The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Let’s all orient away from the idiot’s ideology, please

    The orientation of the average Nigerian towards public funds is too loose and fancy free. People dream too much of living a life of ease and no work on public funds. It is called the idiot’s ideology 

    A whistle-blower, so goes my dictionary, is one who informs against another’s secret wrongdoing. This means that the whistle-blower reports what is known to be secret or covert; what is not generally known. Of course, for one to be privy to another’s secret doing, he/she must have been doing some secret surveillance, covert tab-keeping, or good plain old spying. I like the last one best. It not only worked for most, it led to the establishment of some serious organisations filled with people who spy for a living such as FBI, CIA, MI6, KGB (or KG-used-to-B), DSS… The list is endless. What irks me though is that they have now made it easy for you and I to become spies also and join them in their silly espionage games.

    Listen, have they not invented things you and I can easily buy on the streets to make spying easy like binoculars, spy-glasses, etc.? They are not only Spying Made Easy materials; they bring spying to your doorstep. You have everything you need to spy on your neighbours round the clock, you even have enough gadgets to spy on Buhari lying on his hospital bed from wherever you are in Nigeria. Is he really ill or is he shirking? He seems to have been taking a lot of coca cola… Did his doctors really write that on his prescription sheet? Let me see now… Let me just adjust this thing a bit.

    The psychology of the spy is built on curiosity. I know, it kills the cat; but tell that to the spy because I don’t think he knows. They are also paid a lot of money; did you know that? Next to presidents, I think spies earn the most. They have to; they regularly get killed. Just ask James Bond.

    The trouble with spies is that when they see things, they do not have the good sense to shut their mouths. Through the amateur spies that they call whistle-blowers, the government is said to have recovered billions of naira, the latest of which is the sum of over 15 billion Naira from an apartment in Lagos. I honestly don’t understand the role of Lagos in these spying business because nearly all the loot recoveries seem to have come from Lagos. Obviously, the lagoon makes for some nice hiding spot.

    Anyway, I understand these loots were made possible courtesy of some government-arranged scheme called ‘whistle-blowing.’ Ehen now, that’s CIA-speak for spying. Under that scheme, I also understand that the whistle-blower comes into 2-5 per cent of whatever is recovered. That means the latest recovery will fetch the tattler a little under one billion. Cool! Is there a lazier way to become rich? This is why I’m wondering if I haven’t been on the wrong side of the factory line for too long. Now, who is going to show me how to do this thing?

    I am wondering: what does one need to become a whistle-blower? Spyglass? Binoculars? I am thinking something more sophisticated, like a rich neighbour with a mysterious source of wealth that is filling you with envy and annoyance, especially when he blocks your parkway with his Rolls Royce/Private Jet. Oh yes, they must also work in NNPC or be politicians, if you want your 2-5 per cent to be meaningful. It must be meaningful if it is to set me up for life and I would never have to work again.

    That is what motivates most people to take to blowing their whistles, right – not having to ever work again? I guess so, if you’re a Nigerian. The Nigerian is always on the lookout for the easier way out of anything – queues, poverty, fights, even sleep. I guess it has a lot to do with our inherent and genetic laziness. Have you seen one sleepy Nigerian too lazy to go to his bed? He sleeps on his feet. In other climes, the motivation may be to right a wrong or fight corruption.

    Oh yes, whistle-blowing is one way to fight corruption. Many of us have said that what occurs in Nigeria is beyond the meaning-carriage capacity of the word ‘corruption’. You know, just as you can have an overloaded vehicle, overcrowded room, etc., so also can you have an overloaded word. ‘Corruption’ in Nigeria is a good example. It can no longer adequately describe bizarre actions such as storing pilfered money in tanks or soak-away or building houses for stolen money or even storing looted money in apartments. I have heard many words bandied around such as mindless stealing, a sickness, common thief, etc. Yet, the deed goes on and any amount of whistleblowing don’t seem to be helping.

    Clearly, calling thieves names has not helped any. Rather, people have tended to just bend their minds a little more to find more ingenuous ways to hide illegal monies. I think it is time for the government to look a little sideways to help the situation more. For instance, I think it is time for us to begin to ask the pertinent question, why is this phenomenon so horribly rampant and persistent now? It seems to me there are lots more apartments quietly housing illicit funds like they hide gin, making the foundations drunk.

    I would hazard some guesses. The first is the one nearly everyone in Nigeria has referred to, which is systemic failure. The system that allows an individual to have access to 15 billion Naira of public funds directly and singly without any check in place is clearly faulty and needs to change. No, no, don’t think this is naive. After all, Nigerians are experts at circumventing laid down procedures, especially given our subservience to and fear of contradicting OGA-ON-TOP. Everyone is afraid to challenge the wrong-doer. That takes us to the second point.

    The country needs to get down to brass tacks on tackling the reason why everyone is now scrambling to steal public funds and hide them in their backyards. This reason is that the orientation of the average Nigerian towards public funds is too loose and fancy free. People dream too much of living a life of ease and no work on public funds. It is called the idiot’s ideology. This orientation is what many have termed a mind-set to steal or be stolen.

    What the country is doing now is taking back some of what has been stolen. Yet, it is not making any attempt to replace the ideology in the people’s minds. Nature hates a vacuum. The people must be given a new orientation towards public funds and material wealth if the war on corruption is to succeed.

    Right now, I have a post in my phone where a Nigerian tries to describe the political economy of corruption and how nearly everyone’s livelihood seems to be dependent on it – bricklayers, carpenters, private schools, private tutors, etc. Too true. Seriously, taking the avenues to make illicit monies away from everyone has created a void in the lives of people. It is an anti-corruption fight without correction. Not filling it with the right discourse on public accountability will cause a relapse into behavioural aberrance.

    So, a three-pronged approach is advocated here. In conjunction with using whistle-blowers to fish out Nigeria’s stolen monies, and the courts to cleanse the character of the stealers, Nigeria needs to also think about how to engage the minds of whistle-blowers and others yet ‘clean’ so as to assure them that they are right in standing on the platform of probity and ‘due process’ enduring public stoning.

  • The folly of Nigeria’s reverse logic

    The nation is destroyed because the mass of people who should be the last bastion against unbridled greed, lawlessness and foolery fall prey to the disease of illogicality

    You know what reverse logic is, don’t you? Reverse is moving backwards, like when my dog is going round and round backwards trying to eat his tail. Logic is reasoning sensibly, like when the same dog abstracts the correct guess that dinner is ready when someone is holding his plate in front of him and begins to wag that tail. Reverse logic is when the blasted dog moves backwards away from my scolding voice, tail between his legs, because he has soiled some pristine place in the compound. He abstracts then that I might be holding a gun he cannot see so it is better to move away… That’s not reverse logic? I could have sworn… Alright then, you define it for me, dear reader. There has been too much sun beating down on my poor head anyway for it to function reasonably…

    Thankfully, though, the sun is whimpering now behind the clouds, as the rains are coming down in trickles. It is not yet uhuru as the torrents which should have come by now are still shy and hiding behind Mt. Olympus, but the signs are encouraging. Now, I can dare to stare shyly back at the sun.

