The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, Saturday, called on parents to instil family values in their wards to save the country from degeneration according to reports. The minister made the call in Kaduna during a stakeholders’ engagement with 77 district heads, religious and community leaders from the 23 Local Government Areas of the state.
The admonition was given in reference to the looting of palliatives by some Nigerians who had taken advantage of the hijacking of the #EndSARS protest by hoodlums.
She said:
“We need to remind ourselves that our children need to be upright and that this criminality going on, on a daily basis, is not for their benefits and the benefit of the state and country.”
No doubt, criminality in any form by anyone is condemnable. Unfortunately, the masses were pushed to their limits by a government that does not care about the welfare of the citizens. And some took to looting what was rightfully theirs but had been held back from them by their political representatives. Some members of the political class even planned to convert what should have been freely given to the masses into birthday giveaways to score some cheap political points. Is this not a higher level of looting?
If the palliatives had been distributed to the masses as expected, long before they were discovered in the houses of politicians and warehouses across the nation, the incident of citizens looting food items en masse would probably never have occurred.
Besides, our leaders have made life so difficult for Nigerians that some people barely have a square meal a day because many people are jobless and some are under-employed. Yet, they still don’t see the need to create jobs for the teeming populace.
While the government is pointing accusing fingers at the masses, they fail to realise that four fingers are pointing back at them because they have failed Nigerians woefully. And if they weren’t so shameless, they would realise that they need to advise themselves too.
