built.

The Church of Manage

The greatest trick they performed was not stealing the money. It was convincing us to spiritualize our suffering.

Now we have sermons that tell us to manage. Prayers that tell us to endure. Proverbs that tell us that he who has patience will see better days.

So the market woman whose shop was demolished without compensation goes to church to thank God that she still has life. The graduate who has been home for five years without a job goes for deliverance because they told him his village people are holding him back, not the government that refused to create jobs. We have been taught to endure what should make us angry. And they benefit from our endurance.

When a People Get Tired

But there is a limit to management.

Every Nigerian today knows someone who has japa-ed. Not because they hate Nigeria, but because they got tired of managing. Tired of buying fuel to power a generator to pump water to survive in a house they pay rent for in a country that sells oil.

That tiredness is the beginning of change. Because when people get tired enough, they stop begging for empowerment and start demanding accountability.

The difference between empowerment and accountability is this: Empowerment gives you fish for one day and makes you come back tomorrow. Accountability asks who stole the fishing net. We must stop clapping for our own robbery.

What Must Change This Week

We must change our questions and we must change our mind culture.

Do not ask a politician what he will give you. Ask him what he will build that will make you not need him.

Do not ask how much is in the empowerment envelope. Ask how much is in the local government budget and who spent it. Do not celebrate the man who pays your child's school fees once. Question the system that made you unable to pay it yourself.

And most importantly, stop thinking like a survivor and start thinking like an owner. The survivor asks, how can I manage this bad government? The owner asks, how can I replace this bad government? The survivor prays for rice. The owner demands the farm.

A government that loves you will make you independent. A government that uses you will make you dependent.

This week, as we resume, we must decide which one we have. And we must decide which mind we will use — the mind of the managed, or the mind of the owner. Nigeria will not change because politicians become good. It will change because citizens become tired of being managed.

And that tiredness must become organization. Organization must become demand. And demand must become power. Until then, they will continue to invest in your suffering, and they will call the profit governance.