The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Worshipping money

    Until the society learns to abandon the culture of ‘worshipping’ money, corruption will not be eliminated and we will all continue to wallow in this culture of frustrations that engender threats, counter-threats and quit notices

    Poor Acting President, Prof. Osinbajo; he is fighting so many battles at once mustering all the arrays in his arsenal – persuasion, cajoling, tough-talk, stick and carrots, trotting up and down, you name it. The man holding the fort for President Buhari not only has to run the state and keep it above ground, he also has to make sure his fellow thoughtless countrymen do not lead him to running it aground.

    Right now, those countrymen are singing all the tunes in their repertoire off-key: hate, ethnicity, breakup, quit notice, disunity, corruption, etc. From every corner of the country, muscular throats are singing songs of threats and counter-threats. Yet, the Acting President it is who must find ways to convince these heady men not only to please stop singing for the sake of all our ears but to live together in unity and to even let go their evil, corrupt ways so that when his principal returns, he can tell him, ‘see, the people are still together, and they’re no longer corrupt.’

    So, you can find him preaching that the country will not be divided even if the people are, and everyone’s anxieties will be addressed. In other words, whoever wants can pack his load and leave the country but the country is not going anywhere for anybody. I don’t know but is that man Superman or what?! And here I was thinking he was not too high off the ground. I wonder what gave me that impression.

    Until recently, the major problem with Nigeria was corruption; that was before the agitation for the Biafra State became more deafening. Now, we have bigger problems, of course, but we thought if only there was no corruption, there was no height in the world this country could not scale. Heck, we said, in academics, Nigerians are making real strides in the outside world. In world trade and business, Nigerians are there. In scientific innovations, Nigerians are holding their own. Till today, there are some among us who would never fail to point out that the two greatest musicians who ever lived are Michael Jackson and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Clearly, there is little beyond the reach of Nigerians; all, that is, except governing their own land.

    The trouble is that the few people charged with governing the home country have governed only their pockets because of corruption. They have neglected to build social infrastructures like a decent transportation system, constant electricity or potable water system. Rather, they have preferred to bequeath on the nation a most chaotic transportation system worse than hell, a darkness evincing electricity company and rain water. Wait, they didn’t make the last one? I could have sworn; they gave the impression…Anyway, if there was no corruption, everyone would be well catered for in the society…

    I read in the news the other day that the Acting President had taken the fight against corruption to the church. And I thought, mmh, it’s gone that bad. No one would doubt, however, that the man is right. The problem with corruption is that there are too many hiding places for it. Name your Cayman Islands, Swiss, American, French, British banks, churches, mosques, etc. I guess your average looter thinks that if he gave God the regular tithe of all he stole, then it was ok. Now, the Acting President is saying no, not ok.

    I have often pondered in my mind the question of stolen funds and what religious houses should do about and with them. From that question have arisen several more. For instance, I ask myself, can a religious house turn back money when it stands in dire need of hefty sums to complete its projects? In the Middle Ages, that is the age of the church in Europe as an instance, the church was run by the state. This meant that churches were built by the state depending on the needs of a community and its priests were also paid by the state. Not so in Nigeria; they are run by religious bodies.

    What this means is that each religious organ is on its own. Everyone builds as he sees fit and as he can command their faithful to part with what they have (or don’t have). This puts a lot of pressure on the faithful and even on the cleric himself. In many cases, the worship place is also seen as a ‘statement’. Please don’t ask me what that is. So, the more funds are brought in, the merrier the project. Now, I hear there are air-conditioned churches. I ask myself, how will the congregation ever know how hot hell is if they snore through the sermon in comfort?

    The problem is that the Nigerian society has raised money to the status of a god and religious houses have become such lucrative places for worshipping it. Every man is for himself and the more funds he can attract to himself the better. How then, do we expect anyone to start asking where the money comes from? This reminds me of a story told by a worshipper who said he had been attending a certain house of worship for more than fifteen years without ever attracting a visit from the attending cleric. A month after he introduced his banker relative to the place, however, he was astonished to find his cleric and family in his relative’s house one evening. Yes, the cleric was ‘attracting funds’ for the place of worship.

    Truth is, many of our places of worship need funds for ‘projects’, sometimes sending out their ‘faithful’ as ‘begging crew’ sometimes to solicit for funds from passersby on the streets for ‘religious house construction’! It is so bad now that places of worship project their building constructions to hold thousands. I don’t know, but that to me is clearly leaving the substance and chasing the shadow. As in the society, money is worshipped openly; and getting people to heaven has been made to take second place to putting up gigantic structures.

    But then, religious houses can hardly tell what funds are stolen and which are not. For instance, until someone is declared a thief, it is difficult really to tell what funds he is bringing to the religious house. As an instance, one of the recently discovered cache of funds was said to belong to a Christian who never appeared to have anything to be suspicious about him other than his car. Surely he must have brought some of his stolen substance to the church.

    I remember another story (I’m never short of them) of someone who is said to have donated a generator set to a church and it was gladly received. After a while, though, it was discovered that the funds used to purchase it had been stolen but the cleric was said to have refused to return it. It was a gift to the church in answer to a prayer, and it remained so. In another story, a cleric knew that a certain amount of money had been stolen by his congregant but he poisoned his member so that he could have sole custody of the money.

    The truth is that people have turned religion to the tree that sprouts money in the backyard for the cleric or the religious house. As long as the society worships money, be it from the kidnapper, looter, ritualist, counterfeiter, fraudster, all are welcomed to bring their ‘tithe’ to the house of worship. Until the society learns to abandon the culture of ‘worshipping’ money, corruption will not be eliminated and we will all continue to wallow in this culture of frustrations that engender threats, counter-threats and quit notices.

  • Plastering over our cracks

    I read recently that a certain ‘Mr. Evans’, a notorious kidnapper who operated his ‘business’ on the million-dollar scale, had been ‘kidnapped’ by the police. Imagine that, and I heard he was caught after a gun battle. I’m not sure but I don’t think he’ll be ‘negotiating’ his release soon. We wait and see, because man, this is Nigeria.

    Anyhow, I hear he’s singing to the police in a sweet tenor voice right now, and his opera is titled ‘Why he should not be kept with poor criminals’ because he is a ‘wealthy’ owner of ‘mansions’! I honestly did not know that criminals had grades. I thought everyone who does the crime sooner or later ends up in the place made of concrete and iron grills to do the time.

    Concrete has its uses, but have you ever walked over a cracked concrete pavement? No? It’s a bad experience I tell you. You’re never sure if the next step you’ll take will catch a corner of your toe and twist it and, you know, kidnap it. On a cracked pavement, you can lose a toe or your heel. Choose.

    Yep, this nation appears to be one concrete mass filled with all kinds of cracks to me right now, I tell you. It’s so bad all kinds of rumours are filling my ears. I heard for instance that contrary to reports, the decision to give the marching orders to easterners living in the north did not originate with the northern youths but their elders who are hoping to cause a bit of trouble in the country so that ‘things can fall apart’. Ditto the east too. Like I always say, I only hear these things.