    I am still working up some courage though to stare back at some of you my most esteemed readers who have grumpily told me to go back to waking up the argument on just who is responsible for the wretchedness of Nigeria. But come, reader, and let us reason together. This column has declared times without number that it is not really interested in discussing politics. It is more interested in curating this museum called Nigeria in a lighter tone of voice. It is interested in showing Nigeria to life and showing life, love and laughter to Nigeria.

    Somehow, however, the politicians and their brand of politics have often got in our way, as they do everything. I think we find that everything still revolves around politics. Forgive us for interrupting our treatises on life now and then with side-comments on politics. We shall go back to our breezy talks on the grave topic of the human condition with this one on April Fool’s Day.

    Another April 1 came this year, unofficially called April Fool’s Day, and hardly anyone even turned a hair on account of it. Rather, everyone I met has been turning grey in the hairs and foaming in the mouth on Nigeria’s recession which many have termed the Fool’s Economy. It is because in a country of over one hundred and twenty million people, a little thing like a recession has bested us and has called us all fools. Shame on us.

    Seriously, many people think that April Fool’s Day is all about fooling someone while hoping not to be fooled in return. I’m sure you have heard of the ‘Your father is at the gate waiting to see you and you must hurry’ kind of prank we pulled on each other in secondary school, often early in the morning no matter the weekday that day fell on. I think the April Fool’s Day pranks have grown since that time. Now, I hear it involves bigger stakes. But never mind that.

    I am more concerned with the relationship between April Fool’s Day, reverse logic and our economy. Somehow, I think that our economy has been running on the oils of reverse logic, like April Fool’s days. How else can one explain this recession if not that what should not have happened in the first place has not only happened but has brought out results that are surprising to everybody? I mean, like someone always says, how can you go to the African market and expect not to come home with a headache? There you are, reverse logic.

    Listen, Nigerians have got to be the dumbest geniuses or the most brilliant fools in the world to have made trillions of dollars since the 1960s through oil, a natural commodity, and have absolutely nothing to show for it in 2017 but one gigantic headache – a recession. Worse. Over the years, the country has even had to go a borrowing; and who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing, or so I was taught. Now, according to the experts, we have managed to accumulate a large portfolio of debts that any young country will envy. However, according to these experts on the economy, Nigeria is currently paying over sixty per cent of her revenue to service those debts. Now, if that is not reverse logic, I don’t know what is.

    Seriously, how does any country seeking development live like that? The answer is, well, like Nigeria is currently doing – live for today, tomorrow will take care of itself, if it comes. UNFORTUNATELY FOR DEBTORS, TOMORROW ALWAYS COMES. Our tomorrow has come to haunt our yesterday, only it has come in the form of a recession. So, the time has come for us to get our priorities right and stop living in reverse.

    Take the national assembly for instance. I am not competent to comment on the calibre of the people that people the current class or how they got there. I can comment however on their lifestyle that defies any kind of reasonable logic. Why would the average Nigerians be in want and deprivation and their honourable selves be defiantly insensitive to the needs of their people? If they are not buying bullet-proof cars, they are tom-fooling around in academic gowns to celebrate untoward degrees or demanding that cases of malfeasance against them in courts be dropped by presidential fiat. I’m wondering, is this some kind of April Foolery or something?

    To start with, one cannot see in our law makers any sense of the sombreness that these times call for in leadership positions. The times are bad. Paying sixty per cent of our revenue to foreign countries is stupid. To end the stupidity, we need to work, not play. All one can see in our law makers is all play and no… You complete it. History tells me that whatever good or bad we do today has a way of coming to haunt us tomorrow. Call it law nature’s way, but neglecting it is living in reverse logic that ruins a country.

    We the people are just as mad as the Mad Hatters. There are too many among us who are willing stooges in the hands of politicians ruining the country. We have benefitted greatly from the little bones they throw out their windows at us – connections to get jobs, phones, raw foods like rice, onions, and other trifles., and these are sufficient for us to close our eyes to the truckloads of resources meant for our future that they cart out of the country. And we pay in our tomorrow…

    Many among us are living lifestyles not supported by our incomes. Our children’s school fees cannot be accounted for in our income. Neither can our properties. This is reverse logic. We the people must wake up and work to end the cycle of internal and external slavery by being accountable to order wherever we are.

    Most of the time, April Fool pranks succeed only because the human mind is gullible enough and ready to believe anything. The typical Nigerian leader is not interested in the people becoming independent of them. They want the masses to be dependent on them. This is why they only throw out pittances which the people scramble for. In the long run, the nation is destroyed because the mass of people who should be the last bastion against unbridled greed, lawlessness and foolery fall prey to the disease of illogicality. Our leaders’ reverse logic is what makes fools of us all and makes every day now an April Fool’s day in this country.

  • Nigerian Senate, what gives?

    Right now, Nigerians are too hungry and angry to tolerate jokes, clownishness, absurdities, pantomimes, buffooneries, slapsticks and other theatrical movements that do not translate to more food for the people in general

    Leader, I am sure you are also wondering, just as I am, what to do with this intractable weather. I tell you, I am at my wit’s end. When it’s not unbearably hot, you are wondering if the heavens have not forgotten to close the gates of hell. Yet, the fans and air conditioners we installed in the streets silent; — no electricity. What, there are no air conditioners installed in the streets? The people have no food to eat we’re talking about street ACs? Now, look who’s looking at the fine points. I could have sworn our government had got round to that considering all the billions of Naira I hear being bandied about daily.

    Well, someone had better hurry up with that street air-conditioning project, because the news is that we ain’t seen nothing yet. Yeah, the Meteorological Room people upstairs are predicting a much higher jump in the temperature, worldwide. Anyway, now I am wishing I had built me a house of bricks. I hear they are extremely cool all year round, like my grandmother’s water pot. The greatest fridge in the world cannot match that one, and it does not need IBEDC.

    I’ll tell you something that is even much cooler than that pot, it’s the news that women make better leaders than men. Ah ha! I always knew it, but I was too afraid to say it. Some new study has said it for me, that women make better leaders than their male colleagues. The long and short of that study is that women possess some personality traits such as openness, sociability, supportiveness, etc., that make them better leaders. Did I say that already?

    Who would have guessed it? I thought these were the very things men used to put down in the house. ‘Why must we visit my brother the third time in two years simply because he lost his job?’, goes the man petulantly. And the woman goes, ‘It’s not just your brother I am worried about, it’s the children. We need to make sure they are alright.’ So, because of this, the study is saying women are… What a world we live in.

    If it is true that women make better leaders (I love the sound of that), then it must mean that the Nigerian Senate does not know it. Right now, people are not too happy with the senate, because the women are not up and doing. It could also mean that there aren’t enough females in the senate to shove the men aside and take over.

    Seriously, the happenings in the Nigerian Upper Chamber seem to have left all us gawking and wondering what is going on. Here we are, a nation filled with people who are literally hungry and practically begging each other for a morsel of food, tired of a supposedly temporary recession that is promising every whit to be permanent, and all we get is a senate filled with people callously celebrating unseriousness! If we are not hearing about a senator who has given serial numbers to his vehicles literally, we are hearing about a bullet-proof jeep that is having us all going around doing double takes and muttering aloud to each other like Galileo, ‘Can this be so? Can it be true?’

    At the centre of these national affairs appear to be the senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki and Senator Dino Melaye. I have listened to the discourses and have been amazed at how we have all left the substances and are chasing the shadows around. The first substance is that Nigerians are hungry. The second is that Nigerians are hungrier than we know. The third is that Nigerians …. You can guess the rest, but listen to the shadows we are chasing right now.

    First, should the Ag. head of customs, a retired army colonel, appear before the senate in his street clothes or appropriately uniformed? Hmn. Am I hearing someone giving a parallel metaphor about Nero fiddling while Rome burnt? The difference with this one is that instead of picking up buckets and attacking the inferno, the people are standing around debating the philosophy of conflagrations. A worthy subject for a treatise, right?

    Then, the discourse moved to the Magu case. To be (confirmed) or not to be (confirmed); that was the question. Again, rather than beg the assembly people to stop roiling around doing photoshoots and get down to the serious business of governing, the ordinary people preferred to add the weight of their lips to the matter and take sides. We are still hungry, people, or have we forgotten? Don’t we think that is a weightier subject for us to attack with our lips? It gets worse.

    Then came the controversy of whether or not senator Dino actually graduated from the university he claimed. Again, there were pages and pages, posts upon posts affecting to either side. It got so bad even the exalted chief executive (that stands for Vice Chancellor in some universities) of the institution had to take some valuable hours to address the press and slap our faces with the almighty fact: the senator graduated in third class! I hear the record keepers are still trying to locate the exact records to back him up.

    Naturally, the exulting third class graduate is said to have made a triumphant entry into the hallowed chamber the next day, wearing his academic gown. Now, I say, there is everything worrisome about this. To start with, I ask myself, is this kind of behaviour allowed in the chamber? Does the behaviour not appropriately measure the days of emptiness in the chamber? Most importantly, how does the action help to fill our empty stomachs? As usual, the people gawked. Some applauded, others laughed but most remain non-plussed, trying to fathom how on earth this action translates to democratic ideals in a land of desperately hungry people.

    Then came the matter of the multimillion Naira bullet-proof vehicle and the reported customs payment and my poor head just snapped. There really is so much it can take, you see. I think it stopped processing all these negative pieces of news about Nigeria, including even the purported report of the suspension of one of its members ‘for petition writing’! Seriously! After going round and round, my head finally buzzed on one point, can a class suspend one of its own members? I think I need a lawyer to explain that to me. I thought it was only the teacher or the person responsible for sending the fellow to college in the first place who could do that. But then, as I said, my poor, weak head has been so assaulted it can hardly think properly.

    This is why I have resorted to addressing the source: Senate, what gives? Why is the Upper House displaying its rump for the world to see? Is the senate now about just two people? Why should the body earning the most in the land be worth such questionably ‘not much’ in terms of productivity, reputation or even regard? I know teachers whose days are filled with horror because they have to deal with children whose parents are afraid of them. They have no time to frolic around, have no single car, they earn very little as salary, yet do not go around parading their academic garments or honours.

    I think the senate needs to move away from these horror stories coming out of its house. It needs to develop a sense of maturity that can cloak it with more seriousness to reassure Nigerians. Right now, Nigerians are too hungry and angry to tolerate jokes, clownishness, absurdities, pantomimes, buffooneries, slapsticks and other theatrical movements that do not translate to more food for the people in general. Let the senate get serious, please.

  • Understanding Roses, Clouds and Sleep

    If you don’t get enough sleep, you will not be needing the clouds anymore and the roses will be growing on top of you

    Generally, a man brings out the rose when he has pushed his wife’s back to the wall in his flagrant abuse of the rules that say: A GOOD FATHER PAYS HIS CHILDREN’S SCHOOL FEES; TRY AND COME HOME BEFORE TWO AM; DON’T ENTER THE HOUSE THROUGH THE WINDOW JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE DRUNK; etc. I say, when men break these laws, they go out and buy a bunch of red, red roses and hand them to the missuses like God handing out the tablets of stone containing the commandments to Moses. Then women’s song becomes COME HOME, ALL IS FORGOTTEN.

    I tell you, only a frozen heart can resist the power of the rose. Yeah, he is called a Nigerian. Nigerians have no use for flowers, let alone roses. That’s why I’m the only one growing them in my backyard. Unfortunately, they are taking just one look at me and dying and I have no idea why. Could it have anything to do with the heat and lack of rain and sweet talks?

    However, whether we are Nigerians or not, we all have to recognise, greet and celebrate the rose, clouds and motherhood this day because they all consolidate in a very important part of our lives, our mothers! Today is Mother’s Day in some parts of the world, and I hear that in some other parts, the day is represented by roses; it’s even called Rose Day. This is why we must take time to understand roses.

    For me, the rose is THE FLOWER’s flower. It symbolises so many things – suing for love, suing for peace, suing for friendship, knitting a nation together, even stopping people from hissing at each other, etc. I guess that is why it is used a lot. To be honest though, when the rose is used to indicate love, it can mean anything from ‘I love you if the tide is not too high’ to ‘I love you with only a quarter of my heart’. Oh yes, men (and women too) are known to do organ donations a lot. They regularly give portions of their hearts to several reigning objects of affection at once. That’s why a woman wants to know her man’s not thinking more about his car than about her.

    Most mothers’ hands smell as sweet as the petals of a rose, because they are forever handing out bread, corn, amala, eba, garri, groundnuts, cakes and all kinds of food. And God help you if you cannot take whatever they hand you in the palm of your hand, including amala. Then you get the sharp side of their tongues and palms, like a thorny rose. We were so blessed to have been raised on mother’s strict diet of love and lavish beatings. There is a post in my phone where someone has described the different kinds of slaps he enjoyed from his mother when he was young. Let me see your hand if you did not also enjoy those slaps of love too. I thought so. Liar!

    What is important to note about mothers and roses is that they both grow on a well-manured soil, both are found in home environments, and both are watered by the clouds that burst their seams and send down the torrents. While mothers may not exactly sprout out of the soil (one little girl said that Santa Clause brought her mother), I assure you they are watered by the same clouds that hang over roses. Do you remember the buckets and buckets of water they kept sending you out to fetch when you were young? Un Hun, they were used to water her.

    So, while we are celebrating mothers and roses, let’s not forget to also celebrate clouds because sometime in this last week, the World Meteorological Day was marked and their theme was ‘Understanding Clouds.’ Have you noticed how hot it has become lately? My, it’s enough to make one go around in one’s skeleton! The sun is shining down on our pates like there’s no tomorrow and there is no watery respite from anywhere.

    Now let me tell you some of the theories I have heard concerning the held-up rains. I hear some powerful people are holding the rains somewhere and until they are appealed to, the torrents will not fall. Mmm. Yet again, I hear that the problem is that some powerful countries have diverted the rains to their own countries and since everyone knows just how inefficient we are in this country, they were pretty sure we would not notice anything. If anyone did, he could easily be bribed to keep quiet. Some quiet voices have said though that it’s not raining because the clouds are not heavy enough, but who listens to those.

    I don’t know about those theories, but I do know that if we took a little time to understand clouds as the meteorologists ask us to do, we would perhaps get our answer to the question of why the rains are not coming as we want them to. We would understand why the clouds are forming too slowly or inefficiently; why the desert is now attempting to dip its leg in the Atlantic Ocean; and maybe give a few warning shouts.

