The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Just how much more can Nigeria take?

    I believe congratulations and commiserations are quite in order to you, my football-loving readers, on the performance of the Green Eagles in the World Cup games going on right now. I know, I know, they lost. At least, they won one. Think of the alternative – losing all. Better luck next time. But, as I always say, good luck comes to them that prepare for it. Better luck will come when we prepare hard by organising ourselves well in the Ministry of Sports, and practise well as players. I will also practise hard on my cheering. Now, on to weighty matters.

    Reader, since you are no stranger to this country, I believe you have been more abreast of the news than I have been. Going by the strangeness of the many things I am hearing and learning through the news, I quite believe I am the stranger around here. The reason is that too many strange things are happening in this country and the government, which is supposed to react on behalf of everyone, is taking them in its stride. That is so strange.

    Let me recap a few of the things Nigerians are taking right now. Just last week, Nigeria lost to Argentina. Some say, no surprise there. Hmm. Also last Thursday, a tanker filled with fuel exploded in Lagos and spread fire that consumed many lives, vehicles and properties around it. That was just another of the times that these things that ply the roads to bring fuel to petrol stations would spill out their guts. Yet, the government that should have devised a more effective means of transporting this stuff, such as the rail system, has not done so.

    Some people have said that the people who should have found a more efficient system of transporting, among other things, fuel to petrol stations are not inclined to do so because they own more than eighty per cent of these tankers, trailers and articulated vehicles. The result is that these long, danger-filled vehicles litter the narrow and bad highways, leaving the little vehicles to struggle with them. The Oyo-Ogbomosho road is just an example of the many of such harrowing experiences of Nigerians.

    Another is the rising level of insecurity in the country. According to an Amnesty International report recently released, up to 1,813 people have been murdered in 17 states across the country since January 2018 by so-called herdsmen. Yet, the murderers have not been apprehended. According to the report, the government’s failure to deal with the herdsmen is becoming a source of encouragement for them to commit more murders. The effect came soon enough last weekend. Over eighty people were said to have been killed in broad day light in some Plateau state villages at once. Some people think the figure is higher.

    The season of strangeness is not letting up. Many of us are reading the government’s lips on the matter and are not making any sense of it. The president’s words of commiserations and promises are heard each time there is such an occurrence, but we can’t seem to understand the direction the rhetoric is blowing: is it for or against the victim? It is really hard to say. Here we are, thinking that perhaps these killers are possibly foreigners seeking preys and expecting a very smart deterring response from the country that would resound and echo round the world and let anyone who cares to listen understand one thing: Nigeria is not to be toyed with.

    Rather, what the world is getting is almost a whimper of acquiescence and a turning of the other cheek that implies that Nigeria can be toyed with and invites other cowards to come join the fray. It is so bad now some people are saying that the government and the security forces are tacitly joining hands to help the herdsmen claim land for their cows from the farmers they are killing. I thought that could not be true, but then I have been full of wonder at the fact that our security forces always seem somehow not to be there when these things happen.

    Indeed, the Amnesty report even says that the level of insecurity in the country is rising. The report says that the attackers often come in their hundreds and are well armed and stay for hours to raze their victims’ lives and lands to the ground. Yet no help comes to the besieged villagers. As if things were not bad enough. I mean, there are still kidnappings going on, with hunger on every side and poor salaries or no salaries and super expensive commodities. I tell you, adding these day-time ‘killings with impunity’ is killing us. I ask myself, just how much more can Nigeria take?

    I do agree with people who say that Nigerians are resilient. Slap them on one cheek and they will turn the other. Slap them on that one too and they will borrow someone else’s cheek just so that the slapping can continue until the slapper’s anger is abated or they run out of cheeks to borrow. Yet, methinks there is a limit to being taken for granted; even the vulture sometimes tires of waiting.

    Clearly, the security apparatus is in the hands of the government. This country has not written it in the laws of the land that people can bear self-defensive arms. If this were so, I think our rhetoric would be different. Right now, the only arms I can bear is my pen, which I understand is mightier than the sword. Just to look at it though, one would think that my pen should have been able to make me the billionaire I had always dreamt of being. So far, its strength has laid mainly in gaining me some kind of notoriety. ‘I read your article last week, but your English was somewhat beyond me. Could you just tone it down a little for the sake of some of us who, you know, did not read English …?’ How mighty can a pen be?!

    Anyway, the government clearly has the security forces under its control. When problems are successfully quelled, the credit goes, where? When, however, problems are allowed to fester, the blame goes, where? It seems to me that the government therefore has a choice: to pick up a credit card or a blame card. That’s either green or red, I think. Right now, the government is picking up the red card all the way…

    So, here’s my take. The government needs to urgently assure Nigerians that it has no ulterior motives by decisively dealing with the menace these killers represent. Too many of us are suspicious as it stands now. Is there a covert attempt to help the herdsmen to gain access to free land? Is there a covert genocidal programme going on? Like someone said, coincidences don’t just happen. There are too many of these instances of gruesome killings to put down to chance. Something is fishy in this state.

    Otherwise, I would begin to wonder how the government can be sending messages of commiserations to victims when the disease has been identified yet not tackled. The right thing to do is to forestall the disease from being able to repeat or spread itself in the first place. Prevention, they say, is better than cure. This problem should not have lasted beyond that first strike. It should be tackled now so that we do not find out just how much Nigeria can take.

     

     

     

     

     

  • How many Republics does Nigeria need to get it?

    My favourite scene in one of my favourite novels is a record of an oral examination administered by an elderly doctor on a medical student. The student is asked to assist a woman to deliver her child, both made of papier-mâché material. His efforts, a mixture of two-fifths concentration and three-fifths inexperience, send the mother, child and forceps flying through the air before hitting the ground. Calmly, the examiner bends down, picks up the discarded forceps, and hands them back to the young man. Now, hit the father with that, he says, and you have killed the whole family.

    Many a father must be familiar with that scenario. While women generally rave and rant at a child who is too slow to get it, men simply turn down the corners of their mouths, look at the offensive thing standing in front of them, and shake their heads in despair, hinting that the child is not likely to get it, ever. When I was young, mine went a step further. He would pierce me with his most disapproving eyes and sneer out a disparagement I cannot now recollect but bad enough to make me shudder, ‘Grrrr!’

    These days, we reserve such sneers for those learning on the job. There is nothing more frustrating than having to learn on the job. Somewhere in the wilds of one of the African forests exists a tribe that trains its young to overcome fear by throwing him into the forest to survive, alone, for one week. If the trainee emerges after the stipulated time, he is feted as a brave heart. If, however, he fails to emerge after the stipulated time, everyone shrugs off his memory with the consolation that he would not have survived in the real world anyway. I think that is the ultimate sneer.