    You know, I’ve always told you I hate politics because I hate hearing this kind of rumour. However, all my hate has not kept me from following the antics of this nation. True, I have often been distracted by the nation’s growth in other directions – art, science, philosophy, sports, entertainment, rumour mongering, national pastimes, just name it. In all my moments of distraction, however, I never really take my eyes (and ears) off the shenanigans of our so-called politicians. There’s too much hanging on them till you don’t know whether to hate them or the nation.

    Anyway, it is no secret that I really do not care too much for our elitist politicians mostly because I envy them. Honestly, I don’t know whether to berate them or ask them to please give me the smallest seat they have in the assembly. Seriously, they have fiddled mostly while the nation has burned. They have dined and wined in obscene luxury while I am surrounded by people whom I can see are having trouble feeding. So, to be honest, when I heard that rumour, I felt like poking my fingers in their eyes.

    So, I really spare a thought for our Ag. President, Prof. Osinbajo, who finds himself dancing around in the midst of our politicians now. I really would not want to be in his shoes. Imagine, he has to douse so many fires started by thoughtless Nigerians. Let’s face it, Nigerians, all to a man, are thoughtless, that’s why we are still where we are. Here he is trying to reason with the east; there he goes trying to reason with the north. And all the time, the west knows exactly where the problem is. I still firmly believe, like the west, that the problem lies in the failure to let all of us in Nigeria sit down to a roundtable conference, like King Arthur’s men, and put our swords on the table. Oh yes, there are tables large enough to take all 120 million swords, I assure you.

    Reasoning with a particular section of the country can go some way but not all the way. In battles, that is what gives room for yielding costly grounds, compromising, looking the other way, etc., all of which allows one party to show the other his tongue in mock victory. This actually amounts to plastering over the cracks to hide the fissions and give a semblance of some order. The sores still fester beneath and the grumbles live to fight another day, year, decade or century. Oh, is it the grumblers who live to fight another day? Never mind, one or both of them survive long enough to repeat the fight because it never goes away until it is stared in the face.

    I am also hearing voices calling for a revisit to the report of the past National Confab and I am wondering if that is not another way of plastering over our beloved national cracks. I’m beginning to be fond of those things: they show we are human after all. The way some Nigerians go, you would think they came from some planet far, far away. Anyway, that confab was a placatory gesture and the individuals were chosen by the government itself. This is not quite the same thing as letting everyone air his or her voice on the future of Nigeria. Methinks the confab still leaves a lot to be desired in the reordering of Nigeria.

    Listen while I’ll tell you my reasons for calling for a conference. My dictionary defines a conference as a ‘serious conversation’ or ‘discussion’ on a theme. Now, that is some serious definition. First, it assumes that the theme will be a weighty matter; two, it assumes that the participants will be truly interested in the conversation. I believe that Nigerians are interested in any conversation about Nigeria; you should hear them go on corridors. When the topic of Nigeria is introduced, I assure you, there is no messenger or chief executive, foot soldier, decorated soldier, professor or administrator; there’s nothing. There are just voices expressing opinions seething in heaving, passionate chests. I think it is time to capture everyone’s voice on the matter of Nigeria.

    Secondly, when voices are stifled or suffocated, they will sooner or later erupt in a way that might be entirely out of anyone’s control. Nature has a way of balancing things out. Oh, I’ve said that before? Forgive me, I have this habit of repeating myself, especially to listeners who are very patient with me. I assure you, your value is immeasurable. Anyway, there are as many opinions on the subject of Nigeria as there are citizens. It is important to allow them to speak. At first, it may be cacophonous, but by and by, some distinct strains of reasoning will be discernible and my small voice will be heard above everyone’s.

    I think it is presumptuous of anyone to believe that someone can go and represent a whole lot of others. Often that someone goes to represent his own interest and reasoning. I have a definition on my phone that says a politician is someone who is not interested in solving the nation’s problems but his own concerns – how to get paid highly and reelected. So also is someone sent to go and jaw-jaw on others’ behalf: his concerns are when will he be paid and what will he be paid.

    A national conference will take into consideration every nuances and hidden wisdom not generally expressed by representatives. I don’t know why. Perhaps, it’s because representatives are given briefs or other things. What I know is that uncommon wisdom can come from the most hidden voices. One must patiently coax it out.

    Sadly, though, governments have formed the decided opinion that the people should not be allowed to talk. Hence, there has been this consistent effort to silence them. This is what has resulted in the boko haram, militancy, etc., phenomena. It is time we stopped repeating our mistakes and learnt to stop plastering over our cracks.

  • That ‘Go Home’ order…

    Why don’t we by-pass the war and go straight to the dialogue? This country needs to sit down and dialogue and stop all this patchwork governance

    Since I grew to know Nigeria as my country, I have known her to live on tenterhooks; you know, never quite comfortable on her feet, like an ungainly bulky thing. Quite apart from the very shaky foundations of the country, there is also the fact that her leaders have not been able to grasp her handle. To cover up, they have content themselves with filling their pockets with the country’s cash, filling their hearts with gaiety and burying their heads in the sand. They call it the ostrich effect. The result has been that the country has roiled from one political crisis to another.

    I bet even the most politically naive among us cannot have failed to notice the latest of these crises. I believe I am one of such and even I have heard a lot of buzzes and fuzzes and noisome pestilences in the air. I tell you, it’s worse than taking a walk through an enchanted garden in the height of summer, what with all the nymphs, fairies, spirits, sirens and satyrs all walking abroad and giving off eerie kinds of noises and lights.

    Nigeria is at present in that eerie zone. It all began with the declaration of the revival of the Biafra project by the person of a Mr. Kanu, and the subsequent response of some northern youths who gave ‘a Go-Home order’ to southeasterners living in the north. It was reported that a coalition of northern youth organisations ordered that Igbos vacate the north by the end of three months.

    Now, that pronouncement had all kinds of doomsday sayers pronouncing the inevitable: IS IT TIME? IS NIGERIA BREAKING UP? WHEN WILL NIGERIA BREAK UP? WHY WILL NIGERIA NOT BREAK UP ALREADY? COME ON, BREAK UP ALREADY!

    Needless to say, chests have heaved and passions have risen over the matter. The social media has been aglow with unarmed warriors of both divides and I have stood in their middle swiveling my head round and round and wondering, ‘where is it going to end?’ Even my jokes flew out of my mouth. Has this not amounted to a unilateral declaration of war? Man, I hate war; you can’t laugh in a war. If it is, then this declaration bears all the marks of being different from previous ones.

    Normally, it is the old ones who interpret events to determine what constitutes an affront to a community. They weigh every event against its contextual background to determine its import and shave off all the freights of ego, vanity, self-service and so on. If what is left is considered affront enough, then the old ones declare the society affronted and the youths are marshalled into defending the society’s honour.

    This situation failed to observe the time honoured ritual and instead turned the world on its head. To start with, the renewal of the Biafra cause was spearheaded by a young man and the response from the north came from a coalition of northern youth associations. I don’t know what that tells you, but I see a pattern here. The young ones are fed up that the old ones have fed themselves up.

    However, I see an even bigger pattern in this event. IT IS THAT THE YOUTHS ARE ITCHING TO TAKE OVER THE RUNNING OF THIS COUNTRY. THEY HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THE OLD ONES HAVE BEEN RUNNING THE SHOW AND HAVE ALL BUT RUN THE COUNTRY AGROUND WHILE TAUNTING THEM, THE YOUTHS, FOR NOT BEING RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH! After all, Gowon was ‘only thirty’ or so when he ruled as Head of State; many state governors were more or less no older than him, and he managed to steer the country out of a civil war. At ‘thirty’, many Nigerian youths are still lounging on their fathers’ long chairs and posting photos of themselves relaxing in front of the telly. I think now the youths are tired of just watching telly.

    The only problem is that the manner of speaking is not quite clear or these youths are not speaking English or their new found muscles are full of steroids. Someone once said that young people are always running towards death by the way they drive, talk and live, while the old ones are always running away from it by the way they drive, talk and live. When I heard about the ultimatum given by the northern youths, I immediately thought, these people have never been to war.

    The horrors of war are too many for anyone to want to run into it. Most of the people who are caught up in a war are often helpless. No one willingly chooses it as a way to resolve matters. In giving that ultimatum, the northern youths were choosing war, albeit, I suspect, in grave ignorance of the consequences. Should, however, the youths not have been totally innocent of the consequences, it was still not a very measured answer.

    The thing about war is that no one side wins. Costly casualties fall on both sides, so where is the victory? A war is never to prove any argument, logic does that. And a war is only as strong as the arms supplied to run it. So, the only person who wins in a war is the arms dealer. That is why he prays that the war never ends because the longer it goes, the more his pocket is filled, even if people are dying.

    I thought I heard that war had been banned. In any case, it is not what we need now; it is old fashioned. The globalization of history and the economy continues to show us daily how highly and extremely deficient and backward this country is in every aspect of her development efforts. The country has no good transportation system to speak of. She cannot guarantee constant electricity for her citizens. She cannot even give pipe-borne water to most households. Worse, food is fast becoming an essential commodity. Sir, this country has nothing going for her, and these youths want to add war?

    If Nigeria was running as it should with every infrastructure in place, I don’t think any group would trouble themselves to seek their own country. I see the Biafra agitation as a metaphor of the grievances of any right thinking person against the present state of Nigeria because nothing is working. If you want to see constant electricity, you must go abroad. What kind of thing is that? And let’s face it, it is tempting to think that, perhaps, Nigeria in smaller chunks might be easier to run and development could reach people more easily.

    Clearly, the south east is not the only aggrieved party in Nigeria. I am aggrieved. As I am writing this, there is no electricity in my house, the sun is beating down on the roof like sin, water is not running in my taps unless I turn on my well water, if my car breaks down, I have to huddle in some rickety taxi (no sir, I can never mount those motor cycles you call Okada) whose floor is more or less the tarred road, and so on. The list is endless. Rather than fix these things, the leaders are all helping themselves to large chunks of state funds with a frenzy comparable to a thief who finds himself in a jewelry store.

    Really, people should know that most wars end through and in dialogue. So, you ask yourself, why not by-pass the war and go straight to the dialogue? This country needs to sit down and dialogue and stop all this patchwork governance. When there are grievances, they need to be addressed. Dialogues address grievances. Otherwise, people should know that beating the drums of war as a joke is no joke.

  • Wanted: A Nigeria Development Commission!

    I don’t know what good these mushroom commissions can do other than set up emergency millionaires and empower the cronies of the officials in charge

    My, so many events have been breaking out so angrily these days my ‘pen’ has been roaring on its hind legs, if you will pardon the metaphor. Seriously, our political actors have been really moving the pace it’s getting harder for us ‘commoners’ to keep up. Let’s begin with the drama that broke in Lagos State. Imagine, I hear politicians and their families are now summarily uprooting clergy from their church posts, as happened in Lagos State.

    Well, when I heard that, I felt things must have come to a sorry pass indeed, and boundaries have become so fuzzy that a serving people’s elected official would meddle in clerical matters. Unfortunately, I cannot be a judge in this or any matter for that matter since I am not a certified mediator or judge. I forgot to enroll for those courses.

    I do believe though that it is a sad day indeed when religious officials are subjected to state high-handedness in nebulous matters that have nothing to do with the breach of the law. In this case, the hierarchy of the church, headed by God, enforces any needed discipline on any of its erring shepherds; that office does not lie with state officials unless it can be proved that state laws have been broken. So, I would advise our state officials to hands off religious bodies. If anyone wants recognition, there is plenty of space outside the church or mosque to demand and get worldly recognition.

    Then there is the fact that our president, Muhammadu Buhari, has not only persistently remained incommunicado to me and many other Nigerians, he has ignored the offer for him to try my holiday home along with some of our home-brewed Nigerian doctors. I tell you, I am peeved. I am peeved that no Nigerian hospital is going to benefit from this general indisposition of our president. It represents for me a lost opportunity to upgrade our human or material resources in at least one lucky hospital.

    I certainly don’t buy the Minister of Information’s explanation that the president is in UK because he ‘deserves the best in medical treatment.’ While I agree that everyone, including the president, deserves the best, it does not follow that that best necessarily resides outside the country. True, we may lack material resources, but hello, I am putting it to the minister that this kind of reasoning is responsible for this deplorable lack. All our politicians have been going outside the country because they feel they ‘deserve the best’ while neglecting the country’s hospitals, schools, roads, transport systems, foods… Let the president come home and see what Nigerian doctors can do for him.

    The one event that has peeved me the most is the fact that the House of Representatives is said to have thrown out the bill for a South East Development Commission (SEDC) designed after the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and North East Development Commission (NEDC). How dare they! Here I was, already dreaming of submitting my own bill for the Oyinkan Medubi Development Commission (OMDC) if the SEDC one went through. Excuse me, I need more dresses, not to mention shoes.

    True, my OMDC does sound a little like OMPADEC but never mind, the goals are the same – spread the money. Now, what am I going to do? If an entire SEDC fails to make the shot, and NDDC is being attacked by tankers, what can little ol’ OMDC do? I tell you, it is a bit aggravating. And, while we are at it, where is the demand for the North West Development Commission (NWDC) or the South West Development Commission (SWDC)? What about the NCDC, SSDC, TDC, BDC, and KDC? You work out what parts of the country those initial letters stand for. Perhaps those areas don’t need development? After all, as the Majority Leader himself said, ‘every zone deserves a commission’.

    Seriously, I ask myself, what do we need all these NDDC, NEDC, NWDC, SWDC, SEDC, OMDC and any number of DCs for when we don’t even have a NDC – Nigeria Development Commission?! Seriously, where is the blue print for the Nigeria Development Commission? See, no one can produce it. I do believe this is the reason why there is this proliferation or demand for commissions. People want to head them and drive around in convoys.

    Just a few days ago, I read that the NDDC MD’s convoy was involved in an accident and I went, the NDDC MD also has a convoy? Where will this thing stop? Why must we always put so much drama in every position we occupy? Why do we take ourselves so seriously in this country considering we are not even capable of making a spoon? It’s not in our culture to eat with spoons? Forgive me.

    Anyway, I ask myself, what do commissions do exactly that everyone seems to want one? Let me try and answer that question. I think commissions take one look at a region, throw up and their arms and declare that there is an emergency in that place. They then proceed to stretch out their full torsos, roll out the money and begin to spend. In truth, I think commissions are supposed to be those bodies charged with the development of a designated region (or, in my case, person). Honestly, the word connotes for me that the entity has suffered some kind of neglectful trauma and deserves a special reparative commission.

    When the Niger-Delta commission (NDDC) was created, everyone went ‘Agh! Ugh! The region will now give us peace and electricity. Each time there was a power outage, we were told that gas supply had been interrupted in the region. With the creation of NDDC, we were sure all manner of things would be well in that region.

    Sadly, it was not to be. Not only did the commission not solve the problem, indeed, power outages continued and even deepened. Worse, reports of funds misuse scandals soon began to erupt from the roofs of that commission. The waters in that region were still being polluted. People were still largely not able to return to their traditional occupations. Poverty was still roaming freely around the place. Industries were not springing up in the region with the same alacrity that the oil was sprouting. Now, it has become clear that we need something more drastic than a commission there. It is very likely a federal presence but I think we’re still thinking that one out.

    And then, the north eastern part of the country upped and set their part of the country on fire and promptly demanded a commission for themselves too. That one is still young so the stories of scandalous misuse of funds erupting from its roofs have not yet fouled the air too much, only a little. And now, the south east has demanded its own.

    So, if you ask me (and I bet you will) I don’t know what good these mushroom commissions can do other than set up emergency millionaires and empower the cronies of the officials in charge and give us more convoys for tankers to target on the roads. What we need instead is a commission that will oversee the development of the country as a whole.

    The Nigeria Development Commission will, like Buhari, belong to everybody and belong to nobody. Its focus will be the overall development of the country rather than target some pockets of air in unknown parts. That commission would be sensitive to the defining character and needs of each part of the country and coordinate such development programmes as these parts require. Let’s face it, everyone deserves their own commission; so a general development commission would eliminate all these minor demands from everywhere and minimize spending rivalry.

     

  • What will Nigeria look like in twenty years?

    By twenty years, who is to say that a natural national ‘tectonic drift’ would not have taken place?

    My vision is not so good these days, what with age catching up, recession going around and the country going down. The result is that I can’t see farther than my plate of food any more. Indeed, I find that if my dinner dish moves ten centimetres to the left or right of the table, it stands in danger of not being eaten. So, if I can’t see my plate of food on the table, I bet many of us are thinking how then do I expect you to see Nigeria in twenty years’ time or what kind of country our children will be inheriting in a few years’ time?

    You know, many people have been predicting the rise and fall or fall and rise or rise and rise of Nigeria. I know for a fact that all we appear to have seen so far has been the fall and fall of a country that is said to possess some of the greatest potentials on this planet. Believe me, I know something about potentials. Listen while I tell you.

    When I was in primary school, my teachers took one look at me and decided that I might amount to something if I would just take my head out of the clouds for a few moments and learn even their names. I can’t quite remember five of them, but I remember the one who almost taught me. On the other hand, my secondary school teachers said they knew for a fact I could do something great in the sciences if only I spoke better English. I am still grappling with all the nuances of structures like ‘never doubt what no one is ever sure of.’ When I can make good sense of that, I bet I’ll get ahead with my science subjects.

    Naturally, by the time I got to university, I had grown suspicious of every of my teachers. So, I did not believe them when they said my potentials were huge but I needed to stop setting my sights so low. Whoever heard of someone jumping an obstacle of one foot and clapping for herself if not one of the great dumb of the earth? So, I know about Nigeria’s potentials.

    It is so sad really because I am thinking, were I to possess half of the potentials that Nigeria has, all my teachers combined would have given me their shoulders to ride on. Here we are, putting our shoulders to the heave-ho of building this country, and nothing but empty fluke coming up. The reason is that Nigeria is not standing on the right structures and our present leaders are not willing to reexamine its structures to allow everyone have a sense of belonging.

    Without restructuring, it is easy to conceive what would become of the country in less than twenty years. To start with, in twenty years, you and I are likely to have been pushed aside, unless you’re carrying an Obama gene or something. However, our legacies might still be around. The roses I planted in my backyard are also likely to still be blooming. You, and the people you are fighting with over a village or land or tribe or religious boundary would probably have killed each other off, leaving mother earth to fish around for new people to fight over her. Oh, how much she enjoys these scuffles.

    Without a proper sit-down conference on what the future of Nigeria should look like, I doubt if we would still have a police system in twenty years. Come on now, we hardly have a remnant of the system just a few years after its establishment. What hope is there then that it can still stick around for the next two decades or more? The reason why the police is not working is clear for all to see. It’s the same reason that the electricity system or water system or public service system are all not working. That reason is that they are all premised on the wrong argument and ‘broke people are fixing things that are broke’. The result is the lack of results from any of them. In spite of the huge human potentials of this country, people are not poised by their education to utilize the nation’s resources to make a good life for themselves and also give back to the nation. Rather, they are encouraged to aim for positions where they can steal from.

    Unfortunately, the oil, which is supplying us all the money we’re stealing today, would clearly have gone by twenty years. Scientists tell us that the supply of oil we have in the grounds can only last us a few more years. That’s right, there’ll be no more oil to power American or Chinese factories. But that is not what we should be worried about. I am more alarmed that come twenty years, the present oil-dependent countries would have got alternative energies to power their factories, vehicles, houses, lives, smiles, etc. Even now, I hear that research into these alternatives is very advanced. People will be driving cars on roads that are suspended in the air very soon. Factories will have in-built energy systems. So, gasoline will soon be outdated and Nigeria will be left holding her untapped billions of barrels, wondering.

    Come twenty years, I doubt if religion will exert any moral force on any person any more. I’m praying that the leaders of the major tribes would have exhausted their last cards in religion to divide the people while they plunder the nation’s resources. In short by that time, the people would have wizened to the tricks of their ‘leaders’ in holding religion as a big stick over the people’s heads while they the leaders contravene every article of the faith they profess. So yes, the young ones would refuse to allow anyone to pull any wool over their eyes in the name of defending their religion. They would instead find themselves defending their economic survival, just like their leaders.

    Worse, by twenty years, who is to say that a natural national ‘tectonic drift’ would not have taken place? Right now, every segment of the population – tribe, gender, religion – is crying that it has been maginalised by the centre. Just exactly whom this centre favours is not quite known. It’s a case of all running helter-skelter, the centre is not worried and theirs is not to reason why. Clearly, the ‘tectonic plate’ holding this country together is yielding to the grumblings and mumblings and malcontent flowing from everywhere. This is something the children should not inherit.

    Definitely, by twenty years, the children would have come into their inheritance. In this present state, Nigeria is hardly worth bequeathing to anyone. However, once they sign the deed of possession, who knows if the children will not choose to resolve issues by holding each other by the throat and disintegrating the contraption? I’m hoping the children we have now will dust up the country, straighten out some of its rough edges, do something about its appalling language of consumption and change it to one of production, a magnificent factory for goods and services. Yes, I pray the children have a better sense of higher purpose for the country than their forbears.

    What can we do? The way I see it, we have two choices. We can either face squarely the fact that we are of differing tribes and tongues and talk about it instead of looking for ways of recolonizing each other. This means we must dialogue together as serious partners. Alternatively, we can wait for our more impatient children to end the matter once and for all. You can be sure if that happens, they will be splattering eggs on their fathers’ faces. It is time to talk about restructuring.

  • The minimum wage battle

    Pay packet is important, but the volume of productivity is almost more important

    Last week, reader, we postponed talk on the minimum wage issue till sometime later. Well, ‘later’ appears to have come earlier, like Christmas. I must admit that ever since I came into the consciousness of my being, I have noticed three immutable facts: life is short, people are inherently good and workers have had to fight for increase in minimum wage since Adam. So, to my knowledge, fighting for wage increase is now synonymous with being a worker.

    Whenever a supervisor has had to tell his worker that he wanted to increase his work load, the first question has always been: will it translate to wage increase? I think the reason is that no matter the volume of work, the bottom line remains how much of the company’s money is going home with the worker. Let the company declare all the profits it wants, there will be a trade dispute if the wage affairs are not cleared up first.

    This is why wives never see eye to eye with husbands. Too often, husbands think that when women spend money on make-up, shoes and bags, it comes nothing short of prodigality, dissipation and profligacy. In short, she’s a spendthrift. Husbands go to great lengths to prove that the make-up industry is a multibillion dollar industry otherwise called the ‘make-up profligacy’, which is spreading fast in the world. Wives listen in silence then say only one word: ‘exactly.’ I think they mean ‘that’s why it has reached them.’ I think secretly, husbands regard themselves as management, and wives think they are the ‘workers’ who can spend their ‘earnings’ as they like.

    I think that workers spend their own earnings on living expenses anyhow. Listen, I did some research and came up with some facts. The war for increased wages has been fought forever. That accounts for the ringing in my ears as I’m sure I heard the war cries while in I was in the womb. Seriously though, if that wage war has been going on forever, I think someone should seriously consider capitulating to the other or we’ll have a case of tired soldiers of both sides in the war falling asleep behind their guns in their respective trenches.

    I know some workers who are not about to give in. In Nigeria, I understand the struggle started as far back as 1945 when workers rallied round to press for more money. I understand they abridged it to COLA (cost of living allowance) money. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn they were asking for… Anyway, since that time, there have been up to 15 general struggles for nationwide wage increase, I hear. Today, the struggle continues with the most recent demand: an increase of the minimum wage from N18,000, legislated only in 2011 and not fully implemented across the country, to N65,000.

    The workers have presented their logic clearly. The cost of living index has gone up by 14 per cent, they said. Food index has also gone up by 20 per cent. (Really? I could have sworn it was more. I can no longer afford to buy garri with double the amount I used to buy it). Sorry, I could not help adding that; it’s cutting into my soul, that’s why.

    Another reason they gave that I find painful to me is the fact that prisoners are fed on N18,000 per month, while the government is asking a Nigerian family of at least 6 people to subsist on the same N18,000. Imagine that! I think we should all voluntarily move into The Government’s Prison so that we will no longer be cheated out of our wages. In prison, your typical family of six will now be fed with N108,000 to their hearts’ content. I think if the government sees a massive prison break-in, it will begin to pay us better to stay out of The Government’s Prison.

    By far the most compelling of the reasons given for the wage demand is the fact that law makers have broken the bounds on their own wage limits and are said to have increased their pay by as much as 800 per cent. I doubt very much if a law maker knows exactly how much he/she earns since they have all collectively seen it as their bounden duty to kindly ‘rid’ the land of its resources. Talk of putting the cart before the horse.

    I do not know of a nation where an assembly is allowed to fix its own wages without reference to the people who sent them there. Where that occurs, it is taken for granted that the assemblymen and women are not only certificated but are thoroughly educated on the finer things of life such as respect for the electorate, value for life and the vision to develop the country.

    I have a post in my phone that said that someone in Gen. Babangida’s family got married and the ‘Nigerian elites landed with 34 private jets and all the splendour of richness. But none of them is a captain of industry, none has any intellectual property, none came into wealth by inheritance, they didn’t even win lottery. But they all have one thing in common, they held various positions in government and plundered this country.’ Imagine, 34 jets and I don’t even have one of them. Poor me, that’s why I sometimes find myself nearly trekking to Lagos. Seriously though, how can workers keep quiet when this is going on? Another post puts it even more mercilessly. The workers were left holding their ears on account of the noise of the jets as they came into the town. I rather think the old general was congratulating himself as he surveyed the results of the Nigeria he helped to create.

    Anyway, the above is just a summary of the people’s logic in asking for a raise in the minimum wage. I doubt also if this kind of logic can be faulted. It stands to reason that if there is discontent in the workforce of a land, there cannot be labour peace. I think this was why the developed countries used some kind of preemptive logic to put their horses before their own carts.

    Let’s use teachers as an example. In Germany for instance, my research tells me that an average teacher earns between $38,200 – $64, 000, per annum, with the average being in the region of fifty-something, which is on the high end of the nation’s wage system. I have another post that says that when the country’s judges, engineers and doctors asked the Chancellor to up their own wages to meet the teachers’, she was said to have retorted ‘How can I compare you to those who taught you?’ All those who agree with me that her heart is really in the right place on this matter should please raise their hands. Thank you all. Your hearts are also in the right places.

    Come down to Africa and the picture changes. In Ghana, the average teacher’s pay is about $4600k per annum while in Nigeria, it’s anything between $500 – $2,000 per annum. This is indeed far from being idyllic for any worker. So, NLC’s demand is indeed admissible. Only thing is, I’m not the one paying it.

    One thing I haven’t heard much of in these demands though is how to increase the productivity level of the average Nigerian worker. From experience (and also research), I have found that the typical worker’s eye is not on the volume of work done but on the clock and the pay packet. Too many Nigerians see government work as a source of ‘free’ pay packet – something not worth working for. Pay packet is important, but the volume of productivity is almost more important. It not only justifies the pay packet; it also helps to swell it more. That is how we can win the wage battle.

  • Being ordinary

    The western countries that we all run to now were built by ordinary people such as clerks who fought for the rules and regulations or put their backs to it and brought out the inventions they needed

    There is a question I keep asking myself, dear reader. Which came first: life or literature? When you honestly try to imagine some of life’s occurrences on stage, they sound so implausible that you are likely to have people going, ‘Ah, ah! How can that happen?’ Yet, you and I accept it as fact when people say that literature mirrors life. So, what can they mean when they say that some things sound stranger than fiction? Can you resolve that little corner of confusion for me because I’m thinking things are not as straightforward as they seem?

    I think I know fiction when I see one. Once upon a time (usually that’s how fiction starts), going to the moon for holidays was thought to be fiction. Now, there is a company that is dedicated to taking its first set of holidaying tourists to that silent place as early as in ten years’ time at a ‘sky rocketing’ price of course. I also think that the Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Green Lantern Man stories and their ilk are all products of fiction. Yet, I am told that these cape-wearing heroes are not just there for their pretty faces. They are replications of what exist in you and me. Yes, we can be heroes in our small worlds, see through walls, kick bald headed villains, survive every kind of kryptonite thrown at us, and even fly like kites in those ridiculous tights. Ask the athletes if you don’t believe me. So yes, in fiction, you and I live ordinary lives; but in actual fact, we are superheroes from small towns living in big cities.