    One thing is clear to me, the rains are not falling because I think the clouds are sleeping. Now, let me tell you something about sleep. Anyone around me will tell you my most favourite pastime in this world is sleeping. They’d be wrong. My most favourite pastime is sleeping soundly. When I heard that the world day of sleep was celebrated about last week (imagine all these days being celebrated at once) I was sad. They could easily have used me for their adverts. What I’m not too clear about is that their theme this year says ‘sleep soundly, nurture life’, and I ask, what life? Between Buharinomics, the rising dollar and this infernal heat, I am not sure exactly where that life is right now or who can best nurture it.

    Let me share with you some of the things I found on the internet on sleep. ‘Sleeping is no mean art; for its sake, one must stay awake all day’ – Friedrich Nietzsche; ‘No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap’ – Carrie Snow; and this Irish proverb: ‘a good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book’. Clearly, these people know a few things that we don’t. To start with, there are only twenty-four hours in the day when most of us need thirty or more. So, where is one to get the hours to waste in sleep? More importantly, how can one sleep in this infernal weather when the clouds are refusing to burst their banks?

    Well, according to the sleep medicine people, sleep is not optional. Heck, that’s why the Almighty God made the night hours for observing it. That is the time though that some of us do our best work: writers, businessmen, noisemakers, rapists, murderers, fraudsters, scientific experimenters, etc.  The notion, however, is that if you don’t get enough sleep, you will not be needing the clouds anymore and the roses will be growing on top of you. It’s as simple as ABC. Now, who is going to tell the all-night people? How can we persuade them to give the needed respect to sleep as much as the scientists do? I’m talking about those who conduct night vigils, play music all night, hold night parties, etc., and make lots of noises and don’t invite their neighbours.

    Clearly people, roses, clouds and sleep have a lot more in common than we know. Pray for the clouds to burst their sides so that you can get some roses for your mother and then you’ll get a good night’s sleep. Happy anniversary all round.

  • What makes you happy?

    Happiness is just round the corner. It comes from the smile you get from your neighbour, employee, friend, spouse or fellow citizen

    Today, Reader, we are taking time away from the hot topic of just who is responsible for Nigeria’s unhappiness. Clearly, Nigeria has no happiness to speak of. I want to thank all those who reacted to those articles, many passionately. We shall pick up the gauntlet a little later after this short break on happiness. Now, what makes you happy?

    I have often thought of happiness and how to get it. I know for a certain it does not reside in the bottle. How do I know this since I have never tried to bury my head in alcohol? Well, I have observed that most people who do that often come up with their heads plastered. Their hairs are stuck fast to their heads, eyes unfocussed and steps swaying to music no one else is hearing. I also know for certain it does not reside in my pots. Believe me, I have tried gorging myself in gluttony in my search and all it got me has been one colossal weight increase that has my pair of scales screaming, ‘are you seriously expecting me to read that weight?’ Of course, I have hissed back at them scales, ‘Liar, Liar!’

    Nevertheless, I checked my physique to see if that machine has seen something that I failed to. I saw that my limbs had somehow taken to resembling the teenage daughter of the trunk of an Iroko tree. Well, that’s no reason to grumble, I thought. I picked up the tape rule to check my waist and I had trouble finding it. So, I enlisted the help of my dressmaker who asked me, ‘where is your waist?’ My arms also seemed to have a mind of their own. They no longer obeyed me when I said, ‘fit into the sleeve’. They would prefer to wave their fat pockets at the wind. I also noticed that my head had somehow slipped from being a size dumb to a size dumber. When I checked with the doctor, he said something like ‘aging process’ but luckily, I didn’t hear him properly.

    I knew I had to shift the weight off me or it might submerge me. First I put on the trekkers and took to walking early in the morning as the doctors recommend. Along the way, I gathered a great deal of greetings and good wishes from fellow passers-by, but no happiness as such. My return smiles lit my own face though. Somehow, I could not see the effect of my suffering on my weight.

    So, I took myself off to the gym. What first hit me was the array of machines that had been arranged to help me slice off the fat, no matter where it’s hiding. The ambitious trainer told me to hang on something and lift my legs off the solid earth. I looked at him as if he had just said I should lift myself off the ground. He was not joking. I failed of course, so he said that was a confirmation of the bad state of my health. ‘When you can lift yourself off the ground, you will be amazed just how good you will feel about yourself,’ he said. It sounded suspiciously like he was saying there was a lot of happiness to be got from some physical wellbeing.

    Out of pity for him, I refrained from running out of there and never going back there. Instead, I picked up a pair of weights and tried lifting it above my head. Instead, I went sliding down, backwards. I went on the bicycle and it creaked under me. I took pity on it and got down. Then, I went on the elliptical and it swung me around so much I felt my weight was in danger of flying off. So, hugging my weight to me, I got off it and went crying to the massage machine, popularly called the tianshi. It vibrated under me and threw me off. Round one to the gym, I concluded as I took my towel and headed home in humiliation. I knew though I would go back. Reader, you should try it some time.

    Next, I took my search for happiness to my money. I went to my bank and asked them there to help me count my filthy lucre. It took them exactly … two seconds. The other second was for the page bearing my name to open on the computer. No, I’m not going to tell you how much or little, you thief, but it was enough to cause happiness to flee from me. As a matter of fact, it did at that point. So, I thought, perhaps this is the reason why Nigerians seize every opportunity to pretend that every monetary vote that comes into their keeping automatically becomes theirs for the spending. That would amount to a lot of happiness going around, I am thinking. But one lesson was drummed into me and I think I’ve mentioned it here before but since I like repeating myself, here it goes again.

    There is a difference between having money (yours or not) and being wealthy (often yours). Money, I am told, is what temporarily comes into your hand by any legitimate or illegitimate means, and wealth is what comes into your hand through entrepreneurship. So, one may have money through borrowing, embezzling, frauds, etc. One however only has wealth through investing one’s money in manufacturing or stocks so that it yields for you whether or not you are there. This follows that even a salary earner who does not invest his/her money cannot be said to have wealth, only some money. On the other hand, one who embezzles and invests the money cannot be said to have wealth, only stolen loot. The day the loot crashes soon comes. So, definitely, money (especially other people’s) cannot house any happiness either.

    Don’t forget, reader, we are looking for just where happiness resides. Could it be in the genders then, I asked? I looked at the males and females I came across and tried to gauge their happiness quotient. Let me just summarise my findings. From most of the males I came across, I got the impression of people wondering what exactly they were doing on Planet Earth. I saw them thinking, like the speeding motorist, ‘this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through…’. They had this glazed look, you see. I think they got it from watching too much football. So, I put their quotient of happiness at forty-five per cent. Please feel free to agree with me.

    The females, on the other hand, had this definite look that only colonisers have, you know, the kind Britain had after it swallowed America. The whale also had it after it swallowed Jonah. The females have not only colonised Planet Venus (where they come from) and Earth (where they are now), they are already eyeing Mars. Have you seen a colony of females at any event? My goodness! They are worse than a colony of ants. They are forever swishing around in their one-foot high heels and perfumes that smell worse than horses’ sweats and dresses that evoke the conquering of Sumatia all over again. Of course, I have no idea where that is. Look it up. Anyway, I put the happiness quotient of females at forty-six per cent.

