The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Mugabe forever

    Africa’s diverse groups are looking for an efficiently devised and managed socio-politico-economic system that allows every individual to have a place and make a life for himself in it.

    Not too long ago, I wrote on this column:
    …Let’s give it to Mr. Robert Mugabe who says he has no intention of dying, because he has had a conversation with God on the matter of his death. Only, he should please share that audio/video evidence. If he does not have that evidence, then he should please step aside, and he shouldn’t make me to have to make him.

    Unfortunately, dear reader, I eventually had to make Robert Mugabe leave. Well, to be honest, I did not do it alone. I had a lot of help from his overambitious wife, his very annoyed bosom friends, and his excessively patient countrymen and women. I think the story really started with the unchecked ambition of his wife, Grace, who wanted to succeed her husband as head of state. This did not go down well with his bosom friends, Constantine Chiwenga, the head of the military, and Emmerson Mnangagwa, the former vice-president. It also annoyed the people. Through that, she finally paved the way for Mugabe to exit the Zimbabwean scene in semi-disgrace, even though he had hoped to live forever.

    I am not sure we have the full ramifications of what happened in Zimbabwe. While some commentators have described what took place there as a coup, others have been rather guarded and described it as a ‘change of baton among three friends.’ But, like they say, if it quacks like a duck… So, if it looks like a coup, feels like a coup, then it is probably a coup. After all, tanks were rolled out.

    Not that you can blame those who call it a change of guard. Truth is, the participants know each other. From our understanding, these three gentlemen named above all fought the liberation war side by side. The only one absent then was Grace, the wife. I think she was probably not born then. So, Zimbabweans have allowed the three liberation fighters to continue to enjoy the fruits of their liberation labours, even if it has meant literally sucking the country dry. But the people have not really minded rolling up many wheelbarrows of their dollars to the market just to buy an orange, have they? I think that is what Grace thought, as she so wanted desperately to go on with her partying.

    Anyway, today, we just want to talk about why things had to come to such a sorry pass before anything was done. What were the people looking at? I have always wondered why this African continent is so blest with leaders who have no business being in leadership. No matter how well-meaning the best of them are when they start out, they soon turn their minds to petty things and lose their vision. Most Africans cannot seem to get past the wealth they are surrounded by when they assume public office. They then become promptly blind and cannot see the fine print that draws the line between the public pocket and the private pocket. They think all is the booty of war. Why?

    One would think that people like Mugabe and his friends who had to physically fight to wrest their country from white rule would appreciate the fine things about governance. I would think indeed that people like that would appreciate the onerous fight to move the country towards socioeconomic and political liberation. If that fight had continued at the momentum it started with, Zimbabwe should now be cruising on the superhighway of development, a first world among the thirds. Instead, it is standing still in the midst of the last of the thirds.

    Mugabe sat at the head of a triumvirate of friends that has been ruling the country and has left the entire populace of Zimbabwe gasping for air. Even with Mugabe gone now, the saga still continues because the remaining duo might end up just keeping house for him. Mugabe lives on; Mugabe forever. The reason is that the only thing that differentiates them from him is that they have no Grace as yet to affront the sensibilities of the people, after inflicting poverty on them.

    Another question I have asked myself often and with no answer in sight is why a 93-year-old man would persist in thinking that he alone should keep ruling his country until he dropped. What exactly was he thinking? There is a post that has been going the rounds showing that America has had seven presidents since Mugabe came into power in 1980. More importantly, the snapshots of Mugabe always showed him at his varied ages of growth but invariably in various stages of sleep on his exalted seat. So, while the man sat and dozed on the country’s resources, he gave nothing back but somnambulating for all his 37 years in power! He was god, and no mistake.

    So, why do African leaders suffer from this god complex? I think it’s mostly because African leaders have contrived to make the law ineffective. Where there is no law, there is no sin. Most African leaders have fancied themselves to be the law. They do not embezzle; the entire funds belong to them, by divine right. They do not commit murder on political opponents; the entire country and its peoples belong to them. They can do no wrong; the entire legal system exists for their manipulation. Only the law of nature is left to cuff them because that does not belong to them.

    Mugabe has been cuffed now by old age and led out of the stage. His fellow triumvirates are not much younger, and yet, for all their years in power as head of the army, the ZANU-PF, the vice presidency, etc., Zimbabwe remains in shambles. What then becomes of this broken country? The people smile on.

    One of the problems of African countries remains this plurality of peoples. Most African countries have not been able to get past it. It is responsible for differences in language, culture and religion. It makes one group call a goat a goat while another calls it a beauty queen. It is one thing to mouth inanities like cultural diversities being beautiful as we do in Nigeria. In reality, though, plurality of cultures within a confined space spawns nothing but a deafening cacophony, if not properly managed. Unfortunately, devious and visionless African leaders continually use conjuring tricks to hold their diverse states to ransom. Mugabe was said to have been able to hold on to power for so long because he was able to control these diverse groups, even if dubiously.

    In truth, ability to control is not what these diverse groups need in their leaders. Africa’s diverse groups are looking for an efficiently devised and managed socio-politico-economic system that allows every individual to have a place and make a life for himself in it. This is what the leaders of western countries have been able to build for their citizens in spite of their own cultural diversities. Now everyone from all over the world wants to go and take advantage of that. In Africa, the leaders would rather take advantage of the situation and build confusion upon confusion so that the people can be at each other’s throats while the treasury is being emptied… It happened in Rwanda; it is happening in Nigeria. Nigeria now has religion pitted against religion, group against group and me against the whole world.

    Mugabe lives forever in every African leader that remains persistently anachronistic and not forward looking. When they do not manage their countries well but control groups for their own selfish ends, they are not leaders. People say there is a new word  for it now. They have merely mugabed.  The man just might live forever after all.

  • How can 22,000 teachers be wrong?

    It is easy indeed to point fingers, but let us remember the most important fingers are pointing back at us. We are all guilty.

    You remember how they used to tell us that thirty million Nigerians could not be wrong about Abacha being the best choice for Nigeria at a time in our history? Well, thirty million Nigerians were wrong. Now, we are being told that 22,000 teachers in Kaduna State are wrong because they failed the competency examination set for them. They had failed the equivalent of Primary Four level examinations. But, how can 22,000 teachers be wrong?

    I must be the only person in this wild kingdom who is not scandalized by this piece of news. Like everyone else, I saw the sample answers but unlike everyone else though, I did not panic. I simply went back to my bowl of amala. I am used to people failing exams. Heck, I am even used to people refailing exams. This means they fail the resit, and have to do a resit of the resit.

