The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • If laughter is indeed the best medicine, why can it not cure toothache?

    Nigerians do have a great sense of humour… It lies in doing exactly those things that go against nature, reason and universal good judgment, defy any human understanding, or belong in the animal kingdom. They are the things that give us toothache, which laughter can obviously not cure.

    Laughter, the sages write, is really the best medicine. They go further to say that a merry heart does the body good; they go even further to claim that life, love and laughter are intricately tied together. Even more preposterously, they claim that those who know how to laugh at life’s situations live longer. This means of course that those who don’t know how to laugh soon wither off. Well, all I can say is that whoever says this has obviously never had a toothache.

    Anyone who has ever had a bout of toothache can testify to a number of things. One, it begins quietly, often when you’re cracking a bone. The ‘crack’ sound you hear from the cavernous yonder often catches you by surprise. Two, it is no respecter of persons. It would have a king writhing in pain, on the bare floor, underneath his expensive throne, crown flung aside most disrespectfully, the same way it would seize a market maid. Thirdly, it never strikes in the morning when you can quickly redirect your route towards the dentistry. No sir, the blasted thing always strikes deep in the night when help is anywhere but right where you are; or else it strikes at the beginning of the weekend, ruining your every chance of enjoying that cow-leg pepper-soup you skimped, saved or accepted bribery to buy. I tell you, when the toothache comes on one, there are no age restrictions on the shouts of pain as you writhe and respond with irritated malice to any question from the rest of the healthy world. ‘Where are the car keys?’ ‘Un hoe, un mo mont’, which, at other normal times, would probably have come out as ‘In here, in my mouth’.

    I have been a faithful student of laughter; I have even done researches on the sort of humour that produces it. And they are many. The quirky twist of understanding or words is one source. Take the instance of a well-known thief caught in the act of stealing someone’s purse only to turn around to claim that he actually thought it was the one he had lost earlier. Or, take the case of a man addressed by his wife as ‘Hon’. Asked what it meant, his wife replied it was a term of endearment to which the man replied, ‘After forty years, it is a term of endurement’.

    The readiest source of humour of course is when animals are given human characteristics and they are depicted slaving away at the stove, playing cards or tennis or even driving. The act of animals taking on human frailties brings out the ridiculousness of those humans some more, and makes the animals look like saints. It is obvious that all the while the poor animals are thinking, ‘Are you sure human beings do these things?’

    Has it struck you that no matter how much you prod and joke, Nigerians do not seem to appreciate humour? I am willing to be corrected on this but most Nigerians I see appear to have given their sense of humour a permanent holiday. Indeed, they all go around as if toothache has taken hold of their heads and they cannot generate or even respond to laughter. Everyone is going around with dead-pan seriousness as they grapple with the reality of life in Nigeria – a life of no water, no electricity, no food, no health, no this, no that – it is all they can do to stay alive, let alone smile. The market woman has no joke for the buyer, only a frown of ‘I beg commot for my front if you no fit buy’. Ditto for the petrol attendant, the taxi driver, and all the people you meet every day.

    Don’t get me wrong. I occasionally come across genuine humour merchants, no, not professional ones – those are simply plying their trade – I mean, people who generate spontaneous laughter from any given situation they find themselves in but they are too abominably few. Just the other day, I cut into someone’s lane in traffic with my car and, quite offended, he shouted, ‘Stupid woman. Go get a driver!’ Now, how is that for a response? I mean, how was that supposed to help my driving? I have found that Nigerians do not respond with mirth to the many contradictions that surround them.

    Indeed, I sometimes I think the little humour in the country can only be found at Lagos bus stops where the country prefers to let its citizens screech their ways around the land like crazed mice drunk, skin and teeth, on punch. So, instead of turning into the refined, well-nurtured citizens who board vehicles gently like the rest of the civilized world, we are turning into the kind of people who scratch their living out of the eyes of others. Then you hear ‘Shod, Shod, Shod’ hollered all day long at passers-by in Oshodi and you are wondering if a lost gentleman is wanted to shod the earth, not knowing they are only calling out a destination.

    Sometimes, too, you can find some humour in the Niger Delta where so much oil is flowing out and so much money is flowing, paradoxically, into the ground. The other day, a report was given that the highest unemployment level is in the Niger Delta region. How come, with so much wealth flowing into the place? The report went on to say that the problem is that people there do not work. Money is ‘just shared’; factories are not set up; tomorrow is not thought of, it does not exist. And, when an indigene is employed, I hear, he simply contracts the work out to a non-indigene who ‘reports’ back to the indigene with an agreed per centage of the wage earned. Hilarious. Can no one there appreciate where all this is going to lead? That we will eventually have a region of contractors?

    May be, too, we are too sad to find the humour in the rather tragic and illogical situation unfolding in the northern part of Nigeria, where the millions of unschooled children are even now taking advantage of the decades of neglect from their leaders. Now, guess who is crying. No, it’s not the children who were the victims; ’tis the leaders who were the neglectors. Believe me, it’s not funny when one’s teeth are set on edge because one’s father has eaten sour grapes. You can not only not taste of any brew, let alone one’s own, you can also be forgiven for not showing any sense of humour.

    Me, I continue to find humour all around me. Take the national honours list for instance. Over many years, the nation has now become disenchanted with that list. If it is not filled with the names of crooks, it is filled with the names of serving politicians and you wonder where the difference is. Every year, the list contains the names of the nation’s primary ruiners, on whom we gleefully confer great honours. Come on!

    Perhaps, I should correct myself. Nigerians do have a great sense of humour. It does not lie in the universally acknowledged quirks of character, actions or even words. It does not lie in attempting to make light of different situations that accost us daily. It lies in our doing exactly those things that go against nature, reason, good judgment; that defy any human understanding, or belong in the animal kingdom. They are the things that give us toothache, which laughter can obviously not cure. Happy smile week!

    • This article was first published many years ago but is reprinted today owing to its relevance

  • Have literacy, will travel

    I cannot begin to tell you what reading and books have done to me. They have made me cry. I remember the tears I shed when the canes came down heavy on my back for not being able to put the letters together fast enough for one of my teachers back then. But once the letters came together and formed words in my mouth, they seemed to hop and dance gaily as I travelled nimbly through them library books. I became the advertisement for ‘Have literacy; Will travel’. Back then, though, I had no idea that what I was experiencing was the power of illiteracy and its counterpart, literacy.

    My teachers had the tough duty of teaching me to read. I was not their only ward. So, the entire pack of us in the class had to measure up or be disgraced. Naturally, I was disgraced, and this is how it happened. I remember how the teacher in one of my very early classes devised the clever method of dividing the class into two: those who could, and those who couldn’t. Until I could read, I heard nothing, I saw nothing and I said nothing.

    I tell you, children are sensitive. The parent or teacher who can exploit this fact for the child’s good will be richly rewarded. My teacher exploited this fact by simply separating the haves (with motivation to read) from the other haves (with motivation to sleep and play). She also explained in clear terms why she had separated the class. In other words, if you found yourself on the left side, you could read; if you found yourself on the right side of the class, you could not read. Somehow, through lack of effort, I found myself on the right side of the class.