    No right-minded parent living in the twenty-first century would send his child into the forest to learn life’s lessons now. I think, rather, that many parents would prefer to go and stay in the forest themselves if they are sure their offspring will not be there! But here was Nigeria, while still tottering on her feet and not even used to wearing shoes, being granted independence and told she could now live alone. More or less, she was told to go into the wild forest of democracy, unschooled, untutored, and survive. Naturally, she has had to learn her democratic lessons on the job. This is why she has the fragments of so many republics strewn around her.

    One of the necessary conditions for survival in the wilds of course is education. This simply means knowing those things that are absolutely essential to life such as how to still breathe in and out when afraid. Rather than teach her citizens the rudiments of democratic principles such as voting an honest few in the mould of Abraham Lincoln to represent the many in the mould of Jack the Ripper, Nigeria has consistently taught her children to choose Jack the Ripper to represent Abraham Lincoln. Not surprisingly, Nigeria has become a country where the entire population is wandering around half-witted, half-crazed and thinking, what is this democracy thing about, sef? And the few who have been able to see their way clear are asking, where on earth can one hide some loot?

    Of course, while learning, it is also important that the learner should be totally free from hunger and, let’s see now, yea, hunger. There is no greater threat to learning than hunger. Indeed, I know a teacher who begins to hit his students with serious grammatical bombs whenever he gets really hungry. So, at the first sign of trouble, his students quickly rally and agree to a lecture shift so as to avoid being shelled. The thing about hunger, though, is that it is no respecter of persons; it beats down as mercilessly on the just as on the unjust. Secondly, hunger can cause a man to overeat and misbehave; he may shut the door against others so that they do not come in and eat with him, as Achebe said, or he may beat a drum to let the whole world know how full he is, as Bode George did. So you see, unless the problem of hunger is tackled and wrestled to the ground, no democratic lessons can sink in. Every sane person would be more interested in how they can also get to ‘eat’.

    On the heels of education and food is the problem of shelter. These three naturally go together. Being in the wilds does not necessarily mean that one can go to sleep on the coiled springs of a boa’s body. One will surely wake up on the other side. A small shelter is sufficient for a man, since after all, when he leaves the forest, it remains behind for others to use. This is why having five, ten houses is surely insane, rat behaviour. Rats are known to gather what they don’t need.

    Dear reader, we are in the wilds in this democracy thing. I think that if it is to survive in Nigeria, everyone must first have access to some reasonable education, food and shelter. Then we can start talking turkey. We can also stop annoying the world with our ridiculous mistakes and gaffes as we mangle up republic after republic. It was Oscar Wilde who said that to lose one parent can be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both is carelessness. By analogy, we dare say that to lose one republic is a misfortune; to lose two, carelessness; to lose three, a calamity; but to lose four will be … what, idiocy?

    This article was first published in 2011, and since then, nothing has changed to give one hope that this democratic process can pass muster. Our legislature is still out of touch with the people they represent and the executive is not busy enough executing the building of the nation. It is rather building itself for 2019. There is more poverty in the land now than before, and hell is really not very far away for many Nigerians. Altogether, we don’t seem to have learnt the lessons taught by the fragments of the previous republics.

    Many people, this column included, have called for the restructuring the very foundations on which this country exists as a nation. In a collective voice, we have mouthed the fact that restructuring is the reasonable way by which everyone can understand and negotiate his/her participation in the nation building process. This is what we believe can halt the current ideology propelling everyone to empty the treasury of the land. The results of the restructuring would build in us all that necessary sense of belonging that is a sine qua non for nation building.

  • On yet another father’s day…

    Have you noticed that June is the month of confrontation? It is the time of the year when the heavens and the earth meet in one long conversation that ends in downpours the likes you haven’t seen since the year began. It is also the time in the year when the earth’s plants and the sky’s sun begin their hide and seek game to bring out varied colours of flower sprigs so bright and fair Othello’s Desdemona would be green with envy. Above all, it is the month fathers and children look at each other and confront some hard truths: why in the world do they resemble each other in every way particular, even to the repeating of the same damned mistakes of the fathers? Is it just a hormonal thing or is it psychological: that we are all compelled to repeat our parent’s mistakes? Or is it a matter of the family’s share of the grey matter gene not being efficient?

    Whatever it may be, it is important to note that the world is celebrating all fathers today. You know what they are, don’t you? They are those generally oak-like beings who hover around the house, growling their needs and displeasure (in one breath) at nearly every moment and are forever issuing commands. ‘You, get me my newspaper! You, get me my pen! You, come outside and get me a stone to hurl at that lizard! What do you mean you are inside and I’m outside? What has that got to do with anything?’ Naturally, with reasonable attitudes like that, you are not surprised that world wars are fought daily in many homes, and the United Nations can do nothing to help.

    Seriously, there are more fathers and children living in fractured relationships than you can imagine. Forget Freud and his psychoanalytic theory of Oedipus Complex or Rex that causes unnecessary and useless competitions; forget his student, Jung and his even bigger theories about the inner workings of the (in)human mind. Fractured relationships are fractured relationships. Something causes them; it is certain that something can mend them. But what do these relationships fracture over?

    It is not certain but disagreements over what each takes to be the stuff of life helps. That is what makes one go, ‘YOU BETTER TALK TO YOUR SON; HE SAYS HE WANTS TO BE A WRITER WHEN HE CAN BE A LAWYER. WHAT DOES HE WANT TO LIVE ON, EH, WHAT? HE WANTS TO GO AND STARVE. OR DOES HE THINK I’M GOING TO SUPPORT HIM THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE? YOU BETTER TALK TO HIM!’ And the other goes, ‘Why can daddy not understand? Why is he behaving as if he was never a young man himself? Can’t he understand that I’ve got my life to live? It’s my life after all!’ With a stalemate like that, the mother can only do one thing: continue to swivel her head from one speaker to another. Hers is such a placid, peaceful life.

    Watching father-child interactions gives one a better understanding of the war of the worlds than any book or film can. It is a veritable collision of courses where everyone thinks he/she is just and the other a malevolent monster. What is a child but a being sent from the other world to come and plague you, said a father? And another asked his son: ‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘A daddy, with a lot of luck’, replied the son, as he watched his father struggle to balance the family’s accounts.

    Then there can be failure to appreciate the stuff that each is made of. One can go, ‘Mummy, why is Daddy such a hard man? No matter what you ask him, the answer is always ‘NO’. ‘No’ to shoe allowance; ‘no’ to make-up allowance; ‘no’ to summer holidays abroad when all my friends are going. Why can’t he understand that our times are different from his?’ And the father goes, ‘You better talk to your daughter. In this house there is no room for any spoiled child. My parents did not spoil me; why should I spoil any yeye child?’