    Nigeria, we have a problem, but I do believe we have had this disaster coming to us for a long time. Many words now in the ocean from this column and others had talked about this situation and warned that the nation was sitting on an educational powder keg that would blow sky high any moment. No one batted an eye lid. Now, the fat’s in the fire, and everyone is all atwitter, literally.

    Now, it’s time to talk turkey. It’s almost turkey time, anyway; Christmas is near. But we are not talking that kind of turkey. We are talking the kind of cold turkey that should send the shivers down our spine, if we have any. It is easy indeed to get hot under our shirt collars when it comes to pointing fingers, but let us remember that the most important fingers are pointing back at us. We are all guilty.

    Let’s start with where to pitch the blame. I believe it is at everyone’s door: teachers, union officials, governors, politicians, state functionaries, local and national legislatives, and oh yes, let’s not forget the president of the country. Believe it or not, there are in each state of the country, thirty-six times 22,000 teachers waiting to be discovered the way these ones were. Their hour has just not come, that’s all.

    The most important yet neglected avenue for national development is education. Unfortunately, politicians and pseudo-politicians who people the corridors of power and take decisions do not care much for that fact. They do not believe that the matter of education is a serious matter; neither do they believe that the future of the country depends on the outcome of their decisions. At best, I think most, if not all, our folks in agbada who make policies on education only see it as the universally approved means of getting the young ones out of the house and out of their way so that they, the elders, can get on with the serious matter of sharing the country’s money. So, if Mr. El-Rufai is serious about these tests, then there are a few more he should apply.

    I think he should start by testing our agbada-totting policy makers and see if anyone of them knows anything beyond the fact that the schools under them exist. Very few know how many schools they have, including those under trees. Fewer still know anything about a mission statement for them; and even fewer still can articulate any dream or vision for them. Most do not care about how to turn out pupils that can think and innovate for tomorrow and be nation builders. They only care about the business end of it and hope that the survival of the fittest dictum will prove itself once again.

    Then we should test Mr. President to try to discover why education gets only seven per cent, or thereabouts, of the budget, instead of the recommended fifty per cent, or thereabouts, and he is able to sleep well at night. We must get the fact out of him somehow. Unfortunately, that will lead us to testing the Nigerian educational system too which, being so highly and extremely volatile and underfunded in the wrong places, does not support the engaging of the appropriately qualified teachers. It’s a little like an aging woman’s figure: bulging where it should not, like the waist, and thinning out where it shouldn’t, like the hair. Yep, very volatile.

    Naturally, this breeds other problems such as insufficient resources; e.g. room to grow. Now, I’m not talking about an aging woman; I’m talking about sufficient classrooms for the ever bloating number of students in search of a certificate, real or not. Classroom shortage is a clear and present problem that cuts across the entire country and the gamut of all the institutions. I tell you, very few Nigerian students take lectures in reasonably comfortable environments.

    Then, we should really test the teacher recruiting system and see if it can pass the most basic, rudimentary, Primary I exam questions: who recruits and what system is used? Do they recruit qualified teachers or their relatives or the relatives of politicians who push their untrained parasites into the educational system? After all, they tell themselves, ‘anybody can teach.’ If we went through these 22,000 teachers, you might be surprised how many of them were engaged ‘as a favour’ to someone. Favour is a political noose.

    Even most of the ones who went through teacher-training systems are no prize winners either. The schools are overcrowded. The teachers are overwhelmed. The resources are not renewed because institution heads please themselves first before taking care of anything else. The result is that most students are under-taught, under-achieving and not really interested in the job.

    Most importantly, Nigerians as a whole are not really interested in self-development, a concept that keeps an individual ahead of his time, place and comperes. They are more interested in things that bring prompt and instant monetary gratification for individuals. So, many of us teachers are the same way we are twenty years after we begin. The only change in our lives can be found in the salaries we earn. That must grow from year to year even as our brains seem to decline in direct proportion or there will be trouble…

    Then there is the fact that Nigerians really have no respect for teachers. How do I know? Government finds it so easy to owe teachers months and even years of salary and not feel bad. For most teachers, there is no motivation to move them out of bed every morning. Who gets out of bed for the prospect of going to face, and vainly teach, a roomful of increasingly pampered children, many of whom can no longer be handled at home? What then is there to motivate a teacher to do well? The result is that many teachers do not respect themselves or their jobs or their pupils or the government…

    I am a lot more pessimistic than most people. I am thinking that if these 22,000 people are sacked, they would find their way back in the same way they got in the first time: via the Nigerian system. I think the way to go is not to throw the lot out like bad bathwater. Rather, I think it is better to institute a compulsory training system which would see each person desire to lift him/herself up.

    Establishing a strong motivation that would make an individual respect him/herself might also help. Indeed, it is strongly recommended. Seriously, when there is no self-respect, man, the heart is beneath one’s boots and picking it up from there in the mornings is a herculean task. Motivation, on the other hand, does wonders. Someone said recently that there is no stronger cure for any illness now than a bank credit alert. Strongest motivation. Let’s try it, or something close to it.

     

  • Let kindness rule again, ok!

    Nigerians have sacrificed their humanity at the altar of their greed for very filthy lucre.

    This is kindness week. In Nigeria, however, it is no longer fashionable to be kind. You give people rides or money or clothes at your own risk or at their own risk. Going by the stories I hear, the whole thing has me confused. Should I run from people or should they run from me? There is so much preoccupation with ‘making it’ now that no life is sacrosanct – not mother’s, not father’s, not brother’s, not friend’s. Nigerian streets have become places where you ‘proceed with extreme caution’ because the ides of march truly walketh abroad. Now, whenever a relative of mine takes a taxi or Okada in any Nigerian city, I cry, ‘beware… beware!

    The why is pretty straightforward: Nigerians have descended to pure and downright cannibalism. It is said that there is no country in the world where you cannot find Nigerians. Even the moon has one or two. It is also said that wherever they go, Nigerians excel, in the most marvelous ways too. Yet, those of us remaining at home just persist in going at cannibalism, ancient style. I think they call it the Nigerian virus.

    I don’t know what this virus looks like but I can swear it is deadly. Right now, I have a message in my phone about someone who had taken an Okada ride which broke down along the way. Pronto, a taxi showed up in which there were already two female fares or passengers as we call them. It turned out the taxi was taking them all on a ride to hell by a previous arrangement; that’s right, a ritual killers’ hide out.

    At the hideout, so the story goes, the females were raped before being killed and the narrator said he was ‘rejected’ because the ritualists had enough ‘male body parts’. The taxi was asked to take him to a ‘branch’ of the den in another city. Again, he was ‘rejected’ and directed to be taken to yet another ‘branch’ in another city where he was again ‘rejected’ and finally allowed to leave and live.

