Category: Korede Yishau

In the last eight years, their arrivals and departures at events have been loud. These men are the outgoing governors. They have had a lot going for them. They have almost everything free of charge. Their expenses on food, accommodation and travels are borne by taxpayers. They are entitled to jumbo cash officially as night allowance for local trips, and when the trips are foreign, the estacodes run into millions.

They also have aides and hangers-on, and even praise-singers at their beck and call- with taxpayers’ money oiling this ‘extravagant’ way of life. But the music will stop on May 29 when they hand over power to their successors, and the rhythm will assume a new, even scary and disheartening turn for some. The free ‘lunch’ will stop and, worse still, many will lose their freedom on account of corrupt acts and abuse of office. Not even those now waiting to become senators will be free from answering for the sins committed while in power. Some will shed ‘tears’ when they will be arraigned in courts and those who ‘ate’ with them will now be their adversaries. 

Some days ago, Lucky Igbinedion and Bukola Saraki, two men who have gone through what they will go through, gave them hints of how cold the flipside of power can be. Igbinedion went to hell and is yet to fully come back. Saraki has been luckier, even rising to become Senate President. 

Igbinedion, former governor of Edo State, was unsure of what tomorrow would hold after his tenure. His attempts to extricate himself from the web of allegations of money laundering and corruption brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) suffered debilitating hitches. His counsel could not get him out unscathed. Igbinedion had turned himself in to the EFCC after months of being a fugitive from law. 

Outgoing Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle is already feeling the heat of the approaching storm. He is in an alleged N70 billion mess with the EFCC. He is sure going to bid peace bye for some time after losing immunity. 

Instructively, for these men who are leaving as governors, their troubles will not just be with the EFCC. Back home, they will also not be having it easy with their successors.

Rivers State is one place I look forward to seeing gnashing of teeth. Will Nyesom Wike, the outgoing governor, leave the man he installed to work without interference? Or will he interfere and see the other side of the gentle-looking Fubara? Interesting moments await us. 

In Abia State, an opposition party is taking over. That is not good news for outgoing Governor Okezie Ikpeazu. Alex Otti, the man taking over from him, belongs to the Labour Party (LP). Otti is very unlikely not to probe the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration and, when he does, skeletons may tumble out of the cupboard. Otti doesn’t cut the image of someone who will be quiet about this. 

Ikpeazu’s Enugu counterpart, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, is to be replaced by his anointed, but that is not a guarantee that all will be well. Aside the loneliness he will face from folks who will now transfer their loyalty to the new governor, things may fall apart between them if he tries to dictate to his successor. He needs to ask Senator Godswill Akpabio and others who have faced rebellion from their chosen. Akpabio imposed Udom Emmanuel and, in no time, Emmanuel started kicking, biting and punching him. Hard. Very hard. Emmanuel, now on his way out, needs to watch his back. The blows he dealt Akpabio may return to him via the Happy Hour promoter he fought tooth and nail to install. What goes around comes around. 

Nasir El-Rufai and Abdullahi Ganduje are also joining the ex-governors’ circle. While El-Rufai’s chosen, Uba Sani, is Kaduna’s governor-in-waiting, Ganduje could not install the man after his heart. His former principal, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, like an hurricane, swept the polls in the state through his New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP). The party not just won the governorship, the bulk of the National Assembly seats are also in its kitty. If Kwankwaso enters an alliance with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Ganduje’s headache may not be severe, but both of them will still know the difference between khaki and leather.

The list of the ‘endangered’ also includes Sokoto’s Aminu Tambuwal and Ebonyi’s Dave Umahi, who are going to become senators. There is a wide gap between both positions. They will soon find out. They can console themselves with playing at the national level though. 

The next few months will prove that it is near impossible for a new Sheriff to take instructions from a predecessor. Once the initial pretense of being loyal and grateful for being chosen ahead of others is over, successors mostly revolt. The way out is to leave them to enjoy their reign. 

My final take: Power is transient, so transient that just a day, even a minute, means a lot to a man who no longer pays the piper and can’t call the tunes.

When TJ Benson was young, so young telling his left from his right was a stride, death sneaked into his family. It didn’t take just one person. It took two: his father and mother, the forces that shepherded him to mother earth and planted his roots in Abuja, Nigeria’s ever changing Federal Capital Territory. These deaths uprooted TJ Benson from Abuja. He romanticised the city while he was away. By the time he returned to it, he was already an adult, steeped in the ways of the world and perhaps crooning about adulthood being a scam.