    That reminds me of a story I read in a magazine. The son of the house had asked to borrow the car for the weekend. The father had agreed on the condition that the son would first mow the lawn. He agreed and the contract was signed, verbally. When the father returned from his own weekend trip, the son complained that he could not find the car key. ‘Funny,’ said the father, ‘I tied it to the handle of the lawn mower myself before going away.’

    Of course, disagreements over properties are normal, everyday occurrences. Once Junior learns to drive, the question of who really owns the car becomes mute. Nobody asks it; only the father grumbles about accruing mileage, increasing fuel costs, and having to pay for the pleasure rides of sons who should be studying or working. ‘After all,’ father concludes his tirade, ‘at his age, I already owned a car. He just better not think that he is going to own this house’. Now, that is war.

    I believe I have told this story before but I will tell it again for the sake of those reading this column for the first time while the old hands can enjoy it again and also because I enjoy repeating jokes. Once, a father and son were quarrelling and at a heated point of the exchange, the father peremptorily asked the son to leave his house. The son replied that he was going nowhere because he was in his father’s house. His father could go and look for his own father’s house if he wished and stay there.

    I’m not quite sure but I seem to think that report cards may also have something to do with it. That’s another ‘at your age…’ syndrome that can cause fractures. You know how fathers are forever going on and on about how they always came first in their classes in their primary school days? Well, one such bragging was brought to an end recently when some children discovered their father’s primary school report card in some very old box that appeared never to have been opened. In black and white, the report showed daddy coming second from the rear. When the children confronted their father with the evidence, he summarily sent them out of the house. The silly things, he grumbled; let them not go and read their books instead of going around searching old boxes!

    Anyway, an analyst has suggested that men who always claim to have come first in their primary school days actually believe the lie they tell themselves. By the way, there are many self-deluding fathers who believe many other things: that their children are as well behaved outside the house as they are within it; that everyone lies against their children out of envy; that their children fail because teachers hate them not that they are lazy… Well, time to wake up.

    On this column last year, we greeted the fathers and prayed that they would help their family members reach their best. This year, we are praying that fathers, as well as, if not better than mothers, can be fracture healers in their families. Fractures can heal with a great deal of patient and loving handling; and so will fractured relationships. Sadly, there are many fathers who are not on talking terms with their children. The rule is, if we cannot heal, we must not fracture.

    Secondly, this column prays fathers to be encouragers of their broods for a healthy family relationship. The health of the Nigerian family is in the hands of both mothers and fathers; neither is indispensable.

     

     

  • How not to be a lady and my other (un)social etiquettes

    Perhaps, we may regard this age as the ruffian’s age, the rogue’s age, the thug’s age, but certainly not the lady’s age. Good example: just look at our politicians. Can you imagine a good man surviving in their midst? Now then, are you surprised that our female politicians cannot afford to be ‘ladies’ in their midst either? They would not survive. So, our female politicians have learnt to dine with their male counterparts using long spoons. Just ask our former first lady; just look at the terribly loooong spoon she used to dine all the way from Abuja to Rivers State. Do you then wonder that we have been getting some teeeeeerribly funny results in that region?

    They say it takes seven generations to make a lady; and I say it may take seven countries to make one. The reason is that this is the age of THE COOOOOL; the age when bad is good, mean is beautiful, ugly is handsome, wicked is admirable and the unpredictable attracts worse than honey does bees. In this age, ladies have become men of brawn, and gentlemen have given way to laughter. They are splitting their sides watching the women painfully swing all kinds of doors open with fake manly gusto.

    Many people think that being a lady only means wearing ruffles, silks and diamonds. In truth, there are many ladies in AJEGUNLE and there are also many JANKARA women in IKOYI. Actually, it is not when one is dressed up to the nines that one can claim to be a lady. Clothes, they say, doth not a man make, or a woman. Most times, dressing up in the fineries only succeeds in making one look gaudy, untidy and a bad advertisement for the diamond cutter. Just ask the wife of one of our senators who recently celebrated her birthday in a dress that looked like a masquerade’s parade! But you and I know better. We know how to tell a lady apart, don’t we?

    We know that a lady is someone who does everything in a calculated, unhurried way. Even when it is raining, a lady may hasten her footsteps, but she will not run giddy-gadding for shelter no matter how wet she may be. She will also not swear at the blasted weather. Her habits must be neat. Now, that’s a tough one. It means that a lady will not bend down to retrieve her keys like a fish seller laying down her fish-load from her head, her bottoms up. Rather, she will stoop, her knees bent, to retrieve her object from the gutter, no matter how dirty. She will not even walk in any which way, flinging legs and thighs around as if she is trying to determine how much they weigh. Indeed, to be a lady, one is encouraged to walk as if the entire body is in a POP cast, like a broken leg or arm.

    More importantly, a lady watches what she says. Now, there you have us all Nigerian women. I am told that there are certain words that must not ensue from a lady’s mouth; for example, words heavily laden with abuses, insults, curses, and such shrew-like epithets are not ladylike. I think Nigerian husbands wrote that rule, but never mind, the important thing is that her speech, to the weather and every other unruly element, must always be pleasing. Anger at erring husbands and children must be expressed in an inoffensive way, not with pestle and mortar, but with well-chosen words such as ‘Oh, but you are a funny one, are you not?’ to someone who has stolen a goat; and ‘Oh my, what a lovely rascal you are to be sure’ to someone who has stolen someone else’s house. And to someone who has embezzled billions of Naira, a lady would rather say, ‘Consider yourself slapped!’

    When I ponder on why it is that men no longer want to do things for women – you know, like opening doors, drawing out chairs, giving up their seats for them, waiting attentively on the words dropping out of their sagacious mouths, making sure women eat first before the men – I find it is because the women have sold themselves out to the enemy. No, no, the enemy is not the group called men; the enemy is the weakness in women that makes them succumb to the rush of the moment and the rush for the gold of the workplace, which has sometimes been erroneously interpreted as self-realisation. In the process, self-assertion has taken the centre stage and squeezed out the very soul of politeness women are known for.

    Worse, in this age of nuclear technology, the preoccupation of most people is directed more at the nuclear bombs they are sitting on and the nuke-heads pointing at their throats. That leaves issues such as good comportment and social manners scraping the forgotten bottom of the barrel of important items to worry about. To cap everything else, I find that there is a deep, deep level of ignorance which is most astounding. ‘Lady?’, my respondents shot back at me when I vouchsafed to ask some women for their opinions on the matter. ‘Wetin be lady? Abeg comot jo; na lady we go chop?’ In this age, I say, the stomach rules, ok.

    Now, in many homes, the man eats his fill of the dinner first before the woman, if she is lucky to get any. Perhaps, that accounts for why women no longer care about themselves when they are outside the home, e.g. say in traffic. Oh my, have you seen the way women drive cars these days? It is enough to make Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti turn in her grave. I tell you, if she had driven that way when she became Nigeria’s first female-driver, there would have been a parliamentary move against female-drivers then and we would today be in the same boat as women in one Arab country where they are not allowed to drive, and from what I see now, I can’t blame them much. These days, its women who overtake with all kinds of swoosh from any direction, like the Arabian genie coming in and going out of a bottle.

