The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • ‘If money does not grow on trees, how come banks have so many branches?’

    For as long as we refuse to sit down and grow a viable African economy, we will continue to have our heads shaved. We love to go to the west to learn a very valuable lesson: stupidity does not deserve stardom.

    Now, I do not understand the intricate and complex contents of the subject of economics. For instance, I always thought that the law of demand and supply means that when I stretch out my paws to demand the housekeeping money, it must be supplied. I demand, he supplies. What then is this thing that I’m hearing about the conditions being right?

    I mean what other conditions do I need apart from the triggering circumstances such as empty food bins, a number of rumbling stomachs in the house, and the dog going around whining the irritation out of everyone? The dog has become something of an expert at rousing people’s suspicions, prompting the neighbours to ask: what was wrong with your dog yesterday? I heard it crying throughout the day. Mostly, the paws I hold out in demand have never come back to me empty without a little something, but I found out not long ago that it is not necessarily for the sake of the people in the house; it is to keep the dog quiet.

    When I was young and made an economically unreasonable demand of my parents, I often got the reply in this rather curt question: ‘Do you think money grows on trees?’ I have since found out that it is every parent’s God-given anthem. Back then, however, it usually made sense largely because I had never seen a tree sprouting money and so, I understood it to mean that I was being denied; and also that I had pushed the parents into the exasperation zone and I was therefore just one word away from being cremated. Just one word more, and… It thus always kept me quiet for I had no answer. But the present breed of children appears to have come down to earth with the answer to that question in their left hand. A little girl said to her mother in reply to that question: ‘If money does not grow on trees, how come banks have so many branches?’

    With this question permanently hanging over children’s heads, they soon learn to school their demands to wait for the day they find out just what money does grow on. Such a day soon comes when they find it. It is called getting a job. Birds do it, humans do it also. As soon as a baby bird is old enough, the mother bird pushes it out of the nest to fend for itself, mostly because she’s tired of hunting for the food, chewing it into bits and dropping it into the waiting throat of the wee one. When humans do it, it is generally for the same reason: the fathers are tired of hunting for the money, breaking it into bits and dropping them into the bottomless pit of their teenagers’ pockets. A teenager I know once complained that his father was fond of paying his allowance in large denominations which he often found hard to break. Taxis never have change. Couldn’t his father pay him in smaller denominations? I did not record the father’s reply to that intelligent question.

    In the human realm, therefore, fathers are generally the ones who push the young ones into the world economic market. A highly educated father was said to have enrolled his school-going son in the bricklaying profession ‘for a spell’ so he would know what earning money felt like. The son has never forgiven his father, though remains grateful to him for introducing him early into the activities of the economic community, helping him learn early how not to watch the grass grow under his feet.

    Now, that was not the problem of my grandmother. She never gave the grass as much as a breathing room while she was alive. She was constantly on the move because she believed that there were two ways to make money: beg, steal or borrow being variations of the same theme and one was as good as the other; or work. She chose to give us children the example of work as a way for us to understand how to make our money grow. To this day, I have looked suspiciously at both work and borrowing/stealing/begging and have preferred to make my money grow by putting it to work.

    Sadly, my money is not growing because most businesses today find themselves in an ever upward-growing struggle with the government’s catalogue of inefficiencies: inconstant policies, shortage of electricity, water, peace… So, conditions for creating wealth are simply not there! And so, poverty is becoming contagious because debts are piling up. Worse, I read the other day that the unemployment figure is growing something thick in the country.

    Believe me, learning that the various governments under whose care I have innocently existed over the years had incurred a lot of debts in my name has given me horrific nightmares to say the least, and one prayer; thank God my grandmother is no longer around to hear this. And those of you who still have grandmothers to hear this, well, the best thing is not to translate this news to them. Anyway, most governments I know go about laying aside the little nest egg that will not only take them through many rainy days but also ensure their independence so that they don’t go a borrowing and a sorrowing, because he who goes a borrowing goes a stealing. Indeed, the borrower has just one prayer on his lips on waking: forgive us this day our daily debts, just as we probably forgive those who’re debtors against us.

    Our governments do not do that. What they do instead is to perennially go a blowing, and when the needs are on them something thick, they have simply dusted their begging bowl and gone looking for the Paris Club or the IMF, on my and on your behalf. And, listen to this while I tell you, I hear that all that lolly they are said to have borrowed over those years have not even been spent here according to the dictates of their wise hearts. But the lenders have told them how the money must be spent in the lenders’ nations even before they have reached home. Their duty has been just to come home and tell you and me about the loan. A real economic mess, no?

    I have always maintained that Nigeria, like other African countries, is running an economic system it does not understand. It is a player in a field that is completely foreign to it. The truth is that the modern economic system evolved while we were busy building the thatches on our huts across the breadth of the continent and paying our helpers for their services by returning the compliment. By the time we looked up, the law of supply and demand had been invented to replace communal sharing, and goods and service sectors had also been invented to replace good names. In place of cowries, people had also discovered the use of money.

         So, from trade by barter in the early centuries, Africa was catapulted straight into the market economy of the twentieth century. This is why, in the world economy, we look like new recruits in the army who have no idea of what lies ahead. We have no idea that the first thing they do in the army is shave the recruit’s head. For as long as we refuse to sit down and grow a viable African economy, we will continue to have our heads shaved. We love to go to the west to learn a very valuable lesson: stupidity does not deserve stardom. Now, please don’t ask me what that means.

  • Not this well-travelled road again! …

    I learnt that there are unemployed graduates and master’s holders among these kidnappers… If that is true, then they have acquired their education in order to fail the nation.

    Cheerio there, Reader; glad to see you’re middling like me, given our most unsavoury circumstances. Well, you know what they say: when you’re down, there’s nowhere else to go but up. Here’s to hoping that Nigeria’s up days are round the corner.

    I’m glad to report that during the week, the entire world was able to heave a sigh when the erstwhile president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, decided to resign honourably after first digging in his heels, raising fears of a one-man war between him and his country. Reports say that before he fled, he first looted his country’s treasury though. I can only pray that he never finishes spending that money.

    You’re right; you haven’t come here for a news review. I just could not contain my joy that a hapless people needed not be unnecessarily traumatised and offered up as needless sacrifices on the barren altar of one man’s ambition, pride and ego. Can you just imagine the scope of that destruction? I know; because I remember that we have also been down that road before – during them Babangida and Abacha days. Those were days of uncertainty. Would he go? Would he not go? Go already! They eventually went, one way or another, and here we are today…

    Yeah, we as Nigerians have had to travel down many roads to get to where we are now; many roads indeed. Even the road we are careering down right now looks very, very familiar, so familiar it is giving me this sinking feeling of déjà vu. You know what that is, don’t you? It’s when you experience something, and your mind tells you that what your eyes are seeing has already been registered in your brain, many horse years ago. And you tell yourself, ‘how can that be; I’m only ten years old?!’ It is because it very likely happened to your grandfather, grandmother, great grandfather, great grandmother, father, mother… Some people call it history repeating itself. I call it déjà vu.

    Nigeria has given and keeps giving us lots of déjà vus. Right now, very few people know exactly what state President Muhammadu Buhari’s health is in. It reminds you of the Yar’Adua story, does it not? Those who know the facts are not telling; and those who don’t know the facts are speaking. The rest of us are glum, watching and wondering.

    As if that were not bad enough, five children and three staff members of what is known as the Turkish school, the Nigeria Tulip College in Iseri, Ogun State. were said to have been kidnapped sometime this month from the school. Now, that is a road so well-travelled, the ground is positively glossy, because some time ago, some school children were also kidnapped in Lagos for a handsome ransom. Where is it going to stop?

    This column has repeatedly cried out about the evil of this new kidnapping business but the ears of the government and those concerned appear to be turned away. I think the government thinks that if it does not pay any attention to it, it will eventually go away. Truth is that it won’t go away no matter how we pretend it does not exist. It must be tackled head on, if it’s to shrink, like the herdsmen killers. But that is for another day.

    Actually, it is turning out that the more the problem of kidnapping is ignored, the more it seems to evolve. Right now, it’s character has become so complex that no one understands it anymore. Previously, only the down and out dregs of the society were involved in the ‘trade’ for pittances. Now, I am told that in addition to these dregs, unemployed graduates, Okada riders, Police, armed robbers, etc., are all cohorts of a sort in the ‘business’ now worth billions.

    People say there is so much money to be made from it that armed robbers no longer find it worth their while to rob for pittances anymore. They just kidnap. Now, policemen want in as it happened in Kogi State I hear, where a policeman confessed to being a member of one of the kidnapping gangs. In the same Kogi State, it was reported that some Okada riders took a lady hostage, collected the ransom, and still raped her to death.

    Many people have blamed unemployment as the root cause but this is arguable indeed. I was more aghast when I learnt that there are unemployed graduates and master’s degree holders among these kidnappers. And I have cried shame, thrice shame! If that is true, then they have acquired their education in order to fail the nation. I say the same thing for internet fraudsters, otherwise called four-one-niners or yahoo, yahoo boys. Thank God, they’re not girls!

    As shown in the Kogi examples above, it is not always the unemployment story that is responsible for people taking to kidnapping. Most happen because the perpetrators have chosen that path of life as their career. While I very sincerely sympathise with those citing unemployment as their motivating factor, I also sincerely beg to disagree with them. Anyone who kidnaps primarily wishes to control someone else’s life. That’s psycho/sociopathic behaviour. It is an option.

    There are many unemployed youths who are filling gaps in the society with innovative ideas even as we speak. There are many graduates who are re-inventing themselves by adding on skills to their bags of knowledge – computer, carpentry, video games inventions, performances, etc. There is literally no end to social needs that individuals can meet. It is a matter of matching one’s interest with the society’s need.

    Some people have advocated the setting up of CCTV cameras in schools and public places to expose the people behind these crimes. I would say that is a good idea if the funds are available. But, given the state of schools in Nigeria, I would plead that such funds should first be used to upgrade the schools so that many pupils would stop taking lessons under trees and in dilapidated structures. Besides, how many CCTV cameras are we going to need to cover all public institutions in Nigeria?

    I think the real solution to this problem is the Nigeria Police. Only the police still represent the equal opportunity answer to everyone’s prayer in this matter. However, we have a situation at hand in which the police are compromised. The police must agree that some of its members might be working with kidnappers and quickly do something about it before it spreads. It is only natural for people to be tempted to take the line of least resistance when faced with trials. Like everyone else, policemen and women also have social problems. Like the rest of the society, they must be taught that steady work is still the best way to meet one’s needs.

    By far the greatest influence on our youths is the flaunting of wealth by politicians who have become rich at state expense. Politicians disrespect the rest of the society when they flaunt their expensive cars, houses, private jets, etc., in the people’s faces and rouse all of the envy we are capable of. It is natural for youths to refuse to believe that hard work pays, especially when you can move from nothing to everything within a few days of being (s)elected. Knowing that they may never become senators or governors, a desperate youth can take the nearest shortcut.

    In truth, our politicians and other elites are doing more harm than good to our general psyche by the examples of unchecked greed they set daily. I think it is time all of us began to take responsibility for the state of our nation so that we don’t keep travelling on this same old beaten, glossy, terrible road.

  • ‘The problem of Nigeria…’

    Instead of working together to build the country, everyone is busy looking for who to worship or who to worship them

    During the week, I received the following message. It attempts to explain the Nigerian situation from the viewpoint of the average man. As usual, I have tinkered a bit with the grammar but I promise you the sense is intact. Please read:

    … Two million of the likes of Buhari cannot change Nigeria. Everything is wrong with Nigeria. The Director won’t give you a contract except you pay up front. The banks won’t give you a loan except you concede a certain per centage. The man supervising the contract won’t pass the job except you play ball. The clerk won’t pass your file for payment except you rub his palm. The accounts department won’t raise your payment voucher or cheque unless you see them…

    The worst thing is that it has become a norm and no one sees anything wrong with it. If you think otherwise, they begin to think you are sick and not normal. If you stand in their way, you put your life at risk. If you get killed, there is no justice system in place to seek redress and bring the perpetrators to book.

    The police are corrupt; the judge is the same. Nobody cares about anybody. No law and order… everybody is only desperate about one thing: MONEY. They will kill anybody and anything that stands between them and money.

    I am an electrical engineer contractor with MNSE and COREN. But the system doesn’t care about my qualifications. (Power) Distribution and transmission jobs are given to Alhajis, pastors, friends and relatives without any basic skills. I started to ask myself how I would convince my children that education and hard work are rewarding when fools, agberos and touts are running the country from the national assembly to the presidency.

    Don’t put yourself in harm’s way for any reason. The problem of Nigeria is in the hands of Nigerians living in Nigeria… Everybody there thinks about himself and nobody is thinking about Nigeria.

    That lamentation almost has you in tears, no? It fair broke my heart. I am sniffing so much I may not be able to come up with my usual jokes today. I will still try though.

    I agree that the problem of Nigeria is in the hands of Nigerians, but not in the way you think or the writer thinks. For one thing, I do not believe that the generality of people were participants in the orchestration of this gargantuan failure. Most of us have become victims of the charade. Even when we have joined in doing the wrong thing, we are still victims. Not excusing your wrongdoing though but, I quite believe that this debacle was planned and executed at the very start of Nigeria’s birth. It was not an accident.

    This is why I find it really amusing when people play the blame game and point fingers at President Buhari. Like I always say, I am not the man’s PRO or his media man (or woman) but any short-sighted fellow can see that deducing that he is the source of Nigeria’s failures because ‘things are hard in the time of Buhari’ is myopic. I think, and I know many will agree with me, that the failure we are witnessing today was planted the same day the country was born. Nigeria came DOA. The failure is not in our stars, brethren; it’s in our genes.

    Nigeria was very unfortunate to have had the first set of elites she had. It was that crop that planted the disorder, deception, wreckage, chaos, plunder, destruction, insanity and abnormality that have become part of our national life and psyche. In planting a cancerous ethnicity/tribalism seed, encouraging a divisive religious atmosphere, and pursuing an arbitrary political system, the nation’s first set of elites sealed Nigeria’s coffin, set her independence ablaze and made sure she never found her freedom again. That system benefitted the personalities at that time; it was exploited by the army; and is being fine-tuned even today by the nation’s neo-politicians.

    For a system to flourish, it must be inherently utilitarian, i.e., be of benefit to the average man, not just a few personalities or families. Nigeria’s system is at present cult-based, which puts personalities at the centre of action. This is why it is possible for us to turn a few individuals to demigods and worship them as such and place them above the law – executive members, legislative members, institutional heads, service heads, corporate heads, just name them. As gods, they can do no wrong. They are above the law.

         I have a post in my phone showing Russia’s president, Putin, serving himself fuel at a filling station with no attendant in sight. I have another one of the former Iranian prime minister taking a bus to work as an ex-minister. It’s different here though. Recently, I heard that the former IG of Police and the current were having a spat on the number of cars the former hooked home with his finger when he retired: twelve or twenty-four. What?

    The present cult-based system is also why it is possible for an ex-governor to be welcomed from prison like a conquering Hercules just returned from a war. This is why it is possible for fellow senators to worship another senator like he was Caesar leading some Roman campaigners to expand the empire. Instead of working together to build the country, everyone is busy looking for who to worship or who to worship them. And, as of a man, everyone has chosen the emblem of worship: money. It brings power. This is why the system has failed. It never existed.

    These evidences of systemic failure have spread through all the nation’s institutions to result in zero productivity – power, civil service, school systems’ failures, etc. Erroneously, many of us have attributed these failures to the nature of the African man’s heart which I have heard is ‘wicked, black and evil’. I have found this a little strange. I do not believe a Nigerian’s heart is any more depraved than a Briton’s heart for example. The heart of man in general has a depravity depth as long as the north pole. What makes the difference is the presence or absence of well-defined systems.

    So, there are no scientific measurements for ‘wicked,’ ‘evil,’ ‘black’ hearts, but there are scientific measurements for whether one has done one’s work or not. Everyone’s work schedule is clear enough. If there is a failure in a civil service office, then the head should be held responsible. The failure on a police station floor should be put squarely at the door of the supervising inspector. The failure in a classroom should be accounted for by the teacher or the head of the school. If every officer takes responsibility for their jobs, then it should be possible for the policeman to arrest a wrong-doer, be he the president.

    Foundational errors have been committed with respect to Nigeria. I still maintain that it was arrogant of Britain to have yoked three disparate groups together in the first place. However, Britain’s error has been compounded by the error of governance adopted by the early elites for Nigeria. Good statesmen would have built the people rather than focus on tribes or personalities. The most powerful instrument for developing a nation is not so much the material as the human resources. That we built personalities and tribes rather than people has become our millstone now.

         Nigerians should stop behaving like criminals. Many a criminal prefers to recriminate his reporter neighbour, the arresting policeman and the sentencing judge for his stay in prison rather than himself for committing the crime. This is what Nigerians are doing – pointing fingers. We do not need two million Buhari; we need just you. Begin to hold yourself accountable for this country today.

  • The gods of War

    With Idi Amin, there was no way of knowing if he was appreciating the value of one’s verbal contribution or the succulence of one’s flesh, until you woke up one morning to find you did not wake up and you were the breakfast.

    Dear reader, I’m sure you’re familiar with the book/film The Dogs of War by Frederic Forsyth, I think. Well, I’m not. I have rather heard of that other one, the gods of war. No, you haven’t? Surprising, considering the story is lived out daily in Africa, what with all these despotic rulers who sprout like mushrooms everyday everywhere on the continent. The gods of war are the despots who people the landscape of Africa as rulers or presidents and brutalise their own people and declare war on them just to remain in power.

           Let me remind you of a few. I remember… Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo who was said to have clung to his presidential seat by the skin of his teeth for close to 40 years. He killed a few good men for that seat. Well, he eventually had to go I think, or was it that the seat left him? I don’t remember now.

          I do remember what’s his name again now? Oh yes, Idi Amin of Uganda he was. He ate a few good men for that seat. As the story went, he was not just a bad ruler, he was a cannibal of his people to boot! Imagine how creepy it must have been working with him. There was no way one could ever tell if he was appreciating the value of one’s verbal contribution or the succulence of one’s flesh, until you woke up one morning to find you did not wake up and you were the breakfast. Get that?  Huhh!

         I found the one I was looking for in Teodore Obiang Mbasogo who has been ruling Equatorial Guinea since 1979. He entered my book because he is said to be, and I quote, “the country’s god with all power over men and things…” Huh, god indeed, please!!! Even my dog sometimes thinks he’s a god, especially when I give him what he does not like. It’s said though that Mbasogo is said to have eaten a few good men and can “decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell.” What hell? Have I not many times desired one cone of ice cream and my wretched reasonable mind would tell me ‘no’ because it would go to my hips and I swing them hips worse than a rhinoceros? Now, that’s hell. But wait, there is more.

        We have all heard of Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Dos Santos of Angola; the last one there is said to have been warming his seat since 1979. Mugabe is definitely not done warming his seat, just as he’s also not done wrecking the economy. Well, we all know the stories of Abacha and Gaddafi; hardly deserves any mention, neither do they as a matter of fact.

         Now, why have I gone into so much story telling considering I am no historian? It’s because I read recently that another of our dictators is putting up another drama in his country. I read that Yayah Jammeh of The Gambia is even right now rejecting the free and fair elections his people held after he has been ruling them for 22 years. Worse, he himself was said to have earlier conceded defeat and declared the elections fair. Then he changed his mind; now, he wants more years on the throne, like Oliver Twist, except that Oliver twist was really hungry, underfed, poor, sad, afraid, an orphan and… This man, on the other hand, appears to be more into greed.

         That set me asking: just what virus attacks the black man’s brain that when he gets into power, he begins to make himself out as one great god whose sun should not set? Worse yet, he sets about doing anything to entrench himself but govern. He even goes to war to defend the throne against the people and against time. He refuses the results of polls and refuses to die.

         I am beginning to believe the theory that says that the African mind is still grappling with infantile delusions of grandeur. Sadly, this syndrome makes the rulers believe that they are some great ones and ‘possess some superior qualities such as genius… and the conviction of having some great but unrecognised talent or insight…’ Let’s stop the quotation there.

          So, back to our question on just what attacks the brain of the black man. I really don’t know but I can hazard a few guesses. First, I want to believe it’s something in the air of Africa. There is so much heat and dust around it’s no wonder some of both get into our brains. If the brains are not being fried by the sun, they’re being contaminated by the viruses in the air. Seriously. Ever heard of the sun effect theory? It is also called the greenhouse effect but the story is the same: the sun fries our brains and prevents us from thinking clearly. After all, the gasses produced in a greenhouse are more useful for growing plants. Grrr!

          My other theory is that there is something in the food in Africa that prevents us from seeing clearly. Have you checked our diets lately? When the times were good, someone said our plates consisted of carbohydrates garnished with a dot resembling meat which was well below the United Nations’ ration. Now, in these recession-ridden times, the meat has disappeared completely.

          Yes, I agree with you, these things should not be so. Any African should have access to a well-balanced diet where the plate of protein is garnished with a little carbohydrate. This would be so too if we had people to drive developments such as plenty of mechanised farms, animal and plant, energy to consume and work with, industries to produce end-products that can refine lives, imaginations to make people dream, etc. Then, you and I can have lots to eat and even despots will not need to eat their fellow human beings. That’s right, the people we need are called presidents who need to be self-denying to get the job done.

          Somewhere in my phone, I still have a post titled ‘Should we tell Africa?’ I wondered, tell Africa what? It turned out to be a discourse by a group of discussants in the West on the world’s economy. Accompanied by sniggers, laughter and guffaws, the panel concluded that there was no point telling Africa about the new direction the world economy was taking. Its god-presidents were too busy fighting wars of self-entrenchment and the people busy struggling to survive.

         Clearly, Africa’s new elites need to wake up and demand that their presidents do more than preen in new clothes in front of the mirror every morning, noon and night. Thankfully, that is something we cannot accuse Nigeria’s current president, President Buhari of doing. The man clearly is taking his job very seriously. This cannot be said of most of our undemocratic neighbour-presidents.

          These presidents do not only not have the solutions their countries require for development; they actually plunge their countries into chaos. Somalia’s Barre left after decades of playing god and there was a civil war; Gbagbo of Ivory Coast also reneged on elections. Now, Jammeh is playing the same game in The Gambia. What he is saying like the others is, ‘if I cannot be king then there’s no kingdom’.

           African presidents should realise two things. They do not have a monopoly of wisdom in their countries. Even if they did, there is so much any group can take of any brand of wisdom. They need to realise that power always seeps out of the throne, somehow. African presidents should therefore learn to respect tomorrow because it does come.

  • Kidnapping, Plc.

    My freedom can and should therefore not be taken away from me by anyone just because he is unemployed, greedy for great gain, aggrieved, poor, or just plain wants to marry me

    This morning, I received this message on my phone and I am taking the liberty to reproduce it for you here. As usual, I have tinkered with the spellings and all to make it readable.

    Please pay attention; something is happening in Abuja and Lagos now. People dressed like policemen stop cars and ask for particulars. Please on no condition should you let them in your car, they are kidnappers. Once they enter, they tell the driver that they are going to the police station. They end up taking the person elsewhere and ask the person to call someone to come and bail them with a ransom. It just happened to two people this morning. Also be cautious when taking cabs at night…

    Just a few weeks ago, we wrote on this subject of kidnapping on this column and since then this dastardly trade has expanded. Obviously, very little has been done about it; this is why it is now operating like a fully established and registered company would – in the open. I am not giving up; I will continue to write about this in the hope that others will join me to shout about it until the police wake up and do something, if only to clear their name from the stink.

    Often, I muse to myself that each regime we have had in this democratic leg has left something distasteful for us to swallow in this nation. Pa Olusegun Obasanjo’s era left us the Okada commercial motorcycle to strain at, and it has been a very hard swallow for us all since then. At that time, Obasanjo as the president really needed something to show he had the people in mind all the while.

    The problem then was that the electricity situation was dismal indeed and people were watching each other dozing over their tools in their shops – carpentering, vulcanizing, pepper milling shops, etc., — and also cursing their situation. Unfortunately, rather than give us good train services, the then presido chose to liberalise transportation ‘so that many people would be employed’. I think I heard someone mutter something like it was cheaper for him. Anyway, that is how it came about that those Okada people have perpetually been getting between our feet, or err… tyres.

    Then the era of ex-presidents Yar’Adua and Jonathan came. The Yar’Adua years were too brief for him to have left something for us to get stuck on but the President Jonathan era was too full of glitz and glamour not to have left something in our throats. In that era, electricity was still scarce; people were however no longer staying to doze in their shops. They had their Okada business to fill the roads with like termites.

    With so much money flying around (dollars, pounds, and sometimes Naira) in the Jonathan years, it was too much to ask some of us not to think up ways of catching some of it. It came down to a choice between begging Jonathan to allow them join in the spraying circle and taking to kidnapping. With hindsight now, methinks it would have been cheaper to have begged, but I thought I heard someone mutter again that the circle was too small. Today, the unfortunate effect of the Jonathan glitz and glamour has metamorphosed into Kidnapping, PLC.

    Kidnapping is now a business for many, complete with veterans. People don’t even think twice about just getting up and depriving others of their liberty, not minding that this is a highly criminal offence comparable to murder. All too often, the kidnapping leads to murder but the state is not making as if it cares. Many families are grieving over this issue but the state is too silent for my liking. I can bet you that right now, many families are running around looking for money to ransom a family member from kidnappers. AND THE STATE IS SILENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Last week, my family (and my town, never mind where it is), was thrown into that anguished running around over the kidnapping of not one but three citizens of the town, including my family member and everyone felt so helpless. They had been travelling along a Nigerian route between Edo and Kogi States. What astonished and frightened me most was the information that the kidnappers could not turn up at first at the agreed point to collect the ransom they demanded because they were busy trailing the relatives of another victim they had just ‘taken’ and from whom they hoped to get more money. Can you just imagine this?!

           What the deuce is going on? Is this a country or what? How is it that the mother or father (I cannot recall which one now) of a serving minister is kidnapped and the country cannot rise up against that crime to stamp it out once and for all? How can a former minister be kidnapped and the state get him released, then become somnambulant over the crime?!!! I don’t get it! It is definitely not enough for the police to suddenly swing into action in the case of a kidnapped known figure and leave the remaining families in this land of 170 million people to their own fate. This is not fair. Someone said Nigeria is now officially a failed state; that is why this kind of thing can go on. I find myself agreeing reluctantly.

    Now, it has got that people are using kidnapping to solve their problems. To solve unemployment problems, turn to kidnapping; it requires no capital or bank loans. Can’t get a girl to marry? Kidnap one, a la the story of Ese. Bored? Kidnap a sex slave. Soon, everyone will be kidnapping everyone else in this country till you become either a kidnapper or a kidnapped. Indeed, before you know it, wives will be kidnapping husbands until those ones release sufficient housekeeping funds. I tell you, this is no laughing matter.

           There’s a theory that says the police are heavily complacent over this matter because many of them are involved. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. I don’t even know how sound that theory is. All I know is that the police have not done much to get to the root of this problem. They are not giving me sufficient confidence that when I go on the road, I will not be kidnapped along the way; and when I sit in my house, no one will enter and ask me to come and be kidnapped. Seriously!

    My freedom is already guaranteed in the Nigerian Constitution, like many other constitutions. It tells me that it is my inalienable right as a citizen of this country. This means that it recognises that I am a human being not a goat or a chicken that has no will but only that of the person who pays for it or steals it. The constitution is thus acknowledging that I cannot be stolen away by some philistine for any reason. My freedom can and should therefore not be taken away from me by anyone just because he is unemployed, greedy for great gain, aggrieved, poor, or just plain wants to marry me.

    Most importantly, we citizens should insist that the police, National Assembly and Presidency beam their search lights on some hot kidnapping spots. For instance, in many recent kidnappings, Okene and Lokoja in Kogi State seem to have featured prominently. A justice, a trade unionist, and now, Mrs. Christiana Agbulu, a university lecturer, have been kidnapped while travelling through and around these towns in recent times. Someone should give us some answers soon.

    • This previously published article is repeated today in memory of Mrs. Christiana Agbulu, who was said to have died in the hands of her soulless kidnappers. May her soul rest in peace.

  • May we find our road in this Year of the Rice…

    I appreciate the ingenuity of the Lagos State governor as a sign of what Nigeria’s leadership can do. That seems to me to be the road that Nigerian leadership should now tread. I wish us a good road in this New Year of the Rice

    I will start today’s entry by greeting all the readers of this column who have kept faith with us ‘Happy New Year!’ These are the ones who tell us they either read the column first to fill their bellies with enough laughter to last through the bad news given out by the rest of the paper, or they read the column last in order to get the bad news first before the laugh lines. You know that famous opener, ‘first the bad news, then the good news…’? Well, choose your order. They also give me written queries I am obliged to answer directly or indirectly should I be so thoughtless as not to appear on some given Sunday. Man, working with you all has been tough but rewarding. Thank you.

    I will also greet those who have read this column only in passing, like an optional side dish, ‘Great year to you!’ These are the ones who tell me they read me when they have finished reading all else in the paper and then have been surprised by how delightfully I have handled a subject matter. I don’t get any queries from those. I do get some words of encouragement from them sometimes though. To these, I also say, thank you.

    To those who totally ignore me and have the effrontery to tell me so, I have only one greeting for you, ‘Good year to you, sir!’ Some of you in this group have been good enough to tell me your objection has been motivated by my rigmaroles or the artist’s impression I have put in the place of my picture. What can I say? Trust me, my impression is better than the real me and the rigmaroles keep me sane. So, I doff my hat to you for ignoring my rib-cracking jibes, liners, witticisms … You are strong but I bear no grudge. I will simply ignore you too.

    You remember Tai Solarin’s famous wish, ‘May your road be rough’? Well, I want to modify it for us; for I don’t think that we as a nation have grown up enough to deserve that wish. For instance, it takes for granted that the recipient even has a road to tread in the first place. We as a nation need something more practical. My wish for this country therefore would be something like this, ‘May we find our road…’

    Once upon a time, Nigeria had a road it was treading but it has since lost it. That road included programmes of educating all her citizenry, having tall economic buildings, roads and bridges. Now, we are so lost children take school under trees, religionists have taken over our economic highways and we are still using bridges built by the army during the civil war… Yet a retired permanent secretary, I read just this morning, was made to give up ‘FORTY (40) SUVS AND OTHER CARS’ that he had helped himself to from the government’s purse. Now you know why the children are sitting on the roots of trees…

    So, we have come to a time, dear reader, when we must welcome the new year in by saying goodbye to the old one. This invariably means letting go of some memories like bad communications networks and opening the horizons of our minds to all possibilities such as plenty of rice floating in via the lagoon, even if it is called Lake Rice. I tell you, I am right now optimistic that life is possible because we have now entered the Year of the Rice. You don’t know what that is? Then, let me take you back a little into the Chinese Zodiac.

    I mean no disrespect, but I simply love the categorisations under the Chinese Zodiac. It has symbols that describe the signs of the year and season in which one is born. It also defines one’s character. For instance, under that system, I fall under the Year of the Rooster and am ruled by fire. That makes me ‘observant, with a keen sixth sense’, among a list of things.

    However, the sign says I have no hidden depths to my character; in other words, I am not profound, not complicated and, oh, so shallow! Please ask me in ten years’ time if this statement is true or not when I might have discovered Elements 119 or 120 in Chemistry; then we’ll know who is shallow! Even though that character summation really hurts now, it explains why I am always so ready to forgive my readers for complaining about my artist’s impression.

         Nigeria’s character also had it bad. Just look at last year. Imagine, it had to raid many houses belonging to its top judges, even taking some of them to court for corruption! Then, the country had to be running after the runaway dollar like its bride. It got so bad we went to bed with one set of values and woke up in the morning with another set. Yeah, it has somehow affected every other value because now everything has risen in prices, even Gari and Elubo and err, rice. Worse yet, the electricity companies responsible for generating and distributing electricity for my consumption are sleeping on the job! I tell you, it has been a bad year for the country. I think the donkey had that year.

    There was one cheering news. We were told that Lagos state had somehow located the source of rice in the country and had done some abracadabra that enabled the governor bring down the price of the commodity. That was how I got told that rice had now begun to fetch the handsome price of about thirteen (13+) thousand as against the rather ugly price of twenty-four (24+) previously touted. When I heard that, I did some whoops and saluted the governor of the state for doing some quick and silent thinking. I immediately called this new year the Year of the Rice.

    I’ll tell you why I am celebrating this feat. Very few of Nigeria’s leaders, past and present, actually do any thinking. Most of them have minced no words about their mission in leadership – to recoup their election losses and ‘chop’. However, here we have a governor in Lagos who knows that rice is the people’s problem and went about thinking of how to solve it through long-term means.

    As the new year approached, I threw out my rags with the old year. I had hoped that by 2017, we would have thrown out corruption. But even in this 2017, people are still managing to swallow billions with their tiny throats. Is it not wonderful?  Also, I’d hoped we would have thrown out epileptic power supply and come into the Year of the Light in 2017. Unfortunately, darkness is still with us, and, according to reports, many are still dying from inhaling generator fumes while sleeping. As I am writing this, there is no electricity and this killed many people this last week. Chances are that as you are reading it, there will also be no electricity.

    We have a new year; we also have the chance to take a new road. As a people, we have been celebrating corruption and ineptitude. Just look at the way Ibori was celebrated. Just look at the sickening way some serving senators wait on other senators for the sake of ‘rice’.

    I appreciate the ingenuity of the Lagos State governor as a sign of what Nigeria’s leadership can do. That seems to me to be the road that Nigerian leadership should now tread. I wish us a good road in this New Year of the Rice.

  • Merry Christmas

    I think we need to go on struggling to build this country because there are many people right now in prison even though they are living in their own homes. They need us to liberate them, set them free, help them find the way, even if the way is into their own brains

    Dear reader, I want to begin by apologising for the absence of your usual serving of depressing chuckles, grim mirth, sardonic laughter and joyful tears on this column last week. It was due to circumstances quite beyond my control. You know the way some floods just come and threaten to pack your things and you don’t know which ones to save first and which you think you can sacrifice to the greedy gods wanting to eat your plastic bowls? It was like that. So, I thank those of you who made inquiries as to why I was absent last week.

    In a few minutes, I will be wishing you a Merry Christmas. Before then, however, I want to take us on a trip. It’s a short one, I promise. The reason you see, is that I have found that Christmas just isn’t the same each year in this kingdom any more. For many reasons, including price changes and man’s inhumanity to man, the merry in Christmas is getting more and more silent or it’s losing its letters and threatening to become ‘Mere Christmas’.

    In the olden days, whenever the harmattan wind began to blow in and the dust particles began to fly into every visible and invisible crevice, we children knew that one important event would soon happen. We would once again eat rice. That was many Merry Christmases ago. You know, just as people say now that Christmas comes but once a year, we used to say that rice eating came but once a year. If your family was rich and lucky, it could come twice in the year. With my usual luck, mine was once, and so it was with great fanfare.

    Listen, this was how it went. On Christmas day, my grandmother had a way of cooking that rice. To my very young eyes, it seemed that she put only a few grains in the pot and before you knew it, the things had magically multiplied. I used to think that the process of multiplication had a lot to do with me blowing my little cheeks of air at the firewood and puffing and heaving and arranging and rearranging the little sticks. Indeed, I thought I was pivot to the cooking process. So, when the pot of rice was on the stove, I never let it out of my sight as I came and went perpetually until it was quite done. I don’t think you need to know about the eating process. There are children here.

    Today’s children now take rice for granted and I hear some even eat it for breakfast. How I envy them and wish I could join them. I can’t. Trust doctors to come in when you’re having fun. They have taken my weight and have brought out their calculating machines and have decided that I have come dangerously close to having the disease of the wealthy without actually being wealthy. I have been asking myself how on earth that is even remotely possible.

    If you want to know the disease of the wealthy in Nigeria, just look at the way the erstwhile governor of Delta State, James Ibori, was said to have been welcomed as he stepped out of a London prison just this last week. Honestly, I have been telling people that if you must go to prison, you better do it in London. That is the only place you can come out of as a Nigerian and get a hero’s welcome from your countrymen. I think the prison atmosphere increases your charisma level or something.

     I have heard stories about this grand reception but I find it difficult to believe them, I tell you. I only heard, mind, that Ibori’s friends and relatives gave him a rousing ‘Welcome Out’ as he came out of prison. From the reports, it would seem to be the kind of reception you would give to Kurumi as he came home from fighting and conquering seven Indian oceans, carting home all the gold of the Indian empire to add to the kingdom’s coffers and bringing with him thousands of slaves to populate the kingdom.

     Well, rather than being a conquering hero, I understand that Mr. Ibori has been in prison in London for offences sounding like money laundering or something like that. Not a very heroic act, but then I guess that depends on where you are standing. I hear that there are senators who are willing to swear that Mr. Ibori is a hero of sorts. They claim that from prison, the man was instrumental to the winning votes of senators, governors and even key senate officials. If you ask me how, you probably will not get any answer. I think we should ask those senators.

    True, there are many among us who are wondering what has gone wrong with the national thinking brain that a prisoner, who is said to have emptied his state’s coffers on himself and his family, is celebrated like a hero and the nation’s heroes are sent into bone-and-spirit-crushing rejection. Clearly, the wondering ones among us must have gone into some kind of mental deficit while those celebrating the ‘hero’ are clearly the ‘Strong Breeds’ even if they are in the minority. These were assisted into wealth and so their loyalty goes to the one who assisted them, not to the millions in that state who have been left behind in terms of development. So, there are many among us even now wondering whether we have any nation left. Why then must we struggle any further to do any nation building?

    I don’t know if I can attempt my own question. I guess, for the sake of the millions left behind not just in that state but all over Nigeria, we have to go on struggling. Perhaps, another Ibori will come along who will assist everyone to become governors, senators, Reps and so on. Then the whole nation can worship him when he comes out of prison for ruling the country from behind those closed walls.

    I think we also need to go on struggling to build this country because there are many people right now in prison even though they are living in their own homes. They need us to liberate them, set them free, help them find the way, even if the way is into their own brains. Yes sir, they have them brains, but those things are filled right now with sawdust of want, want, want. They want palaces, cars, chains of girlfriends, trips abroad to white people’s lands to go and enjoy the fruits of the labour of white people … They want the good life! And they are ready to worship anyone who will give it to them.

    Right now, I really want to wish you a merry Christmas but somehow it is stuck in my throat. It will come out, I assure you, just as soon as I get over the fact that some people think that an alleged convict is considered more important than me. I have been here all along, and no one thought to give me a rousing good morning let alone a good welcome home form… from… from the market. Yet, someone who went to prison is given…

    Worse yet, the chickens are not exactly clucking their way into my pots this year, maybe because of the recession. The turkeys are getting wiser and are actually running away from me. However, in the spirit of the season of peace and goodwill, I forgive them all and wish you a very merry Christmas. May it bring plenty of chickens and brains that work.

  • The changing profile of women

    Actually, I have no problem with anyone daring any other gender’s profession; what I have problem with is women taking on the criminal acumen of men

    I am behind times. This means, dear reader, that while my body is in the twenty-first century, my mind still resides somewhere in the twilight zone. I don’t know why, considering I have been taking my vitamins and soaking up on my humour books. I thought they were enough to take me anywhere. Guess I was wrong. That is why I am a little lost on the subject of the tricks women are turning these days.

    I have always assumed that women should be ladies. You know what those are, don’t you? They are those beings generally called females, you know, the child-bearing specie of the human race. Because they produce eggs, females are considered weak and delicate. I think that’s why they call them the weaker sex. After all, any ol’ person can produce eggs like chickens.

    As it turned out, women did not really like this stereotype and set about doing something about it. Oh no, they did not stop bearing children. Let’s face it, if they don’t continue to bear children, who is going to take up that little job – men? So, they just went about turning their lives around.

    First, they changed their dressing mode. Let us take English dressing. The women first looked at their skirts and dresses and decided that they were too lady-like. Something needed to be added, and they promptly seized the men’s trousers, shirts, and jackets. And, deciding these were not enough, they seized men’s ties. Now, a business dressing for a woman is the complete ensemble of these items, and everyone is nodding assent.

    There are a few side effects to that, of course. Some audacious men are now deciding that women should not have all the fun. They are taking a few items from women’s wardrobes too. Men now wear skirts, dresses, lipstick, and the whole nine yards of makeup. In disgust, such men have been given a name – cross-dressers, sending the message that what women can do, men dare not do.

    In other cultures, the story is not much different. Take dressing in Nigeria. It is quite normal to see women in iro and buba for instance and men in agbada. These days, however, you can see women in agbada too, only under a different name like boubou. But, let a man put on the iro and buba and what do we call him? Mad, and all his relatives promptly disown him. I tell you, it’s an unfair world.

    Then women crossed over into the men’s professions. From being housewives, teachers, nurses and housemaids, women have systematically forced themselves into the traditional world of men’s work: lawyering, doctoring, piloting, engineering, snake catching and charming, nuclear physics researching, crocodile hunting and eating, state governing, motor mechanics and all other unmentionables. Actually, I have no problem with anyone daring any other gender’s profession; what I have problem with is women taking on the criminal acumen of men.

     If you have been reading the news lately as I have, you would have come across some very disturbing items. First I read that a very pretty lady is very busy in Kaduna State presiding over a kidnapping syndicate. I mean, I have been used to having the odd woman being the ‘armed robber’s girl’ or the ‘little woman of the kidnapper’. However, it is a new one for me that women now no longer want to stay safe behind their men; they now lead gangs.

    As if that were not enough, I read recently too of another woman who was caught, along with her boys, in another kidnapping story. The crowd that caught the bunch obviously went into a frenzy and stripped them of their humanity – made them naked to the entire world! No, I am not blaming the crowd although it would have been better to hand them over to the police; I’m flummoxed that the glory of womanhood was lost in the act of stripping that woman naked. More was to come.

    There is the story of a woman who is said to have contracted someone to ‘get rid of’ her husband. I’m sure you understand that to mean she wanted her husband killed. I do too. Now, I wondered, where exactly in the evolution of women did we revert back to Lady Macbeth whose milk of human kindness somehow went dry before she made the most important decision of her life? Honestly, I don’t know where we got it wrong.

    Then I read about the unfortunate incident in Ibadan where a woman was said to have stabbed her husband to death. And I thought, seriously? Since when did women begin to take such offensive offensives? Was it when women got their liberation to vote; or was it when Jack the Ripper stopped lopping women’s heads off that they lost theirs? I don’t know, but it does baffle me that these hard streaks are just popping their ugly heads in women across the land. It’s as if they have lost the wonder of being ‘Her Ladyship’. You see this trend most in traffic.

    Honestly, watching women drive in traffic is like watching hyenas driving. Just as hyenas laugh with abandon, so they drive. It can actually put you off driving. Sometime ago (I think I have told this story but I’ll tell it again), I needed to extract myself from a traffic snarl and a man watching the whole thing nearby commented that if it had been him as a woman, he would not have given way to anyone. So, I said, is that what women are supposed to do: be unreasonably tough like men?! That is exactly how not to be a lady.

    So, what happened to all those qualities that used to be encouraged in women – gentleness, consideration, prudence, love, mercifulness, kindness, patience… These used to be the hallmark qualities of women. Where did they go? Now, we have women displaying roughness, hatred, impatience, thievery, unkindness… Why is this so? Could the changing world be to blame?

    We will all agree that the world is changing, too rapidly for my liking. In the olde worlde, women could be counted on to ensure sanity wherever they were. Women were given every courtesy: at doorways, tables, etc. Indeed, their very presence in a room ensured that the atmosphere remained cordial for everyone. They were that feared. Now, women are being thrown around anyhow. So, they also throw others around anyhow.

    There is a gentleman around me who calls me ‘My Lady’ for some reason best known to him. No, it has nothing to do with the way I carry myself. If you cross a cow’s gait with that of a lady buffalo, you might get close. I think he imagined to challenge me to some ideal behaviour. Now, I live in mortal fear of falling off that perch so that he does not say, ‘so, you’re not different after all.’

     I am writing all these because I am worried about what can be going on in Nigerian homes, if what we see in public is but a miniscule representation of women’s behaviour today. All I can say is that our children are doomed. It means that most Nigerian children are being raised by confused women to grow up as ruffians and cutthroats. Little wonder.

    The stereotype of women used to be positive, no matter how derogatorily the men may have presented it. Now, the stereotype is downright negative, no matter how positively the men may be putting it. One man boasted about how tough his wife is because she once slapped a taxi driver who ran into her car. Me, I am still mortified that I once held a man’s lapels for some offence – soooo unladylike. We need a formula to transform our women back to ladies, and soon.

  • Corruption, capitalists and the NLC story

    I remember the NLC as one big behemoth that put the fear of man into the god the government was then

    The Nigerian Labour Congress, which used to be the hope of the common man, appears to be in need of some hope itself. It is just not feeling like its old self. Just take the way it joined issues with the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) some days past.

    From the report, a member of the labour union appeared to have asked that labour members be included in the committee’s work in the fight against corruption. A committee member is said to have retorted that the labour union is itself ‘corrupt’ and compromised so could not be included in PACAC’s work. Peeved, the union is said to have retorted that the members of PACAC themselves are not saints either so cannot afford to be ‘self-righteous’.

    To start with, I am thankfully not a judge so no one has called me to be a judge in this matter. I am just worried that the NLC has come to a situation where someone can accuse it of being corrupt and all it can say is that ‘you are no saint either’. This is arguing against the man and is worrisome. I mean, in my book of logic, it is like two children fighting and one accuses the other of stealing his mother’s meat from the pot and the other says what about you; didn’t you also steal from your own mother’s pot? Has the NLC come to this?

    That’s not all. Over this last week, I thought I heard one of the NLC presidents, Comrade AyubaWabba, ask the Federal Government to give workers more pay to help cushion the effects of the recession for them. I think he thinks that corruption will be well fought if the workers are well fed.Hmm! I’m thinking, if that is all the NLC can ask for in these turbulent times, then all I can say is, how are the mighty fallen!

    Way back while growing up, I remember the NLC as one big behemoth that put the fear of man into the god the government was then. At that time, when Pa Imoudu or Pa Davis or Hasan Sumonu spoke, the big shots in the colonial, civilian or military government sweated down their spines. They sweated because they had no way of knowing what the body they represented would do next. That entire body was serious about welfare issues and even more concerned about the sanctity of the national body politic.

    Soon after the tenure of Comrade Adams Oshiomole, I think the labour union began to fall on hard times.It found itself between the rock,where it could be dashed, and the ocean where it could be drowned. I rather think it became dashed to pieces given the many unsavoury stories we began to hear about factions and more factions. Now, I am reading that there are two simultaneous comrade-presidents: Comrade Wabba and Comrade Omar. It only needs Comrade Medubi to make up the triumvirate, i.e. the third current president. It can happen. Only God knows what has got to them unions: life or the government. I think life got to them.

    We will start by rephrasing that question, just as students do when they cannot understand your question. How did NLC get to this point where it has two people parading as its president (in its website)?How can it be accused of corruption and all it can do is point a counter-finger at its accuser?

    You know, one of the most interesting features of living in these modern times is the intense level of material wealth that pervades the atmosphere. This material wealth is the goal of every living being. If I tell you that I do not want to own a swimming pool in the roof of my house, I should be lying to you. The concept not only screams freedom to own, it also shouts all the affordances that my being able to work, earn, enjoy and make you envious of me bring. This is the heart of capitalism – to each all he/she can hoard to his corner like a rat gone berserk.

    Unfortunately, someone has to produce all my hoards. That’s right, they are called proletariats who frequently do not get to own as much as they would like on account of the fact that the affordances of their own position do not include, well, what they produce. So, they elect people to fight the capitalist oppressors on their behalf so that they do not get extremely cheated. They are called shop stewards in some climes but around here, we call them union officials.

    These ones are usually excused from the factory line and they go around wearing old clothes and talking their heads off to the management. Problem comes however when union officials begin dress like management and you can no longer distinguish between the union officials and their oppressors. It’s a little like when the pigs walk on hind legs after overthrowing the farmer.

    Not long ago, I saw a picture in the newspaper that filled me with foreboding. It more or less prophetically anticipated this day when the NLC would stand in the dock. The picture showed its officials riding in a convoy of heavy black jeeps, the kind used by our governors, and it had other workers walking beside them. What defined them was their plate numbers: NLC!!! Soooooo capitalist! Honestly, they just reminded me of the new breed of preachers who have now traded walking in the bush paths by the early missionaries for riding in air-conditioned jeeps in order to take the word of God to inaccessible areas. Their converts now do the walking, often beside their pastors’ jeeps.

