The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • How not to kill the children’s dreams

    Parental Guidance (PG) is only a license given to parents to practice law within the home, not a right to practice the tyranny of indulgence as many of us do presently

    Modern children no longer have any dreams; their modern parents dream for them. Just think. From the time of their conception, it is the parents who decide when and where their children receive formal education. They go ‘We’re homeschooling Jnr. We don’t want him coming in contact with the ruffians they release into schools these days.’ It is the parents who also decide where Jnr. receives his secondary education. So, when Jnr. goes, ‘But all my friends are going to the public school!’ you’ll say ‘You’ll go to this very special school even if it kills you. Your father went there, your grandfather went there, your great grandfather went there. You think you are too special to go to the same school your ancestors attended?’ Then, it’s the parents who get to perform all kinds of experiments on the little ones. ‘Jnr. is getting too big for his shoes these days, not so? It’s because he doesn’t have to struggle for his food. Let’s throw him into my uncle’s house where they have ten children and then we’ll see how he grows up.’ As I read somewhere, there is no dictatorship in the world that can compare to that of a parent.

         Just as parents have learnt to be tyrannous, so children have learnt to be wise. There is no sage in the world, not even Solomon, who can confront the wisdom of children. Children learn early that life is a lot more comfortable and easier when they simply obey mama and papa. They also tend to live longer than the parents. It’s not just the destiny thing at work; it’s the fact that they sit back, relaxed, as they watch their parents sweat themselves out taking decisions about their children’s lives, and then proceed to source for the means to execute the decisions. And so, while the parents are huffing and heaving on how Jnr. can finish school and go to Europe for his Masters, the said Jnr. is setting benchmarks for the town’s social life with his pals who find themselves in the same boat: waiting for their parents to get the money for their trip. Now, tell me, who is wiser?

       Growing up in the habit of not thinking for themselves, our children have gone out of control mainly because their parents have spiraled out of control in their mindless pursuit of relevance in the lives of the poor things. I once spent some early morning hours looking for hostel accommodation for my sleeping son. Many children are not even allowed to think. ‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll ask my mum’. Mum says, DOCTOR, and Jnr. returns: ‘I want to be a doctor.’

        One of the most unfortunate things about this country is this lack of policy about anything other than ‘let everyone go and grow up in the best way they can’. Just as there is no transport policy other than ‘don’t ride on other people’s backs’, no housing policy other than ‘make sure your house does not topple on anyone other than yourself’, no town planning policy other than ‘don’t build on Aso Rock’, no speeding policy except ‘speed but don’t get caught’, so also there is no youth policy other than ‘children, go to school’. And so, children find themselves completely at the mercy of their parents and their peers on life’s little advances and rules. Yet, no one is more unequipped to hand out good rules than parents who are caught in the throes of deriving severe pleasures from the tyranny they exercise over their children. To prolong this tyranny, many parents have been known to beg, borrow or steal.

         Why do parents have a compelling need to control their children’s lives in Nigeria? I honestly don’t know. In Europe, I understand children can go make their own way in the world by the age of eighteen, no matter how rich their parents. In Nigeria, however, some unreleased masochistic tendencies are standing in the way of good sense. Did you notice that these tendencies began to manifest at about the same time that the AIDS virus was released into the air? The two have some things in common too. They generally affect men and women, do not discriminate between rich and poor and both are terminal diseases. Perhaps, some parents’ educational-cum-career development processes were so tough in the days of few opportunities that they swore their children would not be so inopportune. Perhaps, and this is my favourite, many parents have realised that the world has been made so unsafe (possibly by them) and so they have to protect their wee ones. Perhaps, modern Nigerian parenthood is now a minefield filled with vanity and ego … Who knows, really?

        Whatever the causes, there are no doubts about the results. Somewhere in the deep recesses or the twilight zones of dreams lie the unrealized ones of these children. Then, those children spend their days in a daze of wonder: what is the next instruction, O Parent Almighty? Worse, they find themselves moving from one dizzying experience to snap-crackle-snap. One such son did, not too long ago. The papers reported how he had been so indulged in drink and drugs that he hardly knew what he was doing anymore, not even being able to account for how he came to have killed an unfortunate young lady. Rather than help him face his demons, however, his all-knowing mother ‘helped’ him to flee justice by parceling him abroad. There, he fared no better, of course, until he was forced to come back home and resume his lifestyle. In frustration one day, he was said to have come to his own eureka – his mother was behind his ruin, and snuffed the life out of her.

        There is yet the story of another young man who had also been indulged from youth because he was the only male among a bevy of female children. Unfortunately, he was not able to resolve his own internal turbulence. That’s right. He set his parent’s house on fire for their tardiness in providing him what he had been used to. I know of yet several stories in which sons (it happens to daughters too, I know) sold their doting mothers’ entire investments of jewelry while both women were abroad. It led to their deaths, at different times, of course.

         Parental Guidance (PG) is only a license given to parents to practice law within the home, not a right to practice the tyranny of indulgence as many of us do presently. When a modern Nigerian parent learns that his recently graduated son has fixed his starting salary at over two hundred thousand Naira in a job interview as we reported on this page sometime ago, does he become outraged? Most of us are not. That is where the problem lies. We should be outraged. In fact, we should be so outraged that we want to spank his graduate behind. Rather, most of us are so proud of his savvy highness that we shake his hand and croon, ‘Well done, son, you are your father’s scion.’ And that is our tragedy.

          Now, most fathers’ scions simply lounge in the sitting room waiting for their fathers to come home with funds pilfered from government coffers. Ah, ah, did we not just hear that a former army chief is said to have built or bought a multimillion Naira house for his son? Naturally, many children’s dreams seem to have been lost along the way in their parents’ pilfering careers Do please let the children have their dreams back.

    • Part of this article was first published in 2011. We have reproduced it here to celebrate this year’s children’s day.

  • Might I remind Great Britain…

    Britain planted the seed of corruption; Britain trained this child the way to go and hooray, the child of corruption is now grown. How dare she now laugh at her own offspring of corruption? Nigeria is in today’s mess because of Britain’s past action

    Like many Nigerians, I have been privileged to see the video in which the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, labelled Nigeria, along with Afghanistan, as being ‘fantastically corrupt’. It immediately aroused in me such indignation and anger that actually made me love Nigeria even more; perhaps out of pity for the underdog.

    First, dear reader, let me describe the video to you, in case you have not seen it. Then, we will have our own little chat about it. Don’t worry, I promise not to shout or even raise my voice. I will be nothing but REASONABLE. Sorry, I’ll try and keep my voice down.

