The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Can there really be equality of the sexes, ever?

    Rather than go seeking equality between men and women, I think we should go in search of equilibrium. It normally resides somewhere in the twilight zone of insanity and not even remotely acceptable behaviour

    The world celebrated womanhood last week. Great celebrations they were. I listened as people, men and women, extolled the virtues of womanhood, and muttered words to the effect that women were and are irreplaceable. I thought, what if they were replaceable, with what, pray tell, would we replace them: more men?

    In the same breath, these speakers have told us again that men and women are not equal and they need to be. What these people are really saying of course is that men ought to get down to it, put their backs to the task, heave ho, and make women equal to them. Many times, I listen to these speeches and I wonder whether I really understand the English behind their words!

    Of course, you and I know what these speakers are talking about. They are complaining about the numerical strength of women in the work place – it is too low. They are also complaining about the wages paid to women in comparison to that of men – it is discriminatory. Most importantly, they are complaining about the representation of women in government – you can count them on one finger. So, if women are supposed to have these virtues in abundance, why then are they not given equality in abundance and women have to go looking for it?

    The virtues of women cannot be denied, nor can those of men. Truth is, each one of them is supposed to have its own set of virtues that cannot be found in any other. For example, where else but in women can you find that silent, foot-tapping patience, extremely illogical, strong sixth sense, loads and loads of strength to shout and harangue the husband and children to rein them in? And where but in men can you find that fury-filled patience, soundly illogical reasoning that sounds very clever to the ears, and loads and loads of strength to shout about nothing with colleagues over bottles of beer? So, why on earth would you say that these two people are equal?

    Each time I have read these news items about people calling for equality of the sexes, I have smiled. I have concluded that the people really do not know what they are asking for. Nature never designed the two sexes to be equal; so asking for equality would be asking a hard thing: the total upturning and disorganisation of natural sequences. Men and women equal? Naaaaah! They are too divided by their common humanity.

    Did you know that men and women do not inhabit the same world; neither do they even speak the same language, not on anything, not even food? Many instances abound. When a man speaks of taking a weekend family trip, he thinks only of throwing a few shirts inside a suitcase, snapping it shut, popping his toothbrush in his shirt pocket and hitting the road. It’s not so for the woman. She must examine the contents of that suitcase to be sure it contains important items such as clothes, clothes and more clothes. There must be a dress for every morning and evening, and for every morning and evening of extra days (in case fuel shortage extends the holiday), and every morning and evening of more extra days. Then she must bring matching accessories for each dress, make-up for each accessory, shoes and bags to match each make-up, mosquito-proofing items for the environment, cotton bed-sheets for the beds, carpet for the floor, and many more little things for creature comforts. Who needs equality with that?! Viva la difference!

    The difference is even clearer in the little matter of what makes a house a home. Leave it to the man, and you would have nothing in the house but these big, puffy chairs one sinks and promptly disappears into, and then one giant TV set that drowns out all sounds except his snoring. It’s the woman who insists that there must colours in the said chairs and they must match the hanging curtains. Curtains, asks the man, what are those?

    Then she decrees that there must be a kitchen where the food will be cooked. No, she insists, Iya Alakara down the road will not do for everyday. More importantly, there will be breakfast plates with matching napkins, dinner plates with matching napkins, table cloths to match all the sets of serving plates, and cutlery to match each of these table accessories. God help you if she has three dozen sets of such plates.

    Clearly, the world of men and women differ greatly largely because different things are going on in their heads. This is why a community somewhere south of this continent even went to the extent of devising different languages for each sex. No, a man may not even make the mistake of speaking the women’s language out of forgetfulness, and a woman dares not speak that of men either. They are both mutually comprehensible but none dares cross that great linguistic divide. It is forbidden, not allowed, and a taboo to do so. If that divide is crossed, be sure that the heavens will fall and there shall be very severe sanctions to restore them to the skies. We might require the services of a few cows. So, I think the community was trying to make sure that whatever was going on in the head of each sex did not accidentally cross to the other side, you know, to avoid contamination and all. Viva la inequality!

    All you have to do is look at the work space to see how men and women have contaminated each other. Take women bosses as an example. They have so imbibed the authority wielding posture of men that many have made themselves obnoxious. In this, the men are limping after them. Sir, men and women are too opposed in their ways; so we cannot speak of equality between them, thank God. If they were equal, who would put flowers on the central table?

     I have long despaired of ever seeing equality between the two sexes in my lifetime. The line of difference has been clearly drawn by nature: men are very smart, women are very clever. How on earth do you think that breach can be filled? They look to me like parallel lines. No wonder no Supreme Court judge can ever get it right between two divorcing couples. Either way, he is bound to be hated passionately by one of them. His prayer is not to choose the one with the gun.

    Rather than go seeking equality between men and women, I think we should go in search of equilibrium. It normally resides somewhere in the twilight zone of insanity and not even remotely acceptable behaviour. One needs to search really deep to find it. According to my Encarta, equilibrium is the situation where opposing forces balance each other out, for the sake of obtaining some kind of stability. That is when men and women will now confidently tell each other that ‘from where I am standing the sky is red but that does not stop it from being green from where you are standing.’ When the time comes that men and women can tell this to each other, appreciation of each other’s position is not far behind.

    With this balance installed, women will not need to go seeking to be equal to men, nor will men be forever scratching their heads searching for how to make women understand any blessed thing they say. As we celebrate women once again this year, let us not ask for equality; let us ask for equilibrium. That will not only keep us balanced as individuals, it will keep the button of equality balanced in the twilight zone of I’m alright, Jack.

  • Giving the country the run around

    One thing is sure: this mystery could not have been more fascinating if it came from the pages of a bestseller

    Lately, I have watched young Ese Oruru seize the country’s imagination by the simple act of disappearing and re-appearing like a magician between last year, 2015, and this year. First, the story read that she had been kidnapped; then that she had eloped; and then that she had been forced into something like a marriage in the very modern city of Kano from the bosom of her mother’s shop in Bayelsa. Imagine the distance of that journey! It is almost as long as the saga!

    One thing is sure though: this mystery could not have been more fascinating if it came from the pages of a bestseller. The Ese story only goes to prove to my unbelieving friends what I have been trying to tell them for ages: that life is many times stranger than fiction. As Hamlet has proclaimed, ‘there are more things in life than are found in your philosophy (literature) books!’ I think the man must really have been exasperated by his friend’s naive innocence. I am equally getting exasperated as this saga seems to really be giving the country the good ol’ run around. It is drawing out more questions than answers.

    I am often fascinated by the ‘whodunit’ structure of many mystery books. In my professional opinion (err, as a detective, that is), many aspects of this story fit into the structure of a mystery book like a glove. It is complete with your leading lady, a probable protagonist with her innocence, and the sinned-against rather than the sinning face (at least for now). It also has the antagonist, a certain Mr. Yunusa, who is said to be the violator and snatcher of the many properties of the protagonist – her innocence, naivety, purity, youth, freedom, rights, religion, identity, culture, parents, home, familiar birthplace, friends, etc., and all the things that went into making her who she fancied herself to be.

    From the accounts, it would appear that young Mr. Yunusa had many motives. Indeed, at the height of the elopement theory, the motive seemed to have been romance. For a tiny winy while, it actually seemed like a romantic story; and since most of us like romantic stories, we were kinda tempted to let our guard down on the age thing. That was just for a tiny winy bit, mind. I have since changed my mind, even in the face of that data.

    That is what brings in the third, fourth, fifth and any number of parties whose interests in the story are not yet clear, nearly all of whom can be said to have some elements of motive, complicity and/or failure. There is the theory, according one of the stories, that the girl had been fetched up north by the said Mr. Yunusa and kept in the palace of the Emir of Kano, but this has since been denied.

    There have been many speculations as to why the police did not enforce the girl’s freedom earlier. I think there is an aspect of the law that says that security operatives are not supposed to enter one’s house except on invitation or there is a warrant from a competent, unbiased judge that says your house can be searched in an emergency security situation. However, it is well known that the Nigerian security systems have more respect for persons of a certain class; so there is often a very elastic or varied interpretation of what constitutes ’emergency situation’. So, I cannot blame the police too much for waiting for clearance on the situation before releasing the girl. There are just too many things that are not clear about the case, even for the police.

    You can see that this is a tightly woven and complex plot that could only have been conceived by a wild imagination such as natural occurrences. Indeed, if some wild writer had come up with it for a bestseller, I tell you that s/he would have been hung, strung and quartered for trying to start a war in the country comparable to that which greeted the stealing away of Helen of Troy.

    You remember Helen of Troy, don’t you? It is said that she was the most beautiful woman of her time, and when Paris (a handsome young ‘un) forcibly took her from her husband and brought her home to Troy, that city did not mind going to war in order to keep her. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of people died trying to keep that beauty within Troy’s borders in a war that lasted about ten years. I have seen something of Ese’s beauty and I am afraid it does not quite come near Helen’s.

    However, were a writer to conceive the Ese plot in a work of fiction, s/he would have been accused of trying to pit the north against the south religiously, economically and culturally. It could very easily have been a religious war, seeing that the girl is said to have been taken from her Christian roots and put in a hijab within the few months of her departure. Culturally, Ese is still considered underage and in tutelage in her birthplace,, having much schooling ahead of her whereas in the new setting, she would be considered to have arrived at the port of her life even at that age.

    It would have been an economic war that would have pitted the rich resources that the girl might have dreamed of; you know, the Abdul-like kind of treasure trove that opens to ‘Sesame!’ against the poor resources of her shop-keeper mother. Who really knows how she ended up in Kano?! For all we know, she might have been lured by the beauty in the simplicity of saying ‘Sesame!’ to open the treasure troves to meet all her needs, who knows? Who really knows what is going on in the mind of a thirteen year-old girl?! For now, we can only hope that all the questions that will keep the country quiet will be answered soon by time. I can’t trust any of the parties in this matter to do that.

    In the meantime, I think it behoves us as parents of teenagers and other young ‘uns to learn to become mind readers fast, fast. This is because too many things are going on in their heads, and you need to be able to predict which thought will dominate and become ideological. As parents, believe me, you want to be able to hold and call the spades. You need to be one step ahead of your young one. You want to hold the element of surprise in your hands so you can control its use. This is as good as saying you should not let your ward control the element of surprise so that you don’t get this kind of run around that the country is agonising through. Good luck to us all.

  • Thinking and Connecting

    Thinking and Connecting

    As a people, we are not only unpatriotic; we are also very thoughtless.

    I tell you, man, this country is full of contradictions. Here we are, a deeply unhappy set of people living in a happy land. We are among the poorest countries living with a small number of those who got stupendously rich on stolen funds. We are said to be a brilliant people who make incredibly stupid policies. We have cars and technologies and buildings cast in the latest architectural designs, yet the larger population live in hovels. We have the world’s highest number of churches and mosques yet we are the most godless people on earth. The question is, why are we so blessed?

    There is a rumour going the rounds that Nigeria’s (stolen) money is at the heart of many international banks’ and cities’ projects the world over. In short, it is rumoured that Nigerians have taken government’s funds and have sort of scattered and sowed them into various world projects, not on behalf of the people but on their own sweet behalf, yet her citizens are living in penury. Now, there are people calling for a conference on the state of the nation’s economy.

    The question is, who are the people we are going to call to that conference? Are they going to be the same old politicians and old soldiers who ran the country aground? And where are we going to dump the reports? I imagine the stores in Aso Villa are full to overflowing already with such reports. The so-called national conference reports are somewhere there gathering dust. The ex-president’s cronies came, ate and left, and nothing happened.

    Since that conference, many things have been happening in the country. News reports keep telling us how people are being killed for debts of less than N2,000. They tell us how female teenagers are running away from home and willingly agreeing to be used as baby-producing factories. They tell us how fathers and mothers are willingly selling their children for a bit of cash. Just last week, the news reported how a father sold his son for N250,000.

    Yes, we are gradually reaching the point where return will be impossible. Early in this year, poor Oyelowo Ajanaku was said to have been stabbed to death by his wife Yewande in one of Nigeria’s cities due to one pressure or the other. And this one was reported because it involved some high-profile people. Do you know the many such related cases that are not being reported because the personalities involved are not high-profile? I tell you, the Nigerian situation is beginning to get to us.

    To say that the Nigerian economy is in trouble is an understatement. I am scared about it, and I am not even an economist. I think the real economists would tell us to be more scared, if they dared. I am not sure though that many of them would fly the kite of a round-table discussion on the subject just yet. I think we should first look at our management profile and tackle a few issues. Let us tackle the root cause of our problems first before applying the plaster. It will do well to get somewhere with this fight against corruption before we pile on the salutary measures.

    Practically all Nigerians agree that the nation’s jugular has been gripped by the cold and merciless hands of corruption. The national, state and local area executive/legislative arms, large corporations, small and medium scale enterprises, etc., are all grappling with corruption. It has got so bad now that even owners of little shops and kiosks are complaining that their sales/front-desk persons are corrupt! Those ones have now learnt to inflate the price of the goods or services in their charge, give the owner the advertised price of the good or service and pocket the difference.

    In short, every Nigerian you meet now is just waiting for their chance to be corrupt. Whenever they have been placed in a position to choose between their grasping hands and the country, they have patriotically chosen to satisfy their grasping hands. This column has stated it again and again that this country’s problems can be traced to two things only: FAILURE TO THINK AND FAILURE TO TRULY CONNECT WITH THE COUNTRY. As a people, we are not only unpatriotic, we are also very thoughtless.

    Failure to think is not the result of the breakdown of the thinking faculty. After all, you think, therefore you are. I truly believe that our thinking faculty as a nation is truly intact; what has broken down is our failure to focus our thoughts on the things that matter. I have reported on these pages again and again what Golda Meir, a one-time prime minister of Israel, was reported to have said once regarding African leaders but I will report it again. She said that African leaders have no vision for their continent. All they are interested in is consumerism and displaying their egos to their neighbours’ envies. The prime minister effectively told us that African leaders cannot think deeply enough to conceive ways of bringing their countries out of poverty.

    Just imagine her country, Israel, having the kind of leadership that is common to Africa. That country would have been annihilated long ago by any of the myriads of her enemies surrounding her. So now, what Nigeria lacks in the form of external threats, she has thoughtfully provided in her own citizens. Good news: Nigeria is threatened by her own citizens.

     I am always full of wonderments. Have you noticed that nearly, if not all, the people who have pilfered from government coffers and stashed their hauls abroad still live in the country? I don’t know what for, but I keep wondering: is it so that they can see the effects of what they have pilfered on the rest of the country? Or is it to see if there is any fat chance that they can get more to nibble? I don’t know, but there they are, still hanging around and talking into microphones.

    Really, I am not too optimistic that much can come out of any conference right now until these nibblers are good and properly fixed. They are still in leadership. They are wiser than the rest of us in the matter of contriving wily ways of beating the system. They are close enough to the presidency to get policies changed in their favour and at the expense of the country. Who is to say that as soon as a solution is got to end the nation’s economic woes, these nibblers would not immediately begin to dig up ways of working contrary to the rest of us, eh?

     I honestly do not have much faith in the present crop of politicians, whatever party they may belong to, to bring out any lasting solution to the nation’s socio-economic woes or any other

    woes for that matter. Most of them are too self-absorbed to really be interested in lifting up the country. As it is, the whole country seems to be tensely still, as if waiting for something to happen to give the signal to some action or the other. This is not a feeling that calling an economic conference can cure. There is much more wrong with the country than a failing economy.

    This is a feeling that calls for something more profound; something akin to deep thinking on the part of every Nigerian of thought. This is a time that calls on every Nigerian to become a philosopher king and queen for choosing an economic, housing or health policy and sticking to it no matter what, banning non-essential imports, actively promoting Nigerian manufactured goods, relaxing import tariffs on raw materials, encouraging the people to seek knowledge and information, etc. In short, the time has come for us all to connect to the country by thinking deeply about her. Happy thinking day or week.

  • Love Trumps All

    Love Trumps All

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Listen, it appears we have all forgotten the message of valentine, occasioned by the life of St. Valentine, a Roman priest. I believe I have told the story once but let’s recap the history of that legendary martyr once again. It is said that the poor man had the temerity to secretly marry off soldiers and their sweethearts, which was against the roman laws of his era. For this act, the emperor imprisoned him, to be later punished by caning and execution.

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

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

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

  • Are we not burdened enough that we must yet add learning French to Nigeria’s problems?

    The resources that would otherwise have been used to enforce this decision can be better employed in developing writing systems for our many unwritten languages so that they will no longer die just because the speakers are dying. The speakers will bless us for this. France itself can assist in this venture.

    There is an estimate in scholarship that Nigeria presently houses over four hundred and fifty (450) indigenous languages within her linguistic walls, in addition to English and Arabic. It is also estimated that nearly, if not all, have an appreciable number of speakers, no matter how few they are. Once, one language in Nigeria was said to have only two (2) speakers left, if they have not emigrated to Australasia, or died.

    As of now, very few of these languages have been developed to the point of having literature written in them; and fewer still even have alphabets. Yet, scholars agree that it would be a crying shame to let any of these languages go into extinction because of the nation’s indifference. And what is the cause of that indifference, you might ask? We have plenty of languages to spare.

    This means that if we run out of languages within the country, we can always call on those of our neighbours. I guess this is why the Minister of State for Education felt confident enough to state not too long ago that Nigerians would soon be called upon to learn French even up to the tertiary level, if only for the sake of our neighbours. As if we did not have enough problems, no? Ha, ha!

    I have nothing against French. It’s a fine language, but is it for us? Just consider, out of these 450+ languages, Nigeria is presently using only a fraction of them for her internal and external affairs. With English lording it over everybody anyways, even those few find themselves with little or nothing to do. Well, for one thing, they just generally provide an alternative way of saying something already said in the official language; and for another, they provide a means for ethnic brothers to bond. For a third reason, they probably allow people to think in their native intelligences.

    Scholars have told us – bless these scholars for the things they keep telling us – that each language has its own logic and thought system. Therefore, learning more than one language means learning and having more than one thought system. As it is now, Nigerians, young and old, who speak their native tongues alongside English, have thought systems that can only be called convoluted. But I guess it builds bridges across the two languages. This is why the old woman in their village is the one doing them; you’re the one I’m greeting; and oh yes, you are well-swallowing of something (for eku igbeun kan mi). These just make you wonder how elastic a language can be, right, or whether it is gradually coming apart. Now, that is a point of interest to many of us. With so many languages to think in, are you surprised that Nigerians are not able to think straight?

    More importantly, don’t you think we have enough trouble already with the English that was forced on us? To add another language to Nigerians’ plate of repertoires is to add another thought system to the confusion. People will now not know whether to take the native thought through English first into French or vice versa or let them all meet at the crossroads. I think the latter will make for some very interesting utterances, such as you’re the one je suis greeting. That is Frenglish in Yoruba, no?

    Let’s see what the Nigerian language policy in education says. Part of it says that the Nigerian child is expected to learn one Nigerian language other than his/her own in primary school and another one in secondary school, all alongside English. This means that the average Nigerian child is expected to function effectively in four languages.

    This policy does not take into consideration the varying intelligences of children. True, there be some among them who can walk through eight languages without any hassles. On the contrary, many there be among them, if not most, who can hardly cope with one language; yet, as scholars have told us, languages are best acquired or learnt in childhood. If young, sharp children are having problems learning languages with internal structures that are not too far from their own language families, what chances will there be for them or their older generations in tertiary institutions to cope with more foreign languages?

    Language learning is sometimes accelerated when materials are accessible and well trained teachers are available. The reason why the Nigerian language policy in education has not been too strong on ground is not too difficult to guess: no funds. Teachers are not being trained – no funds; text books are not being written – no funds; teaching aids and audio-visual materials are not being developed – no funds; many Nigerian languages have no orthography – you guessed it, no funds! So, forgive me for asking, but where on earth will the funds come from to provide all these with regard to French?

    Come now, let us reason together. Two of the disadvantages of using English for national affairs have been pointed out. Foreign languages do not give the African that sense of identity a language normally should give; and the fact that they do not give that needed national security that a nation desperately needs. Native languages give both.

    True, this country cannot afford to go around translating every cough, sneeze and laughter of the president or myself (thank you so much for noticing that I also cough, sneeze and laugh) into 450+ languages; yet, many of our national affairs actually need to be kept secret, particularly from foreigners like you. Now, how on earth can we do that with all our records being legible in English? We plod on nevertheless for economic reasons, but not by now adding French. Why, that will definitely be making our records available to the…

    Just think too, how jealous other world powers will be if we adopt French as a third foreign language. I’m talking about countries like Germany, Japan, China, etc. They are going to want to know why the most populous black nation on earth is leaving them out of its schools. Have they not traded with us? They have. Have they not been good to us? They have. Have they not also colonised us economically if not politically? They have. After all, nearly everything we use now comes from China. So, we cannot go around learning a foreign language just because the owner countries are somewhere around us.

    English is very present in China, Japan, Germany, etc., yet the governments of those countries have not compelled their schools’ curricula to change on that account. Rather, they have given their citizens the freedom to learn whatever language they see the need to. Many Japanese and Chinese see the need to learn English, so they do it. That is not the country’s business.

    Rather than compel our young ones to divert their needed mental resources to learning yet another language, this country should encourage them to pay more attention to the contents of their syllabi as they stand. The focus should be to use the syllabi to bring the best out of every child and student, and help them to be maximally productive. One more language will not do this; it may even retard all progress.

    Most importantly, we are burdened enough. The resources that would otherwise have been used to enforce this decision can be better employed in developing writing systems for our many unwritten languages so that they will no longer die just because the speakers are dying. The speakers will bless us for this. France itself can assist in this venture.

  • Of goggled gods and N900m cars

    This child would not have had the temerity to affront the ears and eyes of Nigerians with this N900m obscenity if his parent had taken him aside and taught him properly: shshsh, let us keep our stolen monies secret in these days of EFCC!

    Last week, the story broke that the twenty-five year-old son of a former minister had bought himself a princely N900m racing car! So, obviously, Pa Olusegun Obasanjo’s list of emperors consisting only of ex- and present governors needs a review; we must add ex- and present ministers, ex- and present senators, ex-presidents, ex- and present godfathers, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, etc.

    I was quite startled sometime ago when I watched a TV news report about a governor in the south east of the country. The news is now forgotten, but I can never forget the self-presentation style of the governor. He arrived in a huge jeep alongside of which some of his aides were running until it came to a stop. Then he alighted from the said jeep, like a goggled god come to walk on mortal ground among mortal men, swinging a cane. I swear it looked to me like he was prepared to use that cane on any of his aides should they forget to clean the sole of his shoes as he took each step.

    I say, when I saw this scenario, I had to pinch myself to see if I was awake or asleep or in a democracy. I was awake alright; I was in a democracy alright; and the said governor, I found out, had been ‘elected’. Obviously, sometime after the election, there was a transmutation in the man from an elected state official to Dr. Frankenstein.

    Unfortunately, this metamorphosis seems to have occurred in all of our state officials. There is a virus that promptly bites them all, soon after being elected, and changes these men from simpering, begging and innocuous looking candidates to rich monsters of a sudden. Once elected, they begin to measure all men by the length of their own access to state treasury. Other men who do not have an access near or equal to their own such as you the tailor or carpenter or me the pen swordsman (or woman), are no longer worthy to touch their shoes. Only other rich men can touch their shoes.

    Just see the way they go around in long convoys led by whistling sirens loud enough to scatter every chicken and men on their routes. See the way they ride around in cars with glasses so dark you think you’re looking at Guinness. See their flowing agbadas bellowing in the wind so much the ground is swept clean after them. See their faces well ensconced in their dark, dark goggles … I better stop here before you accuse me of thinking they look handsome in those glasses. And you will be right.

    Seriously though, the ex-president once again got it right with that accusation about governors, ministers, senators, ex-presidents, councilmen etc., but actually, the situation is much worse. If they lived like emperors and did not corrupt the young, fragile and impressionable ones around them, life would be tolerable for us. We would ask these emperor-governors to keep snacking on their champagnes and sniffing their ‘smacks’ for breakfast while we, in our innocence, continue slurping our corn pap and sniffing their morals. It’s our God-given right.

    However, when these goggled gods begin to teach their young ones that it is all right to be a spendthrift, then we must complain. Take the story mentioned above involving a minister’s son who is said to have bought a Nine Hundred Million Naira Car! According to reports, the said son is just TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD! This means most importantly that his life is actually just beginning and he has decided to take it in this particular direction. This comes a bit shy of throwing stones at the sun. It’s madness.

    This young man proves what we have consistently maintained on this column: that there is nothing wrong with our young ones that twisting the parents’ heads around a bit will not fix. In short, the parents are the things wrong with the children in over ninety per cent of cases. This child would not have had the temerity to affront the ears and eyes of Nigerians with this N900m obscenity if his parent had taken him aside and taught him properly: shshsh, let us keep our stolen monies secret in these days of EFCC!