    So, we now have a Nigeria where kidnappers are so established they are regarded as ‘Kidnappers, Plc.’ They are regularly wined and dined by the high and mighty and appealed to for financial donations into socially beneficial causes. We also now have ritual killers who have become so overtly confident they are establishing ‘branches’. Yep, it’s Ritual Killers, Plc. And they are said to be ‘making it’, because ‘body parts are in demand’. Seriously, how bad is this virus?!

    Very bad. Just the other day, it was reported in the newspapers that a student in a tertiary institution had been kidnapped but released after being forced to drink blood. According to the report, the student did not know the source of the blood. I think it’s bad enough that he was kidnapped and made to drink blood, any blood, in the first place.

    It is a bad virus that does not make us even recognise kith and kin in our pursuit of happiness. Most Nigerians have now quite convinced themselves that it is only when they have money aplenty that their happiness is complete. So, there is now a frenzied pursuit of it out there that quite literally befuddles the senses. People are ready to sacrifice anybody near or far at the altar of self-worship. And it’s because we have lost the ancient paths of kindness, the only thing in life that does not change character.

    Take the family, that eternal seat of unquestioning love. When Lady Macbeth in Macbeth bemoaned the fact that she had lost what appeared to be the milk of human kindness, many wondered if she ever had the duct that produces it in the first place. Many are wondering the same thing about Nigerians right now. They have sacrificed their humanity at the altar of their greed for very filthy lucre.

    Sacrifices can take many forms. The most common one is slaughtering an animal. For instance, many husbands have gone to bed thinking all is well between them and their wives only to wake up in the morning and find that a price has been placed on their heads by the wives. Sometime in the busy day, many a wife has managed to contract out her husband’s head to hired killers. The same thing goes for many wives. While thinking that all is right with the world, many wives would not thus hesitate when their husbands say, ‘let’s go somewhere.’ That somewhere may turn out to have an Okija shrine priest waiting at the end of it.

    Same way, many children have been thrown up in auctions (if they’re lucky) or killed. Brother has done it to sister and I have a message in my phone to back this up. All of these killings are sacrifices to the hungry god that is said to bring in the fortunes and allow the survivors to live lavishly. Whether it actually does is no point here, but surely, you can’t believe…

    There are other types of sacrifices that kill kindness. Discipline in the family can be sacrificed at the altar of wealth. Spoiling children and allowing them to have access to everything they want is not kindness. Indeed, it is the greatest unkindness. Sooner or later, that child is going to want the head of the parent on a silver platter.

    Many government officials have frequently sacrificed the well-being of the nation to their own greed. At that altar, the nation bows her poor, lovely head when the official’s greed cannot find any boundaries. I think they say ‘it knows no bounds’. It is actually kindness biting the dust.

    Many places of worship have been founded on the lives of many young people sent to early deaths by pastors greedy for filthy lucre. The discovered sculls of the youngsters tell the stories. Social media also does. I have a message with pictures about a young boy who was found buried inside the walls of a church under construction. He was lucky; he lived. I guess the pastor had dreams of a superstardom kind of life, complete with private jets, fleets of cars, overseas travels, endless hotel stays, etc., even if he had to kill kindness to get it.

    I still wonder though why Nigerians think that by making money the focus of life, somehow, things will be all right. A money-centred society has never been shown to be all right. It is only a work-centred society that thrives. This is a society where everyone does his duty not in hope of unlawful gain but as a matter of justice, i.e. working for the day’s pay. I think it should be clear to all by now that the only way to true wealth is hard work. I’m not the only one saying this. Listen to these people: ‘You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want’ – Zig Ziglar. ‘The harder you work, the luckier you get’ – Mike Adenuga Jr. ‘Luck is the dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get’ – Ray Kroc. ‘Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work’ – Thomas Edison.

    There are many more of these quotations telling us that we do not need to descend to horrific acts of unkindness in order to ‘make money’. No one needs to sell or kill anyone in order to make money. We just need to work hard, at the job and at kindness. Very often, kindness begets kindness and if you don’t believe me, ask Sir Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. His father was said to have been kind to Winston Churchill in his youth and Winston’s father took up his education. Let’s kill this Nigerian virus, and let kindness rule again, ok!

     

  • Financial sponsors, and the rest of us innovators in Nigeria

    Private investors are unwilling to sponsor; and bankers are busy looking out for petroleum importers or contractors. So, where then is the help for us poor innovators?

    Private investors are unwilling to sponsor; and bankers are busy looking out for petroleum importers or contractors. So, where then is the help for us poor innovators?

    I don’t know about you, but going through the streets of Nigerian cities, I have often been struck by this absence of surprise. Street after pot-holed street, you come across businesses and shops and kiosks doing exactly the same replicated stuff. I tell you, it feels a little like travelling through the dessert on a camel and the last water point is a distant memory for one. Indeed, one has become so used to the humdrum business clime of Nigeria that one has forgotten what innovative thinking looks or smells like. It just makes me want to shout: where are the fresh products designed for Nigerians’ needs?

    I have many product needs. Right now, I am looking for a product that will open my mouth and put the food there without my lifting a hand. I am looking for that product that can turn my wrinkles into lines of beauty. Someone said I should try smiling, but I have done that so often it’s quite plain it’s not working for me. I am looking for something that will help me identify criminals before they commit a crime near me. No, not the police; they are no good.

    Most urgently, I am looking for something that will continually refresh my pot of stew so that it does not have to become empty. All I have to do is squeeze the ready-made, fresh supply of stew from a tube into the pot, you know, like toothpaste. I am looking for how to get fish without having to go near a river. Please don’t tell me to try a tin of Mackerel. It doesn’t work. Any ideas out there?

    For my part, I am doing a lot more than just expecting. I innovate. I am telling you, every day, in my foremost laboratory, first office and first place of research, I innovate. Other people call it the kitchen, but what’s in a name? The important thing is that each day, the products of my innovative research in that office are used and felt all over the world. Even if that world is within the precincts of only my house, what does it matter?!

    I tell you though, each day, I put my back to the task, testing and brewing, shaking and steaming, scrubbing and grinding, until I find the right way to wash vegetables. Should it be with cold water, hot water, salt, vinegar, or as I eat my plain yoghurt? Which would be less invasive to my skin? The research is ongoing and I’ll let you have the answer just as soon as I find it. The only problem is that my taps have this nasty habit of going dry so often so it slows down my research…

    There is one innovation that has been completed though and it did not come from my kitchen. Indeed, it came from another person’s backyard research table. When I read about it, I applauded the thinking and the efforts. I only hope he will do the same for me when the results of my own innovative thinking become the subject of a newspaper article. The other day, I read a newspaper article about the work of Mr. Olubunmi Oluwadare whose company Oldang launched the solar-powered tricycle. The report says the vehicle can use both electricity and solar energy.