The Abuja he met on return had changed and he felt a compulsion to document the moment he was in at the time. It was the era of the subsidy removal protests. He wanted to capture the sights and sounds before they would change again.

He chose to write a novel to document this change in two ways: setting and language or voice. The novel, ‘People Live Here’, didn’t come as his first book, neither did it come as his second. It came as his third book but his second novel. ‘The Madhouse’, which he wrote after ‘People Live Here’, got published as his first novel and second book. It was predated by ‘We Won’t Fade Into Darkness’, a slim collection of short stories.

“If The Madhouse is a love letter to Nigerian millennials, then ‘People Live Here’ is a love letter to an Abuja that is long gone,” TJ Benson says.

‘People Live Here’, is built around a nurse whose ‘sanity’ takes a vacation. But, in between the lines, we see an Abuja long gone, a Nigeria in need of help and a world that can do with more peaceful nations. We also see senselessness where we should see sense, and we see madness where a perfect mental state is desirable.

When TJ Benson started work on it in 2013, mental health was not as popular in Nigeria.

“It was relegated for the wealthy or an evil spirit you let a spiritual leader cast out of you. So it was important to me for everyday people to read the book and realise it could happen to anyone.”

The nurse, Lia, witnesses horror in Yemen and a place known as Daku, a supposed new local government area in Nigeria which borders an unnamed country. Bombs. Blood. Tears and deaths. Lia sees it all. And her mind snaps.

TJ Benson, who also writes short stories and is a visual artist, says mental health was like a taboo when he wrote the novel a decade ago.

As sad and disturbing as the experiences of the characters are, they are delivered with such elevated craft that will make a reader joyous. The novel is grounded in earth-shattering travails rendered in vivid and poignant light.

The author says the book was inspired by three major things: “The need to set a novel in Abuja because I felt too many contemporary novels at the time I wrote it (2013) were focused on South East and South West Nigeria; the need to create a character as different from me as possible (an independent young, single mother) and therefore challenge myself creatively and, lastly, a news report I heard about some foreign doctors who were slain in Potiskum, northern Nigeria.”

The novel is like nothing the author had ever published. ‘Madhouse’ is a tale of a strange family steeped in dreams, politics and history. He tells the story with accustomed dexterity, poetry and drama. His language is sophisticated, his sentences are a mixture of simple, compound and compound-complex structures, and the story structure is complex and non-linear. The non-linear nature of the story aids suspense. Benson understands characterisation and develops all the principal characters to a point where if seen on the road they can be identified.

Unlike ‘Madhouse’, ‘People Live Here’ is more linear in structure and involves a lot of traveling. This novel is narrated in the way an average person speaks English in Nigeria, especially Abuja, where the narrator calls home. It is not Pidgin English, but Nigerian English may be a safer way to describe it. It is also not the voice of an illiterate as Abi Dare used in ‘The Girl With The Louding Voice’.

It is also a book about an outcast who doesn’t belong in a family. Benson tries a couple of narrative tricks here and there, in fact, there is a trick in the first line that a reader will only decipher in the section narrated by her son, and there is another that will be revealed in the section her son’s father narrated.

“Some readers have (understood the tricks) and I have earned their respect for trusting them,” Benson says.

After Lia’s mind caves in, she is made to see a therapist who encourages her to keep journals to narrate everything she has been through. She chooses to tell her story to a friend named Tafar Yasir, who we are told is a friend she meets in Yemen and Daku but a later revelation suggests something else.

Lia’s journey to her present situation began in the hospital where she worked in Abuja. There she heard of Angels of Mercy, an organisation that hires nurses and doctors for jobs in troubled nations with medical emergencies. She was employed for a mission in Yemen and she hoped to make so much money that would help her get over the poverty plaguing her.

Lia’s backstory is intriguing. She was born by parents who wore Christianity like badges. She chose to fall in love with a boy whose parents’ Islamic affiliation was legendary. And to complicate things further, she chose to become a mother at a young age. And to ruffle feathers the more, she decided to leave home for Abuja with her son to start a new life. In a bus, she made a friend who helped her navigate the Abuja waters. She became a nurse but didn’t find fulfillment at the general hospital. Her search for fulfillment took her to Yemen. She got more than she bargained for.

