The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • The beautiful, the ridiculous and the sublime

    OYINKAN MEDUBI

     

     

    What then are we doing practicing democracy when 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?

     

    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 a Senator from Rivers State was once flown abroad for medical attention after being allegedly shot by the police with rubber bullets! I ask you!

    It’s people like these – the one who shot him, the person that was shot and who agreed to be flown abroad, 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. Our political assemblies are not only the highest paid in the world, many of the members are also said to help themselves to the juiciest contracts in the land, e.g., according to NDDC reports. It’s a little like the head of a family who persists in searching for the cure for hunger by locking himself in the kitchen purportedly conducting one experiment after the other, leaving the rest of the family in hunger. For all he cares, they can be left to feel like orphans. I think he actually believes he is childless himself.

    Anyway, I just hope this politics will not be the death of this country – through laughter. Take a news report I read recently which ‘flabber-whelmed and over-gasted’ me. It said that the council of the University of Lagos decided to remove the Vice-Chancellor of the institution for reasons best known to them. This not only completely usurps the power of the Visitor of the university, the president of the country, who appoints and dismisses, it makes nonsense of the rule of law.

    There is more. Another news report is hinting that the fine for ‘hate speech’, which had been hiked from half a million to five million Naira, might have been at the instance of a single person in government. Again, the whole hate speech thing makes nonsense of the law which says that any aggrieved party can head to the court and sue for libel or defamation of character. Why then is everyone taking the law into their own hands?

    It just proves two things. The first is what many people have said before: that this country has NO POLITICAL CLASS. What then are we doing practicing democracy when 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 a class of egomaniacs and marauders.

    The only problem is that while we are laughing, like Nero, Nigeria is burning with issues of insecurity, hunger, ignorance and disease. 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 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 theirs too.

     

    ***This modified article was first published in April, 2014.

     

  • In a fair world…

    In a fair world…

    Much of what the federal government is holding onto now, like a baby toits toy, should rather go to regional governments, unless it is having something more awful in mind.

    By Oyinkan Medubi

    The days are coming on me something thick now they make me feel like one beleaguered nation, and I am thinking this is not fair. When the IBEDC-enforced darkness is not enveloping me in one cold, dark embrace, the government is conspiring to assassinate me by sending the sniffles through the weather. So, everyone I know is going around now sniffling and coughing and sneezing into one handkerchief or the other. Luckily, the government has not got me yet.

    To add to my embarrassment, I find that the price of the dollar is now rising like some bread dough filled with yeast so that I can no longer buy a bunch of plantain for the old expensive price. More, the price of fuel is taking a climbing hike into the mountains until I am almost using my mouth to suck the last drop out of the pump to get value for my puny money.

    More worrisome though, I find that everyone I know is no longer also going around complaining about the country. And that’s a bad sign. Previously, where two or three were gathered together, the country’s deeds and misdeeds were sure to be in their midst. Now, it is either that people are past talking about the country or they don’t know where the talk should begin. Now, I find that when they do talk they always start from this angle: ‘We don’t know where to turn now. PDP ate the country dry; but APC is adding insecurity. And the people suffer on.’ Hmm.

    Under the circumstances, though, it is difficult to cut anyone or government any slack when news  reports keep telling  us things like  ‘people are now stealing  pots of amala  off  stoves’,‘families are stealing pots of amala only to eat it with palm oil’, ‘people are stealing bags of semovita off other people’s stalls to feed their families with,’ ‘families are now going three days without getting a single meal to eat’, ‘bomb kills fifty’, ‘herdsmen kill family of six’, ‘bandits rape and kill’…

    I think we all know the country has become ungainly, tottering on its unstable legs and undulating like a drunken cow. However, it’s our failure to do something about this clumsy giant of a country before now is what has brought us to this sorry pass. I have always been a firm believer in the axiom that what a people wants, a people gets. The citizens of this country have not been fair to themselves and the rest of the world in not making up their minds early enough just what to do with the strange baby the colonial power handed over to them. Should they smother it quickly before it embarrassed itself and the rest of the world like you would like to do to some of your relatives? Or, should they adjust and settle down to negotiate for more space from the world?

    They did neither. They, instead, waited and watched to see how it would grow or die a natural death. Unfortunately, it has done neither too; it has just been running round and round in circles, like a dog chasing its own tail. So, one way or the other, Nigeria is embarrassing itself. What do you mean ‘how’?

    Well, first, there was corruption, then there was the Niger Delta (ND) problem, then there was Boko haram, and then there was corruption again, then the ND militants again, then unpaid salaries,   then father-son politician-thieves,   then ever-shrinking housekeeping funds,   then corruption…! Me, I have taken a look at all these, thrown up my hands and have exclaimed, I’m getting off this country as soon as I finish my dinner. Who needs all these aggravations? Not soother people; they are thinking something can still be done. I would envy them if I didn’t think they were such optimists.