    Someone commented the other day that Nigerian women carry themselves generally with the most careless abandon in their talk, shape and gait. I agreed and decided to watch myself from then on. However, it was hard going not to fling abuses at taxi-drivers and Okada riders who cut into traffic without any care, children who crossed the roads without checking first, chickens that scurried to and fro without any care. It was tough not to pounce on my food like a famished tiger after a hard day’s work. It was tougher to remember to walk or drive like a human being when I found I was late for work.

    It pains me each time I see women straddling Okada with all their dignity packed up with their skirts, or when I watch their waistlines jiggling up and down as the road contours. They do not ride Okada astride in skirts, showing their all to the backs of the riders.

    Clearly, the women in this country need to get their ladylike acts back together. There are things ladies just do not do; they do not let money, position or politics make them lose their sense of propriety. More importantly, they must retain a good temper and be trustworthy. And they must guard the sanctity of whatever has been entrusted to them (children, husband, power, position or wealth) with every sense of responsibility for the sake of everyone. Above all, they must be careful never to fight in public or drive those around them crazy with their nonsenses.

  • There needs to be social reformation for democracy to survive

    Last week, we celebrated democracy day, and I must tell you that I had nothing to celebrate. Lately, I have been so drowned in depression that I did not realise the day was a public holiday until I had picked up my handbag to start for the door. It was the radio that brought me up short. It remembered me a cartoon I read a long time ago about a civil servant who was so used to going to work that he found he had become an automaton. It happened that one day, he woke up, and straight from bed he put on his hat, picked up his briefcase and went to work in his pyjamas, only to find out that it was a Saturday.

    Flat joke, right? Well, that was how flat the democracy day was for me – no zest, no bubbles, no chutzpah, just democracy on my empty plate. I guess that was what everyone was thinking too – the empty plates that have now come to define daily living in Nigeria. Everywhere you turn, sad long faces greet you while your own questioning one stares back at them. Behind the dull ache of it all, everyone has this one question: what the heck is going on? Why are we not hopping around in democratic ecstasy?

    One might say it’s probably because we still have not got this democracy thing pat down. Another might say that all we have done so far has been to threaten democracy. No one has really put his back to it to try and build it up or buffer it. Everyone has had his/her sticky little fingers around her neck to smother it. Some might even say that corruption is still alive and well in the country and smothering democracy. Others would say that the fingers throttling democracy are actually trying to throttle corruption.

    True. There have been all kinds of explanations to the ineffectuality of democratic dividends in the land. Is it corruption fighting back, as people are wont to say? Or is it that the government did not put its thinking cap on to ensure that something better than corruption was planted in the land before attempting to remove the famous corruption? I know, and I’m sure you do too, that one does not set out to tip out an evil force without first ensuring that something more positive would be used to replace it.

    According to some (I think the government will agree while many will disagree), Nigeria tipped out the evil force of corruption before replacing it with a more acceptable social ethos. I sort of think that the government especially hoped that all they needed to do was destroy corruption and Nigeria could breathe again. People would automatically find themselves doing something more socially acceptable, given that they are saints in the making and don’t even know it. Well, they were wrong.

    According to others, corruption is still alive and well, and laughing back at us. Some believe that it has so perfected its system and that it has so spread its tentacles and grip on every facet of living in Nigeria that it cannot be removed. It is in the petrol buying and selling. It is in the buying and selling of food items. It is in the awkward transportation system we have chosen to adopt in this country, the service sector, the private sector, the worship sector. Heck, it is in the very air we breathe. How then can any government claim to have eradicated it, especially as there is nothing better on ground?

    Sure, we can use productivity to replace corruption. We can use diversification. We can even use cottage industry or agricultural outputs. My take is that whatever might be used to replace something else ought to have been on ground before the something else is withdrawn to give room for the whatever.

    Well, corruption aside, I know that my hunger is threatening democracy. Boko haram once threatened democracy but you and I will now agree that we seem to have more to fear from Fulani herdsmen than boko haram. So yes, the Fulani herdsmen’s attacks are threatening democracy. Even the president’s failure to halt the attacks is a threat. The assemblymen’s over inflated earnings are threatening it. The failure to educate the people on the goals and processes of democracy is quite another. Heck, even I am threatening democracy, especially as I don’t know much about it either, given that I am expected to be a full and willing participant in the process, with me being hungry and all.

    Seriously though, the lack of knowledge is about the most damaging of all to the survival of democracy. To start with, the majority of Nigerians are still not educated. And the ones who are know nothing about democracy. More than half of the participants who stand for elections do not know or understand what is expected of them. So, clearly, we do not have the literate society that can translate the ideals of the democratic process into reality for all our benefits. For that, we must look to the ants.

    A study of nature will show us that one of the most organised societies is the colony of ants. In that kingdom, everyone knows his place. One is either a soldier (those are the ones that bite you when you are careless), or a worker (the ones that forage for food and generally find it in the cake you leave cooling on the table) or a queen (the one who makes the political decisions such as asking the soldiers to squash a dissident). There you are; can any society be more democratic than that? Everyone knows where he belongs, and that, to me, is literacy.

    Literacy, adult and juvenile, needs to be pursued relentlessly. The reason is simple and straightforward. No social reformation can take place without it; and social reformation is the oxidation, combustion and draught of the fires of democracy. Social reformation makes democracy burn like mad and dance the victory dance. Right now, the only social reformation we have seen has been the distribution of herdsmen around the country. I don’t know what for; please don’t ask me. All I know is that even if they kill off the entire country, they cannot replace the populace with cows.

    Seriously, there is still no electricity for all twenty-four hours, year round, for most people. There is still no pipe-borne water for all once you leave the precincts of your roof gutter that collects and transmits rain water. There is no good transportation system to speak of in the entire country. Tourists cannot make Nigeria a tourism destination because of stories of killings, kidnappings, frauds, bad roads and terrible-looking public vehicles that ply the roads. For tourists therefore, it would be too much of a descent into the jungle.

    What then do we do? We need a plan that will take social reformation very seriously. For starters, we need to get serious about fixing the society rather than just promoting individuals, groups, clans or villages. The jocular ‘it’s the Nigerian system’, used to explain every national failure, stems from the fact that the nation is not being built to be self-sustaining. A society that is not built will soon sink into depression and eventually disintegration.

    My democracy day blues actually came from not just my empty plate, but my empty pocket, heart and mind. We must earnestly begin to reform the social structures, so that everyone will know his place. And as they say, the rest will follow. Then, I’ll have my plate full again, I assure you.