    I never knew what pain was until that day. No, I err. There was yet another instance when another teacher used an equally clever and even more effective tactic on me to learn the Lord’s prayer. He simply placed two thick canes on my desk for everyone to see and throughout the day, my tears mixed with my lesson notes. By the next day, I had learnt my lesson. I think I’ve told you about that before. There you go, I repeat myself often, right? I learnt that from my teachers too.

    Anyway, as I was saying, the pain of my illiteracy was never so sharp as that day. From being put in that row of could-nots that day, I felt that I was not allowed to mix with the others who could. They were my betters because they could read. Bless my little heart, I responded to the segregation with profound sorrow and could scarcely touch my food when I got home, although I am told that by nightfall, I had recovered enough to devour my share of food, and then some.

    What I am trying to say is that it did not occur to me to respond to the teacher’s tactic with hatred. At that time, the teacher was always right. Instead, I responded by sitting down to my chalk and slate, and practiced my alphabets. The rest, as they say, is history. Yes, dear, I was no more than six years old or so then; so you can imagine how deeply things could hurt. Yes, dear, that was the age you were allowed to darken the doors of a classroom then, and with good reason too.

    I believe many parents would respond differently. The moneybags among us, especially those who have just come into loads and loads of money through the Nigerian system called corruption, would have raised the roof of the skies and threatened thunder and lightning over the teacher’s method. How dared him/her give their child a complex? I understand that in the developed countries, that kind of action was enough to fill the child with enough insecurity that would give his/her psychoanalyst a few years’ job security. Not so me; I was made of sterner stuff. I simply showed the teacher by learning to read and write. Since then, I have become the advertisement for proving that anything is possible, ‘if water can pass through a stone…’ I know, I know, I stole that line, but if the cap fits, who am I not to wear it?

    The other day, I read that the Minister for Education lamented that the illiteracy level in Nigeria is high. I want to say categorically and clearly that the high illiteracy level of this country is the government’s own design. Half a century after independence, more than half of the country’s population still cannot read and write. It is because the national government did not want a literate population. It’s a shame really.

    One of the things the new national government should have put in place upon getting independence was compulsory and free education. This is what the developed countries did, and they are now reaping the result. Instead our national government at that time left the education of the citizens to those who could struggle for it and to parents who were able. Today, the nation is the poorer for this poor sense of judgment. The result is that we have two or more generations of people who can neither read nor write and all the benefits that could have accrued from them are dying with them.

    When you can read, you not only can have flights of fancy, you can say for sure when the other person is talking rubbish. I guess this is what the government never wanted. It has never, and apparently still does not want, its citizens to tell it to shut up. Frankly, I am wanting to tell the government to shut up right now but I don’t want to sleep in Kirikiri yet.

    Nevertheless, I would like to remind the government that this column, and many others before and after it, have equally lamented that the government was breeding an illiterate populace by accident or design through not making reading materials tariff-free. Reading materials include books, newspapers, magazines, more books, etc. Add to that the downturn in the economy that has made many families push books to the back of the list, never to be visited. AS IT IS NOW, MOST STUDENTS CANNOT EVEN BUY THE BOOKS THEY NEED IN THE CLASSROOM. MANY OF THEM READ ONLY THEIR TEACHERS, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.

    I think that it does not help our developmental efforts to keep these reading materials under the same tariff class as other consumables that do not improve the individual. Cloths/clothes, furniture, etc., are materials that only add to the comfort of the person. Reading materials do a lot more. They free the personhood of the individual, allow him/her to cross the borders of the mind and inspect every conceivable human emotion and will. Reading helps the individual attain true freedom of spirit so that he/she can understand more about man and life.

    We cannot begin to talk of developmental efforts while a large number of people remain illiterate in the country. This large number constitutes the untapped work-force of the country. They also constitute an army that is very dangerous indeed. Apart from the fact that they are not being helped to reach their potential, they cannot help others and they become hindrances to development.

    The government must exercise its power to free up tariffs and taxes on books and other reading materials that cannot be produced in the country. More importantly, what can be produced in the country must also be encouraged through tax reliefs so that newspapers and books can be available to all. Then we can say of all Nigerians, ‘Have Literacy? Do Travel please.’

     

  • Mr. Ayefele and the superior logic of bulldozers

    Arguments are dicey things; you just never can tell how they will end: in a shake of hands, a shake of fists, a bloody nose, a hospital stay or a coffin. Moreover, arguments often involve the deployment of all kinds of logic: reason, muscle display or just plain old might. Reason is when you pit knowledge against knowledge. For example, I might go: ‘this housekeeping money is just enough for my hair this month’, and you may go, ‘that’s fine; it would be a change of diet for all of us in the house.’ It is only reasonable.

    Muscle display is when you get drunk and throw a bottle at someone. Better still, it is when Schwarzenegger throws his enemy over the wall and moves on as if it’s all in a day’s work. Might, as we understand it, is when someone decides to abandon the fine power of superior argument and pull out the superior logic of force. It is also called forcing your way, a tactic that is often used by the intellectually not so superior force, such as a government.

    In Ibadan, recently, the superior logic of the bull dozer marked the end of an argument between the government of Oyo State, and Mr. Yinka Ayefele, the well-known gospel musician. The argument was said to have been over the musician’s N800m Music House, the location of which the government said violated the city’s urban plans and consequently demolished part of it. Obviously, no one told Mr. Ayefele that arguments could end in demolitions.

    Normally, demolitions bring an interesting mix of reactions. When a child demolishes his first plate of amala, there is general clapping. Even when a sick or hospitalised person demolishes a plate of amala, oh joy! When a building is old, crumbling and threatening the lives of those around it, everyone heaves a sigh of relief to see it come down via the action of a bulldozer. People are so relieved they are almost kissing the big, lumpy machine. However, when I demolish my own plate of amala, as I frequently do, everyone just goes, ‘umm, mama!’ There is also a general prayer that the farmers should never go on strike, for my sake.

    Let’s get back to our story. Please note that I am not here to adjudicate but let’s hear both sides. According to stories emanating from the government’s side, Mr. Ayefele’s building violated the laid down plans for the area, obstructed the view of his neighbours who could not see the road for the houses, and caused some traffic problems of a general kind. Besides, the building was originally approved for a suite of offices rather than for a radio station, Fresh FM, they said. Besides, the government claimed to have given lots of notices before it finally moved to do the demolishing.

    On his part, the aggrieved man is said to have believed that the whole thing is politically motivated, given that he claims to have government-approved papers to back up the structure. People also seem to believe that the radio station is being haunted thus because it is critical of the government.

    On my part, I find it surprising that any Nigerian government, federal, state of local, could move so adroitly and fast. And this is why I am commenting on this issue. Honestly, I find it fascinating that any of our governments can be so efficient. It is interesting that they can take a decision and mobilise to execute it so promptly.