    The physical scene is some posh room, the kind Nigerians steal money to obtain, and the scenario is a cocktail party, with the PM, perhaps the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, and someone else chatting with the Queen of England in a small group. The PM tells the queen about an up-coming anti-corruption summit and declares categorically that Nigeria, along with Afghanistan, is ‘fantastically corrupt’. Then there is some laughter from the group, you know, THE DERISIVE KIND OF LAUGHTER! Sorry, I promised not to get angry.

    President Buhari, Nigeria’s president, has given his response to that remark. He said that Cameron was just ‘being honest’ about the corruption situation in Nigeria, and so he, Buhari, was not looking for an apology. He was only asking that the funds stolen from Nigeria and kept in British banks be returned to Nigeria, that’s all. He certainly has a large heart, better than me.

    Reader, the president’s statement represents a loaded, double-barrelled gun with Nigeria’s finger poised on the trigger and Britain looking directly into the eye of the gun as she wonders if it is still working. But we know our president to be not only a simple and forthright gentleman but also an expert one-liner. That admirable one-line response translates as, ‘you call me a thief for stealing; but you have got to be a greater thief for receiving and keeping my loot’. There, that ought to tell them. It should also defend Nigeria’s honour, or what’s left of it.

    Admirable, I say, as that response was, I am not satisfied. I am also not asking for an apology from Britain; I am only after showing Britain not so much how hurtful that remark was but how jarring the laughter was. I have decided to remind our British officials of a few things for when next they are looking for a cocktail party topic.

    If Britain cares to remember, Nigeria did not willingly agree to be a colony. Indeed, many areas of it were forcibly brought under British rule by the power of her guns. Thereby, Britain forcibly brought three EQUALLY STRONG BUT DISPARATE GROUPS together to slug out their existence. Even a blind man could tell that nothing but disaster would result from that but not Britain. Instead, it went ahead to cement that union by naming it Nigeria and blessing it with what it called a parliamentary government. Nigeria has since then been struggling to govern these three groups which it has not dared to dissolve.

    It might have helped if Britain had given a hint or two on governance by building a few social structures for this most populous black nation on earth like France did for its own territories. But no sir, Britain did no such thing; it only built the things it needed for its own mission – carting away rich raw materials. The new country was then left to go on as best as it could – deeply ignorant of western ways yet must run a modern, westernised system. The result has been that from 1960, the country has been moving ungainly from one catastrophic error of governance to another, and providing endless mirth for British officials at their teas and cocktails, I’m sure.

    Forgive me, I omitted one fact. Britain did do something. It laid the foundation for conducting censuses which records of the 1950s and 1960s showed were so skewed anyone could see through them. There were rampant reports of false entries by various groups in order not to be cheated by others. The censuses then showed anyone looking for answers that the Nigerian experiment would not work; but since Britain was not looking for answers, only one solution – that the entity must be kept together by every means – it ignored the translation. So, it proceeded to, according to documented reports, employ duplicity to favour one part. Hey presto, exulted Britain, the problem was solved. The problem was not solved; rather, the seed of corruption was sown. Britain planted that seed of corruption; Britain trained this child the corrupt way to go about solving her problems and hooray, the child of corruption is now grown. How dare Britain now laugh at her own offspring of corruption? Nigeria is in today’s mess because of Britain’s past action.

    No one is denying that there is corruption in Nigeria. Heck, there is massive corruption in Nigeria. This column, along with many, many others, has documented reactions to the mindlessly staggering sums pilfered from public coffers and loosely accounted for. It has drawn attention to the absence of social structures that would otherwise have removed anxiety about shelter, clothing and food from people’s minds. It has drawn attention to the disease of stealing for stealing’s sake currently ravaging public officials.

    So, this column is not blind to reality. It is only berating Cameron, if it dares, for making Nigeria’s corruption a topic for his cocktail party’s amusement. In doing that, he showed a certain lack of sensitivity to the origins of that corruption. He also showed that he had no idea that much of the funds stolen from Nigeria have ended up in Britain to fund the British economy. This is what President Buhari reminded him about.

    I remember that in the 1980s, Nigeria attempted to forcibly repatriate one of her citizens living in Britain then because he had taken Nigeria’s funds and stashed them in Britain. There was a great to do about the attempt then not just because it failed but because it was made in the first place. It turned out that British banks held close to a billion naira of funds said to have been taken away by the individual. That was why Britain was so indignant and minded so much. Since then, various politicians have attempted to out-do that individual and have stashed colossal amounts in British banks. Now, we’re asking politely and we are not angry, can we have them back please? Who knows, those sums may help us find our way back from the sinking sands of corruption.

    Just as I was smarting from the undeserved British mirth, another video of an event was made public. It showed a former British ambassador giving some unpalatable details of how Britain got involved in the war in Iraq. The details given clearly showed that Britain did not have clear proof that there were weapons of mass destruction being built in Iraq yet committed its human and material resources to that war. In other words, the government of that time corrupted facts in order to do what they wanted to do. The world is still grappling with the outcomes of that war.

    Corruption is not a source for mirth. Rather, it is a sign that something is deeply wrong and requires intervention. Someone should please tell Cameron that the corruption in Nigeria is not a source for laughter. It is calling rather for some serious thoughts. I would tell him this myself but I guess I am just too angry for words. Still, I have discussed this reasonably, have I not?

  • The government boxed itself into this corner

    In the meantime, let the governors curb their enthusiasm for victimising workers and reduce their personal excesses and expenses. Let them also stop taking themselves so seriously…

    Sometime in the week, a middle aged artisan who deals in tyres was said to have been killed with one other along a byroad in the city where I live. A vehicle had veered off its path suddenly and had gone to meet him as he plied his trade by the roadside. When I inspected the place later, reader, I found that the space between the tarred edge of the road and the rail behind him was literally no wider than one foot. I honestly wondered where and how on earth anyone could have put a vulcanising business there. I also wondered why those around him could not have told him to locate his business elsewhere other than right on a busy road. I found two reasons.

    The first is that the economy has turned so bad now that Nigerians have become desperate. This means that any undertaking that would fetch someone a daily subsistence earning is gaily embraced. It also means that where that undertaking is located is often not a strong consideration. Hence, it has become normal to see the fried yam, akara, fruit, engine oil, tomato, cement, tyre vulcaniser, meat dealers and sellers, etc., pick a spot right by the roadside to sell or display their tools, leaving them open to blind vehicles. The roadside in Nigeria is everyone’s shop. Who then is to tell another to take his trade elsewhere, no matter how reasonable the argument?

