Wednesday of 20th Week, Year II: reflection

Theme: Woe to the leaders who feed on the people

Reading: Ez. 34:1–11

Given that the Federal Government (FG) of Nigeria claims to be acting in the best interests of the people, one would have assumed that the #EndBadGovernance protests by Nigerian youths, which shut down the nation for more than eight days and demanded that the government should end the string of hardships orchestrated by bad economic policies that resulted in high cost of goods and widespread hunger, would have impacted on further decisions and plans by the FG, at least to bring an end to their insensitivity and extravagant spending. But that never happened.

Barely ten days after the end of the #EndBadGovernance protests, the FG unveiled a multimillion-dollar new aircraft purchased for the office of the president that already has some jets that are less than 19 years. This was in spite of the cries of about 99% of Nigerians that the FG should not buy new presidential jets due to the hardship in the country. As if that weren’t enough, a startling discovery last week revealed that each of the 109 senators of Nigeria go home with a huge salary of 21 million naira (about 13,000 dollars) a month, in a country where the federal government only agreed to set the monthly minimum wage of workers at 70,000 Naira (about 45 dollars).

The level of insensitivity to the plight of the poor people of Nigeria and corruption by their leaders are similar to the circumstances that led prophet Ezekiel to denounce the leaders of the people of his time in the first reading of today. He accused them of feeding on the poor people instead of feeding them and taking care of them, and he warned them that their days had been numbered.

Leaders of our dear Nigeria should also realize that their days have been numbered because the cries of the people have reached the ears of their God. As has always been the case, there will be no rest for the wicked.

May God continue to fight our battles. Amen

Fr Isaac Chima