     

     

  • The burdens our children bear for us

    Sometime ago, a time that seems like eons now, I wrote a piece on this column on children as heroes of our homes. In the piece, I tried to draw attention to the misuse many parents were putting their children to under the guise of bringing them up. I am all for not sparing the rod and all that; but I do believe that children are entitled to a modicum of regard to enable them grow up decently. It is only children whose learning experiences are decent that will turn round to respect the society that brings them up.

    Today, as we celebrate children’s day again, I want to draw attention to another aspect of our social deviousness: the sexual assault the society allows its adults to mete out on children. These days, nearly every newspaper gives a sick-making report of one child or the other being assaulted sexually by people who should know better. And the reports keep coming each day. It has got so bad one can conclude that children are no longer safe on the streets, in their own neighbourhoods, in their schools and even in their homes.

    From these reports, one gets the impression that there has been an outbreak of wickedness of tsunami proportions to children from the male populace across the world. Listen, it has got so bad even the devil is surprised. Just look at the headlines: ‘Lagos printer rapes a 15-year-old pupil’; ‘Lawmaker arrested for raping 14-year-old’; ’19-year-old molests 4-year-old’; ’65-year-old rapes friend’s 12-year-old daughter’; ’32-year-pld defiles 11-year-old;’ ’65-year-old molests teenage boy;’ ’75 remanded for defiling 2 girls’… All of these within a period of how many weeks or months?

    Looking at these reports, I want to join others who are screaming, what is going on? Are we not content with making our children carry the burden of our social irresponsibility, now we have to add our sexual perverseness too? I mean, let’s face it, the Nigerian society has never been considerate of her children. If she had been, she would have borne them in mind from the start of her social construction process. We all would have worked assiduously to leave a worthy legacy for them individually and collectively. We would have worked hard to bequeath to them a society that works: where electricity is not rare, where water flows from the tap, not the end of the child’s bucket, and where food is not a privilege for the child but a right.

    In not giving our children any of these, we have rather consigned them to lives of servitude and slavery. In that life, each child now finds himself or herself working as a fetcher of water, primer of generator and hewer of wood in the average Nigerian home. As if these burdens were not enough, we are now adding sexual servitude to their burdens. The question is, who gave us the right to make our children sources of cheap gratification for our sexual perverseness? The devil?

    True, many of the culprits when caught claim that ‘the devil’ made them do it. Like I said, I bet even the devil is dismayed that his name is being used so freely; he clearly does not send anyone on such horrible errands. It is therefore no use ascribing these deeds to the devil; he is far too busy. I mean, is he not seeing to the emptying of my pocket, my pot of soup and our national treasury? Give him some credit; he has far more important things to do.

    Rather alarmingly, the use of children for sexual gratification appears to be growing. Children appear to be more in demand in the sex-slave trade which cuts across the world’s boundaries now.  So, people who were nurtured and allowed by their own parents and societies to grow up into adults suddenly develop bodily lusts which only other people’s children can satisfy. On the other hand, those who cannot afford to participate in transnational sex-slavery defile little children within their own borders.

    Hence, what we are witnessing is a renewal of the slave trade, that cost many lives in the past, in a new and deadlier form. This new form is not confined to a particular country or known social circuits, so it would be difficult to fight. It is practiced by people to whom the world bows under normal circumstances. Thus, a seized child could end up being the sex-slave of a lawyer, doctor, dentist, contractor, cleric or even unemployed labourer – no defined status. These, with whom children should normally feel safe, are the ones who help to cut children’s lives short or scar them for life.

    Why then are we witnessing this flare up? Among others, the most important reason is perhaps this absence of a well-ordered society where the police and judiciary truly work to apprehend and punish. It has been said that Nigeria has not been able to entrench the reign of justice in the land. I agree. There are many things I should have been apprehended for but which I have got away with so far because of this lack of justice in the land. Just look at my laziness; its colossal. I look forward to that day when justice will reign so that our children can grow up in peace without being sized up by some randy contractor who is licking his lips behind a window.

    Modernity may also have a bit to do with it. All these modern contraptions like cable networks, internet or films tend to expose people to social behaviour that is not necessarily beneficial to one’s own society. What the eyes see the brain wants to replicate. It is rather strange that the Nigerian government has over the years not encouraged the print information culture to flourish as the real reformer of character but has rather encouraged the digital culture to grow and become the real destroyer of instincts. Anyone can have any access to any kind of digital literature now from anywhere. This is not good. Too many unformed minds are exposed to the ‘devil’ in them things. Never mind, I still insist the devil may be innocent in many cases ascribed to him; just like the knife is, until it is picked up….

    Besides these, the population explosion of the eighties and nineties is coming home to roost. While the governments at that time encouraged parents to breed children indiscriminately, those governments failed to make adequate plans for what would occupy the products of these breeding programmes with. Most of those caught in the acts of defilement are those to whom the economy has not been too kind because of missed or absent opportunities. They are the products of poor planned governmental parenthood.

    The Nigerian society needs to wake up and stem this growing scourge. Our children are no longer safe in Nigeria, and I am not exaggerating. This kind of social misconduct is anathema to the traditional society in Nigeria. Children were much valued then and they still have the right to be nurtured and allowed to grow into adulthood, like others before them. They should be allowed to fill their heads with innocent nonsenses, great adventures, stories of heroic deeds, imaginations about great lands, etc. This will teach them to innovate and take initiative in their adult years for societal growth.

    Children should not have to worry about predators lurking around them, and adults should not be allowed to make our children bear the burdens of our various gratifications. We need to wake up, so that these headlines may change. Happy children’s day.

     

  • The Nigerian classroom presently has bigger problems

    Recently, the Minister of Education was said to have complained that the teacher population in Nigeria was ‘grossly’ inadequate for its future needs. He said this against the backdrop of concerns for the country’s population explosion which has been projected would shoot up by millions in a number of years. He was thus worried that the present number of teachers would be highly inadequate and the curriculum would be outdated.

    I immediately thought that I would we rather tried to solve our present problems before tackling the future ones. This column, and tonnes of other writings from concerned columnists and citizens, have gone to great pains to point out the various problems bedevilling our educational system presently. Believe me, the future is not reckoned with yet. Our present needs are actually more worrisome.

    I guess it was that kind of concern that prompted the Kaduna State governor, Mr. El-Rufai, to cause a stir in the educational scene some time ago, when he threatened to fire over twenty thousand teachers at once for incompetence. I think he later stepped that action down when he realised the same thing that our minister is just now realising: there is a severe drought of teachers. I know, I know, the governor claimed to be able to replace them within a short time but seriously, the possibility of that happening is still very doubtful. One could tell the level of his frustration though.