    The other reason I found is that there is a civil service official designated to cover that area from the local, state and federal governments and the police to make sure that people do not go out of the orbits of their common sense in matters such as locating businesses, displaying their wares or even in greeting relatives. Oh yes, it is possible to contravene the law when greeting relatives when you see the extent some people go. Anyway, the officials at all these levels obviously did not do their work; that was why these people died. And they are still not doing their work because people are still placing their businesses right beneath speeding tyres and stomping feet, and no one is telling them ‘NO SIR/MA, YOU CANNOT STAY THERE; IT IS TOO DANGEROUS’.

    Yet, the services of all these officers and officials are so sorely needed. We need them to beg us not to put our houses right on the river’s edge; to beg us not to take our baths in public; heck, to tell us not to do our private businesses in the open, if you know what I mean. I have been witness to a man ‘unloading’ in full view of all who cared to look. I cared to… look away. I bet you thought I was going to say something else – you! you!

    Unfortunately, our officials appear to be less than effective where service delivery is concerned. They are mostly people who have mixed business with pleasure and culture to tie their own hands behind their backs and are therefore unable to lay down the law for me and you.         A committee, said someone, is somewhere where good ideas are called and strangulated. Among all the service staff, the good ideas of laying down an orderly society gets systematically strangulated.

    What is more irksome is the fact that the staff at all these levels appear to have been really bloated to a strange degree. There are people in the service, I understand, who have no designated desks or chairs or functions. There are so many officers, so much to do, yet so little being done. A case of too many cooks, eh?

    Perhaps, Dr. Doyin Okupe was thinking of this when he called on state governments to solve their seemingly intractable salary-payment problems by reducing their civil service staff strength. He asked that governments should sack workers in order to survive; you know, like cutting off a leg in order to live. Naturally, people have been taking this piece of advice not lying low.

    To start with, people have said the doctor probably would not have made that call if his party had still been in power. And that he made the call so that the present government could be seen to have failed which would bring his own party’s ‘failures’ into less bolder relief. Perhaps, I don’t know. What I know is that at other times, the call might have made some sense, but not now, not just now.

    Listen, the Nigerian civil service did not grow overnight. It grew systematically and over a long period, right from the 1960s. The government boxed itself into this corner by deliberately enhancing the public sector at the expense of the private sector. I believe indeed it was one of the fallouts of the policy of the strong-centred government. The private sector bowed its lovely head.

    Unfortunately, the litany of bad economic policies of this strong centre followed one after another. The most notorious of this is the disgraceful import licence era when any crony of the government could bring in anything. Many did because the government found itself with many friends on its hands that it could not say no to. This meant of course that if the private sector was dead before, well, it became more dead. What we have today as the private sector is just a shadow of the old and powerful one which competed very vigorously to attract the best brains into its workforce. Let me illustrate with this story which you might say I probably have told you a power of times. Good, I’ll tell it again.

    Once, someone conceived a brilliant idea of manufacturing bicycles in Nigeria. This would not only bring the price down but it would give several thousands of people work opportunities, not to talk of the several thousands more of service providers to that company. Well, he needed some licence to import some raw materials until the company became strong enough to stand. What was his surprise when he found that a licence had been given some friend of the government to import bicycles in their entirety?!

    The government’s policies reduced the private sector to the pitiful level it is today. The government’s policies swelled the civil service to what we have today for its own reasons. So, the government must find a way of dealing with its problems. It should not make the people pay for its sins of having too many friends and putting the interests of these friends above those of the state.

    If workers are to be let go as suggested, where do they go? What will they eat? Where will they find succour? No responsible government simply throws its own people out in order to solve its own problems without providing a safe landing. For now, the public service jobs are the people’s welfare packages which cannot be taken away without an adequate replacement.

    There is no country in the world that survives without private enterprise providing the bulk of job opportunities as we do not have in Nigeria presently. Nigeria must join others by letting private enterprise take its rightful place so that the people can be given a choice.

    In the meantime, let the governors curb their enthusiasm for victimising workers and reduce their personal excesses and expenses. Let them also stop taking themselves so seriously and remember that the body that drinks champagne and the one that takes corn pap for breakfast will still become skeletons one day or another. Besides, let’s face it: we are only remembered in this world, not for the amount of champagne bottles we can afford to put away, but for the much good that we can do.

  • May Day! May Day! Our DISCOs have not come to take us to the disco!

    Every worker has a right to return to his house, after a hard day’s work, and have access to electricity without having to go up and down in search of petrol to put in generators they have to fiddle with in order to have a few hours of electricity.

    I have always seen May Day, the day set aside for celebrating labour matters, as a day for serious reflections on how to negotiate to eliminate work and keep the pay. I tell you, the day this is achieved will be remarkable indeed. But I despair of that ever happening, when I remember that work has this nasty habit of never doing itself. For instance, has anyone been able to figure out how to get food into the mouth without belabouring the hand? I thought not.

    In spite of the seriousness of the May Day mission, it has managed to attract its own body of jokes to it. I think the jokes are to help us to swallow the bitter truth that the likelihood of work ever being eliminated, so that the worker can be free indeed, is very slim.

    ‘May Day! May Day! I am in a plane and the pilot just died. What should I do?’, radioed a lady to Ground Control. ‘Don’t panic, Madam, we’ll talk you down. What is your height and position?’ replied Ground Control. ‘I’m 5’2’’ and I’m sitting in front,’ replied the lady. That is just one of the many May Day jokes flying around. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

    Truly though, these days, you have a hard task distinguishing between the May Day set aside for celebrating the hardship that we workers endure to build the state and the ‘May Day!’ cry for help by damsels-in-distress in small planes. The same way, these days I can hardly distinguish between the ’70s discos I used to sneak to at night when I was young (never mind how far back or near that is) and the DISCOs that are now in charge of distributing electricity to the country. And, man, I need that distinction.

    To start with, discos are very interesting, the dance arenas that is, not the electricity companies. The thought of an approaching disco often lifted our sagging shoulders, made our steps more nimble and had us looking forward to sweating out life’s unanswerable questions on the dance floor. In short, on the disco floor, life assumed meaning.

    These other DISCOs are simply life-sapping, the electricity companies that is, not the dance arenas. They have done nothing about the darkness they inherited from NEPA. There is a photograph going around of a group of doctors and nurses contributing light from their phones to do surgery. Our DISCOs have increased the darkness, and are making me pay through the nose for this privilege. Imagine, the last bill brought to my house read N25,000.00! What for, I ask; the few bulbs I use? For days now, I have been going around mumbling ‘N25, 000.00 bill!’ to anyone who cares to listen. What kind of madness is this???!!!

