Is this a figment of my imagination?

I am a bit befuddled with today’s romanticized version of yesterday, the country that was and that we lived through. So I have been ‘wanting’ to ask these questions for a while.
Did anyone else queue to buy ‘essential commodities’? For I recall that back in my home town of Awka, there was a Lever Brothers shop used as a sales point for essential commodities, adjacent to BATA, right on the corner of the tarmacked ‘Segen’ and the road leading up to St. Faiths Church. For those who don’t know what ‘essential commodities’ are, back in 1984/85, the then Head of State General Muhammadu Buhari set up a system of government rations of ‘essential commodities’ or ‘essen co’; rice, sugar, salt, and toiletries. To purchase enough ‘essen co’ to give our domestic life a semblance of civilization, my late father shared the maximum amount allowed for each purchase between my siblings, himself and I and we all joined the long snaking over 100 metres long queue, under a sweltering and relentless sun, from the barricaded gate of the Levers Brothers shop, almost to the gate of the St. Faith Pro Cathedral. I recall that we were being persistently whipped into line by horsewhip-koboko wielding ‘no-nonsense’ soldiers for our ‘indiscipline’. Despite that, at some point, the surging crowd managed to pull down the ‘burglary proof barricade of the Lever Brothers Shop. A number of people were injured in the ensuing crash, some trampled underfoot while others fainted due to suffocation and exhaustion. 
That day, neither my siblings nor I managed to purchase anything. I do recall that my father bought a tablet of either Lux or Joy toilet soap and two rolls of tissue paper. Dinner that night was lipton tea and cabin biscuits.
Did anyone else have similar experiences or was this hardship ‘bubble’ limited to the Ozoemene family? Is it a figment of my imagination?
I remember that this was the period when I understood the importance of ‘ugwo akwukwu’ school fees. The Shagari regime had maintained a series of health and educational subsidies that the Buhari administration as part of its austerity measures, curbed. This impacted us especially given that my father was one of the over 53,000 public employees made redundant by the administration’s attempt to curb public expenditure by reducing the civil service workforce. Then Government promulgated an ill conceived and executed ‘currency change’ policy. Millions of Nigerians queued daily at the few Bank branches available then to convert their old currency into the new notes. Those who had bank accounts where lords as their accounts where used as a conduit (for a fee) to deposit old notes in exchange for new. Unfortunately these new notes where not readily available even when the deadline for the use of the old notes had expired. Again, I recall pandemonium at the Banks and that, that year, 1984, I ultimately had to pay my school fees with a collection of old coins from my father’s piggy bank. I recall the humiliation of the teacher and entire snickering class waiting patiently, watching as I meticulously dropped coin after coin (some coated green by some sort of algae), one after the other on her desk…This was the era that prompted a local Igbo musician to wax (yes those days it was ‘wax’, not 'dropped') an album with a hook that went something like; 
‘Mgbe ana e changi ego!
Onye ka mmanya gburu n’uzo!’
'That no one could afford to feed, not to talk of get drunk during Buhari’s currency change regime'.
I remember decree No. 20. I recall vividly the judicial murders (since the punishment did not exist at the time of commission) of Lawal Ojuolape (30), Bernard Ogedengbe (29) and Bartholomew Owoh (26). One of them, Bartholomew Owoh I believe, attended the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) Enugu and was quite popular in the close knit quarters of that community. I recall the front page news of their public executions; white shirts blotched with blood, thin black tie wavering in the wind like a flag flying at half-mast, body crumpled, straining heavily against the restraining ropes that bound them to the stake, and the final embarrassment of their last bowel movements and bodily fluids marking the crotch and seat of their pants. 
I remember that our Primary School teachers embarked on a strike action, and that a decree banning strikes and lockouts was subsequently promulgated. I recall that ‘Student Teachers’ where drafted from St Paul’s Teachers Training College as substitutes, and that these students had no idea what our curriculum was supposed to be. I recall that on a day that our ‘real’ teachers decided to come to school in defiance of a Government directive / lockout, that we, despite being taught to be ‘disciplined’ where encouraged to throw stones at them and run them out of the school compound.
Does anyone else remember this or is it a figment of my imagination?
I remember my father complaining about a certain decree that allowed persons considered to be a national security threat, or to have contributed to the country’s economic troubles to be detained by police for up to three months, renewable without trial. I remember adults around me complaining in hushed tones that all public discourse on the return to civil rule had been banned.
I recall another decree that allowed for the detention of journalists and the closing of media houses that disseminate false statements, false information or ‘rumours’ likely to bring ‘embarrassment’ to or ridicule a public official. Am I the only one that remembers Tunde Thompson and / or Nduka Irabor? To put it in perspective, if you had uttered ‘Clue’ before the ‘less’ under Buhari’s administration, you will have been put away where the sun never shines and I will not want to imagine what will have happened if you had mouthed either ‘Chei!’, ‘Na only you waka come’, or ‘Diaris God’ in those days….you may just have been sent on a one way trip to truly see God!
So yet again I ask, did anyone else experience this or is it a figment of my imagination?



Jekwu Ozoemene