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SIR :The above "domain" name very aptly describes the plight of millions of Nigerians. The people are at their breaking point and totally and utterly lack the capacity to put up with any further punishment from their president and his 12 disciples.
The original 12 disciples had as their leader, Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Perhaps, our president by talking of his 12 disciples is insinuating that he is our Messiah. If so, it would amount to self-delusion of the worst order.
I hear that our president is a devout Christian. He should please go and read his Bible carefully and note that Jesus Christ never imposed on his followers anything that he himself was not prepared to bear. If anything, he suffered to the point of laying down his life that we may live.
In Nigeria today, the vast majority of the population (who are extremely poor people) pay through their noses for kerosene which is their all-purpose and all-season fuel. Neither the president nor his 12 disciples, nor their nuclear families for that matter, pay for petrol or any of the other items that they have deregulated out of their pocket. For them, just about everything is free.
That they have it so easy while the populace is wallowing in abject poverty is bad enough. For them to presume to gratuitously and routinely insult us for protesting the hardship we face, is not only insensitive but also compounds the felony. As Prof. Chinua Achebe very aptly put it, those whose palm kernels are cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
If the President and his disciples want to deregulate prices, should they not begin by deregulating income? Nobody whose income is highly regulated, nay frozen, can afford to pay deregulated prices. Also, given that the crude oil revenues projected in the 2003 budget have more than doubled, why have they flatly refused to use just a small part of that windfall to alleviate the pervasive suffering in the land?
I want to leave them with the assurance that the mill of God grinds slowly, but surely. They will surely answer for the tens of millions of Nigerians they have pauperised quite unnecessarily, and for the hundreds of thousands that are daily being sent to their graves prematurely as a result of their ill-conceived, anti-masses and totally misguided deregulation policy.
Samuel Iheme,
Lagos.`