    Seriously, when I read that report, I immediately felt very happy and comfortable with it and I thought it was so simple and beautiful. Why on earth did I not think up this idea first? Then I would have been the one on the newspaper page. Instead, we have lovely Mr. Oluwadare on the page reminding us again of one of our primary goals in this nation: to think and come up with new ideas that will benefit mankind.

    We in the third world are in dire need of Mr. Oluwadare’s solar-driven tricycle idea. If we are to face the truth for once in this nation, we will all agree that the greatest disaster ever to be unleashed on a hapless people is the Okada motor cycle. No, that’s the second. The greatest is unthinking government officials. The Okada is one little killing machine though, and it has turned its riders into ‘operators’ who together constitute one giant whale of a menace on the road. But the tricycle is one giant whale of a rescue too. The solar-driven one is even better: it is already looking forward to the post-oil apocalypse of Nigeria.

    I am no mouthpiece for this tricycle idea. I do not know the man or his company. I read the report in the newspaper like others and my response is entirely my own. I only wish though that Nigerian investors would take the time and interest to find out some more about it and pioneer its mass production for mass use. Then, we can claim to also be on the technological development highway. In a fair world, for instance, all the monies ‘borrowed’ by individuals from the nation and kept in foreign bank vaults could be used for this kind of stuff, but where’s fairness when you need it?

    Unfortunately, I do believe that our revered bankers have completely erred in turning the helm of our banks towards money-making ventures rather than economy-driving programmes. I believe the failure of Nigeria to enter the technological development race lies in the absence of a sponsoring system in Nigeria. Actually, if we are to really take a good look at the doormats of banks, for instance, we will uncover a lot of dirt.

    Truth is, banks have turned their attention from giving loans to poor innovators like me (even to find the best way to wash vegetables) to ‘making real money’ in Forex or ‘giving short-term loans’ to petrol merchants! This is why bankers now live super-stardom lives – moving around in chic cars, living in incredible houses and generally just carrying on.

    So, innovators like me are forever dreaming up schemes that are ‘dead on arrival’ or stillborn (what’s the difference?) because there is no one there to help us birth our babies. Private investors are unwilling to sponsor; and bankers are busy looking out for petroleum importers or contractors. So, where then is the help for us poor innovators?

    In Nigeria, children are not being encouraged to think. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that they are being encouraged to grow up thoughtless. They cannot see how useful it is to innovate for development and watch as a system backs one up. All they can see are their parents and uncles and aunties dipping into the national treasury and importing the largest cars in order to live the most lavish lifestyles available. The children then dream to do the same. They do not do science projects in school; nor do they do science fairs. There is thus no point in doing ‘Nigeria’s got Talent’. Not right, just not right at all.

    There is no doubt that Nigeria needs her innovators. Without them, the society is sitting still, sitting pretty and on quick sand. The society sinks without the constant injection of new and innovative ideas into the market. As it is now, everything we use appears to come from China because innovators are encouraged there.

    I propose that a scheme be set up between the CBN and the banks, the Ministries of Industry and Education and the various Chambers of Commerce, as well as Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, to connect innovators and possible sponsors. I think this has been suggested before but nothing happened. However, it must be done. That is the way Mr. Oluwadare can get his solar- powered tricycle on the market, and I can get my vegetable-washing product out of my kitchen.

  • Kogi State in shock!

    Since the time of its creation, I must confess that I have regarded the survival of Kogi State as a test case for the survival of Nigeria. The similarity in structure between the two is too uncanny for their fortunes not to be as closely and intricately bound

    First, it was Osun State, now it is Kogi State. For a long time during 2015/16, it was Osun State that was in the news for piling up unpaid civil service salaries. There, and during that time, someone even attempted to commit suicide. However, he was saved in the nick of time to go and add the problem raised by his traumatised stomach to his unpaid salary problem. Now, the problem of piling up unpaid civil service salaries has shifted to Kogi State and someone has finally succeeded in committing suicide. Since that happened, all eyes have been turned towards the confluence state in shock while the throats are voicing one question: what is happening?

    I have been in shock before. Let’s see. My first shock ever was finding out that being religious does not necessarily guarantee me a seat in heaven. I remember being so shocked when the minister said it that I really did wonder what being good was all about. I felt surprised, let down, double-crossed, sold-out, two-timed, stabbed in the back and betrayed, at least as betrayed as my eight-year-old self could feel. Since then, I have been waiting for someone to tell Nigerians that! Now, when someone betrays me, I have simply turned my back. It’s not easy to live down two back stabs!

    Anyway, from what we have been reading in the news, Kogi State is in the news, and it is in shock. In short, we have been reading shocking things about the state in the news. You understand that? Good, that makes you better than me. The Governor of the state, they say, is not paying salaries as and at when due, and the people are not happy. Indeed, so great is their distress that I heard say someone committed suicide. Now, that is huge! We are also hearing that the governor is denying any wrong doing. Yet, dear reader, donations of food items are being taken for the people. What then is really going on?

    If I were a connectionist, I would connect the fortunes (or misfortunes) of Kogi State to that of Nigeria. There you are, Kogi State, just like Nigeria, is sitting uncomfortably on this tripod of heterogeneous tribes. And when we say uncomfortably, we mean really uncomfortably. Since that, em, uncomfortable arrangement of tying three disparate groups together, none of the tribes has been able to go to sleep with two eyes closed. They have been at each other’s throat, jugular, nether regions or junk. You would think that in reluctantly granting the state its existence, the Armed Forces Military Council (or whichever body granted it) at that time thought, ‘you want a state? There, you’ve got one, but let’s see how much you enjoy it.’ It proceeded to tie three nations with no similarity to each other together. Therein lies the problem of the seemingly luckless state: it has been threatening to be DOA – Dead On Arrival.

    Since the time of its creation, I must confess that I have regarded the survival of Kogi State as a test case for the survival of Nigeria. The similarity in structure between the two is too uncanny for their fortunes not to be as closely and intricately bound, connected or interwoven. Yet, Nigeria is looking on as the acts and scenes are unfolding in Kogi. Indeed, it had to take our normally melodramatic Melaye (Shakespeare would have loved that guy; he would have used him as a model in some of his plays) to draw the concern of the senate to the plight of the people. He asked that donations be sent to them. From what I hear of senators’ pay though, his salary in a month should sufficiently feed the horde of unpaid civil servants.

