There are people dying – if we care enough for the living – MICHAEL JACKSON (Heal The World)
All across the face of God’s good earth, it is, that every good thing under the sun is for the good of the living. Except in Nigeria. Here, all good things are for the dead or the (political class) dying.
And so on hearing of the death of the ex-Vice President, I mourned. Many other bigwigs mourned; mine was for a different reason. I MOURNED FOR THE LIVING, for the channeling of vast sums, unbudgeted funds towards his certain befitting funeral; starting from the “befitting” airlifting from Nigeria to a top London hospital – at point of death. The rest, in Nigeria continue to live ‘un-befitting’, very degraded lives. My case is different I know, I would be flown out, in the unlikely event that I should suddenly slump. I’ve been on medical tourism to Dubai and India. Thank God I have a clean bill of health, and do not even need it!
But what of most other Nigerians, what is their fate? It would have been understandable if the vast majority were well and healthy in the main. Or if, upon falling ill, BASIC medicare was available to others. In that case it would have been tolerable, I guess to devote huge government resources to foreign medicare for a very old sick man, IN COMA; just because 40 years ago he stumbled into political office.
This past Monday afternoon, I heard the announcement on NTA news that retired soldiers should go out for yet another round of ‘verification exercise’.
Each time that happens, how many of those poor, sick old men and women slump on the streets of Abuja? Or at the verification exercise centres, How many of them get even First Aid treatment, we don’t talk of airlifting any to London? THERE THEY SLUMP, THERE THEY DIE.
They go; and the living remain on in human degradation. I’m saddened no-one else seems to be shouting about it. Too scared to ‘annoy’ the government; or something?
I will yet speak on our lamentable state from my humble premise that government cannot know EVERYTHING going on; I will therefore do my best to bring it to government’s attention. They could choose to do nothing. They could even choose to witchhunt!
I will NEVER choose to be silent when I see people in so much suffering. Look again at a copy of The Nation 19th November on page 7. The big story there is of a youngster living in a house with decomposing corpse, in Calabar. The deceased’s granddaughter there is too poor to have the body buried or moved to a mortuary. What a life for young girl! And the hapless neighbours.
This is not an isolated case. Sometime ago something like that happened to an erstwhile very committed elderly woman in my church. Upon noticing her absence I had asked after her only to be told she had died. Has she been buried then; I asked rhetorically (I grew up in the North so I will NEVER understand the practice of burying dead people long after their death, as is done in the South).
This case was even worse. The roof of her old house was leaking and whenever it rained, the rain fell and beat the corpse there INSIDE the house. Her teenage daughter there had fled to their village. I wrote a letter to my church. I said if I lived in that old woman’s neighbourhood and such a church came to evangelise me, I would never go! That was how arrangements were made for her corpse to be moved.
So what is happening now is that the living are dying of the stench of the dead.
Their young dependents are forced to live on with stinking corpses; bad enough they would have lost their sole providers.
The pensioners who should be enjoying are falling and dying on our streets – How Is This A Life For The Living?
PDP TO APC, FROM JESUS TO SATAN
When the former Senate Deputy Whip, Gbenga Aluko (Ekiti South) told newsmen last Sunday that the Ekiti Governor, Mr. Fayose was making plans to leave the PDP for the APC my stomach churned. I was disgusted at the thought that anyone who had spent nearly three years railing non-stop at the APC would be so shameless as to want to join it!
But in a swift reaction from the Fayose camp same evening, the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary issued a statement refuting the claim. He said Fayose leaving PDP for APC was like leaving Jesus Christ for Satan! I saw this on Monday morning and laughed until tears rolled out of my eyes. In fact I wiped my eyes, looked at the picture and write-up again, and laughed and laughed some more.
Fayose! I tell you I was in the hall at the Yar’Adua Centre a couple of years ago with the then presidential hopeful Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. The lights were dimmed and we were shown a video of Fayose ‘negotiating’ for the outcome of his governorship elections! It was Fayose who introduced the military dimension to our otherwise regular money politics/rigging Voting System. Even if you weren’t there, that conversation was transcribed in some papers (Ekitigate 2014). That saga cost the soldiers who spoke up his career – he had to flee to the U.S for his dear life.
That is what Mr. Fayose is calling Jesus?!!! To further give flesh to this saga; Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, former Defence Minister of State was in charge of channeling the ‘funds’ to the uniformed men deployed to Ekiti for the election. He later returned a small portion of the money under the Buhari anti-corruption campaign. He is living large today on the greater chunk of the loot which he was allowed to keep.
All that is Jesus Christ! Concerning the same Jesus he’s talking about, the scriptures in John 11 verse 35 says JESUS WEPT! So I could not but laugh!!
That the APC is Satan? I laughed again so hard my sides hurt. And a thought occurred to me; if a questionnaire was given out to the public and people were asked which of the 2 mentioned parties is Satan – what would the answer be? Well your guess is as good as mine!
BLAMING BUHARI
There is a shop around me where the woman sells groundnuts from Edo. These are big nuts, quite tasty unlike the smaller local variety and that’s what takes me to her shop. One day a delivery boy brought her some packs of sachet water, (I feel sachet water ought to be banned like it is in Lagos State. Also, the movement of the crazy deliver vehicle should be greatly restricted.)
The boy asked the shop owner if she had been informed of the price hike on the water. She said yes, but asked why – promptly, the boy replied; Its Dollar Ma, Dollar! What concerns the dollar with wholly locally produced sachet water! But you find people extending the argument to end in: blaming Buhari. Yes there is galloping inflation currently; no official flowery language can mask that. But blaming Buhari for EVERYTHING, including the greedy profiteering we create is not right at all. I have watched a TV market survey where even garri sellers hiked prices, and when asked why, they said, IT IS CHANGE GOVERNMENT OH, IT IS BUHARI. Haba!
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