    Yet, when these DISCOs took over the duties of old, ailing and beleaguered NEPA, everyone thought deliverance had come for the masses from lengthy hours of darkness and torment. Indeed, everyone had the romantic notion that just as the country was rescued from the grasping hands of NITEL with the privatisation that brought in the GSM, the DISCOs would dispel the country’s darkness.

    Not so; as things are proving. It seems that our DISCOs have come to entrench darkness. To start with, my house does not have electricity ten evenings out of seven. (Please don’t tell me I cannot count; this is serious business. It is no time to give me a test in primary school mathematics.) This means I get electricity a few hours during the day, when I am not at home, and when my gadgets and implements are completely at their mercy to wreck and to ruin. It also means my evenings are spent listening to noisy and fume-spewing generators from all around.

    The other day, I came home to find many of my gadgets and implements frothing heat at the mouth. Again please, this is no time to split hairs. They had been burnt to cinders by an unusually high current that turned out to have been caused by electricity wires twisted by high wind. The result is a blown transformer, which has left me holding my implements, and staring at lots and lots of darkness.

           I am not alone, people tell me. In my vicinity alone, there are people whose transformers conked out earlier, making them sit in darkness. Welcome to the queue, they tell me as I sit by them, to wait for our transformer to be replaced. My number is in the double digit of waiters. Someone said his area had been sitting in the dark since the first day of this year; another mentioned a date that sounded suspiciously close to Noah’s era. I don’t want to sit that long on this queue; I am too busy for that.

    From the reports I have gathered on the matter, it seems to me that these DISCOs have been operating like our politicians – making like pirates on the land, plundering at will and taking no quarters! I have heard that they have no plans to purchase transformers to replace ailing ones. They are only interested in collecting money from everybody, and even from their partner, the federal government. That is what I heard. I don’t know how true these reports are but what I observe are communities waiting for transformers while these mammoth-sized, hefty bills keep coming to them even though the last I heard was that the DISCOs had no right to increase bills without first seeing to increase in services. Well, good news: there are no services and we are paying!

    So, clearly, our DISCOs have not come to take us to the discos. No sir, they have come to take us to the cleaners, to shave our heads, and put us all in sackcloth. By the time they are through with us, I predict that even the sackcloth will look too good for us. To me these DISCOs are giving good ol’ disco a bad name.

    However, we can take ’em DISCOs to task. The Labour Day theme for this year is Celebrating the International Labour Movement. I not only celebrate the movement, I salute it for all the things it has achieved on behalf of us the hapless ones. But for them, many among us would just keep working like Boxer in Animal Farm, thinking always ‘we must do better’ until it is time to be taken to the knackers. So, I really salute them.

    This is why I would like the Nigerian Labour Unions to put a lot of thought to their demands. For instance, I hear that the unions are going to push for a N56, 000.00 minimum wage and I am thinking that much of it will be spent on buying generators and fuels to put in them. So, someone else is getting richer. I think that the unions should emphasise that our service providers must work. I think every worker has a right to return to his house, after a hard day’s work, and have access to electricity without having to go up and down in search of petrol to put in generators they have to fiddle with in order to have a few hours of electricity.

    As of now, I have not gained from the DISCOs. I have not got from them the kind of relief that GSM brought to Nigeria. Only the DISCOs are gaining from this transaction; and they are getting lots and lots of money for no services. Nevertheless, I am starting my own Bring Back My Transformer movement (#BBMT – Day 1). Feel free to join me.

  • Are there no more Officers and Gentlemen (and women) in Nigeria?

    We seem to have in our forces these days men and women officers who wear their egos instead of their epaulets on their sleeves, their ranks instead of good breeding on their faces, and their rough backgrounds instead of their present responsibilities on their pants.

    This week, dear reader, we are sailing on choppy waters and without lifebelts too. The reason is that we are going to try and impress on the country to put proper measures in place before recruiting thousands more of police recruits. While we believe that this country is grossly, grossly under-policed (and that’s putting it very mildly), throwing thousands more of frustrated, ill-trained psycho-and-sociopaths pretending to be uniformed forces at the hapless and helpless citizens of this country is wickedness.

    I was greatly alarmed to read two pieces of news in the dailies. One announced that 10,000 men and women were to be employed as policemen in the country. That figure, said the presidency, should address the unemployment problem among youths. I actually smiled at that. Clearly, I thought, this probably means that the presidency does not quite have the grasp of the current unemployment problem in Nigeria. We have since learnt that over 700,000 people have applied for those spaces. I am shocked this few have applied.

    The second thing that alarmed me was the piece of news that said that police colleges were to be upgraded. I just threw up my hands. Why, thought I, does this country always persist in putting their carts before their horses? There we were, thinking that the investigative journalism that brought out the deplora-ble conditions in a police college during the presidency of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan would have resulted in some restorative work. Why, I thought, we should have rooted out the breeding grounds for police brutality before calling for applications!

    Interestingly, while I was thinking of this topic just this morning, I read other reports in the news that seemed to tell me, ‘You think you got the whole story? Wait a bit more.’ One report gave details of the kind of brutality uniformed organisations are giving the public. They range from physical assault – actually beating people up – to shooting at or stabbing people on little or no provocation. The media is replete with these reports and others like checkpoint shootings and stray bullet attacks. Again this morning, I read of how the security aides of a Comptroller-General were said to have assaulted a female member of the House of Reps within the premises of the national assembly.

    Unfortunately, the reasons given by members of the House on why the issue should be investigated did not comfort me one bit. First, a member said they should remember that the victim ‘is a woman’. Man, I am beginning to give up on Nigerians and the way they think. How on earth can the nation’s representatives think so primitively, I queried myself? Does it mean that victims matter more to them if they are females? This is so sexist in a world that recognises that female and male judges are equally addressed as ‘lords’!

    The second premise in the argument offered was that she ‘is one of our (i.e. their) own’. Really, this means that the assault would not have mattered if it did not happen to ‘one of their own’? I think someone should please tell the Reps that this kind of assault happens regularly to us who are lower cadres – traders, market women, doctors, artisans, lawyers, teachers, journalists, etc. Does we not matter since we are not necessarily ‘their own’? Oh, I’m telling them already, you say? Ok, let me go further by telling them that in inviting the supervising Minister and the said CG to appear before the House, I would wish the Reps would rather talk to them on behalf of us, the common man (and woman). May I also add that they should invite the head of police, army, civil guards, and any other guards whose foot soldiers are in the habit of terrorising this common man (and woman)?

