Category: Oyinkan Medubi

When a man goes ‘I will climb the highest mountain for you or swim the deepest ocean’, what is that if not masked schizophrenia?… I really wish Mr. Agbaje had undertaken this long trek of love for a different reason such as protesting this lingering recession or the fact that people who have embezzled are being treated with too much courtesy.

A certain Mr. Agbaje has given us yet again some relief from the litany of bad news we have been getting lately. Before Mr. Agbaje’s story broke, we had had to endure the fire-spitting NJC swearing by its judges and wondering why the nation was antagonising its clan. Then it turned around to calmly ask the judges being investigated to sit plum aside until investigations are concluded.

    Another fire eater was a former minister who is said to have now tamely returned a certain amount of money to the nation after first brandishing all his teeth in indignation at the indignity being heaped on him and his family. He reminds me of one minister who was said to have actually walked boldly into the CBN strong-room to pick up cash, where even the bank’s governor had to tread fearfully. I don’t know how true that story is but it shows indeed that strange days were upon us then.

    Thanks to Mr. Agbaje, I not only got a topic for my piece this week, I was sufficiently distracted from watching President Buhari struggle with the antics of an impatient citizenry who invited him to come and bear the rule over them but cannot endure the paraffin he is shooting up their behinds to enforce a laxative effect and bring out the stolen loots. I was tempted to write on the new licences recently granted for private universities, you know, just to give some pieces of advice, but then I shelved that for another day. When I saw Mr. Agbaje’s story, I immediately hugged it to myself screaming ‘that’s my story!’ Ha! Ha! What do you think makes a journalist’s nose hard?

    I have always felt that extreme actions, like that of Mr. Agbaje, are extreme reactions to extreme situations. For instance, the ongoing recession is an extreme provocation to my delicate brain and results in an extremely egregious headache which I want to attack with a hammer. Well, you can hardly blame me when I am constantly called upon to multiply the few miserable okro fingers in my bowl to feed my family of five … (Bet you thought I was going to say five thousand. Who do you think I am, Jesus?).

    For love of his country, Mandela chose to endure decades in the prison so that freedom could come to his people. While many of his countrymen snoozed on their beds albeit with one eye, Mandela endured deprivations, suffering, mental and physical anguish, and familial comforts to ensure the end of apartheid in South Africa. That is why the world still stands to honour the memory of that man today.

    One extreme action that I still cannot understand is why people who were never enemies would don gloves and begin to jab at each other in the ring to the cheer of a madding crowd. Usually, this action cannot be called a reaction because there is no provocation for it. They call it boxing but I call it madness. Adherents swear by it. Boxing audiences swear by it. Those signing the cheques definitely swear by it. I hiss at it.

     One action that definitely calls for a reaction is the little bug called love. Love is the initiating action, the provocation, or the motivation, while what people do is the reaction. You will not believe what people do for love. Indeed, most married people look back on their dating years and refuse to believe what they did to be with the person they have married and now can’t wait to get away from. One man said he endured three days of snow sleeping outside in the temperate region because he chased after the woman he loved to her country. He did not get her.

    Someone said he had to endure a six-hour ride on the roof of a cross-country bus to unite with his girl (whom he did not marry) while another one found himself donating one of his organs having first lost his heart. Clearly, everyone has a story of foolish in love to tell. You have yours, but today, we’re talking about Mr. Agbaje’s. His is more interesting. He is said to have trekked from Lagos to Zaria to declare his love.

    I love walking; it’s one of my favourite pastimes. It is also my exercise routine. I choose it over running. When I walk though, I do it to gain health — good motivation, considering that when I drink water, I tend to gain weight. Walking gives me a vision that someday, I will look exactly like I did one day long ago when I turned twenty. Despite that it has never occurred to me to use walking to make a point such as that I need more housekeeping money. I think many people will point out to me that my walking may actually reduce my need for more housekeeping money.

      Many classifications have been given Mr. Agbaje (a nutcase, a limelight hugger, a stalker, a lovesick fellow, etc.), but I give him just one, a romantic. Unfortunately, you and I don’t have the same definition for the word. Whereas you think that being romantic means being affectionate, sentimental and loving, believing in giving a lady flowers and chocolates, or paying for her to have a week’s stay in Nicon-Noga-Hilton without the man; just her, herself and she. For me, it’s none of the above.

     Being romantic is when someone is being fanciful, fantastic and impractical. I don’t want to bore you with the characteristics of the people associated with that word. They were mostly poets, sick with consumption when they wrote and did not live long. Their art was their life. Please don’t think I’m rude or callous or anything but I think romantics tend to paint reality in strange hues. When a man goes ‘I will climb the highest mountain for you or swim the deepest ocean’, what is that if not masked schizophrenia?

     Now, according to Mr. Agbaje’s story, he had fallen in love with his princess in circumstances that remain controversial between the two of them, declared this said love and been rebuffed again and again. Horror of horrors, the lady said no. To prove he was serious, he decided to undergo a cross-country walk. Even with that, la belle dame sans merci persisted in her no. Many people thought he should have undergone a head shrinking instead.

