Nigerians and the love of careless numvers

In my primary school, I excelled in Arithmetic. In Secondary school, it was

a big struggle. I was better in the Arts but I wanted to be s Science student.

Mathematics is crucial in Science so I struggled along. When I wrote my WAEC Examinations, the one subject that scared me was Mathematics.

I had to take coffee preparatory to the D Day. In the end after reading, I could not sleep when I wanted to sleep. It was that bad.

Mercifully, I made a credit in the Examination and it was enough for me as a requirement to study Economics.

In the University the struggle continued but I barely made it in the mathematical parts of my course.

To excel in Economics, I knew I had to keep up with Mathematics, hence when I got the opportunity to teach, I overlooked an established school that needed an Economics teacher that could teach English for a new School that needed an Economics teacher that could teach Mathematics.

I reckoned that to teach well, I needed adequate preparation. That exactly was what I did and I doubt if my students did not gain from me.

I had to lay this background to bring to notice, the way Nigerians love to abuse numbers.

We discuss percentages in a scandalous way. Sadly newspapers are not exonorated.

We love to throw numbers about without let or hindrance. We certainly can do better.

What inspired this piece is the report by social media sensation, Tolu Ogunlesi. He complained about the figure quoted by Jigawa Government as spent on lactating mothers in six months.

The actual figure from Tolu's calculation was in hundreds of millions but the total given was in billions.

What made the report most interesting was that the figure in billions exceeded the total budget of the state government for the year. Who does that?

It just does not matter. Pini Jason ( 1948 - 2013) said that Americans talk big and act big. Nigerians believe in the eye of the needle but we also love to talk big, especially when corruption is involved. Better still when corruption is incubating, like figures used to feed school children during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The children were not in school yet the figure quoted as having been used for their feeding was in billions.

We steal billions, yet we are neck deep in debt. When in a hole, you do not continue digging to come out but you reverse your movement to come out.

May God give us leaders who will restore respect for figures. A million has six zeroes and a billion has nine zeroes.