    I am told that some time ago, the video of an incident, in which a woman guard terrorised a man for having the temerity to declare that she the officer looked pretty, went viral. Till today, I have heard no word from the body to explain or apologise to the public. The ultimate revenge, of course, would be for that injured man to make sure he married the haughty woman. But, I guess, he would prefer a more cultured woman, a real officer and a lady.

    Let me hasten to say that I have uniformed people in my family – officers and gentlemen indeed. But they seem to represent the old, dying order. We seem rather to have in our forces these days men and women officers who wear their egos instead of their epaulets on their sleeves, their ranks instead of good breeding on their faces, and their rough backgrounds instead of their present responsibilities on their pants. Too many of the officers who people our forces today are not too psychologically tuned to their present realities. Too many of them are carrying pasts of abuse that have not been properly treated or expunged from them. The result is that much of the pent up anger is offloaded on the public.

    Please note that we are not exonerating the public of wrong doing. Many a so-called common man (and woman) lacks the most essential thing needed to be common; that is common sense. You would not believe many of the stupid and incredulous and incredibly stupid things that people do. I have seen it in traffic and in offices; I have seen it in gatherings and even on the Bench and in the Bar. I have seen it in the most exalted places and the lowest hell holes. Stupidity knows no boundary, gender, person or pedigree. It only knows and hides in the human frailty.

    However, it is not in the place of the members of the country’s forces to teach common sense to the people. Theirs is to defend, and not to reason why. There is no such thing as teaching CS 101. Instead, the judicial system is the classroom where you and I can be brought to be taught the nitty-gritty of common sense. Sometimes this classroom is called prison. The law is where I can be hauled if I violate the rights and privileges of someone else while exercising my own rights and privileges not to tolerate someone’s appreciation of my beauty, for instance.

    Remember the officer who had someone beaten in traffic because she would not give his vehicle way? Unfortunately, she turned out to be another officer’s daughter. I think he eventually learnt where his own rights and privileges end and where another person’s rights begin. But must we all be officers’ daughters or sons or Members of House of Representatives to get our forces to recognise our rights not to be beaten, assaulted, shot at, stabbed or killed just because these men (and women) wear the nation’s uniforms of aggression? I think not.

    I think we all must ask, nay beg, our officers of all uniformed and un-uniformed bodies to be ladies and gentlemen at home and aggressive only to the enemy. It does not take much too; just a little respect for the law. The law recognises that one’s spouse is a human, living being, not a pillow to be pummelled. The bus driver/conductor, taxi driver, Okada rider, other road users, and neighbours far and near are all human beings to be respected or taken to court; they are not shooting ranges.

    By the way, should any un-gentlemanly officer be offended by this article, I hope they are not thinking of coming to slap or assault or shoot me. I know my rights; I have a right not to be shot. I also have my pepper spray.

  • The sky is falling on our heads, and Nigeria is sleeping

    Nigeria has nothing going for her, that’s why she should declare a state of emergency on her sleep, not go on snoring. Sleep is her enemy.

    The world celebrated world sleep day late last month and I quite forgot about it. I believe that my sleep has not been the same since that time, somehow. I find that I can no longer take my normal forty winks, only thirty-nine or so (sniff, sniff).

          Nigeria has not deserved the sleep she has been getting since she allowed 276 of her children to be carted away unceremoniously from a Chibok school in northern Nigeria by some unconscionable people bearing ill-gotten arms. Indeed, she does not deserve any sleep. Actually, there are many reasons we all in this country do not deserve to sleep for a long while yet.

          To start with, we have nothing going for us in Nigeria. There is no electricity for good three-quarters of the day in most houses. In many others, there is no electricity for good three-quarters of the year. Oh sorry, you already knew that. Most homes in Nigeria, rural or urban, have never seen pipe-borne water. Ok, you also knew that. Now tell me what you don’t know so that I can tell it to you.

           Let’s see. Just this morning, I heard that the senate was going to ‘rush’ the bill that would clip the wings of the CCB/CCT just because one of its own is standing trial before the said body. Now, don’t tell me you knew that too?! All right, did you know that the country is broke and her economy is in shambles, people are feeding on other people like cannibals? Did you know that the ground is sinking under us and the sky is falling over our heads? Did you know that Nigeria has nothing going for her? Oh dear, you knew all that too. Well, if you knew all these things, THEN WHY ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING?

           Did you also know, as the media have reminded us lately, that the Chibok Girls have spent about two years in captivity? Those poor little darlings have spent that number of days in that eerie-like existence disconnected from their normal lives and families in the same number of days you have spent wining, dining, living, sleeping and pretending to work. And your beat has gone on; theirs not so much.

           Nigeria has nothing going for her, that’s why she should declare a state of emergency on her sleep, not go on snoring. Sleep is her enemy. Listen, if you remember your Hamlet, you would also recollect that he lost his own forty winks when he got talking with a ghost. And he never regained it either, the sleep that is, not the ghost. The ghost told him the kind of home truths that you and I would not like to hear. It also told him what to do – go on a vengeance mission. For a long time after those girls had been declared ‘taken’, there seemed to be no official vengeance mission. Seriously?! There is no nation on earth with the variety and amount of problems that this country has that can afford to carry on sleeping the way we do.

            The problem with this country is a cultural thing. You and I seem to have adopted a culture whereby we see official positions as privileges rather than as responsibilities. If positions are held as responsibilities, there must be an accounting for; the holder must give an account of his/her stewardship. If they are held as privileges on the contrary, the holder is not obliged to give anyone any account of his/her stewardship, as long as he/she lets the largesse gets round the immediate group.

            People have been quick to assert that the government is not doing enough to bring back these girls. If we’re talking about the Jonathan government, perhaps yes; but with this government, I am a little slower to make this assertion. The reason is clear to all except perhaps the unrealistic. This government is fighting too many battles, including the battle against the people. Even on the fuel issue, its battle is more against saboteurs. The people may desire things to change, they just do not want anyone changing their own ways because they are too used to taking the line of least resistance.

            The sad thing is that Nigeria grew up with very little governmental intervention in the lives of the people; this is why there is so much chaos and confusion in the land. Everyone has taken the position that the law must work and bend for them. This has been the case since the first republic. For example, whoever can ‘get to’ the law first owns a case, not necessarily the victim.

              This is why it is possible for anyone to gather together a group of rudderless people, feed them, clothe them and then tell them what to do. After all, whoever pays the piper still dictates the tune. Whoever feeds anyone is entitled to a large modicum of obedience from him/her. This is exactly what Yusuf did in Borno State and El-Zakzaky in Zaria. These people came into the lives of thousands and thousands of little children who were going through life rudderless, with no governmental intervention. Naturally, you are too glad to find any piece of wood to hold on to when you are sinking. So also these children; they held on to these men and their doctrines for dear life as the only governments they knew. How were we or they to know they would become brainwashed to start boko haram wars or defy the national army?

