Ifeoluwa Adebayo: One year later, Nigeria in turbulence (Y! Politico)

Picture of Nigeria in Turbulence

By Ifeoluwa Adebayo

On May 29th 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, many Nigerians had a lot of hope that a new dawn had come.

However, one year later we have had an astronomical rise in the cost of living for the average Nigerian, food stuff prices have increased, price of electronics have increased, and the price of fuel has increased.

One year after and many Nigerians are beginning to ask the question – is this the change we voted for?

Last week I was on a flight from Addis Ababa to Abuja, a journey of more than four hours flying at least 30,000 feet above sea level. About two hours into the flight we hit server turbulence. Everybody was suddenly silent, the pilot asked that we put on our seat belts, an air hostess that was standing raced to her seat, and tightened her seat belt.

A friend that was seated in front of me looked back to see me, I was watching an episode of the comedy series, The Big Bang Theory. My friend saw me relaxed and laughing. I was not worried, I know flights sometimes hit turbulence, I had my seat belt tightened, I had my comedy series on to distract me.

A few minutes later and we were back on a smooth ride. We got to Nigeria and as the plane landed the plane erupted in shouts of thank God and loud claps for the pilot. It was at this moment I realised many more people than I realised were bothered by the turbulence.

Turbulence is not nice, especially when you are tens of thousands of feet above sea level with absolutely no control of the situation, it is therefore natural that flight passengers get apprehensive. This can be said about Nigeria’s current situation. We are going through a rough patch, a patch worsened by the apparent lack of savings from the years of plenty.

However, it is important that we hold on steadfast, it is important that we tighten our seat belts and hold on as President Muhammadu Buhari steers this craft out of the turbulent space.

It is also important that Nigerians play their part in this journey, we must realise that the time has come to find local solutions to local problems. We must look around us and build new systems, new entrepreneurs, and new businesses.

We must not only farm cocoa, we must establish chocolate factories, we must not only grow mangoes, we must make mango concentrates for export, we must not only marvel at the volume of business in Onitsha market, we must automate the process of shopping from the market.

To get Nigeria out of the doldrums, we must all work together with President Muhammadu Buhari. And sooner than later, we will once again be a country of plenty.

——————–

Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Opinion article written by Ifeoluwa Adebayo

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail