The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Making our children read again

    The reason for this necessary intervention is that our children no longer read. Everyone says this. Even fathers and mothers who never put a book in their children’s hands complain that their children don’t read.

    We have been inundated lately by campaign slogans that attempt to entrap our minds and make us do the bidding of our politicians. So, very likely, reader, you are familiar with Trump’s ‘Making America great again’, and Atiku’s ‘Making Nigeria work again’. Well, this week, we have something to trump them all, which is what everyone should be singing anyway: Making our children read again!

    The reason for this necessary intervention is that our children no longer read. Everyone says this. Even fathers and mothers who never put a book in their children’s hands complain that their children don’t read. Now, I ask myself, who could be responsible for that? Anyway, I remember the many times I have bemoaned the fact on this column that the reading population in Nigeria is thinning faster than the balding head of a vulture. Yet, no one is batting an eyelid, except to join me in complaining.

    These days, what you are likely to find in the hands of a child is a mobile phone complete with internet facilities and every other facility. With it, they can surf every site available, good or bad, and ‘widen their horizons’. Of course, some horizons get too widened in the process. Even children who are not able to master their letters are given phones by their indulgent parents because they believe their children are such geniuses they can take apart the morality of the phone on their own. Such parents are not interested in putting books in their children’s hands; that’s too slow. The parents wake up soon enough though when the consequences come calling.

    ‘Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides’, says Samuel Butler, that 19th/20th century satirist and novelist. Well, he knew what he was talking about, seeing he was a writer and all. In Nigeria today, dear reader, we dare not put books on trial, because they will lose, hands down. To start with, whereas politicians are commanding two hundred counsels to defend their economically insalubrious ways, books will probably command counsels we can count on only one miserable finger. That is the strange way of the world seeing that counsels became what they are courtesy of them books. So, rather than put books on trial, we will just attempt to speak up for them.

    According to Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century statesman, ‘the best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.’ That does sound like taking things from the rear end, rather than the beginning but I’m sure you get the spirit of the man’s words, dear reader. It means that if I wished to know more about banana eating habits of the human specimens called Nigerians, all I need to do is write about it, not eat it. Writing impels you to read.

    Charles Colton, another 18th/19th century writer, says of reading: ‘some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.’ We might well add that some read to take action such as sharing innovative intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, understanding and findings and thus increasing technological knowledge. That is where we are going because we are celebrating World Book Day and the theme for this year is ‘Share a story’.

    Sharing a story necessarily implicates sharing a dream. In a story, characters move deftly and nimbly across the pages to illustrate for us the beauty of life or the futility of inordinate ambition. The characters speak to us words of wisdom to let us know the true facts of life: no good deed goes unrewarded; no bad deed goes unpunished. They teach us that love never grows old or out of fashion, and hate always eats itself out. Above all, stories illustrate to us the futility of self-worship and the richness of other-service.

    Reader, when you share a story, you share a world. Stories have ways of taking you by the hand and leading you over many oceans, rivers, vales and valleys, mountains and hills from where you look down and see the world in all its glorious smallness. Then you discover you are actually not the most important thing that has happened to this planet after all; there is always something more spectacular than you. In story books, you open the shutters of your minds and widen their boundaries to be able to take in all the different worlds and different cultures. We discover new worlds.

    I quite believe that one of the outcomes of the government’s programme of shutting the people’s mind is corruption. That programme began in the seventies and eighties when the government began to shut down the tools and materials of book production – killing off paper mills, strangulating newspaper industries, imprisoning the book work force, etc. The natural consequence of this action is that books became scarce, the people had no credible, selfless models to mentor them, except these wild kleptomaniacs around us, and imaginations dried off. What has come off from all that has been this culture of crazy kleptomania gone mad and wild. Nature hates a vacuum.

    I believe when people begin to read, then they can truly begin the fight against corruption. It is not enough to mouth the fact that the war against corruption must be fought without people being involved. The entire populace must be involved in the fight. There is no better way to marshal the populace to be embroiled in that bustle than through books. The government cannot fight the battle alone; it is a grave error for her to think so. To win that war, we must begin the book revolution which will lead to a cultural revolution.

    Finally, the country must adopt a plan of action to make her citizens more responsive towards books, stories and reading. A situation where the people are kept perpetually in the dark because of the government’s self-serving plan cannot hold perpetually either. Something must give, and it has to be this dark veil of ignorance. The people should be given the chance to own their own thoughts.

    For this last one to happen, the country must attempt to catch readers, book lovers and story tellers young. Let every classroom in the land in the primary and early secondary schools make an hour in the day to read a storybook to and in the class. Let families read story books together. This way, imaginations can be primed to do some serious innovative thinking and increase our national intelligence in order to improve our technological drive. Many parents fight each other over phones and who is hiding or not hiding passwords; they hardly fight over books. Children pick up most of their habits from home and school. It is time to go #makingourchildrenreadagain right from home and school.

  • Has INEC grown, or has it grown…

    The much feared presidential election has come and gone, and so have most of our trepidations. I tell you, so grave were the fears that I heard that many people abandoned their jobs and took to their heels in the direction of their villages. Naaah, many did not go ‘home to vote because that is where they registered’ as they wanted us to believe. They went ‘homewards’ because they did not want to be surprised by any breakout! I tell you, the fear of election violence is the beginning of….

    Anyway, I did not go ‘homewards’. I stayed bravely under the blankets. That’s the kind of courage that cowardice gives you. I thought, if anything would happen, at least, it should meet me in great comfort.

    However, I had a change of heart midmorning. So, I donned my canvas shoes (for a swift get away), light handbag (for phone, keys and lunch) and my thumb and pointing finger (for voting, of course!). THAT DAY, I FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHY MY FOURTH FINGER IS ALSO CALLED THE WARNING FINGER. I USED IT TO WARN THE FELLOW I VOTED FOR.

    By the time I got to my polling unit, I found that I was among the last to arrive. Actually, I was the last to arrive. The scene I beheld was chaotic. There were people seated. There were people standing. There were those seated and shouting or standing and shouting. And then, there were those who were quiet. I joined the standing and shouting ones. Those ones were safer. After a while, I was given a number on the queue that was closer to #1,000 than #1. What is this?, I thought. It looked bad for me. Every candidate had a higher probability of being voted than I had of voting.

    I looked around me at the shouting faces, sitting faces, grumbling faces and debated with myself just what I should do. Hope and pray that someone along the line would lose their ability to count and jump from calling #10 to #500 suddenly? It could happen, but not in Nigeria, I decided. Nigerians are very sharp on the matter of their rights though rather dull on their obligations. Someone read my thoughts and came over to me with a proposition. He had finished using his number and had voted. Would I care to use it again?

    O TEMPTATION! O MORES! MORE DEBATES WITH MYSELF. I DECLINED THE OFFER AND GENTLY TOLD HIM I WAS BORN TO SUFFER ON NIGERIAN QUEUES. Besides, how did he come to have voted so soon, I asked him? He came early, he said. Besides, the queues were moving fast. Wonderful. This was clearly a departure from the 2015 election experience. Reader, if you remember I told you that my voting experience in 2015 was a mini-practice of how many of us would shove and push to enter hell. I was shoved and pushed around like hell then. This time, there was only queueing. How INEC has grown, I mused aloud.

    ‘What growth are you talking about?’, hissed one woman behind me on the queue. ‘Is this how to conduct an election, putting people under the sun for a whole day in these days of technological advancement? In many countries now,’ she paused for breath, ‘people sit in the comfort of their homes and receive the voting papers by email. They fill out the forms and send them back by email. God forbid that we should make progress in Nigeria,’ she finished. ‘Ah, I think they’re afraid of this problem of hacking’, put in someone else, a man. He had a knowledgeable face. ‘Don’t even think about surface mail, with our post office the way it is… But these desperate people… Imagine, because of voting, we now have a public holiday.’

    ‘Desperate or not, holiday or not, now they are making people suffer for no reason,’ returned the aggrieved lady. ‘If they used electronics, would they now be carrying ballot boxes up and down? Would anyone even be snatching ballot boxes, not to talk of losing their lives? I beg, let me hear talk,’ she finished, like a conqueror who had finished and decapitated her foes and had them all lying at her feet, lifeless. After her barrage, we did feel lifeless for a while before we continued enjoying the hot sun under whose hospitality we were forced to take cover. No shoving, no pushing, not in my polling unit at least.

    Nevertheless, I was still flummoxed by a few things when it came to my turn. First, I was attended to by some young people whose sense of the awesomeness of the positions they were in quite overwhelmed them. To start with, here they were, just fresh out of school and parental dependency, not more than a few months into adulthood, now being asked to exercise power over the very people who ordered them around just ‘yesterday’. Naturally, it went into a few of those tiny heads and made some of them to deign to shout at us. We laughed, and endured.

    When it came to my turn, surprise, my name was on the register. That’s one hurdle gone then, I thought. The card reader however took one look at my PVC and crossed its arms and refused to work forthwith, even though it had been working before. I tried to introduce myself to it but it pretended deafness and refused to read my card.

    In exasperation, the lady at the desk said they would have to accredit me manually. Was I ready? I showed her my thumb! She brought out her books, found my name and asked me to thumb print across it. After I had done that, she noted how finely I had done the thumb printing. I told her it had taken years of practice: when you read all kinds of handwritings from your students, you learn to use your thumb to straighten out words!

    Anyway, the entire exercise in my unit cost me no more than three hours, some hot sun, some walking up and down, some queueing and a little bit of annoyance – no one served any drinks. It was later I learnt that in some polling unit somewhere in Lagos, some citizens had thoughtfully turned the exercise into a picnic and had brought coolers of drinks, snacks and picnic tables to the event. Oh yes, they made an event of the matter all right. I had only one thought for them: why on earth was my name not transferred to that polling unit?

    Seriously, everyone around me just wanted to vote and go home. All the novelty that made us stand on the line from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. in 2015 had worn off. In its place in 2019 was tiredness and a certain ennui born of the realization that the people we were queueing for had been given preferential treatment in their own polling units and were resting in their own houses.

    No one thought of snatching any ballot box, what with an armed policeman prowling all around us anyway. I imagined that the policeman could very well have been the one who said the words in a text someone sent to me: ‘I don’t have the power of forgiveness. Only God can forgive a ballot box snatcher. My only duty is to arrange their meeting.’

    Anyway, I left the unit when I finished voting. Some people stayed back. I was told those were the ones who wanted to make sure their votes counted by counting their votes. Me, I took my thumb home for some needed rest. After all, 2023 is just around the corner.

  • Finally, the services of Father Time brought to the fray

    Since last week, reader, you and I have been made unwilling witnesses to a lot of political drama. Remember that I once mentioned that our election stunts normally include a war of words, a crossing of swords and the services of father time. May I solemnly remind you that I mentioned before that we have already seen the war and the crossing. Finally, the services of father time were brought into the fray last week. I think someone should pay me for predicting that. Thank you; that clapping is payment enough.

    Well, you know the story. Last Saturday, just when we were about set and rearing to go and choose … err… ‘our leaders’, news came that the elections had been postponed! The rumour mills were agog. There were not enough materials on ground. The transfer of materials had not been completed. Some early-bird illegal voters had been caught. There was a great deal of disconnect in the election preparation machinery itself. I tell you, when correct information is scarce, incorrect ones play the field with reckless abandon.

    Of course, the reverberations caused by the news were not only political, psychological or sociological but grammatical as well. The political reverberations were quite plain for all to see. Our cards remained in their sheaths and we could not exercise our franchise. In short our suffrages became weakened. Psychologically, some of us became a little discouraged. I heard someone say ‘let them be voting their thing themselves’. Now, please don’t ask me what that means because I don’t know.

    Sociologically, the cancellation gave ‘us the society’ that sense of déjà vu all over again, as they say. Now, that can’t be good. I heard one exclaim, ‘ah, ah, when will this country grow up sef and stop postponing elections anyhow?’ Another one said, ‘umph, they want to do their mago-mago again.’ To some, cancelling or postponing elections has become a Nigerian thing, part of the organic structure of the country. Me, I kept my peace because I thought, supposing INEC knows a thing or two that we don’t? Or three or four?

    The country was given a grammar treat. I tell you, anyone who has had any dealings with grammar will understand that it is not easy. Most people would sooner go through a bout of piles I think than be asked to determine the grammatical correctness of a phrase or sentence. That was the plight of the citizens as they were asked to accept ‘I regret’ for ‘I apologise’ from the INEC chief. I saw many of my citizens going around muttering to themselves and rolling their eyes in agony: ‘Has the INEC chief apologized or not when he says ‘I regret’?’ Did he regret or apologise for that day’s revenue loss? As I speak to you now, many have not come up with a definitive difference. Grammar, grrr!.

    During the week also, the media reported that President Buhari stated that he wanted a free and fair election. Very good! Anyone therefore, said he, who ‘snatches’ an election box should be shot immediately. Ha! The presidency then gave further clarifications that if anyone had any problem with that directive, it meant he had something to hide. Ah, ah!!

    Naturally, many people have been reacting both positively and negatively. It is a little like one of the Hans Anderson stories about the emperor’s new clothes. You don’t know it? Then let me oblige you with a summary just to illustrate how the town can be so divided over a matter such as this.

    Once, there was an emperor who was very rich and powerful and loved new clothes, just like me, without the rich and powerful though. So, he had his tailors constantly staying up all night sewing up stitches to keep him happy in new clothes. Well, one straying fellow turned up in the town one day claiming to have the act of sewing pat down to a T and could make the emperor the best clothes in the world. He was given his own apartment and the whole apparatuses of the job. Knowing nothing about sewing, he proceeded to having himself a jolly time. Whenever the emperor sent to know the level of completion of this prize attire, the tailor replied, ‘almost’. If anyone doubted him, he called them a ‘sinner’ for failing to ‘see’ it. Eventually, the day came when he declared ‘it’ finished and the emperor wore ‘it’ through the streets. Some of the adults admired ‘its’ beauty. Some did not see anything but kept mum, but it took a little child to be able to say all he could see was the emperor’s nakedness.

    I quite understand the president’s frustrations and where he is coming from. He is coming from the history of a country where corruption appears to have been woven into the very fabric of the society. It is where criminals appear to be stronger than the law. It is also where election riggers are alleged to regularly send their thugs to ‘snatch’ ballot boxes containing the people’s votes and cause the elections to be declared either incomplete or won by the undeserving.

    Snatching ballot boxes is a hideous crime. It amounts to robbing the electorate of their sovereignty. It robs them of their minds, intelligence, thoughts, humanness, freedom, choice and above all, their personhood. It is one thing to steal the people’s money and get away with it. It is another thing to steal their votes. This is as good as stealing the people’s intelligence, and this is where the president is coming from. He is coming from that anger. So, his directive is very understandable. I just have a little trouble understanding it, even though I have nothing to hide. I am going round and round, aren’t I?

    In a democracy, a sovereign nation works within the law. The greatest representative of the sovereignty and the law is the chief executive, the president. The instrument that binds and holds the state together, being the law, must be seen to work for the benefit of all. The person who ensures respect for that law is the chief executive. When he loses respect for the law, then its goodbye to that sovereignty. In this instance, in giving the shoot-at-sight order, the president was hitting at the law, not so much the criminal.

    Many have shown that they do not understand that order, and, to be honest, neither do I, like I said. Now, I am coming from a history of a country where the constitutive forces that are armed have regularly shot at civilians, with or without provocation. It is where such shootings have not been fully, sufficiently and satisfactorily investigated or even brought under the law. It is also where the families of such victims have had to bear their own burdens of pain alone with little or no redress from the law or compensation from the authorities. To thus give that kind of summary directive to people carrying arms in that country seems to many among us really asking for it.

    Election criminals must be brought before the superior law. It is true that criminals don’t always fight fair, but we cannot throw the law away because of that. That will be inviting chaos and confusion to reign supreme, to misquote Milton. It is also certain that criminals cannot be fought on their own turf. That will be suicidal for the society; it will result in naked force versus brute force. That’s right, only the turf will be standing at the end of it.

    The president wants good elections. It is only by respecting the law that this can be ensured. He must beat the way to that path for all of us.

  • In the valley of decision…

    Altogether, it seems that most political parties are travelling with empty wagons; and this is why it is so hard to choose. However, slogans are used to mask the emptiness.

    It’s not always easy to take a decision. In fact, experienced deciders will tell you that one of the most difficult things to do is to take a decision. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of great leadership is said to be this ability to take decisions on behalf of a group. I guess that is why I am not a leader because I cannot even decide what to have for breakfast: a bowl of cereal or a bowl of amala. To settle the matter, I assign numbers – whichever one picks number one goes for breakfast; the other goes for brunch. However, I can never tell by what rigging method amala always seems to pick number one.

    Let’s face it, decision taking is no easy pick; pardon the pun. I have not been able to forget a story I read a while back about a young man who desperately needed a job. He finally got one on a potato farm. He was hired to sort potatoes into two different baskets: you guessed it – medium and large. After about three hours on the job, he handed in his notice. What was the problem? Did he not like the conditions? Did he not like the wage he had been promised? Did he not like the farm? None of those, he maintained, he liked everything, but the decisions were killing him, as he wiped the sweat from his brow!

    I have been in that young man’s position many times. It is a little like sorting onions: you just cannot tell the difference between the ones labelled medium and the ones labelled small. For the sake of argument however, you hold your peace. If you ended up in Aro, how would you explain to the doctor that onions brought you there?

    Now, Nigeria has to explain to the world, once again, how difficult it is to sort between difficult-to-accept candidates in an election which is making her the cynosure of all eyes in the world, not out of admiration but because no one quite trusts her. All over the world, people are wondering: what stunt of desperation these Nigerians are going to pull now in the coming election. Yes, I am also wondering the same thing: what stunts are these desperadoes going to pull now? Look at the 2015 election stunts. It started with a war of words; then swords were crossed and finally, the services of father time were engaged. In this election, we have only seen the war of words via the slogans.

    One thing that characterises Nigerian political parties is this emptiness of their political wagons. To start with, there is a lack of strong manifestoes that can serve as blue prints for the ideologies and beliefs guiding the actions to be taken by the party. The reason is not very difficult to fathom. Most people who constitute the membership of these parties seem to have agreed to bury or forget their intellectual capabilities or, at best, keep them far away from the fire of politics. They prefer rather to concentrate on the one agenda that surpasses all grammaticality, which is to get their hands on the loot! This sense of conqueror-takes-all overrides all manifesto contents.

    Now, that explains two things. One, it explains why many people find it so easy to cross into other political parties. They are not moving any heavy stuff. Two, it explains why people win elections and do not know what to do with it beyond continuing the chop, chop programme. Altogether, it seems that most political parties are travelling with empty wagons; and this is why it is so hard for us to choose between them. However, slogans are used as cover to mask the emptiness.

    In this year’s elections, there are two main contenders: the PDP and the APC. Since these two main political parties are really no different from each other, the war of words has been left to the slogans which are just skirting around each other. Ah, plus ca change…

    For the APC, the slogan is ‘Next Level’. For the life of me, I really cannot understand this. For instance, I ask myself, next level in what? Next level suggests the existence of a previous level. The only previous level known to me is the one given by the antecedents of APC. And, to be honest, they have not been too positive. There has been the serious, depleting recession which has left many people hungry. Then, there have been all these unexplained killings which the government was not able to really handle. So, if we explain the next level to be the next step to all of these, then we’re in for a rocky time indeed. It all sounds ominous and frightening.

    On the other hand, the PDP’s slogan, ‘Making Nigeria work again’, is not much clearer to me either. It is so original that I believe Trump must have taken his own political campaign strategy, ‘Making America great again’ from them. Seriously though, everyone agrees that the first outing of PDP, 1999-2015, was not very profitable for Nigeria. The era contrived to insitutionalise and deify corruption to an unimaginable level from which we have not been able to extricate ourselves. So, when PDP says it wants to make Nigeria work again, I ask myself, like when? When did Nigeria ever work?

    Nigeria has been one of the most unfortunate countries on earth because it has all this potential for greatness but nowhere to go, because there has been no one to lead her. Since the 1960 independence, that poor thing of a country has been rolling around like one giant whale suffering from severe constipation which no doctor on earth appears able to relieve. Imagine, a fifty-eight-year-old constipation that defies solution! Anyway, the slogans do not seem to be too helpful either, as we can see.

    To make matters worse, the two political parties have gone and chosen some tired septuagenarians as their front runners. On the one hand, there is the APC fielding President Buhari of whom many have said needs to go look after his health. Indeed, the wisdom in this counsel showed in the recently televised national debates. His performance left me scratching my head and wanting to ask, ‘will the real President Buhari please stand up?’ I quite believed the original was sitting somewhere in the audience.

    However, Buhari continues to symbolise, even if he is not personally leading, the anti-corruption crusade. It has been whispered though that many people around him are using that symbolisation to do that which he hates most. Since mum is the word from the man, we can only assume that all is well in Ground Aso.

    The second party, PDP, has fielded Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, who, many say, cannot quite be trusted. Going by his antecedents, which include his performance when he was in charge of the privatisation programme, as the former Vice-president, including what his boss and former President Olusegun Obasanjo said about him, his utterances (for example, he is said to have said that he would pardon looters!), and so on, then Nigeria has a problem. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that the poor country is between the devil, the deep blue sea and a sharp descent into a valley of chaos.

    Dear reader, to say that we are in a valley of decision is putting it mildly. We are between an APC party to whom my present words no longer mean a single thing, a PDP to whom my future wellbeing may not mean a single thing and other unknown parties with their unknown variables. Yet, come next week, I must needs use my card to pick one of them. Now, you understand why I am wiping sweat off my brow.

  • Looks like the best is long since gone

    People, our glorious past is clearly behind us and nothing but a glorious chaos stands before us

    One of the best things about looking over your shoulders is that it helps you measure your next step in relation to your previous one. If the previous steps have been too small, you can gently coax and persuade your feet to please take larger size steps so you can get to your neighbour’s yard before nightfall. If, as happens to most of us, the feet appear to be going faster than the brain, then you find yourself again gently persuading your feet to go, shall we say, a little slower so that you don’t find yourself ‘putting your feet in it’ too much. That’s when a husband goes at the wife: ‘Did I ask you to write to the president about my financial troubles?’ ‘Did you have to proclaim to the whole world that I was having financial troubles?’ ‘Did I even tell you that I was having financial troubles just because your house keeping money is short by a few miserable thousands? You this woman, be careful yourself o; don’t be putting your foot in your mouth o!’

    I am aware though that most people who have to look over their shoulder do so because there is someone aiming an invisible rifle at them and they don’t know which of their fat shadows that rifle is going to shoot at. And it’s mostly because they have done something wrong, such as performing illegal clones of themselves, their girlfriends or their spouses. Or, it may be because they stole some meat from the soup pot. No, I’m joking. Mostly, it is because they probably stole some meat from the soup-pot.

    When we in Nigeria look over our shoulder, we are not looking out for any rifles (those come from within) nor are we looking out for how not to put our feet in it. No, none of that. We look over our shoulder in nostalgia at the age of our innocence. The age of our innocence was the age when we all believed that we had a country, a place we could call our own, a place where no one in particular felt out of place. It was a place that accommodated everyone’s names within its walls without flinching. It was also a place where one’s brawns, mixed with a little brain, got one a good living off the land.

    Then, there was no creed, no religion, no race that was looked down on. I remember growing up in a vigorous Kaduna in the swinging sixties with every tribe and religion in Nigeria represented on my street and with very little consciousness of the differences between us. Indeed, those differences were for referential purposes only. Now, it appears that Kaduna has become a hotbed of a one-sided religious passion and fervour, a place where people are regularly killed in the name of God. From my recent visit to the city, I could see that the place has indeed grown, physically. However, there was a sombreness to it that could not be shaken off as my guide pointed out the areas that I used to know so well, buildings old and buildings new, all of which were there but now wearing colours of great unease. This is the new Nigeria. Yes, I saw that too, the New Nigerian Newspaper (NNN) building where I had some teeth cut in writing and reporting in many months of training. It was just sitting there where it had always been, but now forlorn, the building that is, not my teeth. Gone was its vibrancy.

    Barack Obama’s recent second victory acceptance speech titled ‘The Best is yet to come…’ includes the following:

    I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you live. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.

    I want to believe the forefathers of the Nigerian state also had something vaguely resembling this in mind. I think they sort of hoped that you and I, wherever you may be reading this, may be able to stand anywhere, shoulder to shoulder across our various divides, doing our best to raise this country up from its supine position. In this venture, what should count are the things which will not let anyone down in moments of stress. No, not a rich parent, no; it is character and skill. These were the things which marked our glorious past, the things we now peep at over our shoulders hoping that somehow they would once again catch up with us and even catapult themselves right into our present and future like magic.

    Sadly, our present is riddled with an insatiable craze for money that has every one of us tearing our hairs and eyes out as we aim for each other’s jugular. The civil servant preys on the innocent populace, the teachers on their hapless students, the traders and businessmen on their buying public and the police and politicians on the entire country. Believe me, you cannot get a more disorganised food chain than this, certainly not what God had in mind, but who am I to complain. Good thing is, we are all partakers of the results of this penkelemesi. Daily, I find that I have to weave through all the barracudas to get a few comforts. Thanks very much; I get by with prayers and fasting. But it gets worse; Masters and Ph. D holders are even now seeking to become drivers in Dangote’s firm. Ha!

    Now, that is just something, isn’t it, when intellectuals are vying for positions that require lower-level skills. But these strange goings-on are not altogether new, are they? They have been happening for a long time. It’s just that they seem to be getting stranger by the day. First, we had military rule. Ideally, the security is supposed to bring up the rear in any organisation. But here we were, rear-ended and up-ended, we stood on our heads with our feet in the air for so long we learnt to stop thinking. For one thing, we were even afraid to think lest we be arrested for that treacherous exercise.

    Then we had marauders called politicians, who looked like they had been trained by the devil himself, take over the reins of the nation’s politics. Since they came, they have not only been looting, they have been mauling the country’s spirit, norms and ethics to bits and pieces, going at it like maniacs. And they would not have to answer for it, if Atiku wins, according to reports. For one thing, they wake up from their nationally sponsored slumber only when they hear money mentioned. For another, they have succeeded in tending the plants of tribal and religious bigotry deep within each of us so much so that everywhere you go, you are required to state clearly where on earth you come from and what creed you belong to. It is not enough that you are simply called a Nigerian. There used to be the Nigerian, now there is just a northerner, a south-easterner or a south-westerner.

    People, our glorious past is clearly behind us and before us stands nothing but glorious chaos. Every group is now engaged in battering the other, propelled by fears and primitive, destructive or acquisitive instincts or all. No nation can survive on that. It is only when a people’s fears lead it to a more altruistic collaboration that it can get understanding. With understanding will come individual and collective wisdom which can lead the group out of the path of destruction into the realm of statehood.

  • Something new, something old, and something minimum wage

    Given that Nigeria pays out the highest amount of emoluments to its political jobbers in the entire world, its workers should also enjoy the same privilege. We should have the highest minimum wage in the world.

    Reader, when we bemoaned the loss of history as a subject in our schools here last week, we forgot to mention that all the while, Nigeria continues to make history. All the time, Nigeria is adding something new or old to her story, creating and recreating all the time. First, let’s have the something new.

    For instance, it is now official that Nigeria is discouraging her female folks from entering the political race. For many years, Mrs. Sarah Jubril’s efforts to become Nigeria’s president and turn our story around was not encouraged. Indeed, you could even say that she was positively discouraged because even members of her own entourage refused point-blank to believe in her: they voted for other male candidates at the primaries the year she contested. Who knows; she might have changed our history but I guess those members did not read history in school… And now, look what we have gone and made Dr. Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili do: she has withdrawn her candidature from the presidential race! I tell you, this country is too difficult for anybody to ruin – the people are doing it all by themselves!

    Now, let’s go on to something old, such as Obj’s old letter writing habit. I have not read Obj’s latest letter to Buhari but I have heard the gist. He seems to have asked the president to close shop on his political career and go look after his health because he appears to be past it. I don’t want to comment on that as I don’t really like to leave my Uber-UN observatory post and get my dainty feet muddied by the political murk. I do have some reservation about the fact that Obj had two opportunities also to right the wrongs of this country and we all know the results of those periods. And I keep asking myself: has anyone really ever written any letter to Obj, apart from his daughter or his son, that is? How come he has to be the one giving out the missives all the time? Does he want us to officially title him an epistler or epistolerian? He should tell me so that I can open a library for his letters.

    Like many people though who had the privilege of watching the president’s performance on a recent debate between the two political parties, the president’s performance really left me scratching my head. I tell you, the experience had me asking myself the question: what exactly did my parents have for breakfast when they had me? Perhaps, it can explain just how I came to have ended up in Nigeria.

    Seriously, Nigeria has not been a good experience for me, I don’t know about you. Its weird and flawed systems have thrown too many people into governance where they have no business being. Not surprisingly, the results have made for a very awkward swallowing for all of us. I believe even now, the originators of the so-called Nigerian system are looking at all the corruption, all the non-functioning or non-existing structures, and biting their scruffy nails and wailing, ‘had we known…!’ Just look at the wage system.

    I understand that the state council recently approved twenty-seven thousand Naira as minimum wage for the states, but employees of the federal government would enjoy thirty thousand Naira. As someone pointed out, this is a staggered system that will not do anyone any good because it allows for differentials. The question everyone is asking is, why the staggered system? The question I am asking is, why the staggered system? Oh sorry, is that repetitive? Seriously though, why does the government always have to look for someone to clean up its mess?

    You know, and I know that we are not running a democracy in its real sense, thankfully. So, this means that we can pretend that none of us is wiser than the other. It also means that we can pretend that the government is erring in error.

    There is no doubt that the wage story has had a very deleterious effect on the psyche and economy of the nation. On the one end of the pendulum of this country, more than half of the population (roughly eighty million, my estimate) live on less than ten thousand Naira a month on account of their educational and occupational status. On the other end of the pendulum, less than a tenth of the population (roughly five million) live dangerously on millions of Naira a month on account of unfair access to the coffers of government. A further five million live also dangerously on hundreds of thousands of Naira on account of their educational and occupational statuses. The rest are barely scraping by on trading, small jobs, cottage work, etc.

    Granted, the wage problem of this country predates this administration. However, the failure to attempt to introduce some kind of reason into it has rendered it almost barren. To start with, inflation takes more than half of what one is given. Then, it is not fair that the workers in a country should earn, gross or net, nothing substantial, while politicians in the national and state assemblies across the country earn large chunks of the country’s gross earnings in the same month just for ‘sitting’. Might I ask: are the rest of us not earning much because we’re ‘standing?’

    At the moment, the government is the largest employer of labour because it has refused to allow the private sector to grow or has killed nearly all the manufacturing concerns that kept the wage problem under control in the seventies and eighties. So no, we no longer have the small and medium scale enterprises that gave employment to a very large part of the population. Now, most people are working for one arm of the government or the other and the wage bill is now an albatross on the government’s neck. This is exactly as it designed it to be, and it is complaining.

    So, in this bind, the government finds it must keep satisfying the literally bottomless appetite of its political jobbers and also attempt to appear just to the army of labourers who work to keep the country going. That means that there are two issues involved now: how it must pay its workers and how to keep the wage problem under control. It appears that the government wants to solve the two problems in one deft stroke, and thence eat its cake and have it by staggering the minimum wage. In the language of those of us who are not politically savvy, it is called divide and rule or speaking from both sides of the mouth. Keep the people divided by favouring some and leaving others in the cold, then they won’t be able to unite and fight. This is unjust.

    If the minimum wage in Chad is $110 and $304 in South Africa, then there is no justification for keeping Nigeria’s under $100! Given that Nigeria pays out the highest amount of emoluments to its political jobbers in the entire world, its workers should also enjoy the same privilege. We should have the highest minimum wage in the world. What is good for the goose is also good for the …

  • The end of the world and other historical mysteries

    I once read a book, Did Spacemen really Colonise the Earth? Even after reading it, I am still wondering if they did or not. In other words, the book raised more questions than answers. It gave hints of what the spacemen conspiracy theory was all about but not much else. To another question, Did the Bermuda Triangle really swallow ships, planes and people walking by? it raised more dust than it settled. People are still walking by that spot and getting swallowed up, except Nigerians, and science is still none the wiser; just scratching its metaphorical head. I think we should look at the blood flowing in Nigerians’ veins.

    However, to the question, what is responsible for the dream that most people have, when they are young, of appearing to fall through space into a bottomless pit or black hole? the book says we are all reenacting our birth canal experiences, trying to go back to the womb as it were. And there I was, thinking it was because the world was moving too fast. Have you noticed that twenty-four hours seem to go really fast these days? No sooner do you go to bed than you have to be up. To be honest though, I seem to go through the black hole often when the time to submit another PU entry draws near.

    The writer of that book did not try to calculate when the world is supposed to run its course and come to an end. I think s/he left that to other clever idiots many of whom have given us various dates, some of which have long since passed. The one world’s-end I remember vividly was supposed to have come to pass on July 8, 1984 or 1988 or thereabout. The media reported though that a family had sold all they had, liquefied their assets, eaten all they had and proceeded to wait out the end under their bed. They came out from this hiding place the next day looking baffled that all was normal. I guess abnormal will seem normal to you too if you have been hiding under your bed.

    Another one gave the first day of the new millennium while yet other predictions gave 2012 and 2013, variously. Now, we are in the nineteenth year of the millennium, and the world is still rolling on, turning on its axis without any hiccups, except when I stub my foot on a stone. Naturally, I am not careless; so when that happens, it is not because I am not watching where I am going. I hit my foot against a stone only when the earth stumbles against a falling space debris. I think the debris are caused by the Bermuda triangle belching out some of the splinters from the ships it swallows, which causes the earth to stumble. Howzat for a conspiracy theory?

    Anyway, how do I know so much about the world and all these weird facts? From history, that fascinating subject that Nigeria has cancelled in its children’s curriculum. I am not a historian, as I only studied it as a subject in my school days. I am not a history teacher either but I know enough about it to appreciate its significance. Well, I also love gathering weird facts; this is why I write this column.

    I also read a number of history books, some of which told me that the world would end when Putin, Kim-Un or Trump or any of their successors would get so carried away in their conversations with their subordinates they would not know when they would lean their behinds on THE BUTTON. You know that button, the one that would make everything go KABOOM! AND KABURST!? There is no date for that one. In other words, dear reader, how long you and I have left to eat amala depends on these people having the sense to have the presence of mind to please have their conversations in their kitchens, not THE BUTTON-ROOM.

    History tells us that many people think the world has come many times to the edge of closing up shop. Look at the Heavens gate affair in which people were made to believe that the world would end in 1997. So, they packed their suitcases and met at the designated spot where they paid for space to be taken in a chariot which had been ordered to take them to heaven. Look at the tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes which some believe are signs that the end would come sooner than we think. Some even say that 2019 would be the tell-tale year when the KABURST! would happen.

    You know, history has many uses, apart from scaring us with predictions. History puts us on our toes. It helps us remember what happened the last time we smoked in bed (the bed caught fire); the last time we left the gas on (we had to drive all that distance back home to put it off); the last time we left the tap open because there was no water (the house got flooded); the last time you asked the children to serve themselves directly from the pot of stew (the pot became empty of meat) … There is no end to the number of things that have happened because of one thing or the other. That is history: it piles up one fact after another. If it is so important to life, how come then the powers that be in our educational system decided to remove it from the secondary school list of subjects?

    Seriously, it is only history that can help us appreciate the consequences of actions because it enables us see the action before, during and after its evolution. For example, through history, we can truly appreciate the events preceding the first world war and how needless the war (and all wars) was! Through history, the children can appreciate the events leading to Nigeria’s independence and historical development since that time till this moment. That is what can help them situate not only themselves but even the events of the present.

    Everyone must know where he is coming from in order to understand where he is going to. Without the affordances of history and its subject contents, the present crop of children, this Generation X, cannot fully appreciate the sacrifices their ancestors made in order to bring them this far. They cannot appreciate the contributions of some of the genuine leadership this country has enjoyed. All the reference points they will have will continue to revolve around the thieving, conniving embezzlers, cut-throat scramblers and conspirators, deceivers and power-hungry mutants that many Nigerians have become. God forbid that these should become the heroes of our Gen. X.

    I honestly do not know the reason behind the removal of history from the secondary school subject list. I have pondered and wondered: could it be because there are no teachers? I believe that the nation has produced enough teachers for its need. Could it be based on the commonly held notion that the country needs to encourage its technological development, hence the need to orient the children’s focus by emphasizing science subjects more? I’m reluctant to believe this because science itself makes use of history. So, what can be the logic behind this action?

    Whatever be the logic, the action does not spell good for the country. It is an experiment going wrong. Let’s bring back the history subject, so that we can truly thrash the many mysteries surrounding our existence: when it started, where it is going, and why I can never seem to find the things I have hidden when I need them.

  • What’s up my sleeve this year…?

    Politics is the cheapest and easiest way now to suddenly come out of crippling poverty and into really obscene money without working in this country… All the politicians in the national assembly and states are practically immune from worry, work, poverty, recession, death or even the world suddenly ending

    I have been learning the collective nouns that describe groups of things, and it happened quite by accident. I was searching for what one could call a group of new year’s resolutions and instead stumbled on the improbable things that things are called. That was how I learnt for instance that when my best enemies, snakes, band together, they are called Dens. That is not so surprising, considering that they are nothing but robbers anyway. I also learnt that when my second best enemies, alligators, band together, they are called Congregations. And I thought to myself that it is no wonder they are so prayerful, seeing how they always bow and bob their heads up and down before they snap their jaws on their victims, like many people I know.

    I then went in search of the collective noun for my third best enemies, politicians. I came across a Crash of… no, that belongs to rhinos; an Ambushment of… no, that belongs to tigers; Flamboyance of … no, that belongs to flamingos; Destruction of… no, that belongs to cats. Truly, come to think of it, anyone of these terms could very well describe our crop of politicians but they have not been so officially designated. Who am I then to so name them?

    So, I continued searching and came across a Pomposity of … no, that belongs to professors; a Lechery of … no, that belongs to priests(!); a Confusion of… that belongs to philosophers; a Worship of … wait, that belongs to writers! Dis English sef! Ah, finally, there it was: a band of politicians is called … wait for it … a Lie! That’s right, a Lie of politicians. Ha! Ha! It, sort of, explains everything, does it not? It explains why they say one thing and do another, why they can’t be trusted and why I am determined that my New Year’s resolution is to avoid them altogether. By the way, they have other names but I cannot mention them on this column; seeing this is a family-friendly newspaper.

    Actually, I have many resolutions up my sleeve but I will not tell you, cause then I will have to change them. However, after taking stock of the previous year and all its crashes, ambushments, destructions, and confusions, I decided I needed a brand new resolution against falling prey to the Lies of Politicians, seeing this is an election year and all. I have resolved that I do not want to end up in Court; wait, that belongs to … kangaroos.

    Anyway, I have this whole load of resolutions which I am determined to enforce. First, I have determined that this year’s elections will not be violent. Oh yes, I have the authority to determine that; and so do you, come to think of it. As a citizen of this country, I can decide for the country and follow up on it. Even if it is not officially gazetted, I believe I can muster enough will within myself to shun violence, and to tell as many people as possible to do the same as I am telling you now, dear reader, and come to think of it, so can you. Then, come voting day, I will bring out my card, vote and leave. If someone were to shove a weapon in my face, too bad for him. I promise you I have enough presence of mind to reach into my purse and whip out my own … LET’S HAVE A PEACEFUL ELECTION card and shove it in his face too. I bet you thought I was going to say ‘gun’. Naaaah! Very likely, at the sight of a gun, I will pick up my legs and …

    Seriously though, too many people have expressed the fear that the coming elections would be violent given the very high stakes involved. I expect people to be rather desperate about the elections all right, and we will continue to experience this fear until you and I take some resolutions and stick to them. You and I know the cause: there is too much poverty in the land. Salaries are no longer cutting it for many people; politics is the cheapest and easiest way now to suddenly come out of that crippling poverty and into really obscene money without working in this country. Just look at the national assembly and the states close to you. All the politicians in those places are practically immune from worry, work, poverty, recession, death or even the world suddenly coming to an end!

    The reason is very simple: you and I have not made up our minds on whether or not we should fight the government to a standstill on the wages of politicians-in-office. This column, and others I believe, has wailed and cried that it is not right for governors to earn so much while in office and still put themselves on the state’s pension list to continue to earn the same colossal sums for life! It is not right!!! Yet, the public has not moved a muscle save to only wink at them, condemn them in the daytime and worship them in the night time. This is why people have become desperate about politics. Anyway, I am resolved this year to not let sleeping dogs lie quietly any more. There is nothing logic cannot accomplish.

    I have also been peeved by the way the prices of goods rise in this country at the smell of salary increase; it’s as if the market has a long hand that it dips into my pocket, all the time waiting at the door of my success and eavesdropping with its gaping mouth. I will no longer have that. Right now, the labour movement has been negotiating the national minimum wage increase and I, as a labourer, am watching them. I am sure the market is also watching me watch the labour organisation who are also watching the government. So, you can see there is a lot at stake, and a lot of watching.

    I am determined though that this time, the market is not going to dip its long hand into my pocket when that announcement is made. Oh yes, I will eat, thank you; but, I will eat what I grow, raise or logically persuade to come into my pot. For this reason, I am preparing my flower pots for okro, ewedu, efo, tomatoes, etc.; I will no longer use absence of land as an excuse.

    My aquarium will no longer house a golden fish that I can’t eat but will get down to proper work and house some real fish I can chew on. Even the dog will stand guard against intruders; everyone has to bend the back to fill the stomach. I will also see what I can do about my neighbours’ chickens that constantly disturb me with their clucking; there is no reason why they can’t give me an egg or two per day as payment for the disturbance. So you see, I am prepared, sir. What about you?

    Trust me, I am just getting started with my resolutions; I have since learnt that there is nothing like a house-load of resolutions to get you going. So, given the spate of insecurity in the land, I have resolved that no intrepid thief would be allowed near me anymore. I have resolved to school as many of my countrymen as I can possibly reach in the art of self-sustenance, and teach them the dignity in labour. In this 2019, all hands must be on deck. Not to do so will be… Cowardice: that’s the group name for dogs. What are your own resolutions?

  • Happy New Year

    I have had to say ‘Amen’ to so many prayers that God’s own living saints have thrown my way since this holiday began. It has been like that each year but you won’t hear me complain. No sir; I have accepted it as my lot in life to receive your prayers…

    A Happy New Year to you, dear reader. May you see nothing more dangerous than ants crossing your sugar this year. Please say ‘Amen’. I have had to say ‘Amen’ to so many prayers that God’s own living saints have thrown my way since this holiday began. It has been like that each year but you won’t hear me complain. No sir; I have accepted it as my lot in life to receive your prayers, so keep them coming. I know that as you have been praying for me, someone, somewhere, is also praying for you. Remember, what goes around eventually comes around, be it good, be it baaaad…

    I sincerely want to thank you for keeping faith with this column throughout this last year. Heck, many have kept faith with it since it began. I know that for many, it is because they are regular buyers of this newspaper, and they are not ones to waste their money by skipping any column, even if it is written by the devil himself. I think I told you about a woman who quarreled with her pastor and the pastor was sure he would not see her again. Surprisingly, she turned up the next Sunday and declared that she would not miss her service even if the devil was at the pulpit. And I said, tell them, sister! Anyway, these fine people are determined to get their money’s worth by not letting a single letter of their newspaper go to waste without it being read.

    I know many there are that read PU for the jokes… No, very few? Seriously? And there I am dredging the blessed things out of my chest like a tired magician bringing out hat trick after hat trick, only it’s the same rabbits that keep recycling themselves. Never mind, one day, the rabbits soon discover to their surprise that they have been dealing with the real Houdini all along and they just did not know it. Ok, some do get our jokes. To those who do, I say thank you indeed.

    Indeed, I really need to specially appreciate someone who has consistently undertaken to fatten my GSM account with so much credit that has left me speechless. I can only pray that the individual will also be surprised by good things. Now, I do not know what has motivated him or her to do this, but I’m hoping it has been in appreciation of my jokes, and not a case of someone trying to pay me off to please keep quiet so that others can be heard.

    It reminds me of a joke about a man and a woman praying at a church gathering. The man’s prayer was that his multimillion Naira contract would come through. The woman’s prayer was that God would grant her just five thousand Naira to start a business. However, the woman’s voice was louder than the man’s. When the man could no longer hear himself think let alone pray, he brought out five thousand Naira and gave the woman so that she would get out of God’s way and his way and he could pray in peace. Overjoyed, the woman ran out of the gathering shouting something about the speed with which God hears prayers. So, whatever motivates the good Samaritan fattening my GSM account, I say may the juice never dry.

    So many events are chasing each other for mention this first PU entry in the year, and choosing among them amounts to asking me to choose between heaven and hell: my inclination is towards heaven but my deeds are definitely pointed towards hell. Should I choose the way money is being spent on elections and none for workers, yet the president is asking us to let him concentrate? And here I was thinking that the matter was so simple… Which one will benefit Nigeria’s future more? Oh, I guess that is why he needs his superpowers to zero his super vision on them issues and choose one. So many of us are choosing things these days.

    Should I choose the fact that women are doing so many things forbidden them in the twentieth century such as voting and being voted for? Oh, they could vote but not voted for or not vote but be voted for? Now, you’re confusing me. Anyway, there is this hot topic about women entering forbidden temples in India. That is how you know that the world is really coming to its end. Or is it an end now?

    Perhaps, we should take the worrying fact that as many as 39m people in the world presently are blind, as the world celebrates the Braille day. Now, that is truly baffling, considering the giant strides that medical science has made. You would think that preventing blindness should be no more than child’s play to our hard working doctors. And, talking of doctors, there is also the news that many of them are fleeing the shores of Nigeria right now because they are no longer allowed to practice their art in peace and that is disturbing their scientific minds. Nigeria really needs to wake up NOW and fight to keep her doctors so that she would not need to import Cuban doctors later.

    Maybe, I should complain about the way people are now flashing their four fingers at me by way of greeting. I suspect it says a lot more; could it be a subtle campaign strategy by the president and other members of his party, do you think? Or, I should go for this topic: the passing of one of my revered teachers, Professor Sophie Oluwole. Do you remember that I once told you that one of my teachers said she was practicing her religion on earth because she did not want to be surprised when she got to heaven and it turned out that she needed to have practiced it and she would not be able to come back to rectify it? Well, she was that teacher, and … She left many footsteps to follow, including our philosophical inclinations on this column. Rest well, ma.