    Anyway, I bet you the Kaduna State governor was not alone. Indeed, many states appeared to have been ready to follow suit if the action of sacking thousands of teachers had been followed through. Had they done that, then they would all have come to a sad realisation: the ones they hoped to replace the sacked teachers with would be no better. It would have been a full circle brought round: plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. I guess they all decided to live with the safer option: the devils you know are better than the saints you don’t. The better ones are yet out there, unseen.

    Now, we come to the fact that even the population of teachers, as it is, is not sufficient to tackle the educational needs of the present, not to mention those of the next few years. At present, public schools are grossly undervalued in every aspect. Let us take public primary schools as an example. According to reports, public primary schools in Nigeria collectively house over twenty million pupils and the teachers who cope with them are only a little above half a million. This means that presently, teachers are handling more than their fair share of pupils at each contact period, perhaps over forty as against the recommended under twenty.

    Now, this is just on the average. I have seen and heard of classrooms where the teacher has no sitting space, no pacing space, only standing space. I have seen and heard of ‘class arms’ reaching as far as ‘E’ in some schools. I have seen and heard of schools where the average mentioned above is only a mirage, and the classroom population is a consternation and an astonishment. These are real and present dangers.

    All of these classroom problems naturally come with their attendant implications. A classroom of screaming children is bad enough, an overpopulated classroom of screaming children is unbearable even for the average even-tempered person. To handle such, the person needs the patience of Job (to out-wait a thousand crying episodes), the strength of Samson (to break off a thousand fights per day), the wisdom of Solomon (to see through their thousand and one tall tales) and the running savvy of the rabbit. This last one means s/he has to be able to outrun his/her charges as they fly around the class, school or neighbourhood.

    The above mentioned are least among the problems; indeed, the Nigerian classroom has bigger ones. As of now, dear reader, I understand that many public primary school teachers across the country teach their pupils only in the vernacular as the pupils, even in the advanced classes, have no inkling of English, the language of the common entrance examinations. A researcher who tried to compare the rate of understanding between private and public schools’ pupils found out that the mode of communication in public schools did not even give room for any measurement. So, in the matter of communication: Vernacular Rules, Ok.

    We have talked about the problems of overpopulation and communication; now, let us add the problem of poor learning environment. Most classrooms in the public schools hold little or no attraction for learning for the child-learner. Classrooms are not made conducive for the learner. Public school children are lucky to have rooms shielding them from rain, sun and moon instead of trees. They are lucky to have cement floors under their feet in place of grass or mud. They are lucky to have wooden chairs and desks to sit and write on rather than cement blocks, felled trees or makeshift seaters. Many classrooms are open to the elements; and so are their occupants.

    Then we come to the problem of poor remunerations. I believe that Nigerian teachers are among the most poorly paid in the world. Perhaps, it might be that they are among the most unqualified and the most resistant to training and retraining, I don’t know. Perhaps, it might be due to political manipulations. I don’t know. What is known is that many times, teachers are not paid or are poorly paid in spite of having this large work schedule of holding down a class of highly restless tykes. It is also known that many times, they don’t do the work. It is also known that many times, teachers are resistant to moves to improve them or make themselves available for improvement.

    In many countries in Europe where education is valued, teachers are among the best paid workers. There is in my phone right now a joke credited to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was said to have retorted to demands for salary increase by other professionals that she could not pay them higher than she pays teachers because those were the ones who taught them! But then, their system ensures that each teacher is worth his salt, pepper and all. In short, only the best are hired at all levels, and high performance is demanded of all.

    It remains for us to say now that Nigeria has always followed the line of least workability either by ignorance, error or poor judgement. I suspect the latter but it could also easily be the former ones. Anything that smacks of hard work is anathema to us. We are more interested in hard pay, I think. Therefore, I do believe that finding out how to evolve a good system can sometimes be beyond us.

    This has not been a treatise on public primary education in Nigeria. It has only been a little reaction to a word credited to the minister of education. The reaction has only focused on the public primary school system in Nigeria to show that we can build a sure foundation to counter future problems when we solve the present problems of overpopulation, poor communicative abilities, poor remuneration, and poor school environment, among many others. Public secondary schools would surely constitute a whole new kettle of fish.

    Government’s ready response to these problems has always been negative – due, it says, to lack of funds. Yet, we all watch silently as national assembly members award themselves unearthly emoluments and cart away our resources to foreign countries. It stands to reason that when we are able to retrieve these fat emoluments from the national assembly, we will probably have something to run our schools with. Until then.

  • Let me tell you what I think of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    Let me start this week by recounting a joke I once read in the Reader’s Digest, I think it was. There was once a king who was worried about not knowing exactly what his subjects thought of him. So he got up one day, determined to find out, and dressed himself as a wretched pauper, then slipped out of the palace doors.

    He then fetched up at a bar where he met a lone, wizened old drinker. Simulating the manner of a carefree citizen, the king asked breezily, ‘And what do you think of the king?’ ‘Shhh!’, said the other. ‘Not here’. Then they went outside. ‘Now, will you tell me…’ ‘Shhh, not here’. Then the old man took the king some way out of the town. ‘Shhh, not here.’ They finally entered a field. When they got to the middle of it, the old man looked right and left, then asked the king to move closer before he whispered, ‘I like him’.

    The moral of that story is that if you really want to know what I think of AI, you have to wait till we get to the middle of the field before I can whisper it to you. Let me start however by saying that this week, we are not going to concern ourselves with the antics of our politicians, the subterfuge of our government, or the deliberately courted hysteria of the citizenry. We are going into the world of information technology

    I have always believed that western information technology is nothing but a ruse. My ancestors already had the traditional one. I remember that an ancestor of mine had the ability to command his own disappearance by standing on only one leg whenever danger threatened. More, that individual could also spend days on the farm and still manage to communicate to his wife beforehand what he wanted to eat on his return. That to me is information technology. So I ask, how come we’re just speaking of it now?

    Well, from my readings, it seems that the world has flown away with information technology, or is it the other way round now? It seems that since the microchip came into existence, the world has not been able to rest. I told you that someone has given the forecast that the world is probably going to be consumed not by fire but by the computer, the facilitator and host of your information technology structures.

    Take the computer for instance. Now, I hear you can programme your computer to wake you up in the morning, order your coffee, select your day’s wear, part the curtains, answer the door, organise your schedules and remind you that you are still owing your neighbour a rake that you failed to return on the promised date. Of course you and I know that these things make sense in Nigeria because they are already happening here. The facilitators of these actions are called wives.

    Seriously though, the other day, my computer reminded me that my next blood pressure measurement was due just because I once made the mistake of entering the last reading in it and it told me I was a borderline! Me, a borderline! I shook my fists at the thing.

    What I cannot easily shake my fist at is a robot. You know what a robot is, don’t you? It is that thing that is said to be +human, -sense. It is the personification of the information technology, microchip and telecommunication all rolled into one; the AI. I have no idea what that means but I guess you do. Anyway, in more serious climes (that means those countries where life is taken a little more seriously such as America, Japan, North Korea, etc.), robots are taken so seriously it is said they might soon replace soldiers on the battle field. So I ask, what will humans be doing when robots are slugging it out, go back to slinging insults?