Without setting out to, the author preaches peace with his picturesque exposition of the perils of war and crisis. No war ends on the battlefield. It is always settled at the round-table. Yet lives and resources are wasted fighting unnecessary wars and fanning senseless crises. Lia’s experiences in Yemen and Daku strip bare wars and crises.

In some sense, the novel is a love letter to Abuja. Aside from the ‘Abuja English’ Lia narrates the story in, the book tells us a lot about the Federal Capital Territory. We see it, we breathe it in and we breathe it out.

This is a book that will drop posers in the minds of the readers. But for the author, the people are free to make of it what they like.

“The ‘tricks’ you mentioned have also given room for multiple interpretations. But ‘People Live Here’ belongs to the people now, so I must respect their experience of the work,” he says.

My final take: TJ Benson has written a work that will endure, a work that will be studied long after his time on earth. It is a legacy that will endure. Enduring legacy is something we all should strive for. In everything we do, we should remember posterity and how it will remember us.

Many men of God said there would be a way where there seemed to be no way. We thought their spiritual binoculars could see what we could not see, and we were on the edges of our seats waiting for the miracle of miracles.

We were hoping their Father in heaven is different from ours and would shock us. But, we were disappointed. Donald J. Trump lost as American president. His administration dawned at dawn on January 20, 2021. His era ended, and Joe Biden’s began. Trump has known no real peace since then. A Jury indicted him in the midst of his plot to return to power. He was arraigned on Tuesday in New York.

Trump faces several counts related to business fraud. The indictment is from a Manhattan grand jury. It is the first time in US history that a former president is set to face criminal charges. The ex-president described his travail as “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history”.

The indictment is not unconnected to Trump’s alleged role in a secret money payment scheme and cover-up involving a sex film star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Before his arraignment,  the spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, said Trump’s attorney was contacted to “coordinate his surrender” for arraignment on “a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal”.

“Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected,” he added.

The payment relates to a $130,000 payment made by Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-personal attorney, to Daniels, days before the 2016 presidential election, to stop her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump continues to deny the affair. The Trump Organisation is said to have reimbursed Cohen.

Court filings in Cohen’s federal prosecution shows that the Trump Organisation authorised payments of $420,000 to the lawyer to cover his $130,000 payment, tax liabilities and a bonus. Defiant Trump has said he “wouldn’t even think about leaving” the 2024 race despite the imminent trial.

Cohen admitted to paying $130,000 to Daniels. He also admitted helping to arrange a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal to kill her story of a 10-month affair with Trump. The ex-president also denies an affair with McDougal. Cohen was sentenced to three years in jail. Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford, has agreed to be a witness. In a book in 2018, she described the alleged affair in graphic details.

Trump’s travail speaks to the strength of the American institutions. They follow the facts. Party affiliations or any other affiliations matter not. It is mostly about what the law says.

A Trump supporter, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, sees the indictment as “legal voodoo”.

“This is literally legal voodoo, this is political persecution, this is a combination of political hatred and selective prosecution on steroids,” Graham told Fox News.

The Senator used the interview session to seek donation to Trump’s campaign. Trump sent an email to donors after news of his indictment broke.

“You need to help this man, Donald J. Trump. They’re trying to drain him dry. He spent more money on lawyers than most people spend on campaigns. They’re trying to bleed him dry. Donaldjtrump.com, go tonight,” Graham said.

“We’re not going to give in. How does this end, Sean? Trump wins in court and he wins the election. That’s how this ends,” Graham said. “They’re trying to destroy Donald Trump because they fear him at the ballot box.”

Mike Pence, who was Vice President in the Trump administration, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “I really do believe that this decision today is a great disservice to the country and the idea that for the first time in American history a former president would be indicted on a campaign finance issue to me, just smacks of political prosecution, and I think the overwhelming majority of the American people will see it that way.”

