The apostle James speaks of “faith [that] is dead”. He asks his readers, “What good is it, … if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
James spoke those words to his audience some 2000 plus years ago. Today, Nigerians may very ask their president, Bola Tinubu, those same questions after what he said last week while retreating to Beijing, China when his house was burning, as it were. The day the his plane sped him out of Nigeria was that same day the pump price of fuel rose steeply from 650 naira to 870 naira a litre. Behind him, the presidency denied knowledge of that. But in China, Tinubu confirmed the price increase as official. “You might have been hearing from home in the last few days about fuel prices,” he said while addressing Nigerians in Beijing. “But, can we help it? Can we develop good roads like you have here? You see electricity being constant in quantity and quality. You see water supply, constant and running, and you see their good schools. And we say we want to hand over a banner without stain to our children? What is the critical part to get us there if we cannot take hard decisions to pave the way for a country that is blessed and so talented? … The more you want everything free, it will become more expensive and long-delayed to achieve meaningful development.’’
Done with the hard truth many of us need telling, according to him, the president again said we just have to have faith in the bitter pills he is forcing down our throats, even as he knows and sees many already being killed by them. This president, either he possesses a heart of stone or he doesn’t remember anything he had said previously. An example: he told Nigerians who went on a 10 day hunger strike in August that he had heard them “loud and clear” and promised to replace their years of anguish with the “oil of joy”. Almost two months after he promised a new N77000 national minimum wage, public service workers are yet to get it. Last month, the government ordered traders to slash prices of foodstuffs. But nobody listened and nothing happened because the order was not implementable. Traders simply held back supplies and prices shot through people’s leaking roofs.
“The more you want everything free.” The people who “want everything free” are not hardworking workers who are already paying through their noses for everything from petrol to electricity to garri to bus rides. Those who are getting everything for free are the nouveaux riches, enabled by their ability to reach down and grab from the public purse. They have free fuel delivered to their homes, fat purses to shop in supermarkets and take first class flights to the world’s metropoles. Need I day that Mr. President and his team are on the list of these free lunch beneficiaries? Meanwhile, we have hundreds of millions of Nigerians who cannot afford the fare from one town to another. There are many who haven’t visited their ageing parents in the village for an upward of 5 years because they couldn’t afford it. These are the ones that are crying for help. But Tinubu is telling them “it’s well with you, stomach it some more time.” Certainly, this faith is dead, Mr. President must know. The truth is that the president himself is of “little faith”, even in his own prescriptions.