    It’s the news however that present us the worst kind of fiction. For instance, I read in the news that a set of parents actually sold their young child for the sum of N400, 000. A lot of things went through my mind as I read that news report. Were they so ravaged by hunger that they had to dispose of their easily moveable commodity – their child? Or, were they so ignorant that they did not truly know the value of N400, 000 as a sum that soon vanishes compared to the eternal values of a child? Or did they hate the child so much? Worse, has the economic situation descended into samarianism? Fact is stranger than fiction I tell you because in a piece of literature (The Mayor of Caster bridge to be exact) the same act only drew a few guffaws.

    On the contrary, here is the federal government buying back some of the Chibok girls and I say ‘Hooray!’ to them. However, as 82 of these girls gained their freedom during the week, I heard faint whispers of complaint from some people who felt that we probably gave too much in exchange. The reason was that some boko haram terrorists had to be freed for the girls. Well, all I can say to the naysayers is that they obviously do not have any child among the lot stolen by boko haram. Believe me, if they had, they would not have cared if they had to give half of Nigeria for their own child to come home.

    By ‘being ordinary’, I mean that one should not only have an appropriate perspective to life, but that one should gain an ability to do things as they should be done. Work should be done as appropriate. Some would say that salaries should also be paid as appropriate. True, but that’s a topic for another day. Anyway, in the process of doing one’s work as one should, I assure you, extraordinary things happen. Lives are touched, lives are saved, lives are built, the cosmos also moves in strange ways to benefit one down the line of time. Take the story I heard the other day.

    I heard that a man working as a paramedical met a young man whom he had helped to deliver as a premature baby twenty-seven years earlier. What joy he had to see that the baby had grown up to be a man in his twenties. The paramedical man was doing his ordinary work for so many years. And an extraordinary thing happened. That man was not more interested in how much he could stow away from the funds given to him to run his ambulance. He was interested in whom he could save.

    Nigerians are no good in that kind of ordinariness. Yet, most of us want to be noticed, thinking that it is cheap business. We forget that even Superman had to practice the art of flying through the air, as did Michael Bolt. You know him, don’t you? He’s the one who runs faster than superman. I think though it is because he is willing to put himself out to his ordinary business of running and in the process became an extraordinary runner.

    Rather, most Nigerians think that achievement is a matter of pilfering a few millions, billions or trillions to purchase a life of unmerited comfort. I don’t think anyone has quite told them that it takes a lifetime of hard work at ordinary tasks to achieve a lifetime award of extraordinariness.

    Take for instance the news that a former president’s wife has taken the country to court asking that the money seized from her be released to her even though she has not finished answering the questions the EFCC put to her. More importantly, she has not even answered any of my own questions such as what trade did she engage in to accumulate that sum of money? Can I also join in that trade? But, she is not alone, because there are others who, not believing in being ordinary, have helped themselves to the country’s funds and are now screaming blue murder in the court. Worse, the courts are listening to them. T’phia!

    Luckily for us, ordinary people doing ordinary things abound. I heard the story of a woman who could not pay for a toy her little son really wanted in a supermarket. A rich gentleman stepped up and paid for it to the boy and his mother’s delight. Years passed and the man was taken to the hospital ill, having lost his fortune. A young doctor decided to take the responsibility of his treatment on himself. Yes, the young doctor was the little boy who wanted that toy, and the old man was the rich gentleman who paid for it. Extraordinary, no?

    In the race to lay our hands on the nation’s money, most of us have forgotten what it means to just be ordinary and do what we are paid to do. In ordinary lives, we can do extraordinary things if we have a mind to. Ordinary people do the work assigned to them and live decently on their emoluments, even though the Nigeria Labour Congress have asked for higher wages for its workers, which I support conditionally but that’s a topic for another day.

    As Nigerians, we must learn again to be ordinary citizens. It is only by persistently doing the ordinary that we achieve heroic acts, make scientific breakthroughs, build the law and bring up the downtrodden. In touching other lives, extraordinary things happen. The western countries that we all run to now were built by ordinary clerks who fought for the rules and regulations or put their backs to it and brought out the inventions they needed.

    Too many Nigerians believe in taking short cuts, thinking they are making ends meet. This is why in Nigeria, parents sell children, children sell parents, people are locked in struggles for positions instead of working together, and fiction is queuing up behind life to reinvent the stage. We must use our ordinary lives to build the nation again.

  • The west can’t stop the march of science; Nigeria can’t stop the march of stealing

    I think we should begin to comb the lagoon now for hidden monies. I’m beginning not to trust my fellow Nigerians anymore. The Atlantic Ocean may not be deep enough for them to stow their stolen coffers in because obviously, Nigeria cannot stop the march of stealing

    I once attended an international conference where the question cropped up: should a barrier be put somewhere in the path of science? This question came up on account of the moral issues raised over stem cell research and cloning and the like, as well as the language used to express news reports about these things. The debate that ensued went both ways for quite a while after which everyone disagreed to agree that standing in the path of science would very much resemble standing in the path of a raging tornado. Science refuses to be stopped, not by morality, not by religion, not by me.

    As a result of the relentless march of science, it is now possible to have an exact photocopy of me with all my good points (come again?), flaws (ugh!) and two left feet (too right). This means that should I be thoughtless enough to knock myself off, PU will continue, never fear (I know, you were afraid I would say that!). Science has also moved to grow spare parts of me should my toe ever need a new nail. Fascinating, no? There’s more.

    I hear that through science, it is now possible to play God and continue to create more animals. Scientists intone, ‘Let there be a man/goat creation!’ Hey presto, we get one. Oh I forgot, it already exists in the centaur. What about man/donkey? Ok. One coming up. And man/dog? Good, one coming up. The list is endless. I hear some brave students are on the way to cross-breed the dog and goat. They are only waiting for your and my permission, and I guess that of the animal kingdom. Let’s face it, someone has to introduce them to each other. I think they call them philosophers.

    Philosophers are those people who stand among the scientists and ask them whether what they are doing is in conformity with the laws of common sense. Will a dog/goat crossbreed breed a goat or a dog? They also stand among the humanists and ask them whether what they are thinking is in conformity with the laws of logic. For instance, what kind of life will a goat/dog breed live? Don’t mind them jo; it’s because they themselves are crossbreeds of science and art. Clearly, even the philosophers’ questions have not been able to stop the march of science.

    Anyway, while all that is going on, Nigerians are stealing the country blind. Poor us deluded fools. Who is now going to tell us that we are only stealing our future from ourselves? One rich father once called his sons and told them about stealing. He said if they decided to steal from his company, he would not say anything. They should know though that they would only be stealing from themselves. Only abnormal people steal their own money. Yep, they are called Nigerians. So, I think it is safe to say that few Nigerians are happy with Nigeria right now; the happy few being those who are smiling to the cemeteries at the expense of the hapless many. Good for them; brilliant lot.

    These days, dear reader, I find I have fallen into the habit of talking to myself. It is because I have run out of philosophers to ask questions. So, when I am driving, I am mumbling my questions. When I am eating, I find myself choking on my questions. Oh no, I am no longer asking who is, or why anyone is, dumb enough to stow away his stolen millions in overhead water tanks, underground soak-away, graves, unoccupied houses, unoccupied flats, shops, or even bury his mother in a hummer jeep. They are clearly not philosophers. If they were, the police would find them holding their loots in their hand and asking: ‘To hide or not to hide’.