    Then I began to understand why people had become so desperate about becoming Comrade-Presidents. I immediately imagined myself inside those vehicles enjoying the cool air packaged in Germany via German engineering. I immediately decided to become serious about the triumvirate thing. If Rome could do it, why not us? I have gone to look for and brush up my membership card.

    So, in order to gain access to the German-engineered lap of luxury, many of the ideals of NLC written in prison pelts on the backs of people like Pa Imoudu, Pa Davis and co appear to have been traded for, well, softer landings. Talk of tin soldiers indeed.

    The consequences have not been long in coming. Take the last threat of the labour union of a general strike against the last fuel hike. Truth is, people were tired of having to go hunting in the bush for fuel. People were also tired of having to refine their own fuel. More importantly, people no longer believed that the NLC could save the situation as it did in President Jonathan’s time. So, they did not listen to NLC but preferred to read the lips of the president of the country instead.

     More importantly, the NLC can no longer now sneeze and hope the country would catch cold, as the cliché goes. Indeed, the only person catching cold now is the NLC and that is even from its sweat. Many ex-governors are serving presently as senators and collecting hundreds of millions in pensions and emoluments at the same time. In short, a good amount of the nation’s resources is used to service a very insignificant number of people. Talk of corruption indeed. Yet, the NLC is silent, even though on account of this obscene collections, many of its members are taking amala with palm oil for dinner.

    The NLC needs to change its story. Asking the government for cushioning measures is beneath it. The people need a stronger, more coherent demand on the government. NLC should mind that it isthe only true opposition to any government that the people can count on at any time.

  • These random acts of unkindness will not do!

    I understand that the House of Representatives’ speaker has just bought some new vehicles for his members. Ouch! That has got to be the unkindest cut of all, I tell you. Imagine, in these times…

    There is a huge amount of unkindness being passed, like offering plates, around the Nigerian atmosphere particularly of late. When we’re not hearing about huge sums of money stolen from the people in the most brazen acts of unkindness, we are treated to stories of bizarre behaviour that hover somewhere between the twilight zone of insanity and hilarity. Both are strange bedfellows, you will grant but in many Nigerian individuals and institutions, they cohabit comfortably.

     We are more used to random acts of unkindness that do not draw attention. We hardly bat an eyelid when we hear that someone has robbed a blind man. We hardly flinch when we hear about a beggar being knocked down by a car or muddy water being splattered on a passing pedestrian dressed in white. We hardly move a muscle when we come across cases of bullying. These are normal facts that we associate with free enterprise and a market-driven economy and our wicked, wicked ways. They do not alarm us, even though they should.

    There are rather other acts of unkindness that alarm us. First, we are all witnesses to the partitioning of Nigeria among the members of the National Assembly. Apart from the unbelievably humongous (I am normally scared of that word but I am more scared by the object it describes) pay they draw, I understand many of them are also bleeding their states dry by taking even more humongous pension funds after working for four years or a little more. Add to that the fact that many of them are the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the many contracts given out by the federal and state governments.

    Then, take the most recent story from the House of Representatives. While the country is grappling with this uncomfortable recession where salaries are not paid, I understand that the House of Representatives’ speaker has just bought some new vehicles for his members. Ouch! That has got to be the unkindest cut of all, I tell you. Imagine, in these times…

    Kindness, according to the encyclopaedia, is performing an act that shows consideration, compassion and caring. Unkindness is the opposite, when people are deliberately mean to others for the sake of it. So, I ask you, when was the last time you showed any act of consideration to anyone, home and abroad? At home, most husbands are used to passing across the housekeeping money like they were handing it over to an armed robber. Then the brows are knit together in a very deep frown should the wife deign to complain that the market is changing. In retaliation, wives have learnt to pass the food across the table like they had cooked for an armed robber. Then the brows knit together in a deep frown should the man deign to complain that the soup is watery. Unkindness rules the home, ok?

    True, the marital vows in any religion take it for granted that both parties understand they are expected to be kind to each other and treat each other with love and respect. Not so in reality; couples so easily slide into the frame of mind that allows them to treat the other like their worst enemy. I tell you, it is assuming an epidemic proportion. Just recently, I read that a court had handed down the death sentence to a man for allegedly stabbing his wife a whopping 76 times with a knife!!! Even the knife should have complained at some point. I ask you, I ask you! I bet you that the rage that caused this would have started with some unprocessed random acts of unkindness.

    Seriously, there are many husbands and wives stabbing their spouses more than a hundred times a day with some unseen knives psychologically, emotionally, economically, socially and even physically. These don’t kill at once but break down the spirit, humanity and dignity of the other, rendering them sub-human. Unfortunately, this situation brings some sadistic joy to many of the spouses with the upper hand. These are the random acts of unkindness that prepare the grounds for 76 physical stab wounds in a home that is supposed to be a bed of kindnesses.

    Abroad, i.e., outside the home, people are also used to spreading unkindness around like an illiterate spreading ignorance on astrophysics at a conference. For starters, the Nigerian traffic is the devil’s unkindness playground. Just drive through any Nigerian road now and it will amaze you how Okada riders, Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Corp, etc., dish out unkindness to motorists like Christmas soup being dished out to the cold and hungry. It is getting so bad now I am considering packing up and going to live on a farm. The animals would be a lot kinder to me; only the armed robbers may not so readily understand why I decided to isolate myself for them to pick on me.

    I once came across a fellow who was keeping bar just to keep body and soul together. Not long after, he had to close shop. What happened? His friends would come and drink on credit which they never honoured. Such friends! Such unkindness!

    Let me give you some quotations on kindness and see which one you can do. ‘Kindness is free; pass it on’; ‘Be kind to people; reach out: let them know there is good in the world’; ‘Believe, there is good in the world’; ‘The world is full of kind people. If you can’t find one, be one’, etc. Please don’t thank me, I did not write them. I found them floating around the internet.

    Certainly, there is no kindness in drinking someone’s bar of drinks dry without paying. There is no kindness in stealing the people of a country blind just because one is in a leadership position. It is most definitely not a kind act to see so much suffering in the land and continue to show off so much opulence as our assembly members are doing presently. I tell you, these random acts of unkindness will not do.

    Oh yes, there are advantages in being kind to others. I have reported to you here how a self-made millionaire woke up one day and decided he had had enough of being wealthy. He then upped and distributed his wealth to the poor and lived on the little he had left. He reported that he had never been happier. There was also this Hollywood producer who left all the fame and name and wealth and took himself off to some Asian country where he began to rescue children who had been forgotten. He reported he had never been more fulfiled.

    When we display acts of kindness, I hear, our moods improve. Have you see how Nigerians have been going around with these long faces for some time? I put it down to their random acts of unkindness. When we learn to be kind to others, our moods change and become better. And you know what happens when you perpetually go around with this huge smile on your face? Your ageing process automatically slows down. Your anxiety about salary and food will reduce and you’ll find yourself wanting to do more for others. The result is that your happiness quotient increases.

    If you have not been dishing out kindness to others, don’t despair and be driven to suicide. You can still change. Begin today to teach yourself how to be kind in readiness for the approaching Christmas. Believe me, it pays.