Whenever I reflect on the hard times the common man is passing through in Nigeria today, I remember the good old days in Birnin Kebbi. I lived in Birnin Kebbi during the reign of the emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Rasheed, who was like a father to me. I felt more at home in the ancient town than any other place I have lived in the North.
How did I get to that town? My brother-in-law, a medical doctor, had been posted to the town as the medical officer of health in charge of the Birnin Kebbi General Hospital. He later sucked me into the town and got me a job as laboratory assistant at the Government Secondary School in the town.
I worked with Olatunji Dare who was a Chemistry tutor. I was shocked later in life when I got to know that my former boss ditched teaching (Chemistry) to embrace journalism, becoming a lecturer at the Mass Communication Department of the University of Lagos and later chairman, Guardian Editorial Board. I have not had the opportunity of meeting him for an explanation… just as he too would be wondering how I fled the laboratory job to take up journalism as a profession. I still look forward to the day.
I picked interest in journalism while in Birnin Kebbi. By design rather than by accident, I found my way into the only newspaper in the North, the New Nigerian, and was given the mandate to report from the town. I was doing general reporting but I had a flair for sports. I played for the Gwandu XI and later became the coach in addition to playing. I must have gone down in the history of global football as the youngest gaffer to walk the surface of this earth. I did not become a coach by accident.
A Bulgarian technical adviser had toured the northern states, organising coaching clinics. After each training programme wherever he went, he would identify an outstanding player in the club with leadership qualities to play the role of a gaffer. My regret is that I came too early. If it were now when football is a very lucrative profession that I emerged, I would have been rubbing shoulders with the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo of this world. I tell you.
It was in Birnin Kebbi that I had a feel of good stomach infrastructure life in the 70s. I cannot remember how cheap foodstuffs were generally but chewables like goats and eggs stood out on the table. A full-blown bearded goat, whiffy to boot, cost 15 shillings – an equivalent of N1.50k. My, Dauda MacMalik, and I used to team up and slaughter one every market day (Friday). The butcher would eviscerate the animal which was his in lieu of payment. We would cook stew, pepper soup and do barbecue… and it must not last beyond the next market day. Guinea fowl eggs were also terribly cheap. A calabash-full of 100 eggs sold for one shilling.
Later, I found myself in Jos, still in the 70s. At that time, a piece of land measuring 100 by 100 sold for N100.00, while 50 by 50 went for N50.00. You only needed N15,000 to put up a fenced bungalow and two-room boys’ quarters to boot. A bundle of hand brand roofing sheets sold for N25.00 up till the late 70s, while a bag of cement went for N10.00. It cost me less than N3,000 to become a proud owner of a Morris Marina which was my first car in 1976.
Volkswagen, the people’s car, sold for less than N2,000. It cost less N200 to fly from Jos to Lagos. By the turn of the 80s, a return ticket from Lagos to London was N800… yes, eight hundred naira. And 50 kobo exchanged for a dollar by 1978! Today, it is N300-plus to a dollar! Cooking gas was available for just N4 per cylinder. A brand new tyre (not Tokunbo) was sold for N300, while an inner tube went for N5 and you could service your car for less than N100. It also cost N3.50k to fill my 50-litre tank. A Mercedez Benz car (straight engine) sold for N15,000! That amount cannot even fetch you one new tyre today!
As far as I can recall, the first time Nigerians had a feel of the austere times was during the Shagari era. His ministers and the political elite rammed austerity measures down our throats by their profligate lifestyles and corrupt nature. And by the time Buhari/Idiagbon took over the insolvent nation on December 31, 1983, the tills and the shelves had become empty.
Consequently, Nigerians had to line up for essential commodities like rice, tea, milk, sugar, soaps and salt, among others. Fuel queues heralded the coming of the military regime and it continued for a very long time. People had to abandon their vehicles either by the roadsides or at the filling stations. Some had to spend the nights in their cars waiting for fuel.
Today, the nation is again passing through another phase of austerity measures. The corrupt political class in the last administration and, to a large extent, thieving civil servants connived to push us back to the Shagari era. And President Muhammadu Buhari (without Idiagbon) has had the misfortune of returning to power when the damage had again been done. But unlike during his military leadership when essential commodities disappeared from the shelves, the goods are everywhere now but the prices have shot through the roof. No thanks to the recent increase in the pump price of petrol. And the money is not even there!
Imagine a standard measure of rice going for N500.00; a live goat for between N12,000 and N15,000 depending on the size; four guinea fowl eggs sell for N200.00 and N3,500 to fill a cylinder of cooking gas. The last time I checked, it would cost you a whopping sum of N200,000 to fly from Lagos to London and back in an economy class!
When I reflect on the halcyon days, I feel extremely sorry for everyone, especially the masses of today. Will the happy days ever return? Your guess, as they say, is as good as mine.