    March 20 is the UN’s International Day of Happiness. It’s just to remind us that happiness is not something to pursue through cheating or misuse of public funds as most of us in this nation currently believe. I believe happiness is just round the corner. It comes from the smile you get from your neighbour, employee, friend, spouse or fellow citizen. So, I ask again, what makes you happy?

  • Who is to blame for Nigeria’s woes: the people or the leaders? (2)

    Leaders are more to blame. Our leaders abandoned the law and taught the people to do the same

    Leader, things have been happening. First, I heard this morning that President Buhari is back.   I want to welcome him back from what the president’s men have persistently said has been nothing but a vacation but which rumour mongers have persistently said is a sick leave. Let us bring both groups together and just say the man went to a health spa. Believe me, I am myself due for one of such trips. First, however, I need to work for another five years or so to be able to afford one…

    Secondly, I want to say ‘Happy Celebrations’ to all women on their international day once again. The 8th of this month was International Women’s Day (IWD). I also want to congratulate them on the fact that the Federal Government has finally given them what this column had been clamouring for on their behalf for years – a bank just for women that would grant them access to small loans. I say ‘hurray’ to that! I also say ‘brrrrr’ (that’s me sticking out my tongue) to those who laughed at me when I proposed it. I think we will talk some more about this some other time.

    Over the week, I received some reactions to last week’s article on the topic above. I want to reproduce two of them for you. As usual, I have used my licence to tamper with a few things but not with the sense expressed therein.

    …Your snippet on Leaders (and Followers) in The Nation today is good. It is the followership that transposes the form of leadership it desires… The core values of the followers are entrenched in vital institutions of the state to check the excesses of a tyrannical leader. We saw the U. S. courts clip the wings of Trump with respect to his travel bans. T. J. 08039134335.

    …You can’t blame the leaders and the led and be a good judge. Both cannot be the cause and the effect at the same time. If a father did not bring up his children properly you don’t blame the father and children at the same time. Journalists should quit speaking from both sides of the mouth. Only one side is the cause and is to blame. Make your research, find out which side it is and say it. This shadow boxing journalism should stop. M. 08037061410.

    Two views, two perspectives, both of which I appreciate. While I like the understanding that Prof T. J. brought into the reading of the article, I rather felt with Mr. M. on his frustration over not getting a direct hit on the subject matter. This does not mean I agree with either of them. Unfortunately, what is wrong with Nigeria is a lot more complex than all that now. This column and very many others have gone to great pains over time to expound on the problem of Nigeria to look for answers. Indeed, many of us may not even get the kind of answers we are looking for in a while. Let me start by addressing Mr. M’s frustrations.

    To start with, journalists typically ‘speak from both sides of the mouth’ for very good reasons sir. As a result of their painstaking research, many people find that very many factors contribute to a phenomenon. Take the phenomenon of child upbringing Mr. M refers to. It is not always that a parent who works hard at bringing up the child achieves desired results in the child. In deciding who is to blame for a fallen child, all factors must be considered – parental influence, education, peer pressure, genetics, child’s intelligence, societal influence, etc. Have you not seen the child of bad parents making good, and that of religious leaders turning bad?

    So, when people do their research, they often come against this wall of fact: that most phenomena are multifactorial. The task of such researchers is not to prescribe a particular belief to the reader. Rather, it is to gently lead the reader up the staircase of knowledge to the landing, from where he, the reader, can make an informed judgment to continue upstairs on his own. He can reach this target fact by the simple process of inferencing. Thus, write-ups are not only for giving the reader pleasure but they also put power in his/her hands. This is why it is possible for many people to read many interpretations to a piece.

    However, when Mr. M. asks to know which one is predominant among the factors responsible for Nigeria’s current state, he is unconsciously transferring his Power of Attorney to me to decide for him. That I will, in a while, if he would wait awhile. He should note though that I will charge him. In the article in question, I referred slightly in passing to the chicken and egg story but it actually illustrates the Nigerian story. The egg hatches the chicken which in turn lays the egg… but you know that story. The problem now is that all the eggheads have not been able to put their heads together to crack the riddle of which was hatched or laid first: the chicken or the egg.

    The Nigerian story is like that riddle. Who is to blame, the people for getting bad leaders or the leaders for making the followers they want? Leaders have the responsibility of structuring the state and the people have the right to throw them out when they fail. Responsibility and right go hand in hand. However, the Nigerian situation is not normal. There has been neither responsibility in the leadership nor right in the followership until now. We have traced why this has been so in other articles on this column and other columns.

    So, when the Vice President asked the people to stop adulating looting leaders, what he was saying was that there was a very limited way of stopping the looting available to the central government. It was now the people’s turn to step up by turning their backs on the leaders who loot. He was declaring open the People’s Court. The people should begin to exercise their rights and try the looters in their own Courts of Logic that says anyone who loots the treasury is spending for his family alone what an entire community should use for roads, electricity and industry.

    However, given the propensity of the Nigerian people to find themselves drawn, using all kinds of logic, to leaders who have looted, it sounds very much like a tall order. Nigerians as a race are hungry, deprived, poor, uneducated, needy, ignorant, lazy, shiftless, dependent, illogical, unenterprising, stupid, superstitious, and any other thing you want to add but you cannot subtract. These things make them follow the line of least resistance. They also make them liable and blameable.

    While I have heard that a people would often get the leaders they deserve, Prof, I hardly think any group deserves dictators like Idi Amin of Uganda, Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Eyadema of Togo, etc. A nation wants leaders who would help the people think right, act right and teach them to follow the law.

    However, leaders fail when they do not use the power entrusted to them to restructure the society and make the people see better than they do. Leaders are supposed to be far-sighted, intelligent, visionary, enterprising, idealistic, hardworking, and anything else you want to add. This is why they are supposed to be able to save the people from themselves, not sink them deeper into corrupt desperation.

    This, Mr. M., is why I think leaders are more to blame. Our leaders abandoned the law and taught the people to do the same. Now, my bill to you, Mr. M. for making me exercise your power of attorney is that you must continue to read PU.

  • Who is to blame for Nigeria’s woes: the people or the leaders?

    The people’s behaviour in celebrating treasury looting is still reprehensible because they are adoring today what will make them cry tomorrow. However, the leaders’ behaviour is more condemnable because they are knowingly and recklessly leading the people to destroy themselves

    Dear Reader, there are so many emotions coursing through my veins, along with what I hope is red blood, that I don’t know which one I should indulge first. Well, there’s the very shocking news that Spain has appointed a very beautiful woman as its, wait for it, Minister for Sex. Now, I say, that is a very hot one. Have you seen her picture? Man, she is hot, and her job is even hotter. She is charged with the onerous duty of jacking up the population of the country which they say has been dwindling since 2008. For the life of me, I don’t know how Spain hopes that this beautiful woman can turn the nation’s population situation around. I mean, she is just one woman! Well, we can only wait for the logic of her appointment to mature.

    Then there was the hilarious story that an Eighty-two year old (82) Nigerian justice was being screened for an ambassadorial position. Seriously! That was one big hoot for me; but the bigger hoot was the sentence that said the ‘Screening Committee was shocked’ (!!!) when the old man ‘refused to recite the national anthem’. Believe me, I am shocked that the committee was not as shocked by an 82-year-old being nominated as by his refusal to recite an anthem. Wonders will never end, they say.