    And what are they thinking? Some are thinking of restructuring. They say, and we all know and have said, that the centre is too strong, inept, inefficient and ineffective and selfish and tilted. Actually, one is enough to kill it, but we need all six adjectives. So, they also say that because of the powerful centre,  assets end up being unfairly distributed. The ND region,  they say, is a veritable source of weeping and gnashing of teeth for its awfulness. Naturally,  that kind of neglect and others leave the others aggrieved and discontented. This discontent, they say, is what erupts mostly into militancy.

    Restructuring, people say, would involve redefining the way this country is run. Mostly, running everything from the centre does not pay, just like crime. It does not allow individual components to grow at their own pace. Incredible amounts of talents are allowed to go to waste because of the present clumsy arrangement. States are financially hampered and not allowed to do so many things, including have their own police or even sing, and that is why many of them are nigh comatose now and can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

    Well, that sort of leaves me wondering, how come then that so many of them are able to purchase private jets?   In fact,   someone told me that in the heydays of the   Jonathan era, subvention collection time of the month was also a private jet convention time as state governors flaunted and compared notes on their private flying toys in   Abuja.   So,   if they were that hampered, how did they manage to purchase those toys?

    Don’t get me wrong; I am for restructuring if this entity is not to be dissolved altogether since it is clear we cannot go on reeling left, then right, then left, forever. However, devolving power from the centre to the states would simply be moving the poor masses from the gripping arms of one drunk to another brute. There would be too many emergency dictators.

    This I guess is why some people feel that the problem of the country has been poor leadership. The country has been rather unlucky in her choice of leaders, rather like one being unlucky in love. Since her birth, she has been blessed mostly with a succession of the poorest materials as head,   with the occasional exception along the way.   For this rudderlessness, lawlessness has been allowed to reign, sacred cows have been allowed to roam, literally. Now,you and I have to sleep with two eyes open.

    In a fair world, many of the people Nigeria parades as heads should never have smelt power. I would list them now but for the fact that they have not struck any deals with me yet, unlike the federal government’s never-coming list of alleged looters. When we talk, I assure you, you will hear.

    So, in a fair world, the head of the country will always be a man of vision who will know that every region needs development, not palliatives. As someone said, negotiate with criminals today and tomorrow, another group will come up.

    In a fair world, I tell you, I would be the Queen of the richest country on earth, and a small dispensable item like a handkerchief would not have twelve letters while the all indispensable dress would have five letters only. It’s not a fair world, period.

    Clearly, restructuring is the answer. Much of what the federal government is holding onto now,   like a   baby to its toy,   should rather go to regional governments,  unless it is having something more awful in mind. An efficient region is a lot more effective governmentally than an efficient state. It would keep these mini dictators in check. It would also be a way of bringing the centre closer to the people and the country can stop chasing her own tail.

    • This updated article was first published in June 2016.
  • Gaining perspective

    Gaining perspective

    Oyinkan Medubi

    Gaining perspective requires one to take in the entire picture … Do (Nigerian politicians) have the whole picture of the place of their country in the world in their view? That’s a capital NO … Too many of them are too easily satisfied with obtaining and enjoying material gains, and making their children live like princes at home and abroad.

    One foreign commentator said long ago that the sad thing about

    Africa is that her political leaders never seem to get the total picture: that they are expected to lift their countries up by leading the development drive. I added that the leaders apparently don’t even want to get the total picture, until they reach their deathbeds.

    Oh, you should visit some deathbeds — full of stories, confessions, or even fights with the Grimm Reaper – you know, that skeleton that myths say goes around with a scythe. So, like Sisyphus, people scream, ‘it is not yet my time; I have just been made a senator! It is not fair; can’t you take someone else who is poor?’ They might even attempt to bribe their way out, trust your Nigerian. So, most go protesting noisily, like Italian tenors forced to sing operas they hate. Very few go peaceably, like.

    For many, especially those who have held one public post or the other, the deathbed is the time they suddenly become full of regrets about the opportunities and chances they squandered and frittered away in mundane bodily enjoyments or squabbles about trifles which do nothing for their communities, nation and the world. I say, that is when you hear them mutter with hoarse, dying lips, ‘Please, help me up so that I can write a check of restitution to the people…’

    Unfortunately, that is also the time that relatives in the form of children, nephews, nieces, friends, helpers, hangers on, strangers, etc., are many, and extra sharp. They are also especially cooperative with each other. Jointly, without any prompting, they hold the dying one down firmly on the bed and ask him to get some rest while they also hold the check as far from him as possible. Restitution ko, restitution ni, they mutter as the unearned, stolen billions fall on their laps.

    The reason, like you and I already know, is that more than ninety-nine per cent of Africa’s political leaders seek posts for the sake of it, and yes, to escape poverty. Who can blame anyone for wanting to escape poverty? The only problem now is that there is this vast field of socio-politico-economic development challenges gripping the average African, and our politicians are only stopping at helping themselves, thus recycling the problem. I believe the main reason is this failure to gain the correct perspective.