    Never mind. There is a clear case of people not seeing eye-to-eye in Kogi state. I must confess that I am not privy to all the correct facts. There are reports though that there is a pile-up of unpaid salaries of between two months to twenty-two months. There are reports too of some salary arrears carried over from the last administration before this present governor’s administration. So, issues are being pulled or dragged here and there between the administration and the people and agreements are difficult in coming.

    Indeed, things seem to be coming to such a sorry pass that the governor is banning national unions operating in the state. Unfortunately, that cannot help the bad situation from the stories going around in the state. In one of them stories, people have died because of lack of money to buy drugs. In another one, someone’s child was very sick yet there was no money to buy drugs because salaries were not paid. Finally, the child died, and a week later, the man got an alert on his phone that some months’ pay had been posted. There are many other such devilish stories.

    Whatever the case, it is clear Nigerians are not seeing the big picture. Nigerians need to understand that what is happening in Kogi State is a clear pointer to the anomalous structure of the Nigerian state where the executive has uncontrolled access to power. Yes, the legislature and the judiciary are there to check him and bring him to his senses. In most if not in all the states, you and I know that the legislature and the judiciary practically live inside the executive’s pocket.

    I mean, we live in a country where there is just too much hunger and greed for money that all sense and dignity have been jettisoned. I read just today that policemen stole bags of garri. Before, it was rice I heard were being stolen. Now, there is no telling just how much police and innocent-looking citizens are colluding with criminals as long as there is money to share. Truth is, the Nigerian state has fallen apart, like humpty-dumpty, and there is no one to put it all back together. This is why everyone is looking on at Kogi State, and no one seems to be lifting a finger. People are helpless.

    Our helplessness is a signal again to our lack of foresight in this country. The fact that there are no industries or agricultural concerns that give rise to industries has made most Nigerians to depend on the government for jobs. As we have said time and again, any country where the central government finds itself as the major employer soon collapses. The evidence of this collapse is what we are seeing in all the states that cannot pay salaries as and at when due. However, we need not be so helpless. We must fight to get back our industries and revive agriculture. We must begin to think innovatively again.

    Kogi State is a test case for Nigeria’s survival. We all need to return our Palm Oil plantations, Cocoa plantations, Coffee plantations, Groundnut plantations, etc. Without these, there will be continued reliance on oil, which, as everyone can see now, is all an illusion. The real backbone of any economy in the world is the industry built around natural products. Agricultural products and the industries built on and around them are the only things that can salvage the Nigerian economy and change our story.

    Nigeria needs to get up and help Kogi State to change its own shocking narrative. It is only when the truth comes from different throats that we can all understand that one man or any group cannot attack the sanctity or sanity of the country and hold it to ransom. When we all keep quiet, though, then power that goes on unchecked becomes destructive. We all must let reason talk.

  • Living on other people’s money

    Most of the previous loan-monies ended up in private pockets. What is the guarantee that any new loan will not go the way of its ancestors?

    I’m not going to pretend that don’t know much about finance. I know a lot. I know that money is for spending, and that what you spend depends on what you earn, if you’re not a Nigerian. If you are a Nigerian, however, what you spend often depends on what you can pilfer. The Nigerian that cannot pilfer must then stand and gape as the pilferers spend what they don’t earn. It’s called Living on Other People’s Money (LOPeM). Well, that’s about the lot that I know about finance. I told you, I know a lot.

    Today, we are going to dip our dainty toe in the murky waters of national spending. I believe that those waters are murky mostly because we are ignorant and lazy. And this is God’s own truth. I do believe that we are the only tribe in the world that likes to reap where we do not sow, eat what we do not cook and spend what we have not earned. Let me tell you a story someone told me.

    Someone wanted to give his daughter out in marriage. He then sat down and calculated the cost to be several hundreds of thousands of Naira. He didn’t even have the first hundred. He then decided he would beg around to make up for the remaining sum. Why should his daughter not be able to marry on other people’s money? Too bad for their money. It’s a little like the fellow who was asked to look after a neighbour’s goat; and to ensure its safety, decided he would take into his hut with him. ‘Wouldn’t the smell be powerful bad for you, someone asked. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘too bad for the goat.’

    Reader, I find it difficult to blame this father of the bride for wanting to live on funds he did not earn; he was only taking a cue from his country. From what I have been able to gather out of the loud mouths of the media and gossip carriers, Nigeria is relishing living on borrowed funds, and even wants to up the ante on that by borrowing more. Just the other day, I heard the Finance Minister, Mrs. Adeosun, defending the country for wanting to borrow $5.5bn more ‘for infrastructural development’ in the areas of road, rail and power. Hear her: ‘Nigeria has one of the lowest Debt-to-Gross Domestic Product figures in the world.’

    Frankly speaking, I am not sure I know what that means; the only word I can safely interpret there is ‘borrow’. I understand this to mean ‘going cap in hand, holding out a bowl, bending the knee a bit and perhaps hobbling on one shameless leg to show that the borrower has no leg to stand on.’ Indeed, that may be so, for the minister’s logic stands on one leg. It says that the country is still trying to hobble its way out of a recession. There is thus no better way than for it to spend its way out of the recession. In other words, stimulate the economy to grow by putting other people’s money in people’s pockets. Umm.

    I’ve also listened to arguments against this one-leg theory, even from the World Bank. According to the World Bank, the cost of borrowing or paying interest on our loans is too high. Someone even said we are right now paying about 60 % of our budget to service our debts. At present, Nigeria’s external debt is $15bn and internal is $39bn. In short the debt-to-revenue ratio is not sustainable. Not that I get much of this, but I understand enough to be worried. And we’re blaming our father of the bride for wanting to LOPeM. Again, umm.

    Me, I cannot say ‘go a borrowing’ or ‘don’t go a borrowing’; what I can say is that the country that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing. What I want to ask is this: if we owe as much as $54bn, where did it go? I mean, it is understandable when I put N2,000 in my purse and it disappears inside the market and I’m lucky to be able to return myself to the house unharmed. There is a wild thing in the market called inflation that just eats everything up, and is even now said to be descending on people. Really, it is understandable. However, it is a different thing when I search in vain for the borrowed $54bn in the federal government’s begging bowl…Seriously, it’s enough to make me cry ‘wolf’!

    I ask you, why would the government be borrowing $5.5bn to invest in power again? Why?! I heard it said on the radio the other day that since 1999 when democracy was re-installed, the government had spent N11tn on power. Let me translate that into English: Eleven trillion Naira, and I have not had electricity in my house since I woke up this morning. Many countries have not even been able to accumulate that amount of money to run their economy. Yet, here we are wasting this colossal amount on a service that is virtually not visible.

