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The gentrification of Nigeria

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The connection to climate change at the end is a wake-up call. The rich can buy ‘cool air’ with their generators, but when the big floods come, even their gated estates won’t be safe forever. Climate justice is indeed the only ‘people’s movement’ that doesn’t care about your tribe.

I used to think subsidy removal was just about economics, but this article makes me see it as a social eviction. By making fuel a luxury, they have effectively evicted the poor from the roads and the economy. If you can’t move, you can’t trade. If you can’t trade, you die.

The tragedy is that hunger is becoming political. You can only tell a man to ‘endure for the future’ for so long before he realizes he won’t be alive to see that future. When the poor have nothing left to eat, they will eat the rich who are hiding behind those high fences.

The point about ‘architectural cruelty’ is deep. You see these ‘smart cities’ rising while the public hospitals have no bandages and public schools have no chairs. It’s like we are trying to paint the outside of a house that is currently on fire.

We are witnessing the erosion of empathy in governance. Policies are made to please the IMF and World Bank rating agencies so we can borrow more money, while the actual human beings the money is supposed to serve are treated as ‘unfortunate side effects’ of reform.

The ‘ideology of the belly’ is what rules our politicians. They decamp from one party to another because they all belong to the same club. They fight on camera to keep us divided by tribe and religion while they share the national cake in the same air-conditioned rooms.

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