    It’s easy to gain perspective. Let me illustrate. Once, this very busy motorist was stopped at a traffic point for exceeding the speed limit permitted on that road. After the policeman had told him the reason why he stopped him, the motorist was incredulous. ‘The earth is going round the sun at the velocity of 107,000 km/hr, and the solar system is moving round the galaxy at 901,000 km/hr; and you are booking me for driving at 60 km/hr in a 45 km/hr zone? Are you serious?’ Now, that is what I call perspective.

    Let me tell you what someone else did. This youngster had failed mathematics, and some other subjects. In fact, his report card appeared to be bad. Well, he took it to his dad and began the conversation. ‘Dad, what would you do if I had a life-threatening sickness?’ His father said he would have to run around getting the best medical help he could find; and that would naturally take a toll on his and the mother’s own health. ‘Would you have the money for it?’ Well, there is the insurance and the family savings, but we cannot know how far both will go. The father then became suspicious. Are you trying to tell me something? Do you have a life-threatening disease? The young one replied that what he was about to tell him should be put in its proper perspective, considering that he, the son, was thankfully in good health and sound mind.

    Yes, you are right. The life of the country is hanging in the balance, the country has been drained of all her resources by unconscionable politicians and here I am running around with my usual jokes. Never mind. The point we are making is that gaining perspective requires one to take in the entire picture. Take Nigeria and her politicians as an example. Do they have the whole picture of the place of their country in the world in their view? I would say a capital NO. If they did, they would know that they have an enormous task before them. Too many of them, however, are too easily satisfied with obtaining and enjoying material gains, and making their children live like princes at home and abroad.

    If our politicians had a true perspective of their role as the nation’s leaders, I do not think the assembly would persist in cornering more than half of the nation’s resources to their corners. I do not think any politician would consider the life of someone else so worthless that it can be sacrificed ritually or metaphorically to their ambition. I do not think that any politician would actively seek to promote two nations in one Nigeria: the nation of the haves who trample on the rights of others, and the nation of the have nots whose rights are trampled upon. I say, if Nigerian politicians had a true perspective of their role, the problems precipitated by wanton spending would not exist.

    Let’s wax a little philosophical here. I have always held that there are three basic things a man would do well to remember that he can choose: to live well (in contentment), to do his best (in strength), and to die well (in peace). Don’t bring up any objections now; just accept. Thank you.

    It will not do to begin to seek to write a check of restitution on one’s deathbed to the millions of Nigerians that have been defrauded by one’s diversionary antics. Many have sought, in vain, to return such stolen opportunities (whether in funds, positions or objects) because they have caused greater losses in the end. Too late, they realised that nature is one wicked paymaster: what is taken by force or contrivance, nature will deduct by force or contrivance.

    It is important that each Nigerian, to the last man, bears the whole picture in mind. To seek the development of the entire landscape of Nigeria where everyone can have access to basic things that make life possible – affordable food, shelter and clothing – is the responsibility of everyone. It is important then that we all should seek to lift off the veils of religion, tribe or language which are hanging in front of all of us and determining our many actions.

    For instance, it has been documented that too many of the appointments made so far by the president have been of people from his corner of the earth. That should not be so because the corners missed out in appointments or opportunities are only several boko haram spots waiting to happen in future. As the father of all, the president is expected to ensure that no corner of the country is left behind.

    Gaining perspective begins when we realise that even the hottest ambitions still end on the deathbed; and many such beds are made hotter for the regrets that flow into them from lips confessing missed opportunities and wrong fisticuffs. As passing ships on this benighted earth, let us all, our politicians especially, get our perspectives right on the whole picture, which is to help the country gain earthly paradise.

     

    • First published 6th July, 2015.
  • The sum of our problems

    The sum of our problems

    Oyinkan Medubi

    I think if Nigerian men were aware that someone was keeping tabs on their performance between the sheets, they would concentrate less on stealing so much money and live a little more.

     

    It was rather heartening, I say rather heartening, to read something good about Nigeria for a change. When I read about the work of Dr. Samuel Achilefu that has led him into inventing the glasses that can ‘see’ cancer cells, I took courage.

    I say I took courage and picked up my heart from my boots. It made me believe indeed that better days may yet come in spite of the myriad of problems besetting the country.

    On any given day, you’re likely to wake up to all kinds of discouraging things about this country, Nigeria. Today (you can substitute with any day you like since my writing day may not coincide with your reading day), I say today, I woke up to read that socio-cultural groups are still butting heads, people are still beheading others (people are guessing it is likely to be for politicians) while the bad bandit killers are still roaming free on a killing spree (also for the same reason).

    Yep, the media also tell us that corruption is still wearing a cocky hat everywhere in the country; the government wants to prosecute people in the entertainment industry for shooting their videos abroad (not the bandits) and, wait for it, Nigerian women are not being satisfied by their men sexually!

    Clearly, after all is said and done about Nigeria’s problems, like someone always says, there’s usually a lot more said than done.

    All of us are at least agreed on the fact that these problems are man-made. In other words, they are problems that have been created as a result of the refusal by Nigerians to allow sanity and due process guide our national conduct.

    Take, as an instance, this problem of sexually dissatisfied Nigerian women, and you have the sum of all our problems.

    I mean, I have a few questions on the matter:

    1) Do the women know that they are being cheated? 2) Do the men know about the report?

    3) Do the men know that the women know that the cheating going on in the boardroom has extended to the bedroom?

    4) Do the men know that the women know that the men don’t care one way or the other? 5) Do the women even know that Nigeria is talking about restructuring right now?

    I think we need answers to these questions before we go on. Let me see if I can have a go at some of them.

    Well, to start with, let me categorically state that I am not qualified to meddle in this troublesome topic of the birds and the bees.

    Only the walls can, and let’s face it, walls can’t talk. The problem is that many men only like to talk about it, many women don’t.

    Then of course, many are too embarrassed to. Unfortunately, no topic is taboo on this column, including archeology, so I will just draw a modest veil over my face as I say my few words.

    Anyway, according to a recent report released on the level of sexual satisfaction experienced by women across the world, the Nigerian figures do not even appear.

    In other words, there are no statistics available for this country for one reason or the other. The simplest would be of course that they probably did not ask.

    The remotest would probably be closer to the state of affairs: that Nigerian men do not really task themselves too much over their partners’ interests in the matter. Please don’t flay me, I did not say it.

    Traditional books on the subject matter mentioned above have tended to portray the Nigerian man as being interested only in number one: himself.

    Hence, matters relating to taking time to please partners just do not come up. If they do, they come in the form of material goods bestowed on the woman to enhance and move her figure towards figure eight for more acts that please the man so that more goods can come for more enhancements…

    I think you get the drift. That is why men need to steal so much of the government’s money. Its again like the chicken and egg story of which came first. Come to think of it, life is a little like that: do you live to eat or eat to live and that kind of thing?

    Anyway, I doubt if many women are even aware that they are entitled to something called satisfaction in legitimate sexual encounters.

    Again, traditional books on the matter do not say much except that women live to please the men. I don’t really know what that means but I guess it refers to the fact that what happens between the sheets do not enter history books.

    They exist in the brains of the birds and the bees, not in the women’s. Most women just wake up one day and are handed their little bundles of joy.

    This is why women can never satisfactorily answer their children’s question: where do children come from?

    I think if Nigerian men were aware that someone was keeping tabs on their performance between the sheets, they would concentrate less on stealing so much money and live a little more.

    They would take the time to look into their partners’ faces and actually see a reflection of their reality. They would see the meaning of life and something of what it consists of: giving of oneself to others either by helping them, giving out substances, or just plain holding them in love.

    God forbid that a Nigerian man should hold his partner in love. He can hold her in yelling and beating, yes; in punching and pinching, yes; but in love? Nah!

    Yep, women are aware of the cheating going on in the boardroom, but I doubt if they knew it had anything to do with what goes on in the bedroom.

    For most women, life starts and stops in the shops, not in their wellbeing. That’s why many of them just chew the fat and take snuff. Life for Nigerian women is laying down of oneself for others to walk on, or lay on, as the case may be.

    This is why in many homes now, women are left holding and feeding the children while the men are free to live under the tree playing Ayo and swigging the 404 all day.

    So yep, the men know that the women don’t know they are being cheated. The women would have organized some kind of unionism on the subject: Association of Grossly Dissatisfied Women of Nigeria (AGRODIW).

    But what can the women do? Nothing. That’s why they have accepted their fate, picked up their children and headed to the farms, the shops, the roadside businesses of selling roast corn or plantain.

    They know the men don’t care. The men also know that the women know this. So, as the women have gone roasting corn, the men have buried their hands more in their agbada to play more Ayo or stayed longer in their offices to rise higher in the corporate ladder.

    So, with so much roasting to do, how on earth do you expect women to know that Nigeria is right now talking about restructuring, corruption, or even dissolution?

    Between the smoke, the sheets and the crying children, it’s all they can do to hang on to their lives for goodness’ sakes.

    Clearly, men need to step up on reducing their selfishness; and women also need to step up on reducing their selflessness.

    As one little girl said, they should both work hard to let everything be on the level. That’s right, let sanity and due process guide our national conduct in the matter of the birds and the bees so that Nigeria can feature in the next report.

     

    • First published on 23rd July, 2017.
  • Of popularity, notoriety and renown

    Of popularity, notoriety and renown

    By Oyinkan Medubi

    Loots do not make a man. They make a man a common thief, less than the soil underneath an honest labourer’s slippers

    The more I write these few lines for you each week, dear reader, the more I have found that the popularity ratings of the column have grown, not because the lines are good (if you say so, I don’t mind though) but because they are insistent on being heard. I thank you indeed for tolerating me the way you tolerate a mosquito. If you pretend long enough that it isn’t there, it might actually go away. So I find that many read me to get me out of their way and promptly settle down to ignore me. That is how the column has earned its popularity.