    The roads are not faring better. Every single road in Nigeria is crying for attention, and not from loans either. The attention it needs is goodwill from the government and honesty from the contractors. It is well-known that road contracts are shoddily and expensively done. Why do we want to borrow more money to accumulate more shoddiness?

    And rail? Can we possibly count all the rail contracts given out since that 1999 and we have nothing to show for them? I remember the ones given to Chinese contractors, this contractor, that contractor (contracts sourced through foreign loans}, and the rail tracks are still as still as ever before – no coaches, no phum, phum, no nothing; just silence. In my city, rail tracks are now used as car parks or shops. And every year, people continue to die on bad roads when they could easily travel by rail known to be safer.

    Mostly, these power, road and rail projects since 1999 were supposedly done through loans sourced from external bodies – IMF, World Bank, just name it. Yet, nothing meaningful has come out of them because corruption always comes first. Most of the loan-monies have ended up in private pockets. What then is the guarantee that any new loan will not go the same way of its ancestors?

    The government needs to exhaust its options first. First, it must do a serious drive to increase domestic production. Factories that used to drive the economy have died out because of the government’s own inconsistent policies of pleasing cronies instead of making sound economic sense and putting the nation first. The government needs to go to work on the consistency of its own policies, and then work through, on and with MAN to inject life back into industries instead of letting Nigerians remain promoters of cheap Chinese products. Sounds simple, right? Believe me, it is that simple.

    Taking loans to pay salaries does not make much economic sense either. The logic, that when salaries are paid, the economy might be stimulated through the people’s spending, is a bit unbalanced. It might work in the western world where honesty is the rule rather than the exception. In Nigeria where crookedness is the rule, there is a different reality as we can all see. Most of those loans meant to pay salaries in the states are still ending up in private pockets and the people are still poor on many levels.

    The government needs to wake up to reality. LOPeM does not work in the long run. What works is getting the people to get down to work and actually earn their keep. The government must learn to keep its policies simple and goodwill strong.

     

  • I repeat, what does ‘Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable’ mean?***

    It is time to acknowledge that the only realistic thing on this earth is change. The country must accept this if things must remain the same.

    The Nigerian characteristic is so well defined now everyone on the planet recognises it. For instance, nearly every international TV crime series features an episode reflecting one aspect or the other of the Nigerian criminal life. Yes, yes, they mention Nigeria by name! Now, even our dogs are going around ‘showing their Nigerian nature’. Have you seen a pack of them fighting over food? I’ve noticed that there’s bound to be one of them that will pull the entire food towards itself with its paws and growl at any other dog that dares to complain.

    But Nigerian dogs don’t worry me. I worry instead about the discordant voices emanating from different Nigerian throats that, as we said before, have never seen strife. So, I have listened to the rhetoric coming from these throats and concluded one thing: Nigerians are not capable of learning. For one thing, they are busy talking too much; for quite another, the citizens still think that the physical country will wait for them forever ‘to get it’.

    In all of this though, I have trouble processing this sentence, ‘Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.’ I don’t know what it means. When the APC government came in, it promised to tackle Nigeria’s major problem: corruption, and make the people ‘get it’. Well, everyone can testify that it has taken a stab at corruption but it is obvious that the phenomenon is more overwhelming than the party anticipated. The result is that corruption seems to be getting stronger, the people are getting weaker, and the land is disintegrating. I guess nothing causes hysteria in a people like seeing their politician neighbours severely displaying brazenly stolen opulence in the face of their own want.

    The throats voicing hysteria across the land just now are just symptoms of the deep anger that is fast rolling up into a gigantic ball. Everyone you meet these days is angry at something. I am angry at everything – market prices, shortage of amenities, the extremely large lives that governors live, the noises coming from my car; my neighbour’s generator…

    Faced with the APC government’s incapacity, the people’s helplessness is rolling up into a rhetoric of hate. However, the survival of this country hangs on how this rhetoric is managed and channeled. Clearly, its management must build in the rhetoric of change and progress. Now, what I don’t understand is the fact that there seems to be a preempting of how that change should go. Don’t get me wrong. I am not a dissolver or a dissolutionist or a disbander. No sir, not a chance of that; I am just inquisitive.

    There is an old song that goes thus: ‘time changes everything… because mother nature does some wonderful things…’ This means that everything in the universe undergoes some alteration or mutation to achieve good balance. Just look at my skin. There was a time it could pass for that of a twelve-year-old; I think that was when I was twenty years old. Now, I have trouble convincing people that I’m just twenty-one. My skin is saying something like it’s that of a forty-plus year-old.

    I’m also not a sailor, but I have heard people say that wise shipmen who hope to return home never sail their ship close to the wind. Sometimes, to move forward, they must go backwards or even around. That way they get to fool the wind into thinking that they are no longer on the water. Governance is a lot like that. Please don’t ask me how I know; I’ve never been in governance. I know, however, that anyone who insists on moving through an on-coming problem is daring a tornado: he/she soon knows who is the boss.

    Nigeria is facing an on-coming tornado and only good change can avert that problem. Suggestions of how that change should come have ranged from restructuring, to implementing Jonathan’s conference report, to holding a referendum, to a sovereign national conference. Certainly, war is rejected outright. Gen. Babangida lent his voice to the call for restructuring. He even went as far as suggesting the specific areas of governance that can be ‘devolved’ to the states. Like someone said, he artfully dodged, like ‘Artful Dodger’, mentioning resource control.

    The national assembly called for the reports of the President Jonathan-organised conference. I don’t know why they did that but I wish that the assembly could take a look at the issues on ground today properly before trying to fit them into a previously recommended mold. It is just possible that the country may have moved miles away from where it was when those reports were compiled, especially when you consider that the earth is rotating at close to 1600 km/hr. on its axis round the sun at nearly 107km/hr. (No, I’m not the clever one here; the internet is). Besides, the representatives were not elected but selected by Jonathan’s men to go and speak for me. Why?

    On my part, I prefer a referendum, and I think I have called for this more than once in the past. Through a referendum, I get to be able to tell the world whether I want to belong to this country or whether I prefer an island to myself so that I can be as far from all Nigerian-made problems as possible. Seriously, I believe that a referendum would help us to know exactly what every single member of this Nigerian community thinks about staying in the union. I don’t think it is right for anyone to presume to think for his tribe, village or creed. Let everyone have his say.

    Failing this, then let’s have a sovereign conference. If that is done, then elected members can sit down and talk on behalf of their tribe, village or creed. This kind of talk should be more productive because it would allow this country to lay the facts on the table for a change. The truth about this country is the fact that truth has been hidden for too long under the carpet and it is now rebelling there. A Sovereign Conference will force us all to stare it in the face and move ahead.