    Let me see now, if I am lucky enough to hit 82, I don’t think I will be wasting my time remembering the anthem of a country. I will be lucky if I know the name of the country I’m living in. So, what can that old man be thinking of seeking this kind of appointment? More importantly, I’m thinking, what is President Buhari thinking of nominating someone of that age? Most importantly, what is the committee thinking of by going ahead to screen an eighty-two year-old man for a job outside the country, even if it only takes him to Cotonou? What is this country, a circus?!

    Then, during the week, I heard again that people have now ditched putting looted money in overhead tanks or underground soak-away. The government has wizened to those tricks. So now, looters have resorted to hiding their money in coffins. Really!!! I mean, how sick, desperate and twisted can Nigerians really be, I ask myself? Obviously, very.

    To top my emotions, I came across the news that the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, had admonished Nigerians to stop ‘celebrating’ treasury looters. Now, say I, what is our VP trying to do, cause disaffection between looters and their worshippers? Does he not know that indeed most people steal these monies so that they can attract hordes of worshippers to themselves? Sir, the average Nigerian would not go after money as they do if there was no one to worship or envy them, and that is the half-truth. I don’t know the other half.

    Seriously, I have heard so many arguments on this I am almost believing them. Examples: Nigerian leaders are bad but the followers are just as bad. Therefore, the followers are as much to blame as the leaders. Another version says that actually, it is the followers that make the leaders bad. Yet another version says the leaders are the contagions. They contaminate everything they touch – whether they are political, social or religious leaders. They are all the same. Now, I’ve heard everything. So, where were we? Oh yes, we were trying to settle the question of which is influencing the other more: the leadership or the followership.

    I have been in gatherings where people have argued back and forth on this question as if they were trying to settle once and for all the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg. How shall we ever know except we ask Papa Noah just what he placed in his ark – two eggs or two chickens? Until then, we have to hold our peace and calmly examine the issues.

    I honestly cannot argue for any side but I can wax historical and lyrical. I remember that there was a time in this country, around the sixties and seventies, I think, when leadership positions – whether in corporations, civil service, army, etc., — were held very delicately. At that time, a good name was more important than gold because it opened even more doors. Now, the reverse is the case. The gold is esteemed to bring in the name. This is why people are going after the money like mad.

    Listen, both the leadership and the followership have failed dishonourably but one definitely bit the dust before the other. Most people who come to power are under the illusion that it is ‘what the people want.’ In truth, the real power does belong to the people. Most times, however, a few force their will on the ‘people’ by hijacking the machineries of power until the people rise with one voice as happened in France in the eighteenth century when the entire country rejected the dynasty of the reigning king and queen. It also happened in Russia when the people got rid of the reigning Czar and instituted a more people-based government.

    However, in those and more cases, the people were led by their hunger and anger, both of which were vulcanised together by a vociferous group on behalf of the people into one coalesced ball of fiery action. In other words, even a revolution needs a leader. However, in sane climes, the leader steers the state but the people rule his heart and hand. What is known today as the western world has been able to endure because the people rule the hand of the ruler. Twisted paradox, no?

    The point is that the people are important only if they are well informed about their rights and obligations in the land, and responsibly discharge both. This was the first thing America’s early leaders ensured: the people’s rights and obligations. Nigeria’s leaders since independence have never consciously tried to bring up the people to a position of knowledge about their rights and obligations in order to empower them to take responsible and informed decisions. This is why it is so easy for the new elites to simply fall in line with the will of the country’s leaders rather than the will of the people.

    Hence, as far back as the country can remember, the people have been taking decisions in public matters such as elections on the basis of readily assessable parameters such as direct access to the country’s resources. Anyone who is given this access is as venerated today as the early cave Nigerians did the white colonial men. They are the super heroes. This is why they are neither questioned nor condemned in the ‘people’s’ eyes.

    Reader, the paragraphs above have been given as an attempt to explain what is going on in the country. It is not meant to excuse bad behaviour on anybody’s part. The people’s behaviour in celebrating treasury looting is still reprehensible because they are adoring today what will make them cry tomorrow. However, the leaders’ behaviour is more condemnable because they are knowingly and recklessly leading the people to destroy themselves.

    The onus for change lies with everybody. It seems more realistic to me however when the leaders are seen to be serious with the desire to lead by taking serious actions against looting. China, I hear, summarily executes such people. Better one man dies than millions be contaminated. We here can jail them. However, when Nigeria pats looters on the back, the only message that is passed is ALOOTER CONTINUA. Now, I must go reconcile my housekeeping accounts before I become…

  • So hard to think these days…

    To start with, the president would not die without telling me… (but) by staying in London and recuperating under the British health services, the president is putting more faith in their health systems and completely belittling what little is left of ours. I don’t like that.

    Honestly, I don’t know about you, reader, but I’m finding it harder and harder to think these days. Why? Just look around you. The sun is hotter than it has ever been in its history. My hair is all gone from worrying about where my next meal is going to come from, where the next fuel supply for my generator and car is coming from, when I will be able to sleep without worrying about robbers, kidnappers, ants inside my kitchen, and when the deuce my president is going to come home.

    Yes, it is hard to think around this house. With an absent landlord, sorry, president, the roofs are all leaking and the walls are crumbling from rising damp and political disloyalty bulging out the windows. The taps are dry and the wires all crossed and giving out sparks from all kinds of irreverence and disrespect. The house is filled with cockroaches flying left, right and right at your face in treasonable behaviour. At moments like these, you do need your landlord, in this case our president, if only to be able to give him all your complaints and watch him squirm under the weight of your worries while your own face wears the beatific smile of someone who has unburdened himself. Yep, you do need your president, sorry, landlord. Now, I think I’m a little lost with my metaphor.

    Seriously, why is no one explaining to me what exactly our president is doing in London? That is what has set me thinking today. His assistants all mouth what appears to have been rehearsed. You know why I know they are rehearsed? They all said the same thing. That is why they are all insisting he is still on vacation. It’s a little like the students caught in truancy instead of going to school and they all chorus that their vehicle broke down on the way to school. You can only catch them in their untruth if you ask them to give the particulars ‘of this breakdown’, individually.

    So, when I started to hear rumours like ‘the president is dead’, ‘the president is sick’, I refused to believe them because I thought they couldn’t be true. To start with, the president would not die without telling me. No, I am not necessarily his confidante… For another, he made me too many promises to even go getting sick on the job! So, I’m thinking that, perhaps, the president is getting tired of our duplicitous behavior. Obviously, reader, you can see I am doing a lot of thinking.

    Let me show you how seriously I have been thinking. Over the days, I have moved from wondering what the exact state of our president is to asking why he is still outside the country (even if on vacation!). Well, the thing I’ve concluded is that if he is recuperating from an illness as the more vociferous rumour mongers have claimed (you know there’s Amebo, and you know there’s the Amebo app!), then why can he not come and recuperate at home here? By staying in London and recuperating under the British health services, the president is putting more faith in their health systems and completely belittling what little is left of ours. I don’t like that. You cannot build faith in what you have by promoting someone else’s goods to the world.

    If, on the other hand, the president is on vacation in London, then he is still doing me a disservice. What is wrong with Ikogosi Springs that they cannot host the president? What is wrong with Obudu ranch with all its snow that it cannot play host to the first family? It played host to mine, and I think we are the One hundred and twenty millionth in the land. For that matter, what is wrong with my house that the president cannot use it for his vacation? I promise my toilets are clean. Look, look, look here, let’s talk man to man, err, woman; until I am told that London can muster more of what Mr. President needs in doctors or vacation homes than Nigeria can, I will not hold my peace.