    So, you can imagine my consternation when I heard that robots have even now entered the UN! There was this report of one ‘Sophia’ built to be able to not only reproduce what is inputted into her but that she can even simulate thought! By integrating her inputs, she can logically deduce and make structures that are new, thus simulating natural speech. That forced me to upgrade my definition of a robot to +human, +sense, -integrity. Anything that shamelessly steals another person’s ambition lacks integrity. Oh yes, it’s always been my ambition to go through the revolving doors of the UN. Now, a robot with AI has beaten me to it.

    There we are, everywhere you turn, AI is starring at you through its wide open mouth. Your lights now turn themselves on when you step on your porch. That is scary, but thank God for good old NEPA that does not allow that to happen often on account of its darkness restructuring programme. However, when Mr. or is it Miss AI wanted to take my bag after I returned from work the other day, I drew a line. I said a firm ‘no’. Decency is decency. What would I tell the neighbours? Anyway, I think one must look out for oneself. Robots never get tired. They only get disconnected. What would happen to me if I allowed a robot with AI to take over my life? I would become a vegetable, and would find myself needing to be connected sometimes to bring life back to my sinews.

    I am not accusing the builders of ‘Sophia’ and her AI ilk of trying to make me useless. Honestly though, it smells suspiciously so. I never complained that I could not blow on a hot coal pot to cook my meat to a turn. I never complained that I could no longer flip my switch of an evening to turn on the light. No, I did not. So, I regard the AI people as the aggressors. They came to my turf of human abilities and are now threatening to make me useless. I will not have it.

    Now that we are in the middle of the field, let me tell you what I think of AI. I will whisper it in your ears. ‘I think it’s fantastic.’ Shhh! Don’t let anyone hear you. Seriously though, AI just makes life a breeze. When you think that it removes a great deal of stress from much of living, it really makes living, you know, living! It is even more so when you get a robot that cooks and creates exceptional dishes from the little input it is given. I can’t wait to get a robot that can make new dishes from an input of garri, okro and stew. Maybe, it will come up with some new dish like Stokga.

    Even more importantly, I can’t wait for when robots will be sent to war in place of humans. I can think of a few wars for them myself. I have a neighbour who plays his music loudly through the night and I would like to go to war with him. Since I know he can beat me black and blue, I would be too happy to delegate the duty of fighting him to my AI.

    Seriously though, I think it is important for this country to become more serious in taking advantage of the drive for advancement in information technology instead of shying away from everything progress-driven. I won’t give up though. I’m determined to wait for the robot born with the war cry, ‘To the fray…!’ Who knows, even at this crawling pace, it may yet come. Should it not though, we can always go back to the traditional technology with its various abilities.

  • It’s yet another Labour Day, folks …

    It’s yet another labour day, folks, and I’m right now feeling the full weight of my heavy work schedule. As an African woman, conventionally, I am a hewer of wood and fetcher of water. When I am not busy hewing and juggling wood, gas, kerosene and coal like a regular juggler to give a right balance to my housekeeping allowance and ensure it stays in the air (you really should see me), then I am busy fetching and carrying – anything from food, water or chair to flowerpots, child or husband from sun up till sun up. Yep, it is right that I should be celebrated, especially since no one pays me for any of these, not even for carrying the husband.

    I have just described part of your typical housewife’s work. One woman said I should add that with the new liberation that women now have, she also must supply the money to buy the food that she hauls and cooks. Then, in order to get her money back, she must now pet the man of the house, pat him on the head, rub his back, feet and ego. In the process, she must smell his feet. It’s no wonder women are sooooooo tired and headachy at the end of the day; it comes from all these busy schedules of feet smelling. No wonder they never take their apron off; it’s for wiping the nose. Phew!

    Only very few people have heavier schedules with less pay than the average housewife but who is to tell the chief executive of Nestle that? However, our story today is not about housewifery or the one who does it; it’s about the Nigerian worker who actually does the Nigerian work.

    The Nigerian work flows aplenty. You’ll find it in the factories, schools, civil service offices, corporations, streets, homes, and anywhere you would care to look. The work is also being done, or pretending to being done by your average Nigerian. True, most times, the average Nigerian places more value on the pay than on the work, but you can forgive him; he’s just being a Nigerian in those moments.

    True, most workers all over the world tend to place the value of their work on the pay they receive, and contrive to put in less than or equal to the value of their pay into their work. I think this is why they have union officials who are forever shaking their fists and muttering at management, while negotiating more pay for less work and hours. And I think they have succeeded in getting less work and less hours, but I hear they are still talking about that pay rise.

    Anyway, this labour day talk is different. On this labour day, we want to see exactly what the Nigerian worker has accomplished. To you and I, it appears there is much to show for all the talks trade union officials have been having with government and employers since the early nineties when the talks began in Nigeria. True, no one can claim that workers have found themselves where they really want to be today. Largely though, there appears to be more social and rights consciousness among workers. The only trouble is that the more advancement they seem to get, the more the goalpost shifts away from them. It’s just like me now. Every time I think I have arrived at the pinnacle of fashion with a new dress, the glossy magazines shift the parameters. Life is just not fair.

    What is also not clear is the theme for this year’s labour day celebrations, uniting workers for social and economic advancement. It says that I must unite with other workers in order to achieve social and economic advancement. And there I was thinking I was already united with other feet-smelling women. I thought that was why indeed we had got this far. Obviously, I was wrong; there is still a lot of uniting to do. I guess they must mean that there are many fronts where workers are not quite united.

    Take the Nigerian labour case as an instance. I understand that there are factions of the general body. I think we have talked about the NLC factionalisation before so we shall not be repeating ourselves even though I love doing that. However, for this theme to come up this year is a sign that things are not yet right and something is still smelly in this labour state all over the world.

    One thing is clear: a united labour front can determine how well it goes with the body. I’m sure the leaders know this very well. However, for reasons best known to the individuals at the heart of this fractioning business, the union persists in disunity. Different bodies are conducting affairs for the union on different fronts. How does this work?

    Might we just remind the labour body or bodies now that it was unity that helped her to achieve great things in the past. Ask the past labour leaders. That was when leaders were men. Their leadership was not for personal gain but for the welfare of the general body. Why, the strong leadership such men provided even helped the country to stand up as one man against the federal government on the petrol subsidy removal some years ago. The union functioned veritably as an opposition party to any government without being partisan.

    Unfortunately, this story of unity changed suddenly, and suspiciously after the last standoff between the country and its government. Exactly what caused this is difficult to say. Some people have attributed the break to money and its power. They have said that people have been enticed with money to lead breakaway factions and breakaway of breakaway factions in order to weaken the strength of the broken body. Get that?

