Silence of The Cashless Advocates
By Mohammed Adamu
Neither the APC nor us, its sympathizers had supported this cashless nonsense right from time! Not the policy itself though. And certainly not its objective. But we were openly against its timing. And especially its modus-operandi.
And yes, we were alleged to be against it not for altruistic reasons. They said that it was because we were worried it might affect APC’s electoral fortunes. In truth it could have. Or as a matter of fact it was a miracle that it did not!
In truth we believed -and still do- that the policy was maliciously intended, by a form of monistic gerrymandering strategy, to incite voters against the APC. It was also to the utter disappointment of the plotters that it did not!
The major opposition parties (PDP, LP, NNNP), although they got away with the lie that they suspected no motive to rig the APC by default, feigning ignorance about who the policy stood to harm or benefit took their pretence too far!
But whether the object of the policy was to harm the APC, or that the reason for APC’s abhorrence of it was to avoid being harmed; or that the opposition’s support for it was to gain undue advantage, was not actually the issue.
Rather the issue is the undeniable fact that the implementation of the cashless policy has become callously and un-warrantedly punitive, and that virtually all Nigerians, are deleteriously -if not mortally for even some- affected by it.
This (whether altruistic or not), was actually APC’s argument from day one! And it did not only object to the anti-people manner of the policy’s execution, it in fact got a whole apex Court ruling to attest to its abhorrence of it!
This pro-people feat, ironically, should’ve been to the opposition’s credit. Alas, it was achieved in shameful spite of it. In their bid to benefit unduely from the situation, the opposition parties have thrown their voters under the bus!
In retrospect some of us had warned, from time, that the high hope for the very low heaven that the policy would check the monetization of election, was grossly misplaced. And contrarily, it had in fact abysmally cheapened the ballot!
And what better proof of this than that for the first time in the history of vote-buying, as measly as the miniest packs of noodles were distributed to haplessly famished voters and who were more than happy to sell their votes!
Even after the presidential election, and in-spite of the subsisting Supreme Court’s ruling, neither the CBN nor the banks were ready to comply; let alone the already traumatized public, to cooperate in accepting the old-notes.
And in spite even of the one-week extension, we had still gone into the next election with an army of more desperately starving parents some who were ready even to pledge their children as security for a N200 note to feed!
Nothing could’ve been more brutish, or more sadistic! What was first extra-legally imposed on the poor, innocent unsuspecting citizens, was now to be extra-judicially sustained even in flagrant disregard of Supreme Court’s ruling.
Small, and especially petty, trading businesses that cater to the feeding needs of the abjectly poor, have collapsed and are still collapsing. People have un-told-ly suffered, and needless to say that they are still un-told-ly suffering.
The daily struggle to feed (even once in a day) alone, or worse even the desperation to settle especially emergency medical bills, or to warrant the saving of lives at the hospitals, got almost to a murderously pogromic proportion!
How could anyone, even in their wildest malevolent imagination, have ever thought that a democratic government, ironically headed by so populist a President like Buhari, can visit such unspeakable deed on the people?
“To rip the orphan”, as Shakespeare would say, “of his patrimony”; to wrench the suckling baby from its mother’s breast. Or as one character, in his tragic play ‘King John’, would say at the scene of an unspeakable murder:
“This is the very top, the height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, of murder’s arms: this is the bloodiest shame, the wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, that ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage presented to the tears of soft remorse”!
“All murders past” he says “do stand excused…and this, so sole and so unmatchable, shall give a holiness, a purity, to the yet unbegotten sin of times; and prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, exampled by this heinous spectacle”!
It is no wonder therefore, that those who had openly celebrated, (and PRETENDED to extol), both the policy and its sadistic modus operandi (for their electoral gains), are suddenly ashamed to even PRETEND to oppose it now!
Shame!