The Trump years were of more troublemaking and less troubleshooting. He made troubles with almost everyone. His friends were mainly white supremacists and those who benefitted from his policies. African-Americans felt left at the back. Europe didn’t get along with him. He treated Africa as a shit hole and dealt with the Chinese like lepers. Immigrants were objects of misgiving and mimicry. Mexicans were treated with disdain and he began walling them off. He also separated children from their mothers in an inhuman immigration policy. Over 500 kids, according to a report in The New York Times, were as at when he was leaving office, yet to be reunited with their parents because officials who separated them have no records of where their parents were deported.

The rule was: Cross Trump and get tongue-lashed. Reporters had their fill. News conferences were avenues for the immediate past president to thrash the media for a perceived wrong. CNN, to him, meant fake news. New York Times, Washington Post, and others were despicable. Even Fox News that started as an ally ended as a traitor. For Trump, there were no permanent friends. The only thing that was permanent was his interests and once you were against his interests, you automatically switched camp and were dressed down in the worst language possible.

Even Pence can testify as he was quickly re-christened a weakling for not working against the greater good. He eroded core alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, provoked traditional partners and pampered autocrats such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Never had America seen such an era and it could take some time for such a mistake to be made again. Some say the mistake can never happen again. But with democracy, never say never. Even ‘fools’ at times appeal to the majority and get the coveted crown.

White supremacists had a field day. So free were they that they threatened fire and brimstone if their man was not re-elected, and taking over the Capitol was the height of their madness. They wanted the head of Pence and Speaker Pelosi, and others they considered traitors. They broke glasses and desecrated the hallowed chamber. Reports suggest that dozens of law enforcement officers, active-duty military members, and veterans participated in the global giant’s moment of shame. Now, the Capitol has a high wall and the National Guard is out to keep the dogs of war away.

But Trump was not all bad news. He is credited with overhauling the U.S. judiciary, especially with the appointment of three Supreme Court justices and the fast-tracking of the appointment of more than 200 federal judges. He is also respected in some quarters for pushing through massive tax cuts for corporations, expanding the economy faster than it was under Barack Obama, and crashing unemployment to a record low—before the economic gains were washed away by the Coronavirus.

He also normalised relations between Israel and four once-antagonistic Arab neighbours, and he condensed U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but like a commentator noted all these were “dwarfed by what Trump got wrong”.

My final take: It matters not if Donald Trump is found guilty or not after trial. What matters is that his indictment has shown that for a society to endure, strong institutions must supersede strong men.

She was in a forest of a thousand daemons. Not D.O Fagunwa’s, but a modern one. Now, she has survived and her success story seems so good. But Lola Akinmade Åkerström had it rough. 

​When I first wrote about her in April 2021, she had just released her first novel, a novel rejected, rejected, rejected and rejected before it was accepted. That novel is ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’. Its sequel, ‘Everything is not enough’, and another book, known now as ‘Deepest Well’, have got dual deals in the Un​​ited Kingdom and the United States. The U.S. deal is in six figures and the UK one is five figures. Lola’s triumph will only make sense if I recall the struggle to get her first novel published.

It started this way: Lola, who is a Nigerian-American, is a naturalised Swede on account of her marriage. She didn’t start out writing fiction. Creative non-fiction and travel writing found her first. She wrote and published two non-fiction books— ‘Due North’ and ‘Lagom’.

The jealous lover called fiction staged a comeback while Lola was on vacation in Portugal’s Algarve region and reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Americanah’. She visualised a novel about three Black women and one influential white man. Right there she pulled out her notebook, outlined scenes, descriptions, characters, traits, features, interactions and quirks.

By May 2018, as Lola recalled in a July 2020 piece, the first five or so pages were ready and she was so ecstatic. She had a dilemma: “I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go with the book in terms of prose. Whether or not I wanted it to be pure literary fiction, which is what mainstream publishing expects from me as an African writer in the Diaspora. Especially, if I wanted to be taken ‘seriously’ as a literary writer. We needed to keep proving our command of language to primarily white audiences while writing stories mostly rooted in Africa.”

The war between literary fiction and upmarket fiction was eventually won by the latter after she struggled to get into the second chapter of a literary fiction book. She did not want to write a book that readers will struggle to get into.

“I didn’t want to hide what I wanted to say behind pretentious literary prose,” she wrote. So, she decided to write a novel that is in between literary fiction and commercial fiction. Lola engaged the keyboard and after months of typing away, a character-driven novel with relatable plots was born. She christened it ‘Afroswede’.