               This country has lost her sleep and it cannot be regained without a fight. People will not be loyal to any country that cannot identify with them and their needs. Patriotism can only come when the country steps up to address their problems. Then, they have something to protect.

               The best way to start the fight is to accept that desperate situations require desperate measures. In this desperate situation, Buhari should put all of us to work. There should be no exemptions of clergy, laity, ex-this, ex-that, village head, town head, city head, house head; every single one of us should become producers of one thing or the other. Many countries have experienced this kind of hardship. Many of them have realised that going round the world to beg for alms will amount to nothing but enslavement and mortgaging of the future of the country and coming generations. Working from within, and on the little resources they were able to muster, they rallied. I believe it should be possible to rise again from our ashes. India did it; China did it; Singapore, Indonesia, and many others have done it; Nigeria can too. A situation where the country grovels round the world to obtain loans and distribute to states for effecting changes, but which a few so-called ‘god-fathers’ end up ‘sitting on’ to hatch and spend on frivolities, should no longer hold.

            Unfortunately, it is the people who are reluctant to follow the leadership because they are set in their corruption-strewn, kick-back laden and lazy ways. For instance, for the national assembly to seek to clip the wings of CCB/CCT just because one of them is before that body to answer to some charges amounts to evasion and shifting of the goal post. It is not in good taste, not the gentlemanly thing to do and it is a contemptible sleight of corruption.

           There is work to do; therefore the time has come for the country to wake up from this slumber. The president is working; we too must stop sleeping and start working. I declare that we should all work not only to sniff out those Chibok girls but to produce what we need so that the sky will not fall on our heads.

  • In pursuit of true happiness

    Remember, it is not what you don’t have that kills you; it’s what you have

    Today, reader, we are going to wax philosophical because the year is now at an end and as they say, we are not going to pass this way again. This means that we must take stock of what has gone before in order to make what is going to come richer. You will agree that this year has presented very interesting events to the pleasure of some and the consternation of most. After looking through these events, I have been saddened to note that the significant thread that runs through them is this problem of money. Just name any scandal in the year and you will find that at the heart of it is money, running into billions of Naira at year’s beginning and dollars at the year’s close. Clearly, as Hamlet needlessly observed to no one in particular, ‘something is rotten in the state of Nigeria’. More worrisome still, the malodorous content always seemed to stink around or even over the central government.

    Now, one of the hallmarks of this material age we live in is the fact that we tend to fill our lives with dross. You know what those are, don’t you? They are perishable items like vegetables, electronics, people, ambitions or even values. Someone once complained that in the mad rush for success now, people have completely lost sight of the real thing. This means that real people like you and me now regularly sacrifice other people literally to obtain our goals. The story is told of how groups of mountain climbers on their ways to mountain summits regularly climbed over the bodies of other climbers too weak or fatigued to continue their climbs. Heaven forbid that they should think of the alternative: stopping to help, which was often considered too costly as it would mean delaying or cancelling their own ambitions. In your typical Nigerian ambition, therefore, human life has been devalued, ritualised or even wasted to reach the goal: get money.

    Now, things are so bad it makes you wonder if anyone knows the real meaning of life anymore. Most have imbibed and internalised the dictum, ‘get abundance that you may have more abundance’. Whenever your average Nigerian can, he/she aims for abundance and more abundance. This is why it is possible for an individual to construct compartmentalised, ceiling-high shelves where different currencies and denominations sit day in, day out, worshipped by the stealer. That’s right; that individual (and others like him) is your fellow Nigerian. Pity your poor workman who finds he has to work in houses where such altars have been constructed for money. Just ask one around you. He will tell you stories of how the obsessed money gatherers daily run their eyes and hands and feet over and through them in ecstasies of worship.

    Yet, when it has come right down to it, money illicitly and indecently gathered has never been of help to the gatherer. Think about it. Most of such monies are useful for purchasing a lifestyle that is not particularly useful – partying, procuring under-aged minors of both sexes for sexual gratification, purchasing Items of Self Destruction (ISD) such as private jets or Items to be Wasted (ITBW) such as houses and islands because those may not even be remembered again after purchase. It is incredible the number of people who have silently gone down into the grave just after piling up such monumental heaps of money meant for the general populace. Even as you read this, dear reader, I believe you can think of one or two examples.

    Whenever I have wanted to teach myself a lesson, I have always remembered the story told of M.K.O. Abiola who was said to have pleaded with the doctors to do everything in their power to save his ailing first wife, ‘no matter what it would cost’. When the doctors tried and could not, he was said to have hissed and exclaimed, ‘SHAME ON MONEY!’ You see, he had the money and the power, but that money had no purchasing power. Listen, if you want to know the purchasing power of your money, get stranded on the road in the night with no fuel in your car and with you miles away from anywhere. All you will be holding is an empty gallon and a lot of money in your purse. Then instruct that money to get you some fuel. Alternatively, you might find yourself running around the town at night, going from one pharmacy to another, in search of a rare drug for a relative who is sick in the hospital. Someone who had that experience related that he kept pleading with each pharmacy in turn, ‘I have plenty of money here and I’m ready to pay any amount; please just sell me the drug’, but they did not have it.

    It is therefore very perplexing that Nigerians appear to make owning money an end. Some people explain this off as a cultural problem but I disagree. There is no Nigerian culture that licences the owning of money or properties which cannot be accounted for. Indeed, every known Nigerian culture not only frowns at, but even punishes, any illegitimate acquisition of properties. Rather, I think that the faulty physical strapping together of three disparate groups and the absence of a tested, well-formulated foundation (economic, political, moral, etc.) by the founding fathers of Nigeria are responsible for the dissociative life style we are witnessing. Add to that the fact that people have no credible reference points in terms of, say, leadership: for example, China has Mao Tse Tung; Britain has Churchill, France has de Gaulle, etc. In this way, you could say Nigeria constitutes a rudderless ship.

    All hope is not lost. Rather than pursue money, Nigeria must join the rest of the world in pursuing things that have more eternal values. As the old year ends and another begins, each one of us must travel right back inside him or her and find those things which make for greater personal and altruistic happiness and pursue them. There are three things we can thus work on emphasising.