     Frankly, I had a number of questions. To start with, did Mr. Agbaje really walk from Lagos to Zaria? He looked so fresh in his picture! If he did, had he not heard of a little thing called cell phone? Could he not have called to check if the lady was home before starting to come over from Lagos? Who came across him on the road – hit-and-run drivers, boko haram, kidnappers, etc.? Why would he risk head and limbs (no matter how well stockinged) just to say ‘I love you’? And why was he welcomed by the palace of the Emir of Zaria, rather than the lady’s house?

    I really wish Mr. Agbaje had undertaken this long trek of love for a different reason such as protesting this lingering recession or the fact that people who have embezzled are being treated with too much courtesy. They are allowed to return part of their loot, keep the rest and are serving no jail time. Whereas I won’t call what he has done a waste of time, I still think it’s because he has no employer and does not need a daily bath.

For instance, how many parents cried out against the automatic promotion of their ill-motivated children?

Anarchy rules already, ok, when thugs are now holding guns and earning the right to drill educated people on simple arithmetic in midnight attacks. ‘What is mx/yx?’ And the professor must give the correct answer or risk having his fingers chopped off. We know anarchy rules when ruling bodies are made up of the society’s dregs who throw out social decorum in favour of exhibiting and exporting anarchic behaviour. It’s called monkeying around, like the original man who knew no better.

Let me tell you about the original man. He lived in the world’s first jungle more than three thousand years ago. He was known to give rein to his passions, no matter how base. When he felt like taking over a group and becoming the lord of the jungle, he poked everyone else out of the way with his horns until he had his sway. Did you say it is even happening today in our society? May be you’re right.

The original man also surrounded himself with all the animals that could only sing his praises and say yes to him. I don’t know if I have told you this story but I will tell it again. Once, it was said that the lion went around asking every animal he came across this question: ‘Who is the king of the jungle?’ Each animal always went ‘You are, O Lion!’ In return, the animal was then allowed to do obeisance to him the lion. This went on until all the animals had bowed down, remaining the elephant. When the lion got to the elephant, he asked the normal question, ‘Who is the king of the jungle?’ In reply, the elephant picked the lion with his trunk and flung him across the terrain. The lion was said to have picked himself up painfully and muttered, ‘You don’t have to get violent just because you don’t know the answer.’ I’m sure you’d have noticed that the story has changed each time I have told it. I get better with age.

Anyway, it appears some of our pupils in this country have now taken to violence just because they don’t know the answer to their promotion examination questions. From the story, the Oyo State Government or Schools’ Board took one look at its past national examinations’ results and laid its finger on the offending article: automatic promotions. Too many pupils are getting promoted that should be kept back to remedy their weak areas. So, the government or Schools’ Board has abolished or is in the process of abolishing automatic promotion in its secondary schools.

According to the new law, pupils must pass English and Mathematics in order to qualify to go to the next class. Unfortunately, many students failed these two subjects and so have not qualified for their next classes. Instead of taking remedial measures, the pupils took the law into their hands and decided that if they cannot move, then their schools should not stand. In Oyo town, some of the pupils are said to have burnt their classroom blocks. This is boldness indeed.

It is momentous, remarkable even, that we have now reached the stage in our development or descent where our secondary school pupils (generally aged between twelve and sixteen) are burning down their own school blocks out of pique. Where on earth did these children get the idea that violence pays? Oh yes, I think I know: they learnt this deviant behaviour from their parents and their parents’ generation.

Sadly, many parents today have endorsed violence as a way of life. No, I am not talking about the sociopaths and psychopaths among us who flog their wards and wives and husbands to within an in inch of their lives. Those are in the category we call sick and require no less than Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung’s intervention.

I am rather talking about those among us who see violence as a means to an end, like the original man three thousand years ago. We want a Rep or Senatorial seat? Maim our opponent. We want the governorship position? Kill our opponent. We want to get ahead in the Senate or House of Representatives? Seize whatever you can seize. We want to register the children in a school? Threaten the principal. Our entitlements are not ready on time? Destroy the CEO’s office. The children are misbehaving? Beat them to a coma. The dinner is late? Burn down the kitchen. What cannot be got by reasoning must be got by violence.

These are the ones among us who teach the young ones that it is all right to burn down the school when you fail. I suppose that it is natural too that when the children see all these traits of behaviour in their parents and their parents’ generation, they think that it is the only way to get the world to listen to them and respect them. Violence equals Strength.

In the first place, how did automatic promotion creep into the educational system? Oh, I think I know that one. It started when we all agreed that our classrooms should become over populated. It started when a public school classroom started to hold between sixty and eighty pupils to be managed by one underpaid, salary-owed teacher. Worse, the teacher was expected to turn all his/her charges into geniuses, even the slow or unmotivated ones among them, because their parents were too busy making money to help. Moving every child along the school’s classes automatically prevented a clogging up of the system. I believe this is still happening in all the states in this country.