For a well-known travel photographer and author of Lagom, a book already translated into 18 foreign languages, you will expect Lola’s sojourn thereafter to be bump-free. But, in the forest of a thousand daemons that international publishing is, her road was rough and it only later ended in praise with publishing deals (in the US, UK, Canada and the Commonwealth) sealed for her debut novel now renamed ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’.

She worked with a writing guru, Leigh Shulman, to get the manuscript ready for submission to a literary agent as required for mainstream publishing, but nothing prepared her for the heart-breaking rejections to come. To get an agent, she participated in a Twitter pitching initiative called #DVPit. Several agents requested her manuscript, but nothing came out of it. Later, in 2019, two-times Booker Prize finalist and Booker Prize judge Chigozie Obioma came to Stockholm, where Lola lives, to promote ‘An Orchestra of Minorities’. Obioma’s agent at the time, Jessica Craig, was also on the trip. Lola’s friend, Yomi Abiola, sent Jessica a brief email introduction. Lola and Jessica met for 30 minutes. Jessica loved the first draft when it was sent to her. 

Lola and Jessica were so eager and positive that the book would be snapped up in an auction because it was “unique, different, epic, genre-crossing, and boundary-breaking”. But traditional publishers were nervous about it because the book didn’t fit into a clear category.

In the long run, seventy commissioning editors rejected the book and thirty-five others kept mute. On June 10, 2020, Sourcebooks Landmark came through with a pre-empt book deal to publish it in the US and Canada. On April 8, 2021, a deal for the UK and the Commonwealth was announced. Head of Zeus saw the vision and is running with it. On September 7, 2021, the American and Canada editions came out and the UK edition came out on February 2022. 

The novel is about Kemi Adeyemi, a marketing executive, who is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, the CEO of Sweden’s largest marketing firm. Kemi’s immediate task is to help fix a PR fiasco about a racially tone-deaf campaign. It is also about Brittany-Rae Johnson who meets Jonny on the plane on his way to the U.S. This chanced meeting ushers the former model-turned-flight-attendant into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege. It is also about a Somali refugee named Muna Saheed, whose day job is cleaning the toilets at Jonny’s office.

Their ordeals did not end in ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’. One of the two-book deal Lola tweeted into existence, ‘Everything Is Not Enough’, will tell us more about them and Sweden’s discrimination against black women. The book, whose proof copies are out, will be released in October. It has the potential to outdo its predecessor. It is said to contain twice the drama of ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’. 

Lola tweeted a two-book deal into existence, now I am, on her behalf, writing a TV series into existence. Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO or any other streaming giant needs to option these books on three Black women. The series will open up Sweden like never before seen on global television. 

My final take: If you are about giving up on your dreams, tarry a while because you never can tell what tomorrow will bring. Lola Akinmade Åkerström’s new two-book deal is sweet music, so sweet it overshadows the 70 rejections ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’ earlier suffered. Now, Lola is having her well-deserved place in the sun. 

When Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu takes the oath of office on May 29, he will be inheriting a country where cows no longer moo, cats have stopped meowing, sheep find it hard to bleat, bulls see bellowing as herculean, ducks quack no more, donkeys have long abandoned braying, horses no longer neigh, geese have forgotten how to cackle, chickens can’t cluck again and peacocks no longer fancy screaming. 

When he is sworn-in on May 29, he is taking over a country where leaders aren’t ashamed we are renowned for businesses shutting down, for brain drain, for power cuts, for miserable public schools, for roads decorated with potholes, for public libraries with ancient books, for government hospitals forsaken by government, for high level insecurity, for rise in inflation, for absence of jobs, for ritual killings, for yahoo-yahoo boys, for authorities stealing more than armed robbers, for mediocrity and for the dearth of forward-looking leaders. 

The ex-Lagos governor has been chosen to lead a nation also renowned for having the most educated set of people in the United States, for neglecting and underfunding our universities but still regularly establishing new ones, and for having hundreds of doctors plying their trades in the UK, Canada, America, Australia and even Saudi Arabia whose rulers were said to have, in our golden era, received medical treatment here. 