    Better still, I would have wished that the parents had taken him aside and taught him that with great privileges come great responsibilities. Too many emperor-governors/presidents, ministers and senators in Nigeria are teaching their young what ex-Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, is said to have taught Nigerians: that money is not our problem but how to spend it. Not long ago, we heard a young one had posted pictures of the interiors of his father’s house abroad on the internet. It was supposed to incite our envy and it did.

    Now, we have young ones frolicking around the world like lion cubs without manes spending in ignorance what does not belong to their fathers. In the process, of course, many of them have been killed, gaoled, or drugged out of their heads. Blame the parents.

    Parents have the responsibility of throwing their young ones into the arena of work. I’ve told you this story before but I’ll tell it again. A man watched as a baby bird fell out of a tree in his yard. Looking up, he saw the nest and returned the wee thing there. Within minutes, the baby was back on the ground. Once again, he picked it up and returned it. Again, he saw that the baby was on the ground. He then looked and saw Mama Bird hovering nearby. Then, he understood that the bird was being taught to fly. He then told his young one: Go get a job! A job before a reward is nature’s way.

    Our emperor-governors/presidents/minsters/senators, however, put money in their young ones’ hands before jobs. Presumably, the young man in our story has never been introduced to the world of work, yet he has been introduced into the world of such big spending many countries are hissing in envy. Now, how do you expect him to respect work? No one who has worked a day in his life will put down that sum on an article that can crash, be stolen or can kill.

    It is strange though that our ex-president is just mentioning that Nigerian governors are living very extravagant lives. It went on just as much in his time. There were rumours that some states’ structures built with state funds were converted to the governors’ personal ownership. There were rumours of governors who built state of the art hospitals outside the country with their states’ funds. There was another who was robbed of suitcases containing millions of Naira… Indeed, he would have better security reports of all that went on in his time than me…

    These stories we have been dealing with just show what we do with stolen money; and that our goggled gods are a little short on the maturity needed to wear the mantle of office. Without this necessary item, people will easily fall into pomposity, dark goggles, arrogance, indiscretions, mismanagement of office and children, etc. And they would not know the difference.

    The Nigerian story is really pathetic. Since independence, nearly everyone (not all certainly) sent to rescue the country has turned around to desecrate her. It’s a little like someone kitted out to spring someone out of prison, but who gets there and builds a stronger and tighter iron grill to barricade the fellow in. This is exactly what Nigeria’s goggled gods are doing: barricading the country behind poverty lines by giving their children the country’s money to purchase trivial, intangible and inconsequential N900m cars. May God help us!

  • Of truth-sayers and gain-sayers

    Of truth-sayers and gain-sayers

    I had hoped that realization would dawn on the National Assembly to the crazed state of the economy, and sanity would prevail. What the assembly wants to do, however, is a sign of the failure of sanity. 

    I would have said that ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo is a great letter writer but for the little fact that he is yet to write to me. I guess though that he would not because, as you may have noticed, he writes mainly to accuse. He wrote Abacha when that one was head of state. Was it a love letter now, I can’t remember. But I don’t think there was any love lost between the two of them, what with one of them’s back being used as an ironing board and all, so it could hardly have been rrrrrove!

    I can’t remember now if he wrote Yar’adua but he certainly wrote Jonathan, more than once. Were those letters dripping with love or hate now? Oh dear, this porous brain of mine is a real let-down these days because I have trouble remembering the trail of my thoughts. So, what were we talking about again? Oh yes, Obj.’s penchant for letter writing. Yeah, you could say his pen was so very busy he looked for people to write to. How on earth he has consistently missed my name among the privileged ones to receive his missives is not clear to me. You think maybe it has something to do with my name? I could change it…

    Anyway, Nigeria’s national assembly are currently on the hit list of those at the receiving end of Obj.’s love letters. The lucky devils, eh? Oh yes, they are love letters; you know, the kind that says ‘It is because I love you that I am telling you the truth about yourself – you’re selfish, rude and stupid!’ Thank God for love!

    So, Obj. the truth-sayer wrote to the assembly and told them a few home truths about themselves (which they did not know before) and about the nation (which they knew already). He told the senators and Representatives that they are greedy, selfish … but you already know the rest (i.e., the contents of the letter).

    I don’t want to appraise the contents of the letter here. I believe that there are others who can do that infinitely better than I can mainly because they are more intelligent, savvy and can sling insults and praise better than me. I intend to confine myself to just a few tasks here. First, I want to praise Caesar, then I want to bury Caesar, then I want to try Caesar for carrying stories.

    First, let me tell you about Caesar. That man had great power as the Consul of the Roman Republic, just like our Obj., though not in Rome. Actually, you are free to substitute Obj.’s name as we go along if you like, because, like Obj., he was a general and a penner of prose. Look at that, so many similarities. Anyway, insofar as he could set all records straight, especially the records of his beliefs, thoughts and campaigns, he was indeed praiseworthy.

    In a similar way, Obj. has tried to set the records straight for us by drawing attention to the hearts of the assembly members. What he said in effect is that their hearts are not in the right place as far as the nation is concerned. They are, said he, spending more than the nation is earning. They are, further said he more or less, heartless in refusing to align themselves with the nation’s dire straits. Did he say it well? I heard this morning on radio that even his erstwhile gainsayer (someone who says, ‘I object!’ to everyone’s embarrassed hearing) nodded his head and said, ‘Well said, very well said indeed’. He said that. Twice I heard it. Let’s move on, oink, oink.

    While Caesar can be said to be truly dead and buried, thankfully Obj. is not. So the comparison breaks down there. However, let us see what we want to bury in the man. Truly, I don’t know much about the man Obj. but I hear he tells people the truth about themselves, out of love. I hear he looks people in the eye and tells them they are selfish, rude and stupid; a real truth-sayer, that one.

    So, it appears the nation was not quite surprised when he told the truth about the National Assembly. Now, do we want to bury that truth-saying aspect of him? I guess not. I guess we want more truth-sayers in the land. Indeed, if there were more of them, my guess is that we’d be in less murky waters than we are in right now. And we are in such murky waters it looks like we are in some quick-sinking quicksand (stop objecting; this is no time to get technical). We hardly have any money to eat as a nation; people are earning less than fifty dollars a month and here are their honourable selves planning on buying new cars for oversight functions, some say even planning to buy new cars for each member, and some even going further to say even paying themselves higher than they are supposed to. Seriously?!!

