The Nigerian System Is Rigged Against The Lower Class

Nigeria is a country where the system favours the rich and powerful and does everything within its power to oppress the poor and keep him poor. Whenever the poor tries to come up instead of being encouraged, some useless regulation is designed to keep them down.

Sometimes when one looks at government policies, it is clear that this is the goal. It is as if a lot of people in government wake up every day and ask themselves, ‘How will we oppress and suppress the poor today’? 

A law is made to regulate a new industry. That industry was probably doing well all by itself without regulation. But someone in government wakes up one morning, has a brainwave and is like, ‘Hey, there are 100, 000 people in this business. So, if we can ask them to register and charge them N2000 each for registration (2000 multiplied by 100000 people), we will make a lot of money,

The next day you see them  harassing businesses that are giving the common man a livelihood. Very very bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not totally against government regulation, but I believe regulation should be used for the public benefit, not as a way to make money or generate revenue.

Look at what Road Safety did some years ago when they said people should change their licence plates. The new licence plates were just your old licence plate number turned backwards. So ridiculous.

I’m happy the new administration in Road Safety is steering its people away from such inane policies. That is one of the reasons the PDP got so unpopular some years ago.

But if you tell the government to use regulation in the right way, a lot of people in it ignore you. Take the issue of the so-called illegal refineries. Some enterprising Nigerians know how to make fuel, and in this age when our three government-owned refineries have refused to work willy-nilly, these folks are successfully running mini-refineries.

Instead of government to encourage them, it treats these entrepreneurs like criminals, closing down their operations and harassing them. All the government needed to have done is to regulate them, and make sure they refine petroleum products properly. That is where government regulation is needed, but mba, you won’t see them there.

What a pity.