Tinubu is to lead a land where its leaders are so ashamed of its miserable universities that they take their children abroad for education and flaunt pictures of their graduation ceremonies on social media. The people who have been in charge of our land display obscene wealth, filthy lucre everywhere and anywhere, when millions live below poverty level. We have no business being poor. We have gold, we have crude oil, we have bitumen, we have arable land, we have gum Arabic, we have limestone, we have gemstones, and we have everything, except leaders with the milk of human kindness. Only few of them care and their impact is far and in between. 

The next dispensation should be when we rewrite our sad stories and give happy endings. Tinubu needs to be a storyteller in authority. 

In the next dispensation, especially with our precarious situation, our leaders, including Tinubu, need to pause, take a proper look around us and ask where are those who, just some years back, seemingly had it all but are now in graves covered by kilos of sand to prevent their remains from fouling the environment. The depth of their graves and the kilogramme of sand covering them should be enough reason why we should never harm our brothers and sisters, and not be strongmen whose past time is killing, destroying and maiming to show us their might. 

In the next dispensation, we will be a lot sensitive and sensible if only we have imbibed the fact that we would one day, no matter how long we live, be buried in graves with depth, and our remains will be at the bottom of kilos of sand, our flesh will rot, our bones will brittle and cackle, and our places will become history. In the next dispensation, if only we always remember that no one owns eternity, we will think of the darkness that pervades the tomb after it is closed, and hurting fellow humans will be the last thing on our warped minds. Whether we like it or not, our final resting places will not be air-conditioned, heat will be the order of the day and rains will seep into our remains. These should be enough reasons not to make our neighbours suffer. 

In the next dispensation, we should be guided by the fact that whether we like it or not, we will one day be abandoned and doors will be shut on us, and no one will care that we are under, buried under kilos of sand and drenched by rains, and attacked by termites, and feasted on by worms. This should be enough reason to enjoy the company of our neighbours, friends and others when we still have the opportunity to. 

He who has ears let him hear: have all the money in the world, it does not stop death, build all the mansions on planet earth, it doesn’t stop age from catching up with you, enjoy the best of medical treatment, time cannot be arrested, change and recharge your body fluids, end must come, and do and undo, your end is inevitable, yes with time. 

Our past should not have total control of our future. When our past becomes a stumbling block, we need to find ways to straighten our tomorrow and, in doing this, being our brother’s keeper plays a central role or should play a key role. Many crave the opportunity of being born a second time so they can avoid the pitfalls of the past. But, since being born a second time is a luxury we are not sure of, let’s make the best out of this gift that life is. 

Vanity is what many of us spend precious time pursuing. This is a time to have a rethink. Spend more time to be humble and civil to people around you. You don’t have to be mean for your subordinates to know you are the boss. Being bossy is not the hallmark of being a boss. It is not. 

My final take: In the next dispensation, cows must moo, cats must meow, sheep must bleat, bulls must bellow, ducks must quack, donkeys should bray, horses should neigh, geese must cackle, chickens should cluck again and peacocks must fancy screaming. 

Since the bell rang for the commencement of the general elections, only few Nigerians in the diaspora had their spirits anywhere else but Nigeria. We followed news about party primaries, choice of candidates, scandals involving standard bearers and more.

And on the day of the Presidential election, we followed developments on Twitter, TV Apps and other sources. We also called friends and families back home to get information.

And when the tedious collation process began, we were there without being there! We are abroad but exile has not made us uninterested in a process capable of making our country like the nations we have made homes.

Like those at home, we were also divided about who we thought was best for our country. We argued, we screamed at one another. We held grudges.

The presidential race has been called and Nigeria has a President-elect. His name is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. On May 29, he will replace President Muhammadu Buhari. His victory came after a hot battle.

Like those of us abroad, compatriots back hime were and are still divided. Many lost friends in the process and also gained enemies. Friends attacked one another, enemies re-alligned. Emotions ran riot. A trying time it was. And now that the race is lost and won, this is the time to heal.

The presidential race amplified the many divides in the country. We saw pastors turning against pastors, Imams followed different routes and traditionalists went for one another’s jugular, all in defence of their preferred candidates.

The period shows how large our ethnic divides are, how pronounced our religious schism is, and how different our value systems are.

Interestingly too, we saw God reveal different winners to men who claim to hear from him. It was a period that exposed so many things, the beautiful, the ugly and the downright reprehensible.