    In response, I assure you, some among the assembly have tried Obj. on their own. They have weighed him in the balance and have found him altogether wanting. They stated indeed that Obj. was trying to ‘distract’ them. This is curious, you’ll agree, because I asked, distract them from what exactly and how? Well, as usual, I’m full of more questions than answers. They accused him of being mistaken in the identity of those to receive his missive this time. Then, they accused him of trying to divert attention away from any investigation into some of the scandals of his own time. I don’t know if they are truth-sayers here or gainsayers; but they have not given any cogent reasons for the proposed expenditure.

    Truth here is, I’m the one putting someone on trial and it’s someone else flinging out the charges. As for me, my own accusation is this: why did Obj. not see to the completion of the Oyo-Ogbomoso new express road before he left office? Why, oh why? Since he would not write to me, I have promised myself that I would one day write my own missive to ask him this.

    In the meantime, many, I understand, have been calling for the heads of the assemblymen. Since these men (and women too) have represented mainly a drain in the purse of the nation, many people have reasoned, and since very few really understand their duties, let us do away with them altogether, they have cried.

    While I am as grieved as anyone that the nation’s representative assembly could plan to go on this kind of spending spree when the nation is going a-borrowing to finance its budget, I am really reluctant to join my voice with the ‘off-with-their-heads’ group. This is not Alice in Wonderland. Though I had long since been afraid it would come to this, I had hoped that realization would dawn on the assembly to the crazed state of the economy, and sanity would prevail. What the assembly wants to do, however, is a sign of the failure of sanity. In the assembly then, reason seems to be on vacation.

    But reason must come back. There are many states, dear Senators and Honourables, where many, many workers have not received salaries for months. Unfortunately, the workers have not been the only ones carrying this cross. Listen, just this afternoon, someone peddling a tray of bananas was grumbling to my hearing that since salaries stopped being paid, she had stopped having good sales. She said she was on the verge of folding up her banana business. She was therefore praying that workers would be paid soon so that she could have good sales again. In this situation, dear truth-sayers and gainsayers, please let us be reasonable about this proposed expenditure.

     

  • Now that kidnapping is a growing trade…

    I am just wondering why we would whisper about kidnappers instead of pouncing on them and checking their brains. I think there should be some police inquiry into our own cowardly brains.

    A story was told some weeks ago of how someone travelling in a car through a town in Kogi State found himself stopped by some gang or the other. The gang was courteous to him. They told him not to panic; they were not armed robbers, just kidnappers. And they took him away. According to the story, his family and associates had to ransom him with the sum of N1m or so. You can best imagine if his family could not lay hands on that sum.

    Three things immediately struck me in that story. The first is the scary fact that freedom is costly. Can you just put a price on your being able to do your most hateful activity (going to work), visit your favourite restaurant (for your favourite meal) and receive your visitors (even if they are your enemies) in perfect freedom? I cannot put a price on the freedom I have to beg, coax or cajole my car to start in the morning. Come to think of it, I have never really appreciated the freedom I have to take my pittance to the market to haggle, sweet-talk or even quarrel my way through the stall-keepers to get something, no matter how small, to feed the family with. And there I was, thinking that not having enough money to do all the things I want to do was the costliest thing on earth; I now know that not having the freedom to not do them can be costlier. Get my drift? Most especially, not having the freedom to ‘go’ (you know where) without someone’s permission or without being watched is unthinkable!

     The second is the scarier fact that some people have now decided to build their own industry using your freedom and my freedom as their raw material. It’s a vexing trade. I ask you, what is this world coming to that someone cannot build his industry around iron ore, coal, crude oil, tar, granite, marble, soil, yams, beans, flour, cow bones, etc., but must go after my freedom? The individual must be sick, I tell you. My worry now is that the number of those individuals is increasing alarmingly because incidences of kidnapping seem to be spreading. When someone said that kidnapping is presently the fastest growing industry in Nigeria, I said, ehn, all the while, I thought it was politics.

    I tell you; it’s getting now that kidnappers should be taxed if we cannot send them to Hades. I told you a story I heard the other day about a man who put down a hefty amount of money at a launching. Everyone wondered where the money came from, until someone whispered, don’t you know he’s a kidnapper?  I heard (don’t mind me, I am always hearing things!) the other day that someone was filling out a form and when he came to the column listing occupations, he was miffed to find that his had not been listed. He then complained to the official who asked him what his profession was, making ready to include it on the form. When the complainant replied ‘armed robbery’ boasting that he was even ready to pay tax, the official referred him to his immediate boss. I think I would do the same thing, coward that I am.

     Third is the scariest fact that the state (and I mean the police) is just looking on as these things are happenings, doing little. Honestly, I find this baffling. The other day, I heard a news report on the radio that recounted how some vigilant people in a neighbourhood had apprehended a would-be kidnapper in the act of taking someone. Triumphant, the group had led the culprit to the police station to report the matter. Rather than investigate, however, the police were said to have informed the crowd that the culprit was a mad man and should be let go, and he was let go. I ask you!

    As a matter of course, how many kidnappers have really been arraigned even in the face of overwhelming evidence? Very few; most appear to have got away with their loot, and have obviously trained others. Now, there are cells upon cells of this… this… horrible trade everywhere, even in the villages. In some Kogi State villages now, I hear that people don’t sleep with both eyes open anymore; they have now taken to shouting ‘My children are not rich, my children are not rich, don’t kidnap me, no one will pay you’ to passers-by. The reason is that many people are said to have been picked up from their homes, not by security men (then you know they are at least secure), but by fellow citizens who prefer not to work, yet want to have loads of money by depriving others of their freedom.

    I think that was the thought behind a warning said to have been issued by the NUT. I heard a news item on the radio in which a functionary of the NUT was said to have issued a warning cry that kidnappers should no longer kidnap teachers; they would not get any money. Reason? Teachers are already living in penury from unpaid salaries and emoluments. I think this followed the story of a teacher who was kidnapped as he travelled to Abuja. I heard say that he was let go though when the abductors realised they had taken a teacher.

    When I heard that news item, I immediately asked, should anyone be kidnapped at all, whether teacher or student or lawyer or physician or president or unemployed? What in heaven’s name has one’s profession got to do with one’s kidnap value? As a matter of fact, I did not know that anyone had kidnap value. I have tried to calculate my kidnap value as a freelance writer, and it is sadly not much; I guess I won’t even be worth the loaf of bread they will need to feed me with. Imagine that! What is this world coming to, that I can’t even command a handsome ransom with all my words, words, words?