    Notoriety though I find comes mostly through politics. No, I don’t hate politics. I just don’t consider myself as one who is very politically conscious; I’m more like a political somnambulant. Half of the time, I have no idea how many states in Nigeria have governors. Heck, half of the time I have no idea how many states there are or who indeed is the governor of which state. The other day, I heard that someone called Gov. Something had been removed as governor of a state in Nigeria by a tribunal. Who, I asked, is that? Which State is he governing? Everyone looked at me like I had lost it. The economy has finally got to her; they were thinking; a governor is someone everyone should know. And I went away thinking, how do they know all these governors when I don’t even know what states are where?

    The problem, I reasoned, is that many of my fellow citizens do not set out in life to be anything more than notorious. The Nigerian seems to have one credo. Make some noise and people know you are there. Then, what happens? Oh, before you know it, you become the governor of a state, a Representative, a Senator, a principal, a…. On what platform? The platform of noisemaking! But what has he achieved?

    So, there you are, I do not know politics, just like I do not know maths. Why, the other day, someone gave me a poser that sounded more like one of those that Satan uses to determine those bound for hell with him. The test was that if someone were to offer to buy a goat for the sum of N2, 000.00 and the seller agreed to the price and the buyer brought out the money to pay for the goat but the goat leapt up and snatched the money and ate it, then how much would the goat have become? For reply, I made only one gesture: Cuckoo! Why should I give him the privilege to know I did not know maths, I reasoned?!

    So, you can imagine my horror when I heard some time ago that a senator had been taken to another court. I was really horrified. Please, I begged, don’t tell me I did not know that the senator was in one court in the first place. The fellow looked at me like I had mutated to some unrecognisable being. This is his second court and who knows how many more courts before he is through with us, I was told. I sat down in great mystery, wondering: where had I been all my life?

    Seriously, reader, you can’t blame me. I have been too busy tracking where all of Nigeria’s money had got to. First, I was reading that some two point something billion dollars had been shared among a few Nigerians who happened to belong to a political party. Naturally, my head had been swimming round those figures with me wiping my face many times a day to make sure I was not dreaming. Then I began to hear through confessions how the money was disbursed to various agents of the party; and the offers some of them made to return it, either through coercion or remorse. Naturally, I wiped my face some more trying to imagine which bank would contain enough storage space to receive these vast sums when they are converted to our very worthy naira.

    That was when I began to hear stories of how a few top people in one of the armed forces had somehow contrived to convert hundreds of billions of naira, meant for the upkeep of their own arm of the armed forces, to their own personal use. As I was told, they went as far as constructing an underground pit or latrine or soak-away (the story is not very straight around this corner) in the house of one to keep some of the monies while some nestled comfortably in the accounts of the wife of another. As these revelations were coming out, you can imagine that my face wiping had grown alarmingly to reaching some worrisome proportions. I found I had begun to wash my face to be sure I was not dreaming, and also to be sure I wasn’t Pilate. I also wanted to see if the water would tell me why my fellow citizens would persist in settling only for notoriety when they could go for renown.

    One group of people that gets notoriety for renown is known as writers. This is why we are celebrating them this week. I know they also do not work for renown but are happy to bask in it when it comes. Most of the time, they are just content to smile broadly when they succeed in getting their messages across.

    There are many reasons why they do not get that renown. Their messages are often unpalatable to the society; they mirror the society back to it; they reflect for the society the consequences of their heady ways, etc. Truth is, in writing, they keep the truth pristine and unalloyed. Who gives renown to anyone for telling the truth?

    Most Nigerians are rather interested in scrambling for loots. We all therefore seem to have forgotten that loots do not make a man. They make a man a common thief, less than the soil underneath an honest labourer’s slippers. We have said it again and again on this column that what makes a man is not the number of houses he owns (whether honestly acquired or not), or the number of private jets he owns (acquired properly or not), or the number of women or men they are able to sleep with (acquired legally or not).

    True, you have heard many people preach again and again that you cannot take it with you. Well, I’m here to tell you something different. You can take it with you. The only thing is that what you have here gets converted to a different currency when you die. The man who has worked only at stealing from the country may get to enjoy his loot here but when he dies, the loot gets converted into his infamous name which will become synonymous with notoriety. The man who works at actually achieving something may or may not enjoy his proceeds on earth; but when he dies his good name gets converted also into something akin to renown.

    What matters most in this world is what we do for a living, how well we do it and what we are able to achieve through it, no matter how little or how big. Achieving something through one’s efforts is a greater success than any amount of money that one can steal. It not only brings out the truly noble thing in one’s character, it enables a man to touch the tip of the universe. That man is able to reach beyond himself; that man is also the man who has been able to conquer his lowest instincts. That man is the writer. Here’s raising a toast: To all writers!

    • Since being published in July, 2018, this article has remained relevant.