          Have you noticed or have you not, that most organisms grow best only when they are challenged? Take me for instance. I think I’ve told you before that my teachers must have held some kind of meeting and come to the conclusion that I never learnt anything until I was punished. So it was that at every level of my schooling, I never met a teacher who spared me the rod, physically and metaphorically. I did not learn the Lord’s prayer until a pair of canes sat on my desk through an entire school day to my eternal shame and embarrassment. I never learnt the value of homework until I was paraded round my school for failing to do my homework, and many more such stories. I was quite the rebel against progress.

    I can bet you that a vacation home or hospital that will host Mr. President can move from Ground Zero of possessing nothing to the Eleventh Floor of having everything it needs under forty-eight (48) hours. The management will be challenged. The doctors and nurses’ professionalism will be challenged. The cleaners’ professionalism will be challenged enough to stop the chewing gum. Believe me, even the other patients will be challenged to do the needful and get well quickly. Mr. President is that inspiring. Most importantly, the hospital will be able to keep those things for good.

    ust imagine. If the people around President JFK of America in the 1960s had had only one option of flying him outside the country when the bullet struck him, the man would have died before the plane was ready. I know, I know; the man still died, but from bullet wounds not from someone failing to call the air ambulance quickly enough.

    Seriously, after doing a lot of thinking, I’m coming to the conclusion that our Nigerian leaders are not taking the country seriously enough and taking themselves too seriously. That is the problem. Each one of them thinks he/she is more important than the country.

         I have heard it said that one of the prerequisites of being a leader in Nigeria is that one must stop believing in anything Nigerian, including its hospitals or vacation homes. I don’t know how true this is or how true it is of our president but I understand that most Nigerian governors, Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Directors in the Civil Service, Corporate leaders, Tertiary Institution leaders, etc., all begin to treat their headaches outside the country the moment they get into those positions. In short, when they have no money or position, their faith in Nigerian systems soars; but when they have money or position, their faith bag empties. That means we have not moved an inch from where we were in the 1950s. How then do we want to get to the millennial ages where the rest of the world is waiting for us to catch up?

    Now, I believe that President Buhari is a very cautious individual and would not do anything he did not have to do. In other words, he would not have made his way towards London for any vacation or treatment if he did not have to go. I am peeved however that he has left the country guessing unnecessarily on this matter. More importantly, he has left the country for too long. Until I’m given an adequate explanation on this matter, I promise I will not eat or stop thinking, no matter how hard it is. I’m waiting, I’m waiting.

     

  • Knowing when the devil is sitting in your backyard…

    What shall we say then, that Mr. I. went to prison on Friday and came out on the third day when the prison doors opened of their own accord?! Sometimes, people forget that ‘dia is thunder o’! 

    My readers are several things to me. While some have undertaken to love this column come hell or high waters, some have chosen to be discriminatory. The latter group loves me only when I’m talking sense. Imagine that! Who can still recognise sense in this crazy Nigeria?! On the other hand, some have decided to keep guard over my grammar; just to be sure it does not slip into something as unrecognisable as Alice’s in her wonderland. I think they do it with a ruler or something. I always seem to feel a rap on my knuckles when those terrible slips slip right past my watchful editors. I guess we can forgive the editors though; they’re only human and sometimes have to sleep. Yet some other readers have undertaken to love me only when I talk straight and not try to be funny. Now, I ask you, what am I when I am not being funny? Definitely not funny, I assure you.

    Clearly, you my readers are working harder than I am to keep me on my toes. I appreciate every one of you, including those who do not like my jokes. I promise to try to be funnier. Maybe I’ve been telling the jokes those ones don’t like. You know I have to be careful; there are children on this page. Nevertheless, I promise to turn up the worth of my jokes, if not the volume. Don’t despair yet.

    But look, the country is beating me to it already. The jokes coming out of the putrefying sores of the country have gone beyond hilarious. Nearly every day, there are reports of people stealing or having stolen billions and billions of sums of money and hidden them somewhere very funny like a soak-away (Ha! Ha!) or tanks (He he he he!) or cupboards (Boo hoo hoo!). So, how can anyone say he does not like my jokes?!!! Who is funnier of the two of us: me or our unimaginative leaders? You be the judge.

    The news has been bubbling of late over some amounts someone called Dr. Andrew Yakubu was said to have stashed in a locked-up house. In other words, sitting in an air-conditioned house where humans dared not hope to live were stacks of silent, idle and venerated dollars somewhere above the sum of ten million. According to the reports, the neighbours had no idea such an important guest resided in their midst. I guess they would have joined in the daily veneration. They said even the man’s brother supervising the building did not know that only a door separated him and those millions and the poor man had to scavenge the neighbourhood for food. Now, isn’t that the deep seat of irony?! As someone said, if you’re having so much fun, you can’t know when the devil is sitting in your backyard.

    Someone said that in the past six to eight years alone, Nigeria has lost over thirty trillion dollars or is it Naira now, I don’t know. Whichever one is bad enough. The thing is that all that money went in to feeding corruption. What a greedy beast that is. Now, this sum does not include the sums lost over the five decades of our so-called independence. That would bring it to the region of quadrillions of quadrillions of quadrillions – sums large enough to take care of our transportation needs, electricity needs, water needs, housing needs, street air conditioning needs, even the air conditioning needs of every house in this blighted land.

    You know, most countries have taken a more normal route to development. This has involved all the people agreeing to respect the laws of the land in all matters – moral, criminal, political and most important of all, fiscal matters. So, no one is considered to be above the law. I reported once on this column that a former Chancellor of Germany was convicted in a law court for diverting a paltry sum less than one hundred thousand marks then to his party.

    In Nigeria, however, we have preferred to allow individuals to access and pilfer the state’s resources at will and to their heart’s content while giving nothing back to the people but lies and deception. Thing is that these days, hearts are not so easy to please going by the bizarre and weird figures and behaviour we are witnessing. By law, ordinary citizens cannot gain access to Central Bank’s vaults but politicians not only gained access during Jonathan’s presidency, they actually supervised the carting away of bizarre sums. Witness Obanikoro; Dasuki, etc. Yet, they suspect me when I only pass in front of the Bank’s building.

    Listen to this post sent to me recently. ‘Mr. Tompolo was paid N13B; Badeh got $32M; Dasuki took $35B from the CBN; Mr. Metuh took N400M; GEJ’s cousin, Azibola took N6B; Nenadi took N3.5B and so on. The list of these infamous Nigerians helping themselves to state funds is endless. Only this morning, the courts are talking about Diezani forfeiting some millions of dollars found in her account, which I bet she hardly remembers. More bizarrely, none of them even remembered to throw any of that money my way.

    But Nigerians are to blame for all this weirdness; no sanctions for stealing. Rather than sanction these light fingers for their anti-social behaviour people, people like you and I have stood in awe of the devils in our backyard for possessing and waiving huge stolen sums at our noses.