    So no, I have grown up. I have rather taken to asking more intelligent questions like why do I have to have the wrong set of friends? Why am I not friends with loot hiders so that they can give me a little of their loot to hide for them?

    Gentle reader, the reason why Nigeria is in this state is because she has neglected to answer the questions our philosopher/scientists-artists have been asking for ever. The truth is that the nation perishes that neglects to answer these crucial questions. Fortunately, these people don’t live very far away; they reside in you and I. So, we have come to the crossroad where we must ask and answer some crucial questions now.

    The one question that seems to persistently get between my morsels of amala seems to be this: why are our money stealers devising more and more devious ways of hiding their stolen funds? Are we saying that Nigerians are incorrigible and are not capable of learning? Or that we regard this whole thing as a game? Are we saying that Nigerians regard stealing money and hiding it as a game of peek-a-boo? Are we so, so, so kleptomaniac that we cannot help ourselves? Most important of all, why has stealing continued in spite of these whistle-blowing, EFCC, DSS and Police raids?

    Seriously, I am full of wonder that the pilfering has continued at more staggering sums and the hiding no less ingenious. Indeed, the methods of secreting these monies seem to have become directly indexical to the sum: the higher the sum, the more outlandish the stowing away. I think we should begin to comb the lagoon now. I’m beginning not to trust my fellow Nigerians anymore. The Atlantic Ocean may not be deep enough for them to stow their stolen coffers in because obviously, Nigeria cannot stop the march of stealing.

    True, many of what today goes for buried treasure in the world originally started life as stolen coffers concealed in some obscure place until the thieves forgot about them or died. Yep, it comes to the same thing – they forgot about them. Anyhow, one major difference is that those people did not rob their state blind. They robbed foreign countries, they robbed banks, they robbed defenseless ships, they robbed each other but they did not rob the state. More importantly, less than two per cent of the thieves got to spend up to ten per cent of their stolen chests. Yet, they spent more than sixty per cent of their lives running from or wrangling with the law. What then was the point? Great maths, right; I’m rather proud of it too.

    What we recognise today as the western world and even part of the eastern world are marching on relentlessly in scientific breakthroughs. The fastest train in the world is coming out of Japan. The longest and most cost-efficient bridge in the world is coming out of China. The most beautiful and famous inventions are coming out of America and Europe in their millions: electricity, telephone, TV, radio, etc. Even now, we still depend on these worlds to improve on them. On the other hand, the greatest amounts of money stolen from the state by an individual is coming out of Nigeria. Nigeria also has the greatest number of people stealing from the state. Worse, the most ingenious means of hiding stolen funds is coming out of Nigeria.

    Science is marching on in the world for the good of the world. Right now, there is no electricity in my house, but I am being cooled by a battery-powered fan since I have not yet stolen enough money to buy a generator. Stealing state funds is also marching on, but for whose good?

  • Maydays, holidays and weekend treats!

    Nigerians do not as a national culture go on holidays

    There’s a great deal to be said for self-help. ‘When you need a helping hand’, Sam Levenson wrote to his daughter in his book In One Era, Out the Other, ‘you’ll find one at the end of your right arm.’ Taking a leaf from him, I have learnt to be self-reliant. So, I do not only laugh at my own jokes, I have also learnt to praise my own cooking myself. Naturally, my family has taken a vow of silence about both.

    But there comes a time in every woman’s life when her family deserves a break from her cooking. And they go about obtaining it quite politely. When they notice that the salt seems to persistently overwhelm the taste of the food, they lead her gently out of the kitchen and convince her that the heat is too much. They put her in the nearest chair and explain quietly that they heard her Mayday cry for help and they are taking her on a holiday. This dreaded period of a woman’s life consists of many such suspicious holidays which somehow coincide with someone’s birthday.

    I do not dread such a period. Indeed, I quite look forward to being offered a holiday. But no matter what I have done with the cooking, nothing has worked as magically as birthdays; only, they are few and far between. The only option left to me appears to be to park my car at the nearest plantain roasting stand to taste something that has fewer calories and has not been cooked by me. But just in the nick of time, a holiday surfaces: I am to be taken to a restaurant, even though there’s not a birthday in sight.

    But seriously, have you noticed that Nigerians do not as a national culture go on holidays from their labours? You know what a holiday is, don’t you? It is that time of the year when you voluntarily exit your normal, certifiedly sane existence to take on activities that belong in a certifiedly insane world in the name of enjoyment. Such activities may include taking a weekend off to know your country.

    For many of us, our knowledge of our own country has been systematically gathered from cultural shows on television. True, hitting the road with the determination to know Nigeria can be hazardous to the health. For one thing, you do not know whether you would fall into the hands of the highway robbers, kidnappers or book haram fellows who detail their activities on their victims with uncommon relish; or whether you would have a religious crisis on your hands in the north; or be caught in the middle of an armed struggle over land which neither party owns in the East; or drive right into a violent demonstration in the West. Obviously, anyone who sets out to know Nigeria for the sake of it is nothing short of a dare devil and typifies the meaning of insanity.

    Most importantly, knowledge of the country is further hampered by the fact that most of us are existing on the fringes of life. Daily, we are caught in the throes of struggling to make ends meet, what with no or half salaries so that only Callous the Barbarian can put money aside for a holiday when his children’s school fees are begging for attention, not to mention the rent that increases in inverse proportion to the annual wage. For some, therefore, going on holiday means going to the village some weekends in the year to shoot game, or help others bury a dead relative. Most of us content ourselves shooting fish, beef, chicken or some iru (locust beans), and burying ourselves in more work.

    But those who brave the country roads most weekends are always rewarded by sights that lift their hearts. Almost every hamlet is dotted with canopies, chairs and tables arranged for the benefit of those getting away for the weekend under the pretense of escorting some long dead relative into the beyond, announcing the usual reasons not to celebrate. Trust me, it’s bound to be a burial. Head gears of all colours that would give Dracula a headache, point heavenwards and further defy the economy, shouting our happiness to the world.

    So, a holiday affords a woman the opportunity to be taken out of the cupboard for airing and to know her city. On the day of my own holiday, I am literally surprised by the number of new buildings I see on the main road as we head toward the city. Travelling sanely through the traffic in my city, which I believe typifies nearly the entirety of the Nigerian traffic except Lagos, positively tests the virtues of angels. (Lagos tests that of the devil himself). Since I have no idea where it is exactly we are going, we begin from the main road. The short fuse of my driver’s temper is soon lit by the habits of the city’s many absent-minded road users. Someone said when you are on the road, always assume you are the only sane one there. Mmm, I wonder.

    Wondering when the fuse would reach explosion point, I look around me and notice the only road users who are not bothered are the commercial drivers. Most other private car drivers are holding very tightly to their steering wheels, not trusting anyone on the road, not even the traffic wardens. The funniest sight I have yet witnessed is watching a traffic warden standing helplessly, arms akimbo, in the middle of a traffic snarl with vehicles spilled out in every direction up to his legs and wondering how to extricate himself.