    Each of these topics, and many more, deserves a special write-up on its own but not today. Rather, we are just going to sit here and ruminate on our past deeds and see how our future deeds can be better shaped than our present deeds have been so that when these become our past deeds, they will impact our future deeds more reasonably than our present deeds have been by our past deeds. Now, did you get that? I sure did not.

    Anyway, to those who have kept faith with this column, I hope to continue to try to not let you down. The jokes will continue as usual, interspersed with a bit of facts of course. Or, is it the other way round now? I definitely think the holiday victuals are still doing things in my head. To those who do not read PU, I promise to continue to get my rulers ready to give your knuckles the good old raps when we meet. To all, I undertake to continue to present my own philosophical interpretations of our national abnormal behaviour as a people to you. If you find yourself guilty of any of these abnormalities that Nigerians take for granted, then please change. If you are not guilty, then please join your voice to mine and that of others to condemn the behaviour. That way, the society can be sanitised. Have a fun-filled year, with plenty of adventures.

  • An Ode to a New Year’s Morn

    Two hours to the approach of midnight of December 31/January 1, many, including the ones not even on nodding or talking terms with God, find their ways to the church to tell God how much they have forgiven him. In return, they are prepared to ‘be good’. I tell you, January 1 the hopefullest day of the year…

    An ode, says my English dictionary, is a short poetical composition often set to music. Since I cannot claim to be either a good poet or a lyricist or am I even remotely able to write musical notes, that leaves me no choice but to adopt the other, often ignored, definition of the ode: a poetic expression characterized by noble sentiments. I will ignore the poetic part and gaze more at the nobility.

    I mean, our poets are very fine people, to be sure, but I really do not want to go around writing in the style of Keats’ lyrical ballads or odes. I mean, one has to have a lot of food in him or her to wax that lyrical. And, if you’re familiar with the Nigerian story, you would have noticed that there is a dearth of that stuff in the land, hunger I mean, not lyrics. So, yes, I think I better stick to expressing those noble sentiments simply.

    Jokes apart, isn’t it great that you and I have been able to make it this far? At year’s end, it is customary to take stock. So, let’s sing an ode to the New Year’s morn. Typically, odes are melancholic, and rather romantic. We neither want to go the way of romance nor do we want to adopt the sad tone. True, many things in the country right now are rather depressing. Our politicians have so plucked all our feathers as a people that we have no covering left to us again, yet, they are not letting up. The other day, someone announced at a gathering that a piece of cloth had been found and the owner should please come and claim it. By the time the owner came forward with proof (she was tying a similar piece), the cloth had been stolen. That is how bad things have got.

    Yet, I believe we can be cheery. We have had an interesting year, no? You have patiently waded through this column, and watched my jokes hit home or fall through. You have patiently weighed the references to bring out the senses in them. Honestly, I would ask you to take a bow right now if we were in an opera house, but you can still please give yourself a nod of satisfaction for good charitable work.

    On my part, I patiently reflected all your anger and angst over our public office holders. More importantly, I believe I sufficiently conveyed your indignation over the plundering of the state by our politicians. Like Atlas, I also carried your distaste at the gross, the vulgar, the coarse, or shameless in all of us on my shoulders from one end of the shoreline to the other. Now, my shoulders are shot, but I don’t mind. I was delighted to serve.

    So, together, we have gone down to the nitty-gritty of life on earth and in Nigeria. In doing that, we have done each other good service over the year, but believe me, I have been the better for it. You have inspired me to continue punching these computer buttons even through thick and thin, rain, sleet or storm. It is because I think you matter and deserve better (than what the rulers are giving you, that is). I have also been inspired by the jokes I wanted to try out.

    The new year will soon be rolling in, and we need to prepare for it. How best to do it if not by rolling out the drums, ha ha?! You get it: ballads, odes, drums…?! Oh, never mind. Anyway, January 1, apart from being New Year’s day, is also remembered as the World Family Day and also World Day of Peace. It is a lot to have on one’s plate, I grant, but I’m guessing we can also add that it should be the World Happiness day. Oh, I see that one day has already been earmarked for that. I still think it should be January 1.

    Going by experience, it has always been the only day in the year that the barometer of hope and happiness has rung 101/100. I have everybody’s resolutions to prove it. For example, many people’s no-more-drinking resolution has usually lasted through … that holy day, January 1. Many people’s resolution to not abuse, shout at or oppress others has lasted only through … you guessed it. Worst of all, many people’s no more embezzling resolution has lasted only through … thank you for completing that properly for me. Hope springs eternal, always.

    I also have everybody’s zest for life on January I to prove my stand. About two hours to the approach of midnight of December 31/January 1, many, including the ones not even on nodding or talking terms with God, find their ways to the church to tell God how much they have forgiven him. In return, they are prepared to ‘be good’. I tell you, January 1 is the hopefullest day of the year, even if that zest lasts no more than that day. And yet, everyone swears each year would be different.

    So, to ensure that this new year’s resolutions last for more than one day, we must be prepared to ensure world peace and see to the family. To ensure peace, we must appeal to each other to learn to curb our appetites, beginning from the American President, Mr. Donald Trump, the North Korean president, Kim Yong-Un, the tribal warlords all over the world, and me as the president of my kitchen. All of us must realise that the world is only useful to us if it is respected and guarded. Too much of anything is bad – be it weapons, money, food. Just try this: whenever you come into a lot of money, try and get through an entire roast chicken. If you can, then try two… three… Please let me know how you get along afterwards.

    Seriously, peace comes in the realisation that the world does not, and cannot belong to an individual, group or even a tribe. Failure to realise that no matter how much we try, no single individual can ever own all the money in Nigeria, let alone the world, is what makes many strive to hold the air. When we know that it is futile to even try to own all the armory, land, money, houses, jewelry, clothing, cars, chicken, etc., that are in this world, then perhaps we can truly learn to enjoy what we have. It’s called live and let live. That is the secret of peace. I have said it before and I will say it again, no one can own this world – God already does.

    Rather than seek to own the world, I think man would do well to mind his or her family. The best thing one can have is the family. It is the foundational structure of the society. The society is today destroyed because we have neglected that foundation. Too many successful men (and women too) have chosen to pursue shadows in the form of wealth and fame and have neglected their family to their hurt.

    Someone described the family as the people who are compelled by nature to love you. To me, the family is the last bastion of rest for the weary soul in the battles of the world. It is the place of comfort, acceptance and encouragement when everything else fails or succeeds. Take time today to celebrate your family or put it right. Your family is what you make it to be.

    Please don’t mind me; I’m still working on that ode … Happy New Year’s Morn!