    Some people have even pointed fingers at the government as the planter of disunity. They have said that in order to prevent that kind of unified standoff again, it was better to make ‘things to fall apart … so that the centre cannot hold’. Who knows where the truth of that lies?

    What I do know is that NLC as we used to know it is in disarray and the country is the poorer for it. If indeed there has been some external governmental interference, then I would put it down to ignorance, and I would use the analogy of pain to illustrate this.

    Now, one of the things I hate is pain. For me, pain is an irritant, a curse and a most wicked thing to have been planted in the human body. Why indeed do I need to feel pain when I stub my toe or cut my finger? For me, the pain of pain is worse than the original injury. It’s even worse for me when it comes to injections. You should see me do the dance transnationale and dance macabre before I would allow anyone to come near me with the wicked looking things.

    Anyway, as I have grown, I have come to the understanding that pain has a purpose. Unbelievable! Well, this time also coincided with when I could ask questions and gain knowledge. That was when I found that a body that does not feel pain might soon find itself in hot water and not even know it, no pun intended.

    I have since imbibed the ‘Pain is good’ philosophy; I don’t like it, but I accept it, just as I accept the light/darkness dichotomy. Someday, we’ll talk about that. In the same way, whoever is afraid of the strength of our labour union needs to calm down. A strong union should exist for a reason – to serve as a barometer for the society.

  • Of books, bookworms and illiteracy

    During the week, I read someone’s claim that if the poor in Nigeria benefit from a Nigerian government’s policy, it is completely accidental, or something to that effect. I’m sure you and I agree with that statement, if you know what it means. On my part, I interpret it to mean first and foremost that Nigerians (both government and people) have ways of conceiving ideas that benefit only a small number of people, say the government’s men (and women too). So, in this country, the president’s diet is changed so that someone close enough can make the supplies.

    Don’t let us take this interpretation thing further, or else I might begin to think the statement may also mean that the education you and I have received so far have not really been aimed at us but we somehow stood in the way, and gained an education. Really, government’s policies have never been directed at improving the lot of the poor; everything it has done has been for itself. Talk of anyone being self-serving.

    You know of course that the converse will also hold true: that everything the government has failed to do has also been for its own benefit. Take the failure to revive and develop the railways, for instance. That is one colossal failure for which the government needs to cover its face in deep and great shame. The wonderful thing is that I can never for the life of me fathom out the benefit it is deriving from that failure when many nations in the world are being sustained by such social services. All I know is that one of the greatest benefits of modern living is still the train, and it is being denied us the poor in this country. But we are not here to repeat ourselves today; let’s leave that for a rainy day.

    Oh yes, I remember, the rainy days are here again. How do I know? Oh, because I can see various governments scampering around trying to fix leaky potholes and blocked drainages. You thought I would say because I can hear the rains falling down, down this way? No, I can’t say that because most times when it’s raining, I am too busy wading through flooded roads. When I’m not on the road, however, I pick something up and read. That is how I have come to read so many things: newspapers, comics, drug literatures, books, dog’s teaks (sorry, that’s counting), stars… I would willingly have read the dog’s liver (just to know the signs of the times) but the dog refused to oblige me. Yeah, that’s what bookworms do: read anything that comes to hand. That’s why the dog now runs away when he sees my hands coming.

    Bookworms, goes my Encarta, are enthusiastic readers; they are people who love reading so much they gobble books up. The good news is that I am not alone. Indeed, I pale into insignificance when I consider a friend of mine who says he can out-read a bookworm. Now, that is something. Just mention any title in the classics, he’s at home. Even bestseller lists do not go past his door step. And he lives in Nigeria. And he is an engineer. Once, I teased him that I quite believed if he lived in Britain, he would have been one of those who would camp all night in front of some bookshop just to be able to get a copy of a Harry Potter book. He said he got someone to do that for him. I rested my case, but not before I was struck by two things.

    One, I reflected on the rise and rise of Harry Potter and why it has not happened here. To begin with, the book publishing industry in Nigeria is suffering from a grave disease inflicted on it by the government. All over the world, it has been known that revolutions in literacy and information can be accelerated only through making books and newspapers cheap and affordable. I remember being sent to buy newspapers for three pence when I was young. That was some big money then, but I believe that it made news and information to be within the reach of more people than it is now at a whopping two hundred Naira – daily feeding money for many people now.

    Somewhere in the seventies, the trend of information affordability failed and I believe it was entirely the government’s fault. First it introduced SAP, and then it raised importation duties on printing materials. Book and news industries practically crumbled under the weight of the government’s wickedness. So, dear reader, even though Harry Potter is possible here, it will not come in a long while because publishing houses are more interested in fighting for survival than in aesthetics or altruism. Now they work very closely with schools’ curricula.

    Unfortunately, those among us who can really afford to finance publishing houses that would not be too desperate for survival are not ready to do so. They are the people who have had easy access to the government’s treasury but who are more inclined to quickly take their loot abroad than in making the economy grow. After all, it is not their responsibility to help people improve in their reading and thinking habits. Truly, only a foolish rich ‘un will keep his stolen money lying around long enough for detectives to find or for banks to give as soft loans to publishers.

    The second thing that struck me was that the government might have deliberately been trying to keep the literacy level down so that the number of its critics would be minimal. It’s much the same way you would keep the noise level down in the house by tying up the noise-maker. If I didn’t know the government better then, I would have said it was trying to stifle the people from seeking knowledge, wisdom, information and understanding so that they would not have independent minds. I think it has succeeded. Congratulations government; you are now presiding over one of the brightest illiterate societies in the world, and you did it all by yourself.

    That Nigerians are bright and intelligent, there is no doubt. Just look at the array of their activities: ‘419’ scams, intractable boko haram and Niger Delta insurgencies, ‘Yahoo Boys’’ scams, kidnapping businesses, and yes, more 419 scams. These are the efforts of brains put to work. True, these organs are now run by graduates and undergraduates but they were not started by graduates. You see, a dysfunctional society like ours where everything is upside down would sooner than later cause a malfunction of the brain even in the strong breeds.

    The present low level of literacy in Nigeria is causing havoc in every way. People are dying every day because they really do not know the difference between uniforms in health care institutions. I hear that general hospital attendants have been known to divert patients to their own home dispensaries because the patients do not know any better. Believe me, a nation’s economic and political survival has everything to do with the amount of knowledge and literacy its citizens have between them. If you don’t believe me, just look at the farming business in Nigeria today: how many mechanised farms can you count? Well, there’s mine, and mine, and mine; that’s all.

    Seriously, there is a strong connection between the government’s ‘Vision 2020202020’ or whatever name it goes by, the development of books and reducing the level of illiteracy in the country. That connection is political will. If the government wants a literate Nigeria by 2020, it will be done by its will.

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