    Speaking of professional value; there was a time when doctors were being spirited away in Edo State by the minute and we all thought they were being taken away to help robbers with some medical problems. When it persisted, I honestly began to suspect that someone really had it bad to study medicine but failing to do so, had settled for just gazing at them. What better way than to kidnap them? Now, it’s sad to know that all this while, them kidnappers were really after the doctors’ supremo gelatos.

    My worry now is that, for some unknown reasons, the once peaceful Kogi State seems to have become hot news, not just in the matter of the electoral confusion caused by a candidate’s sudden death but more now in the matter of people building an industry out of kidnapping. First, there was a justice who was kept against his will for many days by kidnappers until he was ransomed. Then there was the story recounted above, and many more. Now, I hear that even petty traders eking out a living among the rustics are made to part with their hard earned money to ransom their family members from the holds of these get-rich-quicks.

    I know, people are kidnapped in different parts of this country for various reasons including instant money (it is no more in fashion to just ‘use people for money’) or being sold to be trafficked across the world. Busloads of people are said to be diverted to dens used by others for satanic rituals. I am just wondering why we would whisper about kidnappers instead of pouncing on them and checking their brains. I think there should be some police inquiry into our own cowardly brains.

  • God Will Help Us!

    The dialogue ended with no one proffering solutions, so someone sighed and said pontifically, God Will Help Us. I had a mind to ask if he had God’s word on the matter, just to be sure, like.

    In the days just gone by, the entire nation has been suffused in laughter, incredulity and pain. And so, our vision is somewhat clouded this week by matters such as the ‘missing 2016 national budget’ document, the $2.1bn armsgate, the needless pillages that go on in this country daily on Nigerian roads and in government, and so on. All of these heavily hang upon us, even as we take a somewhat somber look at our national philosophy.

    You know what that is, don’t you? It’s that field of study which opens unto you other fields of study without providing any definite answer to those fields of study that led you to that field of study, get my drift? What I love about it is that it is the only subject where you are permitted to ask more questions than you can give answers to, especially in examination scripts. For example, how do you know that you know what you know? Beautiful.

    This system is fraught with dangers, of course. Whenever steam threatens to blow out of my ears because someone’s action or inaction has lit of fire of rage inside of me, I treat myself with a simple mental massage: the action never really happened; I just imagined it. Better still: he/she does not really exist; I have been imagining him/her all along. The draw back in this law however surfaces when it is time to collect the monthly housekeeping allowance in the house. He just may decide that my dainty outstretched palm does not really exist; he is only imagining it.

    This yo-yo system of questioning does not happen often in the sciences, for there, you cannot afford too many questions. Imagine what would happen if scientists monitoring the landing of a space craft, which they have just sent to space, begin to ask themselves such questions as ‘But how do we know that the craft we have sent really exists? What if we have merely imagined it?’ Were that to happen, I assure you there’ll be nothing to land in but hot soup.

    In most countries, goals are purposed and designed for the common good such that even the littlest person, e.g. the president’s little old lady, is given an identity within the confines of that philosophy. Call that philosophy an ideology if you like, and you will come up with different practices in different parts of the world that sound very much like what I am talking about. And so, you may come across the Welfarist hues of the West which means essentially that even the president may benefit from social welfare, no matter how badly he governs. The Socialist hues of the East practically guarantees that a president is obliged to share his palace with the people for the common good, never mind that no good is ever common. In the South of the world, however, the philosophy often disseminated is called ‘God Will Help Us’. Naturally. It means essentially that we, the people, do not get the opportunity to lift a finger to do anything for ourselves.

    When someone sermonized not too long ago that we should Ask Nothing of God, we all listened. Honest. But we promptly went back on our knees to do what we know best, Ask Everything of God. Why not?! Because He is about the only person we know who can make the oil to flow under our parcel of earth, provide buyers for the crude and then provide those who sell the refined stuff back to us. He is the one who helps us; and yes, he even brings food right round to us. God does help us.

    The other day, I watched in fascination as a large alligator slowly ambulated across the road. Many drivers pulled off the road on the instant, left their cars running and dived into the bush after the animal. I could not believe it, but close to eleven cars did the instantaneous parking thing that day…I then watched from afar as hefty men pulled at the retreating tail of the poor thing. Was that hunger or something? God Will Help Us!

    While traversing the land, you are assaulted by evidences of religiosity. When you call a price that the market woman does not want to hear, she tells you, ‘God forbid it’. When you accuse an artisan of cheating on the materials he has used on your work, he swears that ‘God is his witness’ if he has done any such thing. When a Nigerian asks you to rub his palm with a certain sum, he swears that but for the fact that he fears God, he should not do for you what he is about to do even if it is his job to do it. Do you now wonder why God is so busy? He has to keep tag of the things we ask him to forbid, reject, witness, bind, loose, claim, accept, and decree, even our non-military decrees. God Will Help Us!

    The other day, someone parked his car right in the middle of the turning to my house. Why? Just to enable him purchase an item from a nearby kiosk. This meant of course that no car could enter the street via that turning. A conversation then ensued among the very indignant occupants of my own car to wit: Nigerians are very selfish and inconsiderate; everyone thinks of himself only in every matter particular; no one has any respect for the law; yet Nigerians perform quite well in other climes. I only half-listened to all these, for I was more hungry than interested after a long day’s work. After proselytizing endlessly on the matter, the dialogue ended with no proffered solutions, so someone heaved a deep sigh, exhaled deeply and said pontifically, God Will Help Us. He said it with such authority I had a mind to ask if he had God’s word on the matter, just to be sure, like, so I could stop worrying about the whole thing.

    At yet another conversation, I listened and this time participated as the nation’s woes were dissected to wit: our president listens to no man but follows only his own counsel; everyone carries on national affairs without any thought for the children unborn; the fact that stealing is reducing the country to shreds without any intervention; and the fact that everyone knows the truth about this country but no one is willing to say it because those in powerful places just do not want to know. Then we sighed and exhaled: God Will Help Us. This time, I did ask if anyone had God’s assurances on the matter. No one answered me.

        Sometimes, I have listened to one gory tale after another of armed attacks on defenseless people who are merely in the business of transporting themselves painfully from one day onto the next with very little hope on the painful way. I listen and hear of a female youth whose fingers were laid on the tarmac and chopped off for not yielding what she had on her to highway robbers. God Will Help Us.