    To start with, the action took place at 5.30 a.m.! Reader, it is nigh impossible to get the government to do anything that is in your interest at 12 noon, during working hours, let alone so early in the morning! So, I am wondering what could have motivated this cock-crow-at-dawn, boy scout kind of action.

    Worse, the demolition action is said to have taken place on a Sunday! Holy of holies, that is not even a work day! How were the workers enticed to leave their beds at that unholy hour on that holy day to carry out, if they must, something that should be done on a work day and during official work hours?

    Seriously, on a good day, you normally can hardly get a government to do something that is in your interest for love or money during legitimate work hours. Yet, here we are, hearing that a government readily mobilised itself to work against somebody’s interest at a very odd hour on a most unlikely day. What then are we to think?

    First, I am to think that the government has been deceiving us all along. The impression that the whole world has right now is that government cannot work in Africa. I think they think it has something to do with our backwardness. Little do they know that it has a lot rather to do with the backwardness of the operators of government who all appear to have been specially selected, since independence, from the back of the classroom. It is now obvious that government can work smartly if they do not lack political will, are literate and have an enemy in their sight. Any government that can order a 5.30 a.m. Sunday demolition can work if it wants to work, especially on perceived foes.

    The tragedy of our time is also that our human apparatuses of governance do not understand the rubrics of their position neither are they able to even slightly apprehend the basic letters of their functions. That is what else I am taking from this. Even if it is a given that the structure housing the radio station has violated a law, surely there are avenues for eliminating state errors in cases like this one.

    Don’t get me wrong. I believe in the rule of law. I even advocate the observance of the rule and spirit of the law in its entirety. In that alone we have our safety net and sanity as a society. If indeed Mr. Ayefele went over and beyond his boundaries when building (as many people do), then he should take responsibility. All we ask is that laws should not be selectively enforced. For instance, there are so many petrol stations that should be demolished in practically all of our cities because they are inappropriately placed. Yet, because they have not stepped on the toes of anyone in government, they are let alone. Obviously, in this jungle governance, you need to keep your feet close to yourself.

    I also learnt what most of us already know but refused to tell me, that two wrongs do not make a right. According to the reports, Mr. Ayefele was said to have sent his wife to the governor, and she was begging him from ’11 p.m. to 4.30 a.m.’ not to demolish the structure ‘on her knees’??!! (Now, I have a whole lot of problems with that – if true – but this is not the forum for raising my objections. I think I’ll do that when I take Mr. Ayefele to court for wife misuse or maybe even abuse, I don’t know; I’m still thinking).

    Naturally, this argument has not been stilled. Both sides are, however, claiming right of reason, but only one side had both the muscle display and the might. How did you guess it was Mr. Ayefele? You, clever you! Anyway, in the court of the land, who gets this argument remains to be seen. In the people’s court however, Mr. Ayefele wins hands down on the superior logic of emotion, fellow feeling and same boat syndrome. As his name teaches us though, Mr. Ayefele, if he is right, can take solace in the fact that most government functionaries find, sooner than later, that indeed, aye fele.

  • See how this country is stealing the youth of its Youths

    Sometime ago, I had the privilege to take a young man, no older than eighteen, to task on some of his country’s political policies which bordered on the treatment of a minority group in that country. As best, if not as testily, as he could, the young man defended the country with the excuse that the group refuses to budge from its old, tradition-soaked ways. I know many people who won’t budge from their tradition-soaked seats either, and no one dares ignore them such as our great grandpas and grandmas in politics.

    As I was saying, my interviewee had temporarily emigrated from his country just to meet and know someone in another country, that’s all. He was on a mission to satisfy his curiosity regarding the individual, his target. He met the person, stayed a while doing odd jobs for survival and then headed back home. He was on a pilgrimage to satisfy a longing in his soul.

    Now, no one can completely take care of all the longings on his/her soul, I grant, but sadly, it would appear that many Nigerians, particularly at the top, either do not have or have lost their souls. You know what they are, don’t you, souls I mean? They are those little things men and women carry around with them in the pockets of their shadows. You say shadows don’t have pockets?! I beg to differ.

    Anyway, let me tell you what happens when we lose our souls. Contrary to popular belief, we do not gain the whole world, we lose it. Secondly, you’re given a hefty bill when you sell your soul. I can give you so many examples of people who got the bill after losing their souls in exchange for the whole world. After a while, they realised they did not want the whole world, they just wanted their souls back. Nigerians are one big example.

    Nigerians constitute one classical group of the soulless. It’s only in Nigeria you can find someone who puts the nation’s billions of naira into his account like one crazy winner at a poker game, not to do anything in particular with it, but for the sheer pleasure of seeing it there. It’s only in Nigeria that old, tottering politicians would insist on staying in power to continue to wreak havoc on a hapless nation. It’s only in Nigeria that an ineffective government that is tall on excuses would insist on remaining in power so it can continue to make the people miserable. And it’s only in Nigeria that youths would be so beleaguered they have no youth to speak of.

    Nigeria is guilty of a lot of things, but the most heinous to me is still the fact that it has stolen the innocence of its youths. First, it forgets to draw up a programme of development for this group so that each one can find his/her solid identity as a Nigerian whichever part of the country he/she may come from.

    Next, the country’s adult population builds a large national nest of adults for youths to watch and copy, exhibiting the worst kinds of human behaviour anyone can possibly lay down for others to follow. These behaviour traits include lack of patriotism, murderous instincts, selfish soldiery, gingham-like patterns of recklessness and irresponsibility, unabashed selfishness, and other character traits for which names have not been invented.

    Then, the country steals the future of its own children. Imagine that. Because of the irresponsibility of this adult group, Nigerian youths now have anxiety syndromes over what may become of them in the country. How does it manifest? It manifests in the rabid dream of every Nigerian child to run to the United States of Heaven… sorry, America.

    Nigerian youths have no dreams regarding the country. They do not lie awake thinking of that age-old question: what can one do for one’s country? They cannot dream for the country because they have not been handed any tools to dream with: no good housing system, no credible transportation system, no affordable health system, no power generating system, and so many things. The average person is left struggling each day just to live. So, the youths do not dream for this country, they dream about leaving this country. This should make each of us look ourselves in the mirror and ask: how did I contribute to killing the ability of the Nigerian youth to dream?

    There is worse yet. Many youths there are who think that making money will solve the problem, and too many adults there are ready to teach them. The baffling thing is that many of them have no idea why they want to make money except that they have noticed that their papas and mamas worship at the foothill of money every day. They have seen too many adults in their environment listen to what the rich man says (that’s why they say money talks); consult the rich people in their lives (money is powerful); or obey what the rich man commands in the family (money knows all).

    Too many youths have seen that to bury any family member, people wait for the rich; chieftaincy titles go only to the rich; obaship succession chains change only for the rich; to take someone to the hospital, grown men wait for the rich in the family; and sometimes to eat, people go cap in hand to the rich. The youths have seen the fear in the eyes of their hapless parents and have found a solution: get rich quickly, even if it means participating in money-making rituals, armed robbery, kidnapping, or being apprenticed to a rich one by carrying and shooting his gun for him.

    Nigerian youths have been shown that it is no use having any youth if you do not have cash backing. So, they have taken to either running out of the country if they want to keep their souls or staying in the country and pursuing money into the hole (quick, cross yourself for those who lost their lives in the process) or by turning their family members into money. Somewhere in the east, a young man was said to have killed his mother as part of a money-making ritual, and somewhere in the west, a young man was said to have also killed his mother because he thought she was ‘behind’ the fact that he was not ‘progressing’ in life. Those who are not killing are either militants (north, south) or in one religious vanguard or the other. Oh yeah, they are also killing.

    Nigeria has turned her youths into ravenous wolves, hungry to consume all the money and blood they can find in their paths. In effect, the youths have lost the sanctity of what it means to be youths: the zest for knowledge, the beautiful experiences that define life in its purest form, or the search for the kind of associations that show the true meaning of existence.

    They have not been taught that real life does not lie in holding a gun or knife to a helpless person’s head, or in spraying walls or people with bullets, or in some mindless pursuit of bawdry. Nigeria must teach its youths that real life consists in the pursuit of happiness, love, beauty, innovations, progress and self-fulfilment in ways that are in complete harmony with nature. The country must teach its youths how to reach deep within themselves and bring out their talents to help the society. It is not too late. If it is never done, that is when it will be too late to restore the youth of its Youths.

     

    • A version of this article was first published in 2013 but because of its relevance it has been reproduced today.

  • Why should women play soccer?

    The changes taking place in the world now seem to target eliminating the traditionally held views, beliefs and observances that demarcate the sexes, directing the world towards sex-lessness, where all people and things are held to be neutral.

    Once more, dear reader, let’s leave the vexing topic of our political landscape and all the carpet crossers, SSS sieges, who is a mole and who is not, which person has all the ambition in the world, who is after whom and for what reason, and who has his hand under his chin watching all these and who does not; let’s leave all these, I say, and go off in search of our own peace. I think it should be clear to you and I by now that our peace and progress cannot come from the lot parading this turbulent political landscape right now. Let’s talk instead about soccer.

    I don’t know if you have been following the FIFA Under17 soccer tournament going on in France right now. I have, not out of pleasure but out of a certain self-immolation. I am determined to punish myself by watching a segment of my race run around a football field, risking life and limb, just to earn a living. All the while, I am asking myself one question: why should women play soccer for a living when they should be watching their finger nails grow?

    Traditionally, wars were fought by men while ‘women and children’ were left behind to prepare the hearth for when the men would return. So, history has always spoken of women and children being protected. Any aggressor who dared to carry off the women and children, society’s weaker vessels, was certainly asking for it; they would get the men’s wrath. How dared anyone play with the comptroller-generals of the pots and pans?

    Today, however, we get a different picture. We get a picture where some women go to fight wars alongside the men, kill other people, and come home to prepare dinner for their husbands as if nothing has happened, Pilate style. Two things strike me in that posture.

    The first thing is that this rather complicates matters and sets up all kinds of confusing and chaotic situations in my tiny head. Do the husbands stay at home with the children while the women go to war? What if they come back to learn that the enemy has gone and carried off the, err… men and children? The second thing that strikes me is under what rock was I living when all these role reversals were going on? Just how does it come about that I’m the last to hear that women can now go to war and even rescue their husbands?

    The one that gets my hairs up is actually when I watch a movie and find that the bad guy, after all the rigmarole, is a gun-toting woman, all dressed up to her ears in diamonds, caressing her cat. That gets me wondering and asking all kinds of inhuman questions. For whom did she do all that dressing up? Who taught her to shoot? And why, in the name of all that is decent, would she just fall softly to the ground like a small sack of yams with a catlike sound when she’s punched by a man?

    I’ll tell you why: her physique has not changed. There has not been an adaptation of the physique of the specie from the time of Eve for many of the roles that women are willy-nillying on themselves now. Women have not been adapted to carry guns (they do not have the shoulder blades), drive long distances (they do not have the muscles), become snake charmers (their blood easily curdles), or play soccer (they certainly do not have the bones), the last traditionally a men’s game.

    I am not a fan of soccer. In my life, I have attended only one live soccer match where I painfully sat through the crowd alternately cheering and booing the players depending on whose side they were on. The cheers came from the fans of a club while the boos and hisses came from the club’s enemies. So, you can imagine the luck of anyone who sat between two fans supporting opposing sides in a match. Luckily, all the fans agreed not to throw bottles that day after the match and we all went home peacefully. So, no, I really don’t like soccer because of all the bottles that go with it, among other things.

    However, I have occasionally been known to suffer through a match or two on telly. I have thus seen players, running at top speed after a ball, step on the leg of another player and crunch the leg. Whether intentionally or not, the leg is crunched. I have seen two heads colliding and earning their owners jumbo-sized headaches for life. A red card would infinitely have been better. I have seen arms twisted beyond recognition on the soccer field. Yet, everyone insists that soccer is harmless.

    Perhaps, this harmlessness is what has beguiled many women to become professional soccer players. Again, I ask myself, what are women doing playing soccer? I mean, isn’t being a woman difficult enough, not to add doing dangerous things? The changes taking place in the world now seem to target eliminating the traditionally held views, beliefs and observances that demarcate the sexes, directing the world towards sex-lessness, where all people and things are held to be neutral. With neutral humans, all peoples can qualify to go to war, drive long distances, be snake charmers, and play soccer.

    I want to plead for sanity. I believe there is a reason why these demarcations exist in the first place: so that everyone can spit in each other’s faces. Men spit at women when the food is not ready on time or the children are not well brought up. Women spit at men when the housekeeping money is inadequate because the men refuse to become the presidents of the country.

    Women are known to be the life force of any nation. This means they hold the life of the country in their hands. Just check. Wherever you have women in abundance, there is bound to be a lot of rancour, yes, but you’ll also find a lot of noises and activities. Things go on (even if badly sometimes), but they move. Tables are set. Children are also set in (dis)order. Power flows into people through their hands. It is an incontrovertible fact that the women hold the energy of the land in their hands. They should then not go throwing their weights around on football pitches. A yam patch is better.

    More importantly, women are built to mend others. They stay around and prepare instruments of repairs – listening ears, hand written queries, love, food, quarrels, etc. When men go to war and come back broken in body and spirit, it’s the women who nurse them back to health. When male snake charmers are bitten by their wards, let them charm ever so sweetly, it’s the women who patiently restore their confidence in the snakes. When long distance drivers come back home weary from limb to limb and can nary a hand lift, it’s the women who hold them up. When a soccer player goes off to shatter his bones and comes home crying, it is the women who mend the broken bones and shattered dreams. Hey, what has the doctor got to do with it? Please!

    Anyway, to send the same women into the war front, trucking highway, snake pit, or soccer field is really to send the world spinning. Seriously, the world is changing too fast for me and I can only do one of two things. I can pretend it is not happening and cheer on with the crowd, or I can keep moaning that the world is going too fast for me. What do I do; just what do I do?

  • It’s yet another toast to THE BEER!

    It is time to thank you once again, dear reader, for patiently wading through these write-ups each week. To celebrate, I will reproduce a few reactions to last week’s thoughts on the matter of the political terrain of the country. As usual, I have applied the hammer, spanner and chisel to the constructions. All the same, the sense comes out clear and bright in each of them.

    National Assembly members ‘… decide to know only dancing or singing…’ to quote your column. Are they not better than the clueless, clannish clowns in government who are ‘so silent over so many killings in the land…’ to the extent that ‘the victims have been blamed for (so-called) excessive retaliation by both the government and the killers…’? S. A. 08032159249.

    Your article on Sunday on… what we need is a mass movement of the people! No individual can do this for us! Unless this present set of politicians are sent packing no meaningful success will be achieved in this country! It is now or never. 08034423949.

    Re yours 29th July. You are correct. NASS members earn so much that they do not have sense again. They have run MAD ooo. We must do something now before it is too late. They took us for fools ooo. They will run away any time law and order breaks down!!!. Well done. A. I. 08033519702.

     

    Folks, there are the thoughts and passions of your average man on the street towards the happenings in the land. Let’s take the first response.

    Neither divide in that response bests the other. Our purported political leaders should earn our respect by their seriousness and the way they apply themselves to the task they agreed to take up on behalf of the citizenry. So, I think that the approach of both sides to governance is not acceptable.

    As to the second response, I would say that a mass movement has to be led by people who are knowledgeable about leadership. It is not enough to just call the people out. I think it is a lot more important to help the people to first appreciate the ideals of democracy or governance. As someone pointed out, the tragedy of this country is that the very victims of this bad political leadership are the ones hailing and supporting their oppressors. They are the ones who agree to carry the guns that kill opponents, mow down all those who seek to liberate them, and who come out in large numbers to close down streets, walking long distances or riding dangerously on the sides of rickety vehicles, when their oppressors are passing by from their London or American residences. These victims are the ones who tacitly uphold the dictum, ‘some animals are more equal than others’. We need mass education first.

    Yes, to my third responder, there is no doubt that our politicians are all poised for flight at the first sign of trouble. That has been the pattern from the start. The problem, however, is that the country empowered them to be ready for flight at the first sign of trouble by tacitly endorsing their unrealistic wages. If this nation had banded together like beer drinkers against the extremely high wages of NASS members as we did against fuel price increase during the time of President Jonathan, we would today have had something to toast.

    True, we cannot raise our glasses to toast anything in this country right now. Indeed, I believe the mood among the right thinking ones among us now is to cast out some individuals we believe are ruining this nation. And, after that, we should even expunge all their names from our memories through surgery. In the face of our inability to do that, I think we should spend our waiting time to celebrate with those who are celebrating, and hopefully, they will also celebrate with us when the country is liberated. Reader, spare a thought for beer, the toaster’s favourite. Today, we celebrate THE BEER.

    Have you noticed that beer drinkers always band together something tighter than blood brothers? You couldn’t get the edge of a razor blade to slide down between two blood brothers, nor beer drinkers. They stick together through thick and thin, sick and sin, sip and piss, even to the last behaviour pattern. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the contents of beer. Take the following story, and I’m quoting.

    ‘Recently, scientists revealed that beer contains small traces of female hormones. To prove their theory, the scientists fed 100 men twelve bottles of beer each. The scientists observed that 100% of the male test group gained weight, talked excessively without making sense, became emotional, and couldn’t drive. No further testing is planned.’ Now, isn’t that giving female hormones a bad name? But, we must not pick a fight in a bar seeing that the 100 men may still be under the influence…

    Anyway, you will agree with me that there’s just something about beer that makes people behave somehow… Take another story. ‘An angry wife was complaining about her husband spending too much time at the bar, so one night, he took her along. ‘What’ll you have?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know. The same as you’, she replied. So he ordered a couple of beers and he drank his own in one gulp. His wife took a sip from her glass and spit it out. ‘Yuck, that’s poison!’ she spluttered. ‘I don’t know how you can drink this stuff!’ ‘Well, there you go,’ cried the husband. ‘And you think I’m out enjoying myself every night!’

    Anyway, the first politician to toast beer was said to have been F. D. Roosevelt of the U.S.A. After signing the document that ended the prohibition era, as I understand the story, the man was said to have declared, ‘I think this would be a good time for a beer’. I imagine that, as he said that, he raised his glass.

    Like that wife, I cannot take beer, not even a sip. I will reach instead for my waterlou, THE ALTERNATIVE. Ah ha, wouldn’t you like to know about that! Before I raise my waterlou glass, however, I would like beer drinkers to tell me what mystery lies in beer that makes people behave the way they do. Take the story of a man who had so much to drink at a party that he felt he had had enough and sneaked out to go home. After a while, his friends called him and asked him where he was. In a taxi, he said; he was going home. But, said his friends, the party was taking place in his house! It was his birthday party. Now, howzat, sir?!

    There are yet thousands more of such stories. Take the man who ran around the neighbourhood screaming one morning after the night before, when he had been going at it something bad at a party, that his car had been stolen! It was not in the garage where he normally parked it. His wife let him sweat a bit before asking him to look behind the house. He found his car sitting quietly where he had managed to bring it, as we said, the night before the morning after.

    Right, we’re not bashing beer drinkers today, just toasting THE BEER, and wondering what goes into it that changes people: removing inhibitions, suppressing memories, affecting reasoning, changing intellect and generally making comedians out of drinkers. To THE BEER then! Now, I wonder just what can change our politicians, considering that they are already comedians…

     

  • What can save us from this unending comedy of errors?

    Generally, I leave the subject of politics to others who are more politically masochistic to observe and give us reports on it, while I generally occupy myself with the issues of life, to observe and give you reports on it. This is why I talk mostly about things like life rules, yeah, and maybe kitchen rules.

    However, sometimes, I am forced to break my rule and talk about politics when the din from that arena becomes really deafening, like now. The political noise is right now threatening to drown us all out unless good sense returns. The aphorism that says that the more we see, the less we understand is more true now than ever. There is so much going on right now that just makes me want to shout out, ‘Come on, Seriously?!’

    Everyone takes his or her life seriously but the politicians that run this country do not. Oh yes, they take their own lives seriously enough, but I think they think that the rest of the people exist to lay down their lives for them. This explains why they have refused to take the country seriously.

    From what we can see and what we have heard, the class we call politicians seems to enjoy breaking rules. Since this latest democratic experiment began, we have been hearing all kinds of stories. They have been placed in the press for record purposes. It is good that these things be placed on record or else the people forget.

    We have heard stories about how this bright crop have entered (literally) the treasury and helped themselves to raw cash openly. We have heard stories about how governors literally establish state institutions in their own names and make the state pay for them. We have heard stories about how radio jingles are made to sing these governors’ names unendingly for merely filling street potholes. There are so many stories but what is the point blocking your ears with them? One would end up sounding like those jingles.

    I must however mention some other stories. We have heard how it is quite possible that, contrary to the law, there are sitting uncertificated assembly members right now. There are whispers that there are transmutations of assembly posts. We have heard of people occupying the revered positions of senators whose major preoccupations are either singing senseless songs, giving pantomimic performances, jesting around to no particular end, criss-crossing carpets, or simply dancing useless dances. These are their only contributions to nation building.

    There are stories (please note that I merely repeat them; I don’t make them) of a government so silent over so many killings in the land that it is quite easy to believe there is a silent nod to the perpetrators. We have also heard stories of how the victims have been blamed for excessive retaliation by both the government and the killers and have been punished some more. These are stories we hear which have not been rebutted by anyone. So, we go on believing.

    When these comedies of absurdities hinged on absolute reversals of realities occur, there is nothing to do but to duck. I mean, when assembly members who should be knowledgeable about everything decide to know only dancing or singing or jesting or carpet-crossing or political brigandage, what can you do but duck? When an entire assembly is taken over by a few, then the government is just a sitting duck; the country is but a land of occupation in waiting. It is at this point we need to ask the pertinent question: what is going to save us from these comedies of errors?

    Please note that I did not say ‘who’ but ‘what’. I think I gave up on the ‘who’ a long time ago. Nigerians have a knack of disappointing. See how the whole country rooted for the present government in 2015. Now, many recessions later, many naira devaluations later, many herdsmen killings later, many promises of more killings later, many of us are now questioning our romantic ideals: should we have taken so many glasses of Pina Colada before going to do an important thing like voting?

    So, no, I am not looking for ‘who’, just ‘what’. I am looking for that Deus Ex Machina, that stroke of luck, that serendipitous master stroke, that god of provision, that will just bring in the individual who will lead the drive for nation building in this land. It happened in Rwanda after the war; it can happen here.

    We have talked about nation building on this column many times; and since I’m never tired of talking about it, it is clearly my pet subject. I have complained to the point of irritating your ears and eyes, dear reader, that with all these ‘BROTHER ACTS’ going on, the nation is not being built. Our infrastructures are still decaying by the minute, there is no reformation going on in the housing sector, schools are being destroyed by nature, time, armed skirmishes, or human acts of carelessness, the nation’s health sector barometer is reading ‘CODE RED’ because of decaying facilities and brain flight, and food is becoming more and more of a mirage for many people and many families. Need I say more?

    The political class is supposed to lead the way forward to solving these problems. What is our class doing however? Singing, dancing, jesting, self-promoting, self-gratifying, changing political parties, political high jinks … in short, everything is to the self, not the nation. I think Nigeria has been very unlucky, if you will permit my descent into the unclear waters of the supernatural. From its inception, a political class with a clear vision for leading the country was never groomed. I maintain that what we are seeing today is what was planted in the early years of Nigeria’s history. In those early years, our ancestors planted political chaos, we are now reaping national destruction.

    That said, we can still pull back from the brink of this disaster. We must set out to find the ‘what’ that will save us. Firstly, I think people owe themselves the responsibility to learn about democratic ideals for their own good. They should learn these ideals in order to be able to ask about their entitlements from those people who purport to represent them in these governmental matters.

    IT IS CLEAR TO ME (FROM MORE STORIES OF COURSE) THAT WHAT SUSTAINS THE TOMFOOLERY WE HAVE BEEN SEEING IN OUR SO-CALLED LEADERS STEMS FROM THE FACT THAT MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAIL AND SUPPORT THEM. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE CLEARLY NOT ASKING FOR MUCH, PERHAPS A PLATE OF AMALA PER DAY (THEIR IDEA OF MUCH), WHEN THEY ARE ENTITLED TO SO MUCH, MUCH MORE. BUT, THEY WON’T KNOW UNLESS THEY SEEK.

    Secondly, we the people should really do something about the excessive emoluments going to assembly members. There have been many cries and noises made over this, yet nothing has resulted. We still have a situation where many are overpaid for an average work schedule, while many are not paid nearly enough for the work they do.

    Thirdly, I think that the time has come for us all to take the decision, by general agreement, that assembly membership, or political involvement, should be on a part-time basis. The reason is simple. We do not have a nation yet that we can call home. In reality, therefore, we cannot afford all these comedies of errors on our national menu.

    For now, we all should join hands to work at building the nation first. In time, we may be able to afford full-time politicians.

  • Save this dying world

    There are two categories of people living around me. One group says that judging by the events happening these days, the world is surely and steadily moving towards its apocalypse, its breaking point, its end, its death. This group insists that these things are so strange they make the end of the world inviting so that we will be free from hearing of matters that sound stranger than fiction. These people cannot make any head or tail of nuclear wars, fathers raising children through their own daughters or mothers marrying their own sons. Naturally, these are all happening because the world is coming to an end, they insist.

    Let me support them a little. Think about the numerous earthquakes, uncountable famines, incessant wars, skirmishes, civil strives, increased deaths, unspeakable acts of murder, etc., going on in many countries at the moment. All of these do not favour the continued existence of the world. You could say they are not good for the blood pressure of the world; they are certainly not good for mine either.

    Just recently, I read that a beauty queen in Kenya had been sentenced to death because she had stabbed her boyfriend to death, up to twenty-five times. I want to believe, just as you do too, that a beauty queen is supposed to represent probity and be seen to be above board in everything. This is why I cannot ever be a beauty queen. Not only am I not beautiful, I am also too below board in many things, especially probity. I think that one passed me a long time ago.

    What I find strange indeed is that the civil rights groups in the country were said to be up in arms against the sentence passed on the beautiful lady. I wish they could have been more up in arms against the stabbing in the first place; the young man had a right not to be killed and his blood ‘spilled everywhere’. How can anyone, let alone a beauty queen have so ungovernable a temper that s/he would stab someone twenty-five times?! What times we are living in!

    Or, take another strange scenario. During the last Ekiti elections, I hear that money was a palpable factor. I hear that right on the queue while people were waiting to be allowed to vote, money was distributed to them in order to buy their votes. All I can say is why on earth was I not there to take my own share?! Seriously, can anything be stranger in the land? Is that where we have got to now? When Gov. Fayose introduced his ‘stomach infrastructure’ programme, everyone cried foul play! Now, it seems the stomach infrastructure programme has been monetised by both sides.

    Add these happenings to the fact that the world is right now experiencing one of the downturns of development: global warming as a result of over-industrialisation. So now, the weather blows hot when it should be cold, and cold when it should be hot, colder when it should be cold, and hotter when it should be just hot. And all of us are helplessly watching it, not knowing whether to get the sweater, the bikini or the umbrella of a Monday morning. I hear the heat wave across the world is becoming intolerable right now. Seriously!

    Taken together, one can’t quite blame those who say that things are coming to a sad end for the world. The weather has gone topsy-turvy; parents have lost control of their children; children have lost the reigns to their childhoods; beauty queens are only beautiful on the outside, and governments are no longer governing but entrenching themselves whether the people like it or not. Hold it though; let’s listen to the other side.

    The other group says that strange things may be happening all right, but they are no stranger than at any other time before. They say that strange things have been happening since the beginning of time; and the ones happening now are no different. They say that the good book has said that there is nothing new under the sun.

    To them, every event has its own degree of strangeness anyway. After all, when the sun first began to shine, people first ran away from it, then they worshipped it and now, we have come to depend on it. Now, it is strange when it does not shine.

    This group points out that the world actually began to decay the minute it came into being, and they have a solid argument to back this up. They point out that when a baby is born, everyone around rejoices because the baby is new. Everyone also forgets that the minute the baby is born, it begins to get ‘old’, while people think it is ‘growing’. So, when the baby celebrates its birthday each year, it fails to recognise that it is celebrating its ‘decay’, the idiot. Birthdays are not recognised as ‘decay’ days (as they should) until the wrinkles begin to show and the bones begin to weaken.

    The world, says this group, began to decay as soon as she was born, just like a baby. Naturally, therefore, she would show signs of wear and tear such as misuse (global warming), wrongful interactions (illegal cohabitations), accidents of birth (congenital malformations), character malformations (beauty queens not being beautiful or religious shepherds not leading), incongruous relationships (anomalous sexual orientations), etc. While these may be strange, say they, they are evidences of robust combustions taking place within a living entity or organism. They are signs that the world is alive.

    Clearly, the two groups above do not deny that we are indeed living in strange times. What to make of the strangeness is what separates their thinking. Me, as usual, I am on the fence. You should try it sometimes; it is a very comfortable spot to sit when you have got a good balance and do not easily topple over. Me, I just hold on to my thoughtlessness.

    Right now, I am very dispassionate about where the world is going. I care neither for its ending or its beginning for that matter. What I care about is that while the world continues, it should be meaningful for all. This means that I am not too fastidious about whether the world stays or goes but what we make of our time in it already.

    This is why I fail to understand why Nigerian leaders think that their leadership is all about acquiring. I watched a little clip about President Obama talking to leaders about the futility of simply acquiring money or properties. I believe he was addressing African leaders, and in particular, Nigerian ones. He attributed such behaviour to ‘poverty of ambition’ when one fails to realise that ‘there’s only so much one can eat’, ‘only so big a house one can build,’ etc. I call it poverty of intellect.

    The world may be ending or not, I don’t know. Since no one knows, I think it is safer to assume that the world may not have long to live. Our leaders should therefore begin to think of the good they can do rather than the properties they can acquire. These properties and all the Cayman Island accounts and the Swiss accounts are all unfortunately going to go under within minutes if the worst does happen.

    On the other hand, if one’s resources are put to good use for mankind, there is no telling just where it might reach. Who knows, it may even help to keep the world alive. Certainly, I know it will help to make the world go round.

     

  • If you want to cure your headache, you need to become a car!

    Let’s have a little bit of fun this week, shall we? Let’s not think about this careless country or the comedic antics and pronouncements of the ‘jewels’ we elected who sometimes double, in their spare time, as our so-called leaders. Sometimes, one just cannot guess where their places of primary assignment are: the country or the spas. You know what spas are, don’t you? They are those places you go to when you’re feeling a little weighed down by all the anxieties you accumulated panting over why your money is stubbornly staying at a meagre N200b and refusing to climb to that much needed N300b so that you can at least qualify for a sniff of a mention (even if for nomination only) in the ‘Fortunes Hundred Thousand.’ The spas are those resorts where the obscenely rich go to for a large slice of ‘life’. So, ho to the spas, people!

    At the spas, you, as the rich one, are pampered out of your senses with so many options to make you feel your money’s worth. You can choose to immerse yourself in a hot steaming bath as big as a swimming pool where you can watch your beer and pepper-soup pouch melt off into the water at least for a while. Don’t worry, it will still follow you home as your sign of good living. The wonder of that bath is that it also melts many other things away: headache, gout, annoying irritations from wives and girl-friends and children, etc.

    You may also get treated to the massage of your life. Listen, there is nothing as good as a massage. You will be laid out on a table like a plucked chicken, every mountainous bit of you, while the masseuse picks out your erring, recalcitrant muscles and beats the life out of them. By the time she is through, I guarantee you there will not be any life left in either you or the muscles. Someone once described how he saw a massage table in a rich man’s house. That table, he said, wide-eyed, can take one straight to heaven. No, I’ve never had a massage for the simple reason that I have never felt that any muscle in my body has deserved to be put on a table and be pummelled and pulled and pampered into a cuddle. I have preferred to put those lazy things to work instead. You, I tell them each morning, take me to work, after which we go to the market to shop and then we go to the kitchen to cook and if you’re good all the way, I may take you to the tracks tomorrow for some good ol’ jogging. That usually puts them right. Massage? Pugh!

    Apart from your steam bath and your table massage, you may get treated to other benefits of the watering house that cannot be mentioned on this page for the sake of my readers who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Yes, you can get treated to full canisters of pure oxygen to reinvigorate and rejuvenate your entire system so you never grow old. (Oh, you! What did you think I was talking about? I guess you can get some of that too though).

    The sad thing is that the poor also have their troubles. One would think that the Good Lord would use the principles of mathematics to separate the haves and the have-nots: more riches, more troubles; less riches, less troubles. But not so: as headaches fall on the rich, so they fall on the poor. Once, I had a raging headache, and to get rid of it, I had to resort to some desperate measures. I watched TV where I saw adverts that told me ‘When headaches strike, strike back with …’ That left me wondering. If I strike my dog for some sundry offence, it yelps; if I strike my headache because it first attacked me, obviously, I will yelp. So, to avoid that, I had to listen to the wise counsels of the sages who had better ideas.

    The first consult said I should dip my head in cold water. That sounded simple enough. So, when the headache struck again, straight into a bucket went my head. But then, I began to have some problems. First, in the upturned position, the water not only went into my head, so to speak, it also went into my nose, eyes and other parts not necessarily in trouble. No, said someone, use the shower. The shower went down my head but refused to stay there. Obviously, I needed another consult.

    My new consult asked what my diet was like. I said it was like any other normal Nigerian’s: sparse, no food. It’s in the diet, he insisted stubbornly. All right, I thought, beginning from then on to eye the contents of my diet: too much water, too little water; too much salt, too little salt. I mention those because they are the only things in abundance. I know it cannot be too much beef, chicken or fish because I don’t know how many of us Nigerians can afford the United Nations daily ration of those proteins. So, in exasperation, I consulted a homeopath. Think positive, sayeth he. Positive! Yes, he said; think no evil of anyone, let good thoughts flow from you to them. What if they have bad thoughts towards me, I asked? Never mind that, concentrate on yourself. Keep your mind in the neutral gear as much as possible, he said. Now, because of a headache, I have turned into a car.