    First, we can work on emphasising the miracles that happen each day. Miracles still happen for you and me, they often come at no cost; for no amount of money can be put on the air that you and I draw every moment; our ability to leave home every morning and return at the end of the day; or a helping hand from a neighbour at a right time. More importantly, let us emphasise being miracle workers for someone: rescue a stranded one, bring hope to a depressed and hopeless person, share what little you have with someone else – you will be surprised what you get in return. The second is to work on emphasising moderation in everything. Eat in moderation; live in moderation; own things in moderation. I always say that no one can own the whole world – God already does, so why compete with him? Remember, if you want a slim waist, share your food.

    Thirdly, work for the interconnectedness of people. Believe it or not, the world is woven around people. We all exist to meet each other’s needs. Hoarding all the resources of everyone else therefore is futile. Sooner or later, nature will balance itself out, with or without you, by forcefully taking what you will not release and giving it out to others. The story is told of an old man who called his children together and showed them the multiple houses and plots of land he owned. Horrified, the children berated him for his selfishness. ‘Don’t you have poor relatives you can give them to?’ they asked. Remember, it is not what you don’t have that kills you; it’s what you have. True happiness is sharing what you have with others.

    ***Reader, I am repeating this article as my response to the hidden assets leaks.

  • The beautiful, the ridiculous & the sublime

    The only lesson the people are learning is that it is all right to seek only the things of the self and let the country, and others, be damned

    My favourite magazine last week featured a story of a new kind of computer printer that prints 3-D inanimate objects. Imagine that! All you need to own various objects like toys in your home is that printer called The Cube, your own imagination and a cartridge that spews plastic instead of ink, and hey presto!, you’re lost in the very depths of your own toy and object factory. You can print practically anything you want. Now, don’t get me started on just what I can do with that kind of machine, because that is one beauty I’ve been longing to see in my lifetime for many reasons. Let’s see why now.

    To start with, I have long had a hankering after serving plates that do not break or require too much care. Now, with a machine like The Cube, I will not only make my own plates, I can make them in shapes, sizes and colours I want. Should I desire to satisfy my palate for a large-sized plate of my favourite dish of good ol’ Amala on a particular day, I would first take my time to design the shape of the container; then I would choose the colour of the day, maybe marigold yellow with a hint of a rainbow mix rimming the edges. Then, I would make the food. With the combination of food and plate simmering in front of me, I can now sing, ‘I’m in heaven… This is the heaven…’ as one morsel follows another down the dark, dark tunnel. Then, when I remember that I can choose another plate design and colour for the next day’s menu, another song will issue forth, ‘It doesn’t get better than this…No, no, it doesn’t get better than this…’ Ah, that sure is the life! Hopefully, with enough coaxing, the machine will be able to print my lunch one day.

    Oh yes, I have also wanted to own something that I can stuff down people’s throats when they are saying what I particularly do not want to hear. Now, with that machine, all I have to do is look at the shape of the mouth of the speaker and design the appropriate object to fit it – round, square, triangular or slit. No problem. When someone around me is complaining about the fact that money is scarce in the town and so the housekeeping money is going to be… I quickly shut the mouth before the word is uttered. When someone in the vicinity of where I am standing is trying to tell me that the country is broke, would I mind a salary… I quickly shut the mouth before the unutterable word is uttered. Beautiful. Now, all I have to pray for is that someday, a machine will be invented that will print people, so that I can surround myself with only my kind of people who will only say things I want to hear.

    Now, I have always wanted a machine that can print me a new dress every day. According to the article that started all this wish list, someone is already thinking like me. There are designers out there, it said, who have printed a pair of shoes and a dress, using different printers. Now, that is music to my ears. No more can my tailor and cobbler be rude to me. No more will I have to grin and swallow their insults of ‘come back tomorrow…’ while the waters are roiling deep inside me worse than the Atlantic Ocean in a storm. Now, all I need to do is dream up a look for the day, and command the machine. Then, when I get to the end of the road and find that the look does not really work for me in broad day light as it did in my head, I can go back home and make the necessary adjustments. I command my machine. The only thing that would be left would be for that beautiful machine to print money for me…

    You’re right, we need money to design and build the machines that will make my dreams come true. Don’t I know it? But, seriously, where do you think the money to fund the technological drive in this country will come from when we are busy funding ridiculous projects? Once, I read in the papers that the then Senator Abe of Rivers State had been flown abroad for medical attention after being allegedly shot by the police with rubber bullets! I ask you, I tell you! It’s people like these – the one who shot him, him that was shot and agreed to be flown out of the country, and the one who funded the ridiculous trip – these are the ones who are standing in the way of making my machine dreams come true. They are the Dream Terminators! Honestly, I sometimes feel as if all our money is going into funding the expensive hobby the country is engaged in right now, politics. It’s a little like the head of a family who persists in finding the cure for hunger by locking himself in the kitchen conducting one experiment after the other. The rest of the family can be left to feel like orphans for all he cares. (Actually, he can feel like a childless father for all they care if he would just get out of the kitchen so they can feed).

    Anyway, I just hope this politics will not be the death of this country – through laughter. Take another news report I read the other day. In the last dispensation, the Speaker of the House of Reps was said to have read out a letter written by the chairman of DPP to the house complaining that one of its members had defected to another party. The problem was not so much the defection; obviously that did not rankle. What pained the chairman was the fact that the said member had disobeyed instructions. He had defected to APC instead of PDP as he had been directed to do! I mean, did a group of grown-up MEN seriously want us to believe that they sat down, deliberated and came up with this no-brainer? Unbelievable. It just proves two things. The first is what many people have said before: that this country has NO POLITICAL CLASS. We do not have men and women brimming with ideas, dreams and visions of how to rescue this country from certain doom and self-destruction. All the country has thrown up so far are CLASS 2004, `08, ’11 OR `14 OF CLOWNS AND MARAUDERS.

    The only problem is that while we are laughing, like Nero, Nigeria may burn. In the face of complete helplessness, however, what are we to do but hold on to our dreams? We have sublime notions of what good governance is like: politicians, not clowns, directing the affairs of the country; leaders keeping their pulses on the prices of garri, beans, oil and rent in the market so that when all else fail, the people can eat and sleep; leaders knowing the state of the national institutions under their care because they also use them – hospitals, schools, transportation systems, roads, recreation grounds, etc. Like I said, these are sublime dreams but it’s not as if they are not attainable. They are, if the leaders would just put their backs into the job and teach the people how to do it too. As of now though, the only lesson the people are learning is that it is all right to seek only the things of the self and let the country, and others, be damned.

  • Reactions

    This week, dear reader, I present some reactions to some recent discussions presented on this spot. As usual, I have tinkered with them a tad to make them flow more fluently. Please remember that they are the views of the writers, so I take no responsibility for them, any more than the editor is prepared to lay down his head for mine.