I saw people who refused to declare their preference pilloried, I saw people who publicly campaigned for their candidates called names, and I saw the ambivalent described as the enemies of the people. Many cursed their friends for supporting candidates different from theirs. Someone screamed that any buddie of his who supported a different candidate is his enemy. I saw a cartoon portraying voters from a particular part of the country as blind because of their political choice.

Our nation was a madhouse at the time and many of us were insane. The state of our economy was enough to make us insane and seek to get who we perceived as the best to get in. Being abroad does not insulate one from the challenges back home with friends and families home who transfer their frustrations.

We need to heal and the incoming president has a lot to do in the process. He needs to right the wrongs of the past. He needs to make nepotism a thing of the past. He needs to ensure no Nigerian feels left out because of which part of the country he or she comes from.

Asiwaju Tinubu needs to end this era of epileptic supply of electricity. I will be glad that day when our electricity generating sets will only be useful for picnics at beaches and such places where temporary source of power is required.

Tinubu needs to provide enough direction for members of the National Assembly to truly legislate in the interest of the people and not out of any pecuniary interest. He needs to promote federalism. Our Constitution, whose preamble lies that it was put together by ‘we the people’, recognises the governor as the Chief Security Officer of a state. But, in reality, this is one of the many lies in this strange document that guides our life as a nation. The policemen obey no one but the Inspector-General of Police, who takes orders from the President. So, the president is the CSO of each of the 36 states of the federation. The fact that the government of a state like Lagos spends so much money on the police every year means little or nothing. When the chips are down, the police ‘with due respect’ ignore the governors and align with the centre, where their pay comes from. It is a case of he who pays the piper calling the tunes. Tinubu needs to change that.

The pseudo federalism that Nigeria operates borrows nothing from the advanced world where the government at the centre bothers itself only with issues of national security, international diplomacy and such issues of gargantuan proportion. Instead, our own federalism determines how the natural resources in a state are explored, how the Value Added Tax in a state is shared, how a state is policed, how the local government is administered, how other minute details of a state’s life are worked out and how electricity is generated and distributed.

Tinubu needs to end a situation where, every month, state governments take turns in Abuja to take their share of the national cake. Our governors regularly go cap in hand to beg the Lords in Abuja for porridge. Also, he must know we don’t need a strong centre. What we need are strong federating units that contribute to the centre, and not a centre that is so powerful that states have to cower before it. What we have now allows a president to determine who enjoys federal largesse and we are witnesses to instances where favours are dispensed along party lines. The country belongs to all irrespective of party affiliations

The ex-Lagos governor needs to give us a Nigeria where our schools can compete with others in the advanced world. We long for a President who will take Nigeria out of the Third World. What is wrong with being a First World?

Tinubu needs to deliver a Nigeria where we can reap from medical tourism instead of the current situation where we are the major loser to this trend.

Our next president must make our economy so robust that we can hold our head high anywhere in the world and our green passport will command respect and not scorn. He must make terrorism history, ensure peace in the Southeast and banish kidnappers prowling expressways and forests in the country.

Also, he owes us a Nigeria where oil takes the back seat and agriculture and tourism take the front seat and contribute more to our foreign exchange earnings and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). He must develop our tourism sector, permanently solve the power challenge, defeat the terrorists and make the country a no-go-area for bandits.

From the incoming administration, we expect the best medical facilities and not one who will dash to Europe at the slightest approach of headache.

We also expect a president who realises that looking power in the face helps leaders to be better leaders. We don’t need a president who will see himself as a God with big ego— ego that must be fanned and air-conditioned by sycophancy. 

My final take: The incoming president has a nation to heal, an economy to revive, and institutions to reform. For us to heal, we don’t need a wasteful president who will blow our resources on frivolities. We need a president who will come in and rise above the decades of trial and error called leadership in our country. Our leaders have been callous in the management of our resources. Past error is no excuse for not changing our fortunes. These are the tasks before Tinubu.

Peter Chika, a Nigerian based in Houston, Texas, has a collection of short stories titled ‘The Condom and other Stories’. One of the other stories is titled “The Briefcase”. Its beginning is one Nigerians who are receiving the blows of fuel scarcity can easily relate with. The intro of the story is a subtle criticism of the perennial fuel shortage Nigerians experience every December. Towards the end, it also takes a jibe at instances of suspects getting extra-judicial punishment from police officers. But the story proper is about two men fighting over the ownership of a briefcase. One claims that the other stole it from his car while on a queue at a filling station. Neither has the key to the bag. The one who claims it was stolen from his car is allowed to go home to fetch the spare key but he never returns and the other wants to take the bag and go away. The crowd at the station insists on opening the bag, which he says he inherited from his father and only uses on special occasions. When the bag is opened, what it contains leads to instant denial from the man who claims he has just used it for a job interview.