 Like everything else, whatever goes around must eventually come around. The system of pushing every child along has brought its own results: mass failure that has every parent, school’s authority, government and even pupil crying foul. But who has the right to be peeved here?

It is not the government. This problem was started by the government. Too many times, the government has opted for less expensive ad-hoc solutions to problems rather than doing the proper thing which takes time and is expensive. It was more convenient for the government to adopt this automatic promotion rather than build more schools, maintain existing ones, employ more teachers and rigorously supervise the teaching process. In truth, many of the teachers are not up to par in the profession. Automatic promotion should never be introduced in any school unless that school is sure of the dependability of its teaching system.

It is certainly not the parents. Many parents are criminals where the education of their children is concerned. They have very little input, even to take-home assignments, do not care what goes on in school, and/or are super indulgent of their children and wards’ needs. Yet, they are the first to cry wolf when something is not pleasing to them. For instance, how many parents cried out against the automatic promotion of their ill-motivated children?

     It is also not the children. Many of them are not interested in learning. Like their parents, many school children are now more interested in materialism and its advantages, their social profiles and the internet resources. These preoccupy them better than what goes on in the classroom. Unfortunately, WAEC does not test on these things.

      The government must step up to solve this problem. Don’t get me wrong. I do not condone these children’s anarchic behaviour. Clearly, they have to be taught the crucial lesson that destroying a school property is not a legitimate way of expressing a grievance. They must pay for what they destroyed.

     Yet, the classroom and its activities are regulated by the government. It must therefore find a way to unclog the system, educate the parents and put them to work and also get these children back on their seats. It can be done.

The president should listen to his wife’s rhetoric, no matter how fallacious because in a democracy, the gains and pains of office are shared by both.

Have you noticed that the news these days is full of reports about politicians and government officials saying things that do not make much sense? They are telling us things or having things told about them that are not fit for human consumption. They go: ‘Mr. XYZ: You have ‘taken’ billions of Naira from the State!’ And Mr. XYZ goes: ‘Oh no. I borrowed only half of that amount, and I am ready to return some of it.’

     Pity yourself, dear reader, and me too if you’re minded to, who have to swallow this pigs’ muck. You will notice that there is usually nothing about you or me in the news. We don’t get into the news even when we succeed in executing that quintuple somersault that we had been practicing for years or invent a car. We don’t get into the news for not embezzling anything, for driving well, for greeting our neighbours… Oh no, no one notices when we deign to eat right. Ordinary folks like you and I only get into the news when we decide to feed on worms instead of Indomie (although I cannot tell the difference save for colour) or kill someone for Twenty Naira instead of twenty…

     This sad state of affairs would have continued but for the diversion recently given us newsreaders by no less than the first family in the land, President Buhari’s family. Now, reader, we have to tread carefully because when you are dealing with issues relating to marriage, you can get beaten up. ‘`Tis perilous indeed to get between the tree and its bark,’ someone once said. You see, many are still limping for meddling, for you’re dealing not just with marriage issues but also with the art of rhetoric itself. You know what rhetoric is, don’t you? It is the art of using arguments to persuade someone that he/she does not exist.

     So yes o, marriage has its own rhetoric, where the participants are forever talking and never hearing what the other says. Other people hear it for them, such as neighbours, friends and family. “Don’t you know that when you said ‘What if I even have a girlfriend outside’, what you were really saying was that you actually have a girlfriend?” Marital rhetoric itself can go something like this: ‘Honey, do you think I have grown fat?’ In reply, the man’s ‘Honey, the world is round; fat is round; fat is a good thing’ may make her burst into tears before filing for divorce. That is marital rhetoric.

    In a recent interview, the president’s wife was said to have declared some things to the effect that the president did not know many of the people appointed into governmental positions. In making this assertion and much more that have already been reported or caricatured, the woman was saying things that were made plain to her husband but not to us. So naturally, his reply showed that the discourse was plainer to him than to us, something to the effect that his wife belonged in the kitchen. In short, the world was just an observer to the rhetoric typical of the marital situation. You and I are therefore not going to interfere. We will not even attempt to referee the match on who said more. We will just hold a closed-circuit TV discourse on it, but no one must tell the president.

     We must first understand the background to this; I meant the first lady’s utterances, not the marriage, people. In the first place, it is common knowledge that there is a serious depletion of funds in the land right now and salaries are getting scarcer and scarcer and everyone is groaning in hunger. Unfortunately, rather than blame previous governments for their lack of foresight and failure to plan for rainy days, Nigerians prefer to heap blame on the current president who promised to bring a change to the people’s circumstances.

     So, still wearing her apron I believe that the first lady came out of the kitchen, took one look at the sitting room and all the characters gathered therein, shook her head and exclaimed: Wharra mess! Heck, my husband does not know these people; how then can he trust them to bring change to the people?! I can’t even trust them to like my cooking!’

    You see, the first lady’s rhetoric was pointing at the behind-the-scenes fact that indeed, the country appears to be dealing with a new government but in actual fact, there exists a set of people behind the scenes who seem to be controlling things. Those who have hijacked the government are really the ones to blame. These are the people responsible for everyone’s frustrations, anger and hunger, not her husband. That was the spirit of her submission.

     In her own way, I believe the first lady was really trying to weigh in on the national discourse on the side of, well, the first man since no one else appeared to be doing it. She must have seen it as her responsibility to defend her family against external attacks, the same way the army does for the nation. What she ended up doing however was to question the man’s status on the bridge of this ship: are you ‘Captain Kirk’ or are you a visiting observer from another planet? And that’s what she said, trust me.

     Naturally peeved, the first man in the land retaliated at the letter of his wife’s words. He promptly consigned her back to the kitchen. To tell the truth, when I first heard the story, I wanted to pounce on Aso Rock. Thank God I was held back for I might have ended up in Kirikiri thinking I was making for Aso Rock. Honestly though, I felt sure the president’s reply had taken women back to the pre-18th Century period when they were not even held to be human beings. I still think that’s what he meant though, so I’m still waiting for his personal assurance that he did not include me in that sweep of his hand when he told his wife, ‘get back to the kitchen!’ Believe me, that place is hot!

    Anyway, in catapulting his wife back to the kitchen, the first man in the land displayed his knowledge of some behind-the-scenes facts. For instance, he said that he did not know his wife’s political party. This meant that he believed that his wife lacked the ‘knowledge-base’ to make comments on politics, particularly his brand, to be able to pass judgments on whether he was Captain Kirk or not. More importantly, since her knowledge-base is more defined by culinary activities (kitchen), social activities (sitting-room) and other activities that I don’t know – honest!- (the other room), his wife was better off honing her skills in those areas. I only wish someone would tell me what that ‘other room’ is. So, you see, our first man in the land was not telling his wife she had overstepped her bounds. He was simply trying to accentuate her area(s) of expertise. And that’s what he said, trust me.

        Now, you know that the whole thing has been one big miscommunication. As I said earlier, marital rhetoric can be unpredictable because it can assume several forms. Sorry but there’s no space for that now. It is important to note though that just because women are born in the kitchen (well, everyone thinks so) does not mean that they do not have feelings or some grey matter. True, much of it may have been fried with the yams, some remnant of it still works. The remnant of the first lady’s told her something which she voiced out. The president should listen to his wife’s rhetoric, no matter how fallacious; because in a democracy, the gains and pains of office are shared by both.

Reader, pause awhile and say a prayer for Nigeria for we have, by our behaviour, converted it into one giant mental institution

Did you hear the one about a mentally unstable man who was released from an institution for good behaviour? Well, his doctors felt he was sufficiently healed to be let into the society so he got out and went on the streets. Two hours later, he was back at the institution. What was the problem? He said that while he stood by the road side, he saw a man wearing thick glasses riding a commercial motorcycle and carrying a pregnant woman who had a child on her back, and another one who carried three passengers on his motor cycle. He also saw a taxi driver who had carried seven passengers in his four-seat vehicle and a policeman who only laughed and collected some money from him. Then he thought, ‘the people out there in the world are all madder than me, and I am the one committed!’ So, to avoid being contaminated, he went back.

This last week, I listened in on a radio programme celebrating World Mental Health day. And I thought, ah, mental health! That is the inability of the mind to distinguish between what is socially acceptable and what is not. For example, since most husbands have not been able to distinguish between what is domestically acceptable (such as leaving all their month’s pay in the pockets of their pants for their wives to find) from what is not (such as leaving those pants on the kitchen table), we can assume that their mental health is challenged. There’s someone else whose mental health is challenged: my dog. For reasons best known to him, he thinks barking is beneath him. Do what you like, he just won’t bark. To harass visitors therefore, he simply, err, licks their feet. Grrr! That dog is so in need of a specialist.

Obviously, then, anyone whose mental health is challenged needs help. I can count the people who need help. All taxi drivers, all Lagos bus drivers, all Okada riders need help. From what we have been reading awhile, many justices, many police officers also need help. Most of all, all husbands need help. How else can you classify a husband who sells his wife for a sum of money if not someone in need of help? No, that happened in literature. But I know one who nearly sold his wife because she was costing him too much to feed. Really, what constitutes mental health is a matter of perspective. After all, I once drove the car into one of the walls of the house. No, no one pushed me; I just thought the road extended there. Of course, need you ask? Those around me went, ‘But, were you mad?!’

So, like everyone else, I interpreted the mental health day to mean the day we pause in our respective tasks, think for a moment about any mad person we know, say a little prayer for them, and then move on to choose what we are going to have for dinner. Not so, explained the resource person, it means the day we examine our mind and clear it of debris such as excessive love of money, excessive hatred of our noisy neighbour and too many death wishes such as driving the car at one hundred and forty kilometres an hour on Nigeria’s rough roads. Or, we can just use the day to think about those who appear well on the surface but are really sick beneath, like judges and kidnappers.

Reader, pause awhile and say a prayer for Nigeria for we have, by our behaviour, converted it into one giant mental institution. Seriously. The poor thing thinks it is well but it is really, really sick. Just think about the antics of her citizens. Where else in the world can you find a people so cheerfully bizarre, yet uncompromisingly devilish? Where else can you find a people so nice and yet so wicked to each other all at once? I say, where else can you find a people so artful at biting each other and so equally artful at blowing palliative air to soothe the pain? Where else but in this your good ol’ country can you find people perpetually screaming at each other ‘You hit my car, are you mad?! You beat my son, are you mad?! You stole my prayer, are you mad?! You stole my future, are you mad?! You stole all the meat in the pot, you this stupid child, are you mad?!!!

When we think of the fact that what peoples the walls of this country is a veritable mix of schizophrenics, psychosomatics, psychopaths, sociopaths, sociogoths and psychogoths (if you know what those are, please tell me because I don’t), repressed and depressed joy killers, quarter-mad, half-mad and fully-mad individuals, and all in need of specialists, then we know we need to tread a little. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the Lagos traffic and transport system. That is pure madness. Whoever contrived that system should be hung up for the world to behold as the example of a mad man. Or, you might look at Abuja driving. For exercise, drive to and from Abuja and you will see what I mean. Clearly, every driver along that route needs a specialist. The ones inside the city itself appear to be beyond redemption, so the government appears to have left them alone to finish each other off. When they finish getting rid of each other, to the last one of them, then we can claim the city back from madness. Right now, it is on the brink.

When we think of the mad things we have done to this country, then we would agree that it is all but hanging on a thread, or just hanging. And it all began when we stood the country on its head, much like when you stand logic on its head. Again, pause a while and let us go over the facts together. Is it not in this country that people who have been convicted or are under suspicion are also ‘elected’ into political office? Is it not in this country that people who say they are trying to salvage the country’s economy ask to be paid in foreign currencies? Don’t these things boggle your mind? They turn my hair white and make me nearly go mental.

Sadly, it is also in this country that people go out to kill in the name of God and still preach that that God, in whose name they have killed others, stands for love. Hmm. Strange love. Anyway, this is also the country that houses the highest number of people who steal from the government so that they and their children will never be poor again. Yet another kind of strange love. So, with so much strange love going around, are you surprised that there is so much madness in the land, and we are all ensconced in this giant mental institution?

The World Mental Health day came and went without too many people noticing it. Perhaps, those who did were the only sane ones among us. I dare say the rest of us were too busy displaying our mental instability to notice. Only a mad man will keep hundreds of millions of money in an air-conditioned soak-away, or take hundreds of millions in bribe.

So it comes down to this. The mental health of this country is in your hands. Stop screaming at others; stop driving recklessly; stop embezzling recklessly; stop taking bribes; stop killing in the name of God, and begin now to take care of yourself and others in this mental institution. Who knows, if we begin to behave ourselves we might be let off, and be allowed to

It’s so sad that our existence has been made to be so dependent on our economy so no one sees anyone else in human value but in earning value. This is why we no longer give free smiles to each other. How well we relate to anyone else depends on how financially valuable they are to us.

Get a life! This is the lesson that many of us missed while we were in school – primary, secondary, varsity, or post-varsity; school of skills acquisition or even school of hard knocks. The ‘courses’ we took in all these interventions emphasised only how to ‘do’ things for money, ‘make’ things for money, ‘multiply’ things for money but never how to use our skills, training or money to ‘get a life’. Too often, it’s life that gets to us rather.

      Oh yes, it is obvious that life is getting to many of us now. If you don’t believe me, just look at the many faces that surround you. More and more, laughter is becoming a scarce commodity, and smiling faces are now endangered species. Most faces you meet these days are either drawn, long, haggard or hopeless; and you don’t know whether to clean, shorten, straighten or lie to them to give some hope. No need, you tell yourself, the federal government is already doing that, lying to them, that is.

      Let’s see now, when the dollar started to slide to N250, the government told us that it was not its doing. It was the black market. Then, it went to N350. Still the government said it was the black market responsible. Now, I hear the dollar has gone to N500 and all our faces have turned black from looking too much at the black market. Is it any wonder that those faces are all crumpled up and one cannot get any laughter from any throat now for love or money?

      It’s all about faces today, reader, and how we need to re-arrange them to suit the economic times we’re in right now. Yes indeed, there are faces for every occasion. The face for this economic recession is not hard to spot. First, the eyes are squinted from gazing too long at the horizon hoping it would herald the good news that three months’ salaries of the ten months owed have been paid. The eyes are in permanent squeeze because, well, the horizon is far.

      Then the nose is all flared up and the nostrils red from sniffing out rumours of payment from every conceivable corner. Many noses have sniffed at corridors of government for news so long that the very floors bear their odours. Many noses have even out-sniffed the police sniffing dogs just to get some news or an inkling of government’s thinking. Are they thinking of paying us today, tomorrow or never? I tell you, many noses are even now scraping the very floors leading to many Governors’ Offices just to get some news. That is how low the governments have brought us in this country. Then you ask us to laugh?

      The world is celebrating this year’s Smile Day today but our mouths cannot smile. Most mouths have since moved house. Previously, the African mouth was described as being made of ‘full luscious lips’ and the Caucasian mouth was ‘thin-lipped’. So, it was not rare to find the occasional European who envied the full African lips and got under the knife to make it happen to them. If you don’t believe me, ask the actresses who dot the globe. Ask the cartoonists who attempt to portray our Africanness. Ask yourself.

      I’m telling you that the Nigerian lips that go around bearing this Africanness are no longer describable as ‘full’ or ‘luscious’. No, not no more. You look at the next set of lips close to you. You will find they have since gone from luscious to drained, turned, thinned, pruned, down… Indeed, those lips are anywhere but up – that is the position they should occupy when you smile.

      So, many faces are no longer recognisable now because the economy has turned down. I really don’t know what that means but I have so often heard people talk of economic down-turn. Is it not that it has turned down, like our lips when they are sad?

      Seriously, I find that many of us have formed the habit of tying the shape of our faces to the state of the economy, i.e. our pocket. Have you noticed that when people feel full in the pocket, i.e. when their bank accounts are fat, then they are all smiles and indulgences? However, when the pocket is light and drained, then they are all frowns and sadness. The truism that happiness is just a smile away holds for many of us then. A pocket full of cash is a heart full of happiness, all smiles. A pocket devoid of cash is a heart devoid of smiles, all sad.

      It’s so sad that our existence has been made to be so dependent on our economy so no one sees anyone else in human value but in earning value. This is why we no longer give free smiles to each other. How well we relate to anyone else depends on how financially valuable they are to us. Politicians who have killed and plundered the land are held to be extremely valuable in the family. This is why everyone flocks around them, troops to their houses, strives to be noticed by them, and even prays to be remembered by them… Kidnappers who have gone Plc. Have better value to us than the poor, hard working carpenter. We can call the kidnapper to be chairman at our ceremonies and everyone will nod approval going by his dressing. Trying calling a carpenter…

      In this 21st century, we have developed a very awkward culture indeed which has completely inversed our African culture of other-recognition. This new culture, insanely pivoted and driven by the economic worth of an individual, has in turn driven us mad and wiped the smile off our faces.

     True, our teachers in our primary/secondary schools might have sometimes told us to ‘wipe that smile of your face’ in dour times of trouble-making, but it’s time to bring them back. The smile is the essence of life, the heart of joy and the bringer of a thousand benefits to the body. If you don’t believe me, ask your doctor. Trust me, that smile you’re not giving yourself and others is draining you of life and soul. It’s time to get a life because life is only a Smile away.

If our borders are closed now, I think most of us would expire from lack of oxygen. I know; the thing is everywhere, but I tell you, what provides oxygen for most of us is made in China. We make nothing, and we eat everything.

This week, dear reader, I would like you to join me in mourning, if you don’t mind. I am mourning the loss of an academic father, an excellent host and a most erudite Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Linguistics, Prof. René Dirven. He was of the University of Duisburg, now University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. For decades, however, Prof. Dirven had been at the forefront of studies in Cognitive Linguistics in Europe.

On the 25th of August this year, I received by post an invitation letter/programme announcing the obituary and burial arrangements of Lutgard Dirven, the wife of Prof. René Dirven. She had died the first week of the month. Quite saddened by this, I hastened a letter of condolence to my Prof. His daughter replied that her father, Prof. René Dirven, had died exactly two weeks after his wife died.

I met Prof. Dirven in the summer of 2001. He was my designated host during my twenty-month programme in that country on the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship. I therefore have had the privilege to know him for about sixteen years now. Even though he had retired, he had arranged a surrogate host for me in Dr. Wolfgang Hunig, a most open and warm personality, at the Duisburg University. This meant that I did not have a day-to-day working relationship with Prof. Dirven. However, thanks to modern technology, we were able to relate frequently throughout my stay and beyond, even to the month of his passing via the internet’s many resources.

As soon as I arrived at my research station in Germany, Prof. Dirven held a dinner party in my honour where he introduced me to the rest of the linguistic cast and crew. I soon understood why. It was not just that he wanted to make a foreigner feel at home; the fact was that there was a strong familial relationship existing among members of the linguistic investigation group. I was being welcomed into that group (no, not initiated, look at you!). By all accounts, this large community of investigators had been drawn together by Prof. Dirven.