    Are we not burdened enough that we must yet add learning French to our problems? (14th February, 2016)

    write in reaction to Oyinkan Medubi’s submission on page 16 of The Nation newspaper on Sunday February 14 2016. Permit me to debunk some of the reasons given for discouraging the learning of French in Nigeria.

    1. The French language is not being proposed in Nigeria “for the sake” of our neighbours but for own sake! It is in our interest to take back the jobs our francophone neighbours have taken up on our own soil. I know that some French and francophone embassies in Nigeria employ drivers, porters and other cadres from outside Nigeria as they are unable to find French speaking Nigerians to take up these positions. Meanwhile, the average Francophone is bilingual (speaking both English and French) and can take up jobs anywhere in Nigeria and beyond.
    2. Learning or speaking more languages does not mean Nigerians will not be “able to think straight”! On the contrary, the more languages you speak, the better for your intellect as “the limit of a man’s language is the limit of his world” (Anonymous). I have met people who speak 6 – 8 languages and who count among the best in their chosen professions. As a matter of fact, most technologically advanced countries make their children learn at least two foreign languages while in secondary school. More languages make you wiser.
    3. You also mentioned lack of funds for training teachers of French, writing textbooks and developing teaching aids. France helped in the past and is still willing to help, provided we ask.
    4. Concerning keeping our national affairs secret from foreigners, I am yet to know of any country with modern media (no matter the language used) that has succeeded in keeping such secrets. What we need is to be equipped (linguistically) to hear more nations’ secrets (especially our neighbours) for our own security. How many Nigerians periodically tune to a neigbouring francophone radio or TV station for their news? But they listen to ours because they learn both English and French!
    5. We cannot over emphasize the economic and political advantages of French in Nigeria. Lack of competence in French is one of the reasons Nigeria has not been able to produce a Secretary-General for the United Nations while Ghana has produced Koffi Anan! How many Nigerians are competent to do what Ibn Chambers is doing in ECOWAS? To gain our rightful place as the giant of Africa in international diplomacy, French is the answer!
    6. If other world powers are jealous that Nigeria is adopting French as one of our official languages, let them give Nigerians scholarships to learn their languages too! (German, Japanese, Chinese, etc.)
    7. Where there is will, there is a way. Whether we learn French or not, Nigerian languages will continue to die as long as parents do not speak it at home to their children. I am well versed in French and English and yet all my children speak and write Yoruba fluently because my husband and I encourage them to do so. I know many people that French has opened doors for and taken them far in life and who will continue to encourage everyone they come across to learn it. Learning French will help to alleviate Nigeria’s unemployment problems among our youth. It can NEVER add to Nigeria’s problems! (M. A. (Mrs.), Akure).

    Kidnapping, Plc. (20th March, 2016)

      Your deeply touching piece, KIDNAPPING Plc., of March 20, 2016, really opened up a raw truth about our nation’s present security status. A band of outlaws holding most part of a nation, normal everyday hard-working families, professionals, to ransom and it seems we can do nothing. The president had made fighting corruption and insecurity part of his major agenda in seeking the presidency. Apart from confronting the insurgency in the north-east, the malaise of vicious kidnapping largely in the south has been left to fester. There seems to be no direct policy thrust as yet.

    The police seem to be confronted by the huge scale of this monster but I know their anti-kidnapping squads along with the DSS have recorded good success in apprehending many of these villains. But the scale of the problem is huge. There presently seems no security plan in place to forestall and prevent citizens from being kidnapped. It is hard. More so, there are security reports that it seems certain leading players in society have a hand in this crime. I was told in confidence by an urbane police officer of the calls he gets from high quarters to release on bail some of the miscreants arrested. A security officer told me how lawyers stormed their office when once they apprehended a notorious kidnapping kingpin, requesting for his bail. Yes, senior lawyers.

    What the police and the DSS need is to be equipped technologically to wipe out this scourge. It also needs a figure like the American J. Edgar Hoover, who led his FBI to rid America of anarchists and the mafia scourge. Nigeria’s government just needs to make this fight a priority and get that certain bold person like Commissioner M. of the EFCC, who is fearless and knows no big shot, to be given the necessary backing to lead this effort to end this nightmare. While we wait for the government, let us keep praying we don’t fall prey. It seems all we can do now is to pray. (C. C. Barrister).

    Reading through your article now, Kidnapping, Plc, you did not in even a sentence mention the biggest kidnap saga (the Chibok girls) in your write up. It’s all about your family and town. Kwot! (S. from Kaduna. 2348051466606)

    Hello, Oyinkan, I read your article in… about kidnapping. It’s very informative. God will bless you. You can now see why people are agitating… Mrs. O. 2348069133729

    Good day total sister, in a given environment of poverty, sordid character must take place. Our worst enemy are Police and NEPA. (Prince G. 2348093778665)

    PU: Yeah, I’m all right, folks, thanks for asking. The gentleman who thought I had been unduly self-absorbed on the kidnap of my family member should please read some past editions of this column in this newspaper and he will find many discussions on the Chibok girls’ disappearance.

    Can there really be equality of the sexes, ever? (13th March, 2016)

    Ma, your postscript of 13/3/16 coming from a lady was very instructive. God could have made us like worms or snails if He meant equality. He meant balance or as you better defined it, equilibrium. More grease. (O. O. 2348153469101)

    Dear Madam Medubi, you are one of the reasons I buy The Nation every Sunday. I enjoy your column. Your article, ‘Can there really be equality of the sexes, ever?’… was, to me, a masterpiece. It educated me a lot on this vexed issue of gender equality. Your perspective was so sensible and effervescent. Great article… (O. N. Abuja 2348092055256)

    Aunty, your article on female equality refers. My own case as per finesse in the home is the opposite. My wife sees nothing wrong if she brings tin plates to the table with fried eggs for my guests and I, even though I have lovely crockery. So? (2347054570637)

    PU: Thank you for your kind words, sirs. I like it when people tell me I am sensible. It makes me think I am a little better than Cleopatra who kept a snake by her for a rainy day! Anyway, my word to the last commentator is that he should not despair; he should just pass all that lovely crockery to me.

  • Kidnapping, Plc.

    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

    Today, my blood is boiling. I am therefore boiling mad because my family and town were threatened by the activities of kidnappers. But, I get ahead of myself.

           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 credentials. Can’t get a girl to marry? Kidnap one, a la the story of Ese. 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 in Kogi State seems to have featured prominently. Remember a justice, a trade unionist, and many others have been taken while travelling through and around the town in recent times; so were my family member and townsmen. Right now, there is a part of Kogi State being terrorised by kidnappers. Someone should give us some answers soon.