    Take the welcome of Mr. J. Ibori from a British jail for instance. For bleeding the State dry, according to reports, his constituency has given him a hero’s welcome; you know, the kind you give a general who is returning home from a war. This welcome was soooo weird! They said his religious leaders compared him to ‘great men of God in the bible like Jesus Christ, Moses, Samson…’ I decline to continue that absurd comparison!!! What shall we say then, that Mr. Ibori went to prison on Friday and came out on the third day when the prison doors opened of their own accord?! Sometimes, people forget that ‘dia is thunder o’!

    More worrisome indeed is the fact that our Venerated Thieves of the Republic (VTR) do not do anything more serious with their loot than at best develop already developed places. I heard that indeed the problem of one of these looters began when he tried to pull out the sum of money he had earlier contributed to the development of a megacity in the Middle East. Yep, reader, they said Nigeria’s money was the substantial contribution to that city’s first take-off.

    Now, we must wax philosophical. We have to understand that good things cannot come from bad. Please check the history of all the VTR in our midst. Beyond being able to flash their ill-gotten gold in our faces, not much good has come to them. Good people suffer, but bad people suffer more. Good people fall ill, but believe me, VTR fall ill more. The children of good people may turn out bad; but the children of our VTR turn out much worse. Believe me, when the natural law is broken, it must compensate.

    Nigerians need a different orientation, a different mindset. As I mentioned earlier on this column, nearly every Nigerian youth is right now poised to emulate a VTR, which is troubling. If you consider the fact that these are computer age children angling and rearing to throw their hands into the national treasury like their VTR parents, then you and I should worry. We must change this story; it is no longer funny.

  • Love Trumps All

    Someone says his valentine is his dog: it never disappoints him, never empties his pocket and never asks for dates, flowers or divorce. And I say, ’Fie to that cheap dog!

    Its February again, the month of love or as my friend calls it, rrrooooove. This is the season when we once again remember love, sorry, rrrooooove. To show love, we remember flowers (ugh?), chocolates (come again?!), romance (mmmm!), etc., and that most memorable dinner (blink, blink, blink!) when the man takes the girl out and spends his hard-earned money to impress ‘Her Majesty of His Starry Eyes’! It is the season for celebrating romantic love, crushes, gushes, and all the flip-flops of our inconstant hearts.

    Do you know that there are some people who have a different valentine girl or guy every year? Imagine that now; having to take a different girl out to dinner every year or as a girl, being taken to dinner every year by a different man. Some people have no hobby or what?! It sounds like a good way to fight monotony though. It is also a good way to get to know the whole town. Anyway, I am here to wish you a happy valentine period; and also to let you know that I know a very good restaurant…

    It’s not as if valentine has not been there all along. After all, you have the children to show for it; and if you are not a parent yet, why then, you have your good self to show that sometime, somewhere, something closely resembling love pretended to course through the veins of your birth parents. You also have your errant heart to remind you of it.

    Errant heart or not though, this is the season the love bug bites normal people. It is the season for falling in love, out of love and back in love again with all kinds of people, animals or things. Someone says his valentine is his dog: it never disappoints him, never empties his pocket and never asks for dates, flowers or divorce. And I say, ‘Fie to that cheap dog!’

    Unfortunately, the country is at the moment filled with abnormal people who get the love bites for different reasons. Sometimes, the love can be self-propelled; sometimes, the naira, pound or dollar sign propels it. Like someone said, whether the love is pocket-impelled or stomach-attracted, love is love.

    There are too many examples around us of self-propelled love. Let’s take a few samples from recent newspaper reports. Can you imagine someone being so abnormal that he takes one look at his beloved parent and decides that that parent’s life could be put to better use if killed for a money making ritual? Unfortunately, if it happened just once or twice in a few years, we would come to the conclusion that the young fellas must be psychiatric patients who have broken loose. But it is replicated again and again in so many sane-looking individuals whose souls have been taken over by love of great gain for little labour.

    I attended a church service once where the pastor prayed that the congregation should get lots of money with very little labour. Reader, you should have heard the thunderous ‘AMEN’ that answered that prayer from the congregation. I actually believe I was the only one who refused to say amen. I asked a friend later who also attended if s/he said amen and that one replied, ‘yes now; who does not want cheap money?’ Scandalous! I believe anyone who says amen to that kind of prayer would sell their parent for money.

    I guess I have bought too much into Tai Solarin’s School of Rough Roads philosophy. This, reader, is why I slave for hours to bring this Postscript article to your table every Sunday. I think my editor is another member of that elite group of rough roaders.

    Anyway, there are also people so abnormal they think that the wee, little bodies of their wards or house helps or even their own children must be riddled with witchcraft or light fingers which can only be treated by hot water or severe beating. These ones are so blinkered they do not see the witchcraft lurking in their own adult bodies that can better take the hot water and severe beatings. No sir; they love themselves too much. Such rrrrooooove!

    Should I continue to talk about our abnormal fellow inmates in this huge prison of ours that we call a country? What about the ones who constantly have forced carnal knowledge of wee, little children either for satisfaction or as a ritual in the belief it can help them gain quick money, power or long life? Or even the ones who rape unwilling, non-consenting and uncooperative females, eh? Now, how abnormal are those? There is more, but let’s wait a while.

    So, clearly self-love seems to propel a great number of Nigerians. It manifests in so many ways. For instance, I have heard but I have not been able to confirm, that a single individual in the land has enough money to sponsor the country’s budget, yet there aren’t too many records showing either his work or business experience. The guy loves himself so much that everyone else can jolly well perish for his sake.

           By far the stronger love in the eyes of the average Nigerian now is the love of money. Oh my! You should see the glint in people’s eyes. Anything and everything is now money in Nigeria. It’s got so bad now that if you wish someone good morning, it may cost you some money. Give someone some water, and you may find yourself parting with some money. Money is definitely not just the root of evil in Nigeria, I believe it is the evil. Why, all you have to do is listen to the mind-boggling revelations that came from the armsgate investigations.

    Listen, it appears we have all forgotten the message of the valentine season, which is said to have been inspired by the life of St. Valentine, a Roman priest. I believe I have told the story once but I will tell it again because I like repeating my stories. It is said that St, Valentine had the temerity to secretly marry off soldiers and their sweethearts, which was against the roman laws of his era. For this act, the emperor imprisoned him, before later caning and executing him.

    The most important thing about St. Valentine is the fact that his heart was in the right place. He loved his charges; he loved people and had great compassion for them. As a leader in the church, he was concerned about spreading Christianity but more importantly, he was concerned about meeting people’s needs. He not only put all he had into his work, he eventually laid down his life for his folks, work and conviction. How many Nigerian leaders can do that?

    In St. Valentine we come across self-abnegation for the common good. Nigerian leaders, as we stated above, believe in live and let die – let the people die that their leaders might live. This so easily explains why someone can have billions and billions and billions of the country’s money in their own private pockets, bank accounts and soak-away without feeling a pinch of guilt while the people go hungry. Taking care of self is the number one priority. Obviously, St. Valentine they are not.

    In this season of love, we remember this remarkable legend, if indeed he did live, because he did not care about himself but was more about showing love to others. In the process, he did not mind that he had to suffer because he was committed to loving. Let our leaders be as committed to loving the people and they will be remembered by time. Let them persist in defrauding the people and they will be stoned by time. In St. Valentine, love trumps all.

    • This article is reprised for you. Happy Valentine.