    Naturally, any of these processes should give us some profitable outcomes, pleasant or unpleasant. However, like in any scientific enquiry, the process of the experiment will guarantee the sanctity, or otherwise, of the outcome: restructuring, referendum, or SNC. So, if the country is truly interested in good outcomes, then it should allow the process to run naturally. ‘Dissolution’ or ‘non-dissolution’ should then be the pleasant or unpleasant outcome, neither of which should be forced. This is why I said I did not understand what ‘unity is non-negotiable’ meant.

    However, I don’t think energy should be dissipated on this kind of presumption or it will be just another rhetoric. I would prefer to see the government spend its energy on genuinely cleaning up the land and ridding it of wastefulness, not the half-hearted thing it is doing now. If living in Nigeria were to be made profitable for the least among us, I assure you, no one would be interested in going anywhere.

    Like someone says, even stones can talk, if you’ll only listen. It is time to acknowledge that the only realistic thing on this earth is change. The country must accept this if things must remain the same. Not clear? I’m not sure I understand it much either. Certainly though, if the government wants to be taken seriously, it must be serious. Failing that, will someone please point me to the nearest island just for me, myself, and no other Nigerian, not even my dog? I can’t seem to trust anything called Nigerian…

    ***I’m asking this again because I have not got the answer.

  • The heart of the matter is really a matter of the heart

    … We can say that for the need of a job, the mother was lost; for want of a mother, the children were lost; for want of the children, the home was lost; for want of homes, the nation was lost. The nation, no doubt, has lost its heart…

    It is not easy living in this world. It is even harder living in this country, so hard that you sometimes don’t know which you would rather prefer: to pack your things and go join those who voluntarily took their exit from the world via an internet site or to sit down, place your hand on your chin and keep on sighing. The internet exit happened some years ago at the instance of some mentally and financially unbalanced wreck who asked equally deluded, cyber-crazy people to join him in astral travel with their portmanteaux (of money) at a meeting point where he promptly fed them poison. He told them he would take care of their luggage after relieving them of their money. They did travel to space all right, but I don’t think it was quite the one they had in mind. I think I’ve reported this before too, but never mind; for you, I’ll repeat any story.

    It is also not easy living in the same country with scientists, worse still, card-carrying ideologue-scientists. Most of them, you will agree with me, are mad. But then, so are most artists. The difference lies mostly in the degree of madness each displays. Whereas your mad artist is often mad to himself because he indulges in things like starvation, self-immolation, self-destruction, self-deception (usually over a girl) and so on while creating things of eternal beauty; your mad scientist, on the other hand invents death. He looks for a thousand ways to kill you. He timorously invents and mixes solutions and other stuff like poisons, bombs and lies that blow up in people’s faces and then says ‘Oops, sorry’.

    Wanton killings are going on everywhere in Nigeria, but the worst part is that nobody quite knows why. Perpetrators of such have taken advantage of the mad scientist’s invention to perpetrate evil. The problem, however, is not so much that evil reigns; it is that evil finds somewhere from which to reign.

    Rather lost for something to write on sometime ago, I visited the internet for some inspiration where I came across the story of the wife of a former European PM berating Stay-At-Home-Mums (SAHM) for being uninspiring to their children and raising ‘unambitious’ children because children from such homes, according to the former first lady, only look out for some rich fellow to marry. I got the impression that the lady wished to tell such mums to look at her and emulate her, a well-adjusted lawyer and mum who had put the act of juggling home and career down to an art.

    Well, I thought, as I read the report, there was first the mixing of issues in a not very logical way. It is a known fact that it is not only children of SAHMs who look for rich people (either sex) to marry; anyone from any family type can do that. Secondly, really, not everyone can afford the kind of child care unit filled with attendants the speaker probably had while the family was in office. But, I digress. What I want to bring out from that story is the problem of dissociation that can make someone feel so distant from his family as to seriously commit himself to forgetting the values imparted from childhood. That disconnect, I believe, is actually hinged on the problem of the Nigerian family no longer being able to define itself.

    When I was growing up, the family unit was well and admirably defined. It consisted of a father, mother(s) and any number of biological or non-biological children, even if the latter only came in from the streets. They all mixed together as one because there was plenty of love to go round, particularly as the mother was always at hand. Fewer women worked then; perhaps that accounted for why everyone was happy. Not only could the mother be roused from her mid-morning forty winks to bandage a finger or reattach an arm or a leg (I exaggerate, I know), but she gave her family and other neighbourhood children a firm ground to stand, and play, on. She was the heart of the family; her being intact meant that the family was intact.

    The fact that a woman did not work did not really mean that she did nothing. Often, she ran a shop situated close to home where she could make a trade and also keep a wary eye on the brood in her charge. Our favourite shop when I was young was run by a non-working mother who could be called in the middle of attending to her family to attend to someone in need of a purchase. No one minded that one’s box of matches sometimes had water on it: it was all in the spirit of neighbouliness since everyone’s heart was really in its right place. Her presence at home meant that her children could sleep well and grow well, in that order. It also meant that the children did not have to grow up with anxieties about homework and exams and invigilation schedules at age three.

    The eighties and nineties saw women shooting out of their houses, like uncaged rabbits, to go foraging around for work. Then, the children were left scratching their heads, wondering where their cook, nurse and general dogs-body had gone and if things would ever be the same again. HALF OF THE CHILDREN ENDED UP IN PRE-NURSERY AND NURSERY AND POST-NURSERY WHERE THEY BEGAN EARLY TO COLLECT THEIR BACKPACKS OF POST-MODERNIST ANGST, ANXIETIES, NEUROSES AND THE COMPLIMENTARY PSYCHIATRISTS WHO SOMETIMES DOUBLE AS TEACHERS OR SECT LEADERS. And, you should see the kind of faith these children have in their leaders. They faithfully learn all they are taught, dutifully become scientists, dutifully do all they are told and willingly become evil.

    Many mothers have left home in search of self-fulfilment. The job comes first, the social life second and the home a distant third. This is the reality in Nigeria today. SO, THE RESULT OF MOTHERS NOT STAYING AT HOME IS THAT VACANCIES NOW EXIST IN THE CHILDREN’S HEARTS, often filled by outsiders such as sect leaders. This is why many children swear by their teachers or leaders’ words. Whoever provides the anchor gets their loyalty. In this battle of controlling the heart of many children today across the country, the family has lost out because the unit can no longer function as it used to. An armed robber was said to have bitten off the ears of his mother while he waited to be shot because he believed her not getting a firm hold on him was responsible for his loss of direction. I have no idea whether she was a working mother or not, but she must have been too preoccupied with something or other to pay her son much attention.