  • The heart of the matter is really a matter of the heart

    The heart of the matter is really a matter of the heart

    By Oyinkan Medubi

    The nation, no doubt, has lost its heart and the absence of family values is now responsible for the teeming disconnected youths plying the streets

    It is not easy living in this country; it’s so hard that you sometimes don’t know which you would rather prefer: to keep on sighing or pack your things together and join those who voluntarily took their exit from this world via an internet site. The internet exit happened some years ago at the instance of some mentally and financially unbalanced wreck who asked equally deluded, cyber-crazy people to join him in cyber travel with their portmanteaux (and money) at a meeting point where he promptly fed them poison after relieving them of their money. He told them he would take care of their luggage. They did travel to space all right, but not the one they had in mind. I think I’ve reported this before too, but never mind; for you, I’ll repeat any story.

    It is also not easy living in the same country with scientists, worse still, card-carrying ideologue-scientists. Most of them, you will agree with me, are mad. But then, so are most artists. The difference lies mostly in the degree of madness each displays. Whereas your mad artist is often mad to himself because he indulges in things like starvation, self-immolation, self-destruction, self-deception (usually over a girl) and so on while creating eternal truths of beauty; your mad scientist, on the other hand, kills. He timorously (that’s just it, he would never show much emotion over his science) invents and mixes solutions and other stuff that blow up in people’s faces and then says ‘Oops, sorry’.

    Wanton killings are going on in every part of Nigeria, but the worst part is that nobody quite knows why, perhaps the group of killers has elected to kill for the sake of admiring their own handiwork. This ‘motiveless malice’ (thanks, Mr. Shakespeare) smacks of a purposelessness that can only be explained as being due to ‘sponsorship’, which of course, everyone has guessed at. The problem, however, is not so much that evil reigns; it is that evil finds somewhere from which to reign.

    Rather lost for something to write on last week, I visited the internet for some inspiration where I came across the story of the wife of a former PM berating stay-at-home-mums (SAHM) for being uninspiring to their children and raising ‘unambitious’ children because children from such homes, according to the former first lady, only look out for some rich fellow to marry. I got the impression that the lady wished to tell such mums to look at her and emulate her, a well-adjusted lawyer and mum who had put the act of juggling home and career down to an art.

    Well, I thought, as I read the report, there was first the mixing of issues in a not very logical way. It is a known fact that it is not only children of SAHMs who look for rich people (either sex) to marry; anyone from any family type can do that. Secondly, really, not everyone can afford the kind of child care unit filled with attendants the speaker probably had while the family was in office. But, I digress. What I want to bring out from that story is the problem of dissociation that can make someone feel so distant from his land as to seriously commit himself to bombing parts of  it or sponsor someone to bomb it for some personal gain. That disconnect, I believe, is actually hinged on the problem of the Nigerian family no longer being able to define itself.

    When I was growing up, the family unit was well and admirably defined. It consisted of a father, mother and any number of biological or non-biological children, even if the latter only came in from the streets. They all mixed together as one because there was plenty of love to go round, particularly as the mother was always at hand. Fewer women worked then, perhaps that accounted for why everyone was happy. Not only could the mother be roused from her mid-morning forty winks to bandage a finger or reattach an arm or a leg (I exaggerate, I know), but she gave her family and other neighbourhood children a firm ground to stand, and play, on. She was the heart of the family; her being intact meant that the family was intact.

    Not working did not really mean that the mother did nothing. Often, she ran a shop situated close to home where she could make a trade and also keep a wary eye on the brood in her charge. Our favourite shop when I was young was run by a non-working mother who would have to be called in the middle of attending to her family to attend to someone in need of a purchase. No one minded that one’s box of matches sometimes had water on it: it was all in the spirit of neighbouliness since everyone’s heart was really in its right place. Her presence at home meant that her children could sleep well and grow well, in that order. It also meant that the children did not have to grow up with anxieties about homework and exams and invigilation schedules at age three.

    The eighties and nineties saw women shooting out of their houses, like uncaged rabbits, to go foraging around for work. Then, the children were left scratching their heads, wondering where their cook, nurse and general dogsbodies had gone and if things would ever be the same again. Half of them ended up in pre-nursery and nursery and post-nursery where they began early to collect their backpacks of post-modernist angst, anxieties, neuroses and the complimentary psychiatrists who sometimes double as teachers or sect leaders. And, you should see the kind of faith these children have in their leaders. They faithfully learn all they are taught, dutifully become scientists, dutifully do all they are told and willingly become bombers.

    Many mothers, children or youths have left home in search of self-fulfilment. The job comes first, the social life second and the home a distant third. This is the reality in Nigeria today. So, the result of mothers or children or youths not staying at home is that vacancies now exist in their hearts, often filled by outsiders such as sect leaders or money handlers. This is why many youths swear by their teachers or leaders’ words. Whoever provides the anchor gets their loyalty. In this battle of controlling the heart of many youths today across the country, the family has lost out because the unit can no longer function as it used to. An armed robber was said to have bitten off the ears of his mother while he hung to be shot because he believed that her failure to get a firm hold on him was responsible for his loss of direction. I have no idea whether she was a working mother or not, but she must have been too preoccupied with something or other to pay her son much attention.

    A children’s rhyme says something to the effect that for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the war was lost; for want of a war, the nation was lost. Similarly, we can say that for the need of a job, the mother was lost; for want of a mother, the children were lost; for want of the children, the home was lost; for want of homes, the nation was lost. The nation, no doubt, has lost its heart and the absence of family values is now responsible for the teeming disconnected youths plying the streets. They have nothing to anchor their emotions on or to ground their fears in. Really, the nation has to find its heart again.

  • Here’s to all Fathers

    Here’s to all Fathers

    By Oyinkan Medubi

    Many unsuccessful fathers are today ruling the world, and only one deduction can come from that: it’s no wonder the world is in this sorry state

    My salute is to all fathers today, whom we are all celebrating this Sunday, the third week of June. To many children, the father is the breadwinner of the family. He just seems to represent that part of the family tree where money seems to spring from. This is why it is difficult for children to believe that money does not grow on trees. When children need to buy a loaf of bread, the mother goes, ‘go ask daddy’; when they need to buy school uniforms, ‘go ask daddy’; when the family needs a car, ‘we’ll ask daddy’; when the family needs a jet, who else can we ask? Happily, the story is changing these days. Now, it is possible to ask mummy for money for bread too but we’ll talk about this some other day.

    Fathers also represent safety. Oh, there is no measuring the great amount of comfort a child gets when he/she knows daddy is near, particularly in a thunderstorm, or in the face of external threats, or in the face of internal threats such as mummy. You would not believe just how much children rely on those muscles. A father said he had to take his son to the hospital for one ailment or the other. When the doctors took the son over and started pricking and jabbing him to draw blood for testing, the son felt very let down that the father did not rescue him from the ‘wicked doctors’ with those strong muscles of his.

    Sometimes, those muscles are used to instil discipline via the cane, and that is when things take unnatural turns and confusions set in. A father recounted how his child looked at him with horror when he had to apply corporal punishment. He said he might as well have brought out the knife.

    If we were to ask young children what their fathers represent to them, many of them would surprise us. They would talk about the words associated with their fathers, mannerisms they best remember about them, the names they call them, but more importantly, the image they represent in the house. I read in one book that a child said they called their father ‘Moses’ in their house because every morning, he called the family together and gave them the ‘ten commandments’ for the day. So, when they saw him coming, they would go ‘Here comes Moses with the tablet of stone’, and he would go, ‘If I ever see you playing with my comb again …’ Another child said they called their father ‘General X, Supreme Commander’ because he was fond of barking his commands at them: GET OUT OF THAT CHAIR! GET OUT OF MY ROOM! GO AND BUY ME AN ENVELOPE! All too often, the children quaked and shook uncontrollably at the sound of his voice. Another child said their father was God. He was too fond of saying, ‘Listen, I made you and I can unmake you. You came from inside my body and you can pretty well go back in there.’ Such sweet daddies, these, no?

    Truth is, fathers stand for many frightening things to their children, all too often because those fathers inherited the genes of fright from their own fathers who got them from their fathers who got them from their own fathers, ad infinitum. At the sound of a father’s voice, the child goes into throes of terror and the father goes away thinking ‘Yeah, that’s how to stay in control of the ship: tolerate no dissension from the ranks’. Want to know the truth? Most children tend to see their fathers as being capable of eating them up if they do not do as they are told. That voice is just too scaaaaaary!

    I best remember my father for many things: provisions, a bank account that just never seemed to flow too well in my direction, and THE LOOK. My father rarely applied the cane on us children but he generously applied THE LOOK. THE LOOK was the eye of steel which spelt only one thing: disapproval. Most times, that was all it took for us to want to sink beneath ground level and just disappear from the face of the earth. You took what did not belong to you, you got THE LOOK; you said what you were not supposed to say, you got THE LOOK; you did what you were not supposed to do such as failing your exams, you got that soul, spirit and body crushing LOOK that wordlessly said, ‘Consider yourself slapped and maimed for that thoughtless action’. That look, I must confess, has saved me from many a scrape and has kept me well towed and reigned in. True, I have got into other scrapes in spite of it, but who knows, there might have been more without it. Even now that he is dead and gone, THE LOOK still lives on. Viva la LOOK!

    So, where would we be without our big, bad wolf fathers, particularly since they rule the world?! Oh yes, your world, nations and states’ rulers are all fathers, I think. Let’s face it, some among them are not very successful fathers at home, since sometimes, children sort of develop immunity against the voices, muscles and looks, and just go their own merry ways. Sometimes, though, it’s the fathers who fail to apply the voice, muscle and look and choose to go their own merry way, preferring to give their talents to the nation or the world or alcohol or partying while the mother rules the home. When one woman and her daughter heard that the head of their home had been appointed into a government post, they both laughed. He had no clout to command at home. Many unsuccessful fathers are today ruling the world, and only one deduction can come from that: it is no wonder the world is in this sorry state.

    There are many homes which have no fathers for one reason or the other: death, divorce or desertion and it is clear in such instances that their places and shoes are empty. This is because nature has designed that they should be there. Where mothers are absent, their places and shoes would also be empty because nature has so designed that they also should be there. Natural creation of complementarities has stipulated roles for each divide. Fathers are the last bastion of discipline: ‘Junior, if you don’t drop that knife, your father will visit you this evening with the belt’ produces instant compliance. In the same way, mothers are the last bastion of love: ‘Junior, try and understand your daddy, he means well; now come and take a slice of bread’.

    No doubt, fathers mean well for us, in spite of their ways. That is the way nature designed them to be: furious, angry, whirlwinds; we would like to take them just as they are if they remember that homes are supposed to be havens of rest not hotspots of war; wives are to be loved, not flung across the room like balls and children are to be assisted to grow up to be what they want to be, not forced into prepared jackets that fit the father’s ambition. All the world cannot be my red shoes. So, here’s a toast to all fathers: may your days be long, your cups be full, your voices stay strong and your LOOKS remain compelling. VIVA THATA LOOKA!

    • This tribute to fatherhood was first published on 8th July, 2013.
  • June 12, Sociopaths, and the many Plagues of Nigeria

    June 12, Sociopaths, and the many Plagues of Nigeria

    Oyinkan Medubi

    Until we instil in every Nigerian the spirit of patriotism, justice and fairness, our democratic journey has not started. Only these virtues can defeat the elite-class gangsterism plaguing our leadership today and the sociopathic blood coursing through our collective veins.

    The annulled June 12, 1993 election stands for many things to many people. To some people, the date is all about M.K.O. Abiola’s unrealised mandate. To others, the date is a reminder of loved ones lost and gone: the ones who died when news of Abiola’s win was being relayed, the ones who died when the tanks were rolled out on the streets in the protests that followed the annulment, and the ones who died when the resulting upheaval mandated an exodus ‘back home’.

    To the surviving relatives of all these departed ones, that date will continually bring sad memories. To many of us ‘others’, it stands as a continual beckon of ever receding hope, still there, still being chased but getting ever fainter and fainter. That fading light is no other than that Nigerians can manage to agree on something when they put their minds to it. For now, that something might be an election candidate (like Abiola), a pet peeve (politicians), a ‘national’ dish (pounded yam) or a favourite pass time (‘swallowing’ public funds).

    The trouble is that we have failed to move from the point at which June 12, 1993, met us. At that point, we were wondering who we were as a people, either just odious or plain ogres. Up till then, we killed and maimed each other recklessly in the name of God, and we starved ourselves of needed development for ethnic reasons too. Life after that point has been no better. We are still wandering around our national sub-consciousness like the Israelites of yore wandered over Palestine, only now without repentance. We are still killing and maiming each other, and still starving ourselves of much needed developments, and the only reason for that now is that we have collectively adopted the psychology of sociopaths.

    A sociopath, says my dictionary, is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, exhibiting antisocial behaviour that usually is the result of social and environmental factors in the person’s early life. The only common factor I see in the early life of most Nigerians is this high level of ignorance mixed with a little bit of poverty. However, I don’t think poverty has much to do with the monumental waste by people in positions of authority that we are witnessing in Nigeria today; I think it’s all that very, very toxic ignorance that got mixed into our corn cereal when we were young. It has made us all sociopathic.

    That’s right; the nation has been seized by many sociopathic plagues, as they did Pharaoh’s Egypt. Shall I name them, or have you been reading the handwriting on the wall too? For exercise, oh do let me; I promise to make it more fun. Our first plague is the government that perpetually oscillates between somnambulism and somniloquism. It jerks its knees only when you hit it with a patella of criticism. Seriously, I know my medical subject, thank you very much.

    The problem is that everything revolves around good governance, and we are still waiting for it. Good governance interrupts evil instincts and directs us all to what is good for the sake of everyone. It insists that everyone tempers his/her sociopathic tendencies with something closely resembling good sense. Rather than slap my neighbour with a law suit for leaving his tree branches to shed leaves into my compound, therefore, I learn to grin, bear it and plant my own tree near the wall.

    When I find that the driver of the car in front of me has stopped to hold a meeting with his long lost friend coming in the opposite direction, I don’t ‘accidentally’ run into the said car from behind. If I do, I’m only giving way to my sociopathic tendencies. Instead, the government should help me to be able to point him to a law that says I deserve to get home early too after a hard day’s work without anyone stopping in front of me to talk about their village. So please, government, help us to help ourselves because sociopathic tendencies have got us something terrible.

    The second plague is that this country is peopled with ‘brains’ who have absolutely no inkling of what it means to be real human beings. That includes me of course. Just the other day, I heard the story of how an Okada