Money Spent
Spending is a vital part of us as individuals and an intricate part of our daily lives. No one can run away from spending money on a daily basis. Even before the advent of money itself in it's different forms, individuals traded, sold and bought and made various kinds of exchange with valuable resources as collateral.
Spending helped kingdoms back in the day thrive.
Image is mine
In my country presently, the federal government does a lot of spending. Quite a lot.
One would think that with all the money being spent regularly, it'd benefit the country and the citizens in one way or another but that is not the case as most of the time corruption always gets in the way and the federal government does nothing to stop the vice and so the nation's money is being spent on unnecessary things, things that'd neither last long or even yield profit during it's short life span.
Whenever I watch the news, I always see the president signing this bill or taking on this project or signing another deal yet again with China or borrowing a whopping amount of money from international banks for a particular project that'll die a premature death.
All around the country there is visible proof of projects that never saw the light of day. Projects that were never finished and have been abandoned for years on end. Lots of money went into setting up the projects only to end up abandoned and neglected soonest for reasons unknown to us.
I can't even count the number of times it's been announced that the president is trying out something new and I actually saw it's progress.
Something or someone is always an obstacle.
The country is knee deep in debt because of spending money on things like unfinished projects that would not benefit the nation and would be a waste of time and resources while avoiding those things that need attention desperately. The money borrowed for a particular purpose is never used to fulfill such purpose.
Yet, the federal government goes ahead borrowing and borrowing, drowning it's citizens in debt and putting out our image in a not so presentable way globally.
It is utterly disappointing.
This way of spending money is one of the reasons why the flow of money is not as smooth as it should be. In a way, we're all trying to pay a one trillion naira debt that we know nothing about.
I believe the federal government should focus more on using and improve the use of the nation's abundant natural resources to increase profit, reduce debt to the barest minimum possible and make life better for it's citizens instead of spending huge amounts of money on importing foreign goods for Nigerians to buy and consume.
Funny enough, some of the raw materials used to produce these goods are gotten from the country and the government still goes ahead to import the finished goods.
Focusing on the country's natural resources would help improve the country's export game and would surely bring in more profit for the country.
The better Nigeria we hope and pray for is right within our grasp if only we are willing to work individually and collectively as a nation to achieve that goal.
Sometimes we're our own poison and this is seen everyday where a fellow countryman is willing to exploit others for profit whilst blaming the federal government for his sufferings instead of choosing to not be like the federal government whose roots are imbedded deep in corruption, but choosing to begin the change and turnaround of a great country.
The change starts with you and me.