The book has 14 stories, all of which Nigerians can see themselves in. The stories in this collection take us around Lagos, Port Harcourt, Houston, New York and to other places. Characters speak English, pidgin, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. Street codes and lingo are appropriately deployed.

The weird Nigerian political scene takes the centre stage in “The List”, in which a university don decides to join politics to escape poverty. The political parties on offer have acronyms such as APC and PDP, but they are not All Progressives Congress or Peoples Democratic Party. Their modus operandi are, however, similar to Nigeria’s two most popular political parties. Osita, the lecturer-turned-politician, chooses to start at the local government level and what his eyes see are more than the Seven Wonders of the World. He discovers that the rot starts from the grassroots and he discovers a lot of bizarre stuff. For instance, his westernised pattern of campaign is resisted. The audience is riled, and replies with the throwing of sachet water. What he considers honesty is seen as a flaw. Chika’s resolution of the conflict of who gets the chairman’s nomination ticket is another of his clever ways of taking the reader to where he or she doesn’t know. In one breath, it looks like this is where he is going and, in another, he takes a different route!

Chika returns to Nigeria’s political terrain in “Eye for a Tooth”, a story about a President, Aremu Oladipo who, after failing to get a third term, rallies billionaires to bankroll the election of a lackey as his successor. The names of the billionaires sound familiar: Mike Adeniyi Jr, Anthony Eluemuno, Dr Orji Nnamani, and Oba Odubekun. And the biggest of them all is the one identified simply as Alhaji, who used cement to cement his way to the top of the Forbes list. Interestingly, this Alhaji has a nephew-cum-PA named Aliko. Alhaji disagrees with the President over his choice of successor and the battle line is drawn. One eventually bends for the other. Here, power passes power!

The first story, “The Condom”, is about Ike and his wife, Laura. The couple’s home is under threat all because of an unused condom found in their home. Since the beginning of their relationship they have never used condoms so this discovery engenders a crisis. Ike, who cheats on his wife regularly, is troubled that his last tryst has turned out not well-executed. But, the resolution of this crisis shows that what a man can do a woman can do even better. The twist in this tale told in timelines from the third person perspectives of Ike and Laura is unexpected and offers the impetus to dive further into the pages. The opening story is a fitting welcome to an amazing collection.

The second story titled “Wager” shows that what you see is not always what you get, that a man’s stern face and no-nonsense demeanour do not always mean he has no soft side. The story is about Professor Okeke, a law teacher who is feared by his students. It is also about Yvonne Oki, who unveils the Professor’s bowel for his students to see the warped content.

Humour wrestles humour in “Scent of a Child”. This hilarious tale is kicked off with a wife’s reminisce of her mother-in-law’s constant harassment over her ‘refusal’ to give her a grandchild. Medically, she is certified okay. Her egoistic husband certifies himself fit enough to impregnate a woman and frowns at the suggestion that he should put a scientific seal on his claim. Along the line, Ada is advised to see a smelly baba who ‘manufactures’ babies in a face-me-I-face-you apartment and charges in dollars for this service. The end of this story is another of the crazy twists in this collection.

The story titled “The General” is also political in nature but, this time, military politics. It is about a general who has just taken over government. His name is Ibrahim and he chooses to be addressed as President rather than Head of State like his predecessors. Nigerians are sure familiar with this development, but trust Chika to take a detour that makes you wonder if art has not initially been imitating life.

The story titled “The Offering” is not just the story of Uduak, a man who just got a car after a lot of savings and stress, but also of his pastor. It is a scathing criticism of Pentecostal Christendom, especially the gimmicks some pastors use to get members to give up their prized possessions. This story laced with the right dosage of humour is a delight to read. It clearly demonstrates that as Christians, God gave us brains for a reason, and the reason is to think to avoid taking everything spewed from the pulpits hook, line and sinker. God knows that many who call His name are doing so in deceit.