    Were road signs to exist, perhaps their jobs would be lighter and people can be taught to drive reasonably. But where they exist, they are lying sideways up such as at children’s schools to make you wonder if the children are expected to fly through the traffic. In some extreme cases, the signs are lying upside down, such as at pedestrian crossings, inviting people to go down under. It is a little like the joke in a Reader’s Digest about a visitor on holidays in Italy who noticed that drivers went through the red light without a care and no one complained. Perplexed, he asked his host for an explanation. Traffic lights in Italy, he was told, ‘are no more than, shall we say, suggestions to drivers.’

    When we finally arrive at the restaurant with the driver’s fuse mercifully unexploded, we find it empty. Going by the decor, I call it The Sunrise, even though it is called something I cannot now remember. Looking forward to eating a special meal not cooked by me I place my own request. It is a good feeling to be asked what I want for a change.

    A very informal atmosphere, the cook and the waiter are almost indistinguishable from the other. Friendly and polite, they ask us to wait for our meals. Before the meals arrive however, we finish drink after drink, and conversation after conversation. I then become convinced that they must have had to wait for the cow to expire naturally and the chicken to finish laying before laying hands on them to satisfy our own cravings.

    Finally, my plate arrives at sunset with the explanation that it is fresh cooked. Fresh or not, the taste is exactly like the one that earns a woman a holiday but much more expensive. The very thought of the price kills my appetite and drains the blood from my heart. To think that Shylock got impaled for less!

    And so, as we head homeward, I determine that holidays are, indeed, very important. The brain does deserve some relief from its labours. That’s what Mayday is for. However, in place of my next one, I think I will stay home and order a take-out, preferably some roasted plantains.

  • We need to read books, not just money

    Truth is, where there is a dearth of books, foolishness abounds. Foolishness multiplies because scientific enquiries and breakthroughs are stifled, while artistic endeavours are also neglected.

    We live in strange times indeed, but they are not interesting ones. You know the times are strange when you are getting one hour of electricity supply to your house from your own clodhopper Disco in seventy-two hours. You say that is not strange? I’m sure I beg your pardon. I forget that there are people who are not supplied any electricity in six months. Ok. Let me try again. You know the times are strange when apartments that should hold clothes and furniture hold bales of bank notes; and banks that should hold bank notes are holding empty vaults.

    It is a little like a story I once told but for the sake of those of us who were not there then, I will delightfully tell it again. There was once a rich man who had a grown up son. But this man was desperate to have his son become a renowned violinist. The young man had no such ambition but you know, when you are a rich man… Anyway, to realise his dream for his son, this rich man paid, blackmailed or convinced a renowned violinist to endorse his son’s violin playing abilities by accompanying him (the son) on the piano in a public concert. The violinist in turn convinced a pianist friend of his to turn the pages (of his music sheets) for him while he played.

    Well, you can imagine the result of this talent mix but this is what a music reviewer wrote. ‘Last night, I was at a strange concert. The man whom we admire when he plays the violin played the piano. The man whom the world recognises as a renowned pianist turned the pages.

    But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin. What could they have been thinking?’ Yes, indeed, what could anyone have been thinking leaving these bags and bags of foreign and local currencies in an apartment in Lagos? Worse, what could any civil servant have been thinking, as I heard it, cutting grasses instead of… well, serving?

    Then, to top it, what could our whistle-blowers have been thinking snitching on their fellow Nigerians? Oh, we’ve talked about whistle-blowers? So sorry. Imagine, snitching is not only a virtue now, it even pays! Can you hear someone ask, ‘how did he make his money? Oh, he blew the whistle on his boss’. Clearly that is one group smiling to the bank legitimately. The wonder is that the rest of us are not seeing anything wrong with this picture. Instead, we are all too busy holding our hurting stomachs because of hunger and deprivation and envying whistle-blowers.

    Anyway, it is time again to celebrate books and copyright this year, but we can hardly raise any toast. There is a standard joke among academics. It is said that when people become professors, they no longer want to read books; they want to ‘read’ money. Just think, if they all now go to read money, who will profess for us, particularly in books? No sir, we do not need them to ask us the rhetorical question: who steals N15b and keeps it in an apartment? We know the answer to that: a Martian. What is going on inside his head? We also know that: Martian music that he alone is hearing and dancing to. We also do not need them to ask for us, who cuts grass with millions of naira? We know the answer to that too: a confused Martian pretending to be a Nigerian.

    The other day, someone tried to explain to us that Nigeria is poor because it had not paid much attention to studies in science and technology. I laughed with only one side of my mouth. I believed that man had only a hammer in his hand, so he tended to see the problem as a nail, as the Chinese would say. He was partially right; but from my little study, I would say that Nigeria is poor because it has not paid any attention to anything that is not printed in Naira notes.

    Nigerians only pay attention to anything that carries a price tag to it. They are not interested in any scientific breakthrough. They are not interested in any artistic endeavour. All, to a man, are only interested in making money illegitimately; in fact, the more illegitimate, the better the sum.

    Truth is, where there is a dearth of books, foolishness abounds. Foolishness multiplies because scientific enquiries and breakthroughs are stifled, while artistic endeavours are also neglected. So yes, we need writers of books to show us to ourselves. The writers would tell exactly why laying so much emphasis on controlling either the country or billions of sums usually would make the individual or entity come up empty handed. It never has brought out any tangible results. We learn through books that having inordinate ambitions for oneself or one’s tribe never augurs well. Nature will always correct any imbalance resulting from falsity and injustice.

    Books are man’s veritable source of truth and justice. There is no greater destruction to the human society a government can do than to deprive it of books. The Nigerian government is actively destroying the Nigerian society by denying it free access to books; it’s worse than book haram is doing. Lack of access to books is the sure pathway to lack of knowledge and a highway to a closed mind and ignorance. Ignorance cannot benefit anyone, least of all the ignorant. If the ignorant had access to knowledge, I bet you he would not be happy with his ignorance. Now, I have no idea what that means but no matter.

    Anyhow, a walk through any bookshop in Nigeria reveals a very sorry state. It will reveal the leftover pickings of an era of dependency on foreign books. In other words, once upon a time, our bookshops sold nearly only foreign books. But now, since dollars are no longer available, there is a diminished supply of these books to sell. Unfortunately, there are no Nigerian-made books to take their place on any subject, just name it, even in light reading materials. Why is this so?

    As we said earlier, people are not writing. Everyone in the land is encouraged to go after counting or ‘reading money’ rather than go after seeking and disseminating knowledge or information. Have you noticed that instead of books, people keep shops? Have you noticed that writers of books are not celebrated? The only people given chieftaincy titles are kidnappers (high on the list), well-established armed robbers, politicians, top-ranking soldiers, etc. These are the ones people call to their events. Poor writers of books are hardly thought to be good for anything in Nigeria except to be shown to little children as something not to aspire to.

    More importantly, most governments in the world recognise the importance of books; so they put as little restriction on its production as possible. Not in Nigeria though; the government seems to have gone all out to destroy the book industry since the seventies. It has done this by not only putting people lacking in the appropriate knowledge in charge of affairs concerning the book industry (or anything else for that matter), it has also used heavy importation tariffs to discourage local productions. It is time Nigeria started to put things right. In practically every sphere of public life, Nigeria has put the ignorant on the violin, the violinist on the piano and has made the pianist to turn the pages as our story illustrates.

    We can go after money, but we must get knowledge first so as to know how to use the money rightly. Without knowledge from books, our monies will keep ending up in apartments and shops.