    A children’s rhyme says something to the effect that for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the war was lost; for want of a war, the nation was lost. Similarly, we can say that for the need of a job, the mother was lost; for want of a mother, the children were lost; for want of children, the home was lost; for want of homes, the nation was lost. The nation, no doubt, has lost its heart and the absence of family values are now responsible for the teeming disconnected youths plying the streets. They have nothing to anchor their emotions on or to ground their fears in. REALLY, THE NATION HAS TO FIND ITS HEART AGAIN.

  • Have literacy, will travel

    The government must exercise its power to free up tariffs and taxes on books and other reading materials

    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. I could swear the words seemed to swim in some rivers I could not see. 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 literacy and its counterpart, illiteracy.

    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.

    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 this large number of people remain illiterate. They constitute 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; Will Travel.’

  • Why Nigerians really need to pray harder against their enemies

    Why are we expecting a healthy society when all of these (and many more) ‘enemies’ are being made daily?

    In Nigeria, it is a well-known secret that the churches and mosques are filled to capacity with hypocritical worshippers. Perhaps I am chief, I don’t know. I do know though that more than ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine per cent of these worshippers go to pray for, among other things, ‘financial breakthroughs’. This means they pray that unmerited, unexplainable and unworked for riches should suddenly fall into their laps. They also go to pray for divine healing. This means that in spite of their eating habits, the heavens should see to it that they stay in perfect health.

    Above all, this given per centage of Nigerians referred to above goes to pray for protection against all their enemies, big or small. The enemies may include their landlords (so he would forget the rent), their creditors (to forgive their debts), or that their favourite witches will die, die, die! Certainly, these are noble prayer requests. And, man, do Nigerians pray! Indeed, they are hard at it in the morning, noon and night. To my mind, however, I think it is still not enough. They need to pray harder against their enemies. That is where the root of Nigerians’ problem really lies.

    I once gave a ride to a young, female university graduate around nine in the morning in one of the cities in Nigeria and naturally, I asked her where she was off to. She said, ‘to church’. And this was a working day, a Monday. What was she going to do? She obliged me. ‘To pray’ she said. I asked her what prayer remained for Monday that Sunday did not take care of. She said ‘more prayers’. What about her job? She said, ‘they would understand.’ What about night vigils: aren’t those for mop-up prayers? She replied that ‘enemies were always around, so one cannot rest.’

    At that point, I left off asking anything more. As it turned out, the young lady believed enemies were behind her not getting a good job, her not being married yet, her not having a car yet (a few years after graduation), etc. I forbore to point out to her that these powerful enemies were also likely to be behind her not being able to stay at her job and she must go around praying during office hours. I also did not point out to her that she needed to really pray against the enemies she was making that very hour by not being in her office to serve them.

    Anyway, a light bulb went off in my head on that matter. It struck me that Nigerians really need to pray against their enemies o. Since they are always going around to praying, work is being neglected. In the morning hours of weekdays, people ‘have gone to pray’. At noon times, people cannot rest in their houses because others ‘are praying’. Throughout the night times, innocent people cannot sleep because the guilty ‘are praying’ into loud speakers, presumably against enemies that are standing in the way of their breakthroughs and perfect health.

    It then occurred to me that Nigerians have an awful lot of enemies to pray against. I therefore decided to assist them by drawing up a list for them. So, if you are a Nigerian, you need to pray against:

    — people who think you have pocketed the money released for tarring the road leading to their houses. You must pray against them; they are dangerous people;

    — people who think you have pocketed the money released for the electrification of their village or district. They are worse than cobras and must be bound spiritually;

    — people who think you have jacked up their bills (any) so that you can pocket the difference. They are liars that must be consigned to hell;

    — people who think you are part of a ministry syndicate that extorts huge sums out of clients who come to conduct normal businesses in the ministries. You then make them pay tens or hundreds of thousands above normal fees to share with your colleagues. These are dangerous people who can’t recognize business when they see one;

    — people who think Police/FRSC/Civil Defense check points are really for extorting money out of the public by claiming that their ‘shons are in the shun’ so should be given something for pure water. These people must be checked spiritually;

    — people who think that the money you collected from them to help them renew their state licenses is really illegal money. Tch, tch, tch, these liars must really be repelled;

    — people who think that the money you took from them, before ‘helping’ them to find their files under office carpets is really ransom money. They need to be prayed for, or their souls will rot in hell;

    — people who think that you allow road contractors to bribe you into okaying their work and this is why we have such deplorable roads;

    — people who think that you have a registered company through which you collect contracts to execute from your own office where you are employed;

    — people who think you take money from the country for a contract and fail to execute the agreed contract or you do a shoddy job of it need to be prayed against. Imagine that; an entire country calling you a thief. You really need to show them in your prayers;

    — people who think you’re just drawing a salary you don’t deserve in your office since you hardly show up there for more than a few days in the month must be out of their minds. Pray against them, man;

    — people who think you’re just collecting money from the hospital or school or office as a worker (since you’re hardly there (or just physically there) to help alleviate the load) are not good people. They need to be prayed against;

    — people who think that the police illegally collect what they say is ‘mobilisation fee’ (used to put fuel in police vehicle before the police can respond to people’s emergency calls) are those whose heads are not correct. They are enemies of the state. They must be prayed out of the state;

    — people who think that it is wrong to kill other human beings like yourself in order to perform a money-making ritual or power-making ritual or client-drawing ritual just because you’re a pastor or imam or businessman must be prayed bound until you perform an exorcism on them;

    — people who go around thinking you swallowed their pension money really need to be prayed against;

    — people who think they are the victims of your armed robbery or kidnapping or human parts-selling enterprises need cleansing prayers. They are enemies;

    — people who think they are victims of police’s indiscriminately distributed bullets also require serious prayers;

    — even goats and sheep that believe you have illegally built your house on their free patch must be seriously prayed against…

    Clearly, all Nigerians are the enemies that we must pray hard against. Only a handful have managed not to be someone’s enemy. The sober question, however, is why have Nigerians gone around making so many enemies for themselves? So sorry. I think a more appropriate question is, why are we expecting a healthy society when all of these (and many more) ‘enemies’ are being made daily?

    What strikes me most in people’s prayers is that people hardly pray to be helped to do right by their neighbours. No, no, it’s others who need that help. That’s why you are told in a governmental agency to ‘do the needful’ or ‘do what you’re supposed to do’ or ‘do the appropriate thing’. Failure to do ‘the right thing’ makes ‘you’ an enemy.

    Perhaps, we should begin to pray for our enemies. Perhaps, then, things will turn around for the better.