Great oceans and their seas would fall when I spoke a word. I was strong, powerful insurmountable and infallible.
The envy of Nations I was rightfully named. My peers wanted to walk in my shoes. My heydays, are long gone like the once upon a time of quaint folklore.
Today, in a lonely abyss I sleep alone. No friends no foes. I sleep on the same streets I once owned. What happened to me? How did my worth so plummet? I never envisaged this abrupt shift from grace to grass.
The diviners, the sorcerers paltered with me with forked prophecies. They told me I would be king forever. They said my reign would never end but servants, whose names I looted, earn more accord than I do today. The Cedis and Rand, thrive over me! I wallow in self pity, a dethroned king, I am now. This is how it all began....
On the 1st of January, 1973 replacing the Pound at a rate of N2.00. to £1.00, I began my lofty reign. In that same year my kinsman, named Kobo, was introduced.
He was half the man I would say I was but we both reigned in majestic splendor. We thrived side by side under the purposeful guidance of visionaries. Great council of advisers, insightful, they saw into the dark and helped us avoid pitfalls.
Harrowingly, their gifts died with them. They failed us because they had no worthy successors. The new generation didn’t have their insight and that was the beginning of our doom.
As power and leadership changed, we fell deeply into dingy tunnels. Blind young advisers led us straight to the slaughter. Our royal blood was spilled, we were neglected, hung in the sun to dry.
Their aim shifted from nurturing us to ravaging us. Slowly but steadily, we lost our spot in the skies. Perhaps I thought, it's but a stage. Maybe they have great plans, it's only a phase! I imagined I would come out better. I likened myself to the great eagle, I must be up in the mountain just like the great eagle. I am powerless now because my new masters want me to grow new feathers and come out of the mountains, soaring higher than ever. How wrong was I? Mine wasn’t a tale like that of the great eagle. I was not just abandoned. I was raped and milked dry by incessant corruption. My doomed reality became Inflation and my future recession.
The generation of takers came and sacrificed an empire for their selfish desires. To gratify their lust, they took it all. They sacrificed my future and that of my kinsman on the alter of their avarice. Their insatiable lust for affluence far beyond their reach.
Eons have passed but the status quo is immutable. In fact, it has exacerbated.
In no time my dear kinsman ran into extinction, completely lost his relevance and was no longer accepted as a legal tender in a place where he once thrived, a pity the children would never get to see him.
I rued and mourned his demise but while I was at it, came my end too. My lowest denomination became a leper. No longer accepted as a legal tender, no longer touched.
How the vissionless advisers ruined us! We were lions but now hide in tunnels like meerkats, inexplicably insignificant.
Our peers who once envied us and looked up to us have since left us far far behind, a brutal fate. And now the smallest denomination of me who had 5 times my power when I ruled is now slowly heading into the same dark tunnel of irrelevance just like his predecessors. He must be in some books now, or under a bed, under a chair, in some place seen but not considered useful and at this rate he would soon be consigned to oblivion. How sad that again the children would never speak of him.
Could this be a process of a new birth for me and my kinsman? Could it be a passing thing?
I like to keep my faith alive perhaps it is all a nightmare. Perhaps we are, like the great eagle shedding our feathers for new ones. Or maybe, we are like the snake, shedding it’s skin to be reborn.
Though my peers derisively laugh at my optimism, I know it is not the end of my reign. A new crop of visionaries would be sent to unfreeze my castles and all will come to life again. Till then however, I would keep believing, that like the legend of the mythical Phoenix, my kingdom will again take its place as the pride of its continent. My affluence will again spread to the ends of the earths and legends will come to bow before me like they did.
Will I still command the same respect I once commanded? Will I and my kinsman come back from exile and be accepted again? These questions plague me but in the end, this darkness will pass.
I must cling to hope for surely the sun will rise again and from ashes, I shall one day rise but would it be you that delivers me? I am the Naira and this is my lamentation.
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