There were three things I learnt from my host, Prof. Dirven. First, there was his people spirit. He was a people builder. I would honestly like to report that everyone I met while I was in Europe was kind and race-blind. Unfortunately not. However, Prof. Dirven was one of those not afraid to play host to those of us from Africa: Nigeria, South Africa, etc. He extended his arms of friendship and welcome to scholarship wherever it came from in the universe.

For Prof., scholarship was his credo. He took researchers into cognitive linguistics and knit them into one closely-linked community. He was always welcome to new ideas, needs for tutoring, needs for guiding, and that way brought linguistics into one huge loop. To work with Prof was to be prepared to go the whole nine yards. Any work given to him for assessment usually attracted comments that were most times longer than the work. Indeed, with him, you had to account for every word choice, even your thought. He was that thorough.

One of the things I will always remember Prof. for was his generosity of spirit. Even after my programme ended and I returned to Africa, he did not allow me to get off the scholarship train. He would write to ask what I was working on and offer some support. His support often came in form of reference materials but, more importantly, books. Taking advantage of his association with academic books publishing houses in Europe, he ensured that I had an endless supply of current books on English studies. I even received one the month before he died.

Most of all, I will remember Prof. René Dirven for his work spirit. On my first day with him, he told me he was going blind due to some degeneration in his eyes. Apparently, the degeneration started quite a while back, but he never let that stop him. He always got through a prodigious amount of work daily, managing to write or edit very many books on cognitive linguistics. By the time he died, he was quite blind but again, he did not let that disturb him, working mainly through speech recognition devises. Prof. Dirven’s work credo have continued with me to this day: speed, accuracy and thoroughness.

Many of us in this country can learn something from this. It is clear that the one virus that is killing us is our approach to work, which borders on the criminal. Most people regard their legitimate jobs as the avenue that brings in the ‘chicken change’ in their lives. It’s the stuff they are able to cream off the top of their job that brings in the real thing. The result is that most of us make only futile stabs at our work.

The sad thing is that Nigerians have come to believe that the only thing that counts is the amount of money they are worth, no matter how that money has been gathered together. Unfortunately, these monies are for no other purpose than to boast with and consume material things. Alas, illicit money a life doth not make.

During the week, I got a text message that told clearly how Africans have concentrated their strength and energy on pilfering huge sums of money from their countries to use to indulge in their mindless consumerism. Africans are not even attempting to bring out innovations that can transform their countries from total dependence on foreign culture to some dignifying independence. There is no reason on earth why everything consumed in Nigeria should be made abroad. It is not just lazy, it is suicidal. If our borders are closed now, I think most of us would expire from lack of oxygen. I know the thing is everywhere, but I tell you, what provides oxygen for many of us is made in China. We make nothing, and we eat everything.

The reasons are not too far. The political and military leadership of this country since independence has persistently seen itself as a replacement for the colonial masters. It has therefore rather made our leaders to behave like a ravaging swarm of cavalier locusts, leaving us the masses in helpless wonder. As the ravaged grasses, our half-eaten leaves are lucky to survive.

Nigeria cannot be transformed like this. We cannot continue like this. We cannot hope to get any change like this. When you think of it, how much can a man consume? But i don’t want to think of that right now.

Listen, I bet you that the car you thought you could not live without buying will not matter to you in two years’ time. I tell you, all material things will fly out of your thoughts, were, God forbid, some terrible illness to strike. I can tell you categorically that those houses you are accumulating by illegally creaming off the top in your job will be auctioned off at two a penny by your beloved children or brothers or other loving relatives.

I tell you, you and I do not need anything more than what comes in legitimately from our hard work if we make a habit of living within our means. Those who do that value their work and their work speaks for them, even when they are long gone. Prof. René Dirven’s work continues to speak to the quality of his life. He built people, he wrote books and he served his continent. I can therefore say confidently that though he is gone, his work goes on. He has only changed his address.

We all showed off our foreign wears, clicked our heels on foreign shoes, waved our imported bags, gorged ourselves on foreign foods and later we were surprised to hear that our Nigerian economy was not growing. Can you imagine the effrontery of this our economy?!

I attended a social function recently. At a free moment, I looked at the people who attended the ceremony as they bustled here and there in search of friends or food. It struck me that nearly everyone was wearing one lace fabric or another. Those not wearing lace fabrics were putting on something of equivalent status. Of course, they were all of varying designs and costs. As someone told me recently, lace fabrics can cost anything from three thousand naira to two hundred and fifty thousand naira or more. Clearly, to some Nigerians, the costlier the fabric is, the better. Well, I could not put the cost on what people were wearing that day but one thing that I did not see on anyone was made-in-Nigeria lace or even Ankara.

