Olotu of Olotu and the Ideology of Poverty

I read today the interview with the father of tte Bayelsa State Governor. Whether he is just being a father or whether his words are true a new picture of the Olotu comes out from the discourse. He was a kind and generous man, fair and equitable. His father makes him sound like a good man. But he stole the people’s money! That’s your perspective and what privileges it above any other?

I spent many years playing the victim. I did not find struggling through the economic morass that is Nigeria as a single mother easy. I blamed my father, my husband and any other man in my life for my problems. I blamed them because I expected something from them that I did not get; care, support, protection, you know the usual stuff we woman have come to expect from men after 10,000 years of patriarchy.

The men of authority in my life never provided that. Soon I came to appreciate the man who despite a myriad of personality and character flaws and even criminal tendencies who made the care and protection of his family by whatever means necessary his priority. The man who steals to pay the bills and protect his family from poverty is surely the better man.

You need to experience poverty to understand and not from the point of view of an outsider or adventurer that will eventually got back to another existence but as the subject.

Poverty can warp the mind, and theft becomes not a crime but the daring act of a modern day Robin Hood trying to save his people from the grip of abject poverty. The ideology of poverty is not the ideology of the rich. How many of them understand the principles of political economy? They know a man gets rich buying and selling and acquiring property. Those that do understand are co-opted into the system. Like Oronta Douglas.  Tricked into believing that they can make a difference from the inside, I am not that optimistic.

The rich exist for the poor to prey on tough they may think they are the predators. The rich man turns a blind eye when his poor servant inflates the invoice a little bit, he expects it, after his servant is poor and underpaid and needs the extra money. But Mr. Big Shot will not raise Boy Boy’s salary to a living wage because he’s not sure he can maintain it over the long term.

Fear is a pervasive feature of poverty, fear of just about everything. Hunger, sickness, accidents, marriage, responsibility, childbirth and especially death, the fear that you may not ever climb out of poverty before the grim reaper comes knocking. For some the only way to cope with the fear is to create free. Respect among the poor is fear, fear of the consequences. What will happen if I talk to this person in this way? Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The rich need fear only one thing, losing their money, for the poor life is a daily journey through a dark and haunted evil forest. Who will save me if I stumble? In a Third World country where even the government is not dependable. A lone man comes, Olotu of Olotu, he steals and redistributes his wealth, he steals money from the rich cabal at the federal court and shares with the coutiers of his personal court. The disenfranchised and the out of favor plot his downfall and wait like hungry jackals to take his place at the head of the table.

 2005