         Events since independence have reinforced more and more the fact that Nigeria as an entity remains only in the mind of Lord Luggard. That is why no one seems to be taking the issue of governance too seriously. And so, when disaster throws its grenades at us, we move from wringing our hands, to packing them on top of our heads, to dancing around the problem in circles, and then to waxing philosophical: God will help us. What the… Why, even in the matter of someone using N2.1bn for political advertisements, God Must Help Us.

     

    Note: This is an edited version of an article first published in 2006.

  • Now then, where is the ‘Happy’ in the Happy New Year?

    To start with, how on earth can we greet anyone Happy New Year, when there are thousands of nuclear arsenals in several countries pointed at every single throat on the planet and controlled by psychopaths and sociopaths who go by the misleading epithet of leaders?

    I’m glad you breasted the tape into this New Year. I did too, but only just. I am tempted to ask how you did it. I know, many of you will say you just slept, woke up and found yourself in the New Year. Someone said he slept, woke up and thought he found himself in December again. Honestly, what with all these fuel shortages, bombs going off anyhow, unpaid salaries and rising cost of living, can you blame him?

    Everywhere I go now (and I bet this is also happening to you), people greet me, Happy New Year, till it has felt like people are throwing pebbles at me! Not the ones that come from you though, dear reader; those ones I really appreciate. Generally, my greeters are so cheery and all smiles; and I am thinking, hey, they really mean it! They are happy because they have no problems; poor lucky blokes!; they actually wish me to be happy!

    Seriously, my face is practically pockmarked right now with all the pebbles of New Year greetings. Yet, I am convinced that most people really have no idea what that greeting is saying. If they did, methinks they would not choose to say it; they would rather choose to greet their friends with perhaps ‘Kind New Year’ or ‘Hopeful New Year’! Those ones capture more the desires and dreams of most of parts of me right now. But throwing out Happy New Year like confetti at a wedding is getting to be a little too much for my stomach these days.

    According to my research and you can join me on that search on the net, a Dean Burnett somehow beat me to the tape of questioning where the ‘happy’ in Happy New Year comes from. He said ‘…The greeting is illogical and unreasonable … a more elaborate form of the statement would be “the New Year is here, and it is a happy one” … (It is often) shouted a few seconds after midnight … by people … intoxicated enough to believe they are (happy)’. So he asks, how can one decide that the remaining 31, 557, 590 seconds of the year will be happy when you subtract the ten seconds it will take you to say those words to someone? The problem, dear reader, is that after those ten seconds, the New Year remains but the ‘happy’ somehow evaporates. Where does it go to?

    Before we decide that, let me quote what Einstein is reported to have said when consoling the family of a deceased friend: ‘For us who are convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.’ Like I said, I am only reporting and I certainly do not want to get into an argument with the old man or my physicist friends. I will not win and I like them too much to drop them.

    So, on the one hand, one might be tempted to agree with Einstein, as I have been hard put to it to find the difference between this exact moment yesterday, today, last year, or even tomorrow without their corresponding events which may now make them to be relative to the other. In short, all of time is but one big moment. Seriously? Yet, on the other hand, there are my many wrinkles to show that if something is not passing by me, I am at least passing through it, cause I sure cannot account for them else — my diet; the climate? Nah, it’s the time of life all right, and if it were all but one gigantic moment, believe me I would, like the Biblical Joshua, ask it to stand still – in my youth of course. I tell you, these blessed wrinkles are real enough.

    So, how did we get into this argument? Oh yeah, we were looking for the blunderer who initiated the Happy New Year greeting. Let’s see who the first optimist was to say it. Would you believe it – I cannot find the guy; he is lost to history. All I can find is the history of the change of the Roman calendar to the Julian calendar and the institution of the January 1 date as the beginning of the year… Lucky for that optimist; I would have hung, quartered and executed him/her all over again for being so intrepid as to give us a greeting that is at once ‘illogical and unreasonable’, not to add annoying.

    To start with, how on earth can we greet anyone Happy New Year, when there are thousands of nuclear arsenals in several countries pointed at every single throat on the planet and controlled by psychopaths and sociopaths who go by the misleading epithet of leaders? How can anyone greet anyone else Happy New Year when people are being murdered, kidnapped, robbed, or destroyed all over the world even as we speak (so to say)? How can we shout Happy New Year when fuel queues are killing off old men and women in Nigeria?

    Yes, everything around us has successfully conspired to remove the ‘happy’ in Happy New Year. Let’s just forget it and find other prefixes that go with the times. Let’s see now. I can wish you a Hopeful New Year – you’ll need plenty of it. You’ll need hope to overcome this acute fuel shortage. When it started, no one knew what was happening. All we heard was that some monies were not paid, some monies were paid; there was panic buying; there was no panic buying; but we had no fuel. So, since we do not know where we are coming from, there is every likelihood we might not know where we are going or when we will get there. Reader, you and I will need all the hope to believe that this too shall pass.

    I also wish you a Kind New Year! Too many people will greet you Happy New Year these days and stick a knife at your back next minute. Oh, yes sir; the petrol attendant who sells you short of the amount you ordered; the market woman who has a false bottom on her measuring can; the policeman who uses his gun to stop you on the road and coax his ‘season’s greetings compensation’ from you; the civil servant who ‘kidnaps’ your file that you must ransom from under his feet beneath the carpet; the nurse who is busy attending to her nails or boyfriend, or the government doctor busy at his own hospital in the city, while you are languishing on the government bed… Need I go on?  All of these are knives daily thrust into our backs in this country.

    Above all, I wish you a Peaceful New Year! Ah! That is the neat one, you’ll say. What with boko haram in the north, Biafra agitators in the east, and the combined team of police and army running from one end of the country to the other these days, our lives appear to be worth only as many as the psalms we can recite each morning. I wish you the kind of calm you can only get from knowing that you can’t die twice, even though they say that cowards die many times before their death. I honestly do not know what that means, but look, if you and I are still alive now in spite of Jonathan’s rule or misrule, Buhari’s clean up campaign, Dasukigate, boko haram’s suicide games, Biafra games, Aregbesola’s no-salary games, etc., chances are we will still be alive sixty or more years to come. Can I hear a loud ‘Amen’ to that? Thank you.

    May the year bring you love from many kind hearts.