I rather wondered what such ceremonies do to the economy, because in our lace outfits, we were not growing our own economy. We were not only dressed in foreign things, we even ate things made abroad. Most people were fed rice imported from Thailand. Now, everyone is complaining about how expensive rice is. I think I have tired of telling anyone who cares to listen that we have been living on borrowed throats eating rice, spaghetti, tomato paste, knorr and maggi seasonings, and everything else. Even our salt is imported. So, at that ceremony, dear reader, we all showed off our foreign wears, clicked our heels on foreign shoes, waved our imported bags, gorged ourselves on foreign foods and later we were surprised to hear that our Nigerian economy was not growing. Can you imagine the effrontery of this our economy?!

It is a fact that people want social ideals. People want well organised social structures with working systems such as constant electricity, flowing taps, corporations offering good jobs, hospitals dispensing cures, etc. A good social order also embraces some wonderful mores and values that lift up the society for the sake of everyone. The values may include hard work, living only on one’s earnings, not living beyond one’s means, being accountable to the society, taking responsibility for one’s actions, etc. On the scales, I guess you’ll say we are still some way off.

There is no telling what advantages can accrue to the country from a good social order. To start with, there is continuity of life: everyone gains from being assured that yes, they have the freedom to wake up tomorrow. Would you believe the number of people who have died silently from this dislocated social order we are practising – out of frustration, hunger, unhappiness, or plain, old illness? More importantly, there will be a place in the society for everyone – each according to his ability and reach. In other words, everyone can reach for the cookie jar as his/her height allows without breaking the jar. There is a jar on every level. This means that if all I want from life is a coconut, I can just go lie under the coconut tree until one falls in my mouth, or head as you will, and no one would mind.

However, the absence of a good structure has introduced into the country a social disorder that allows everyone to do as he pleases. People provide electricity, water, roads, jobs, cures, etc., for themselves. I was at a very small business arena the other day and was amazed at the array of generating sets arranged alongside a wall. I stopped counting at thirteen as they all emitted the same grating noise and belched the same blue-black smoke into the air. The other day, someone attempted to sell me a bottle filled with a dark fluid that she claimed could cure everything.

Worse hit is the social value which has indeed plummeted. For instance, a politician does not feel complete until he enters a venue with a retinue of attendants and uniformed men and women legitimately assigned to him by the Nigeria Police. I attended a burial ceremony once where one of the celebrants was waited on hand and foot by a uniformed para-military, to everyone’s annoyance and envy. The uniformed fellow insisted on standing behind the celebrant during the service, blocking some people’s view. The people could only hiss.

Unfortunately, this culture of social disorder is built on reverse logic. Reverse logic is when you plant seeds of corn and sit down expectantly waiting to reap a harvest of beans, arguing that the soil that produces both is the same after all. It is a culture of planting chaos and expecting to reap order from it. For instance, people argue that it is not their fault that lace fabrics are so attractive and available. So, we can give our local fabrics a face-lift: invite the plastic surgeons. Those are real artists.

The present system asks us to be dependent on foreign economies for every need in order to grow our own economy. This means that for every lace material we wear, we are promoting another country’s economy and ensuring another man’s job while our children cannot get jobs. This is reverse logic at work.

True, the social order of the Nigerian system is a little confused right now, but we can straighten it out. I do remember a time during President Obasanjo’s time in office where he led Nigerians to patronise Nigerian-made fabrics to grace occasions. The move caught on like a flare. Everyone adopted the less costly fabric made in Nigeria as the wear of important occasions – weddings, burials, birthdays, etc. Then tailors became fashion designers and wealth began to spread. Unfortunately, the move died out in the time of President Jonathan and fashion designers became tailors again, though new and improved.

Our social disorder has even grown wings. We watch as those who have stolen the country blind seize the privileges that should go to the entire society. We acquiesce that they should have better access to the country’s money. We acquiesce that they should enter the Central Bank Vaults to fetch it themselves at times, as I heard that Obanikoro once did. I’m still waiting for someone to deny this quickly so that I can sleep well at nights and stop tossing and turning, asking myself what I’m sitting here doing instead of…

So, the thieves in high places have justice because they can easily afford the law. They have better security so petty armed robbers and kidnappers do not trouble them. They have better access to undeserved respect and honour because people prefer to associate with them rather than with me. I’m not the one they call to their high tables.

Seriously, people, we have tried one type of social disorder and it has not worked. I think it is time we tried another kind of social disorder. The other day, we had electricity at my house for about six hours at a stretch and I developed the jitters. That was so abnormal that I felt sure something was wrong, a new social disorder, do you think? I rather liked it, especially as this abnormality seems to have become persistent lately.

Another abnormality I would like to see is someone opening up the factories again and making Nigerian-made fabrics replace lace as the fashion wears at social events. Let the Ankara reign once more; let the tailors have work again (no, I’m not one), but you’ll be surprised the ripple effect that’ll have. Let the public taps run again – I’ll probably run out of the house when it first happens, but I’ll adjust. Let hospitals dispense health and doctors and nurses actually care for the patient rather than fight the government and each other. Who knows? We just may like the new disorder.