    To cut a long story short, I practiced this emotional neutrality for a while, and would you believe it, I have felt less tension towards our leaders who, I’ve heard, over-pay themselves in salaries that can finance another country’s national budget; or that I’ve heard that oil subsidies being paid out have now increased by more than a thousand fold since Obasanjo left. I hear these things, but I do not let them leave any impression on me whatsoever; so now, no headache.

    Then I began to understand the source of my headache: it is the fact that Nigerians would prefer to go and enjoy themselves instead of working to fix our country. It then occurred to me that the first pang actually occurred when I read of how government officials no longer keep their good selves in the country. I remembered then how they all, national, state and local government officials inclusive, seemed to suddenly develop a penchant for flying out of the country under every excuse most notably to go and learn the ropes of democracy. And I always thought, what is there to learn in democracy? I then came to the conclusion that we Nigerians appear unable to stop exhibiting our very primitive impulses to show our neighbours how we have arrived; neighbours being the world now. That was where my groans started.

    So, dear reader, we have had some fun with our national, large-sized headache, the source of which no one quite knows: whether from the leaders or from we the people. It is however the reason that the country has been in the neutral gear since 1960. Now, on that account, nearly every Nigerian in any position of authority thinks he has the divine right to oppress those he is required to serve. So, you finally understand why I needed a consult to begin with. Do note though that not all headaches can be laughed off. If you have a headache, please consult your doctor who will tell you whether to be afraid or to put your mind in the … you know where.

     

  • Of popularity, notoriety and renown

    The more I write these few lines for you each week, dear reader, the more I have found that the popularity ratings of the column has grown. Not because the lines are good (if you say so, I don’t mind though) but because they are insistent on being heard. I thank you indeed for tolerating me the way you tolerate a mosquito. If you pretend long enough that it isn’t there, it might actually go away. So I find that many read me to get me out of their way and promptly settle down to ignore me. That is how the column has earned its popularity.

    Notoriety though I find comes mostly through politics. No, I don’t hate politics. I just don’t consider myself as being very politically conscious, more like a political somnambulant. Half of the time, I have no idea how many states in Nigeria have governors. Heck, half of the time I have no idea who indeed is the governor of which state. The other day, I heard that someone called Gov. Something had been removed as governor of a state in Nigeria by a tribunal. Who, I asked, is that? Which State is he governing? Someone said he is/was a governor. Yes, I read that, I replied, but who the heck is he? Everyone looked at me like I had lost it. The economy has finally got to her; they were thinking; a governor is someone everyone should know. And I went away thinking, how do they know all these governors when they seem to change every minute?

    The problem, I reasoned, is that many of my fellow citizens do not set out in life to be anything more than notorious. The Nigerian seems to have one credo. Make some noise and people know you are there. Then, what happens? Oh, before you know it, you become the governor of a state, a Representative, a Senator, a principal, a…. On what platform? The platform of noisemaking! But what has he achieved?

    So, there you are, I do not know politics, just like I do not know maths. Why, the other day, someone gave me a poser that sounded like one of those Satan uses to determine those bound to go to hell with him if they pass it. The test asked if someone were to offer to buy a goat for the sum of N2, 000.00 and the seller agrees to the price and the buyer brings out the money to pay for the goat but the goat leaps up and snatches the money and eats it, then how much has the goat become? For reply, I made only one gesture: Cuckoo! Why should I give him the privilege to know I did not know maths, I reasoned?!

    So, you can imagine my horror when I heard yesterday that a senator had been taken to another court. I was really horrified. Please, I begged, don’t tell me I did not know that the senator was in one court in the first place. The fellow looked at me like I had mutated to some unrecognisable being. This is his second court and who knows how many more courts before he is through with us, I was told. I sat down in great mystery, wondering: where had I been all my life?

    Seriously, reader, you can’t blame me. I have been too busy tracking where all of Nigeria’s money had got to. First, I was reading that some two point something billion dollars had been shared among a few Nigerians who happened to belong to a political party. Naturally, my head had been swimming round those figures with me wiping my face many times a day to make sure I was not dreaming. Then I began to hear through confessions how the money was disbursed to various agents of the party; and the offers some of them made to return it, either through coercion or remorse. Naturally, I wiped my face some more trying to imagine which bank would contain enough storage space to receive these vast sums when they are converted to our very worthy naira.

    That was when I began to hear stories of how a few top people in one of the armed forces had somehow contrived to convert hundreds of billions of naira, meant for the upkeep of their own arm of the armed forces, to their own personal use. As I was told, they went as far as constructing an underground pit or latrine or soak-away (the story is not very straight around this corner) in the house of one to keep some of the monies while some nestled comfortably in the accounts of the wife of another. As these revelations were coming out, you can imagine that my face wiping had grown alarmingly to reach some worrisome proportions. I found I had begun to wash my face to be sure I was not dreaming, and also to be sure I wasn’t Pilate. I also wanted to see if the water would tell me why my fellow citizens would persist in settling only for notoriety when they could go for renown.

    One group of people that gets notoriety for renown is known as writers. This is why we are celebrating them this week. I know they also do not work for renown but are happy to bask in it when it comes. Most of the time, they are just content to smile broadly when they succeed in getting their messages across.

    There are many reasons why they do not get that renown. Their messages are often unpalatable to the society; they mirror the society back to it; they reflect for the society the consequences of their heady ways, etc. Truth is, in writing, they keep the truth pristine and unalloyed. Who gives renown to anyone for telling the truth?

    Most Nigerians are rather interested in scrambling for loots. We all therefore seem to have forgotten that loots do not make a man. They make a man a common thief, less than the soil underneath an honest labourer’s slippers. We have said it again and again on this column that what makes a man is not the number of houses he owns (whether honestly acquired or not), or the number of private jets he owns (acquired properly or not), or the number of women or men they are able to sleep with (acquired legally or not).

    True, you have heard many people preach again and again that you cannot take it with you. Well, I’m here to tell you something different. You can take it with you. The only thing is that what you have here gets converted to a different currency when you die. The man who has worked only at stealing from the country may get to enjoy his loot here but when he dies, the loot gets converted into his infamous name which will become synonymous with notoriety. The man who works at actually achieving something may or may not enjoy his proceeds on earth; but when he dies his good name gets converted also into something akin to renown.

    What matters most in this world is what we do for a living, how well we do it and what we are able to achieve through it, no matter how little or how big. Achieving something through one’s efforts is a greater success than any amount of money that one can steal. It not only brings out the truly noble thing in one’s character, it enables a man to touch the lower tip of the universe. That man is able to reach beyond himself; that man is also the man who has been able to conquer his lowest instincts. That man is the writer. Here’s raising a toast: To all writers!