Nigeria and the Sin of Poverty

(By Joy Isi Bewaji) - The only sin you commit in Nigeria is poverty.  

If this 70 year old woman was having consensual sex with a younger adult male in her three-bedroom apartment in ParkView estate, Ikoyi...

The hand of culture, religion or any idiotic rule made for homo-habilis will not be able to pass through tight security at the gates... how much more knock on her door and drag her out of her right to be pleasured.

Living amongst poverty and its attendant cousins allow for intrusion. When you are poor, your life is not yours. It belongs to the people who pray for you to find food. These people control your life and everything that happens to the holes in your body - what you eat (when you eventually find food made possible by their prayers), and what is inserted in your vagina.

The sin of poverty is the only crime in Nigeria. 

This is why Crime, placed side-by-side an unintelligent, unenlightened, ill-equipped Police force, seems to be an unending unquenchable and achievable alternative for many. What they are really fighting for is dignity. 

Many people practice fraud solely to buy Dignity. Because to be poor in Nigeria is to sign up to a life of constant humiliation. 

Brigitte Macron, 64, is living in peace with a younger man. A civilised world is busy commenting on her toned arms and tanned body and blonde weave, and acknowledging her role in her husband's success (yet I find her story to have traits of paedophilia)...

But this woman in Ebonyi, what did she do? Did she sleep with a 15 year old boy that was under her tutelage? Did she abandon her little children just so she can have sex with a younger man? No.

Her crime is poverty. Her crime is living amongst idiots.

This justifies a lot of activities around us. If we do not stop treating poor people like dogs... if we do not place value on the integrity of people and not on their wealth... if we do no treat all labour with dignity... we will always have to live amongst kidnappers, fraudsters, MMM-ers and entitled beggars.

I say that I will rather be dead than be poor in Nigeria. I do not want to ever beg for bread. Heck, I do not want to beg for vacation splendour either. I have lived my poorest life as a married woman. And I will choose death than go back to that mess or anything similar to that. There is nothing honourable about poverty. Death is honourable. 

But that is just me. As I will not commit a crime to get money. 

For many, however, dismembering a body for money ritual practices is the next step to buying some dignity. 

Fix this mindset by allowing poor people enjoy the same social privileges as the rich (or middle-class).

All I see in this picture is poverty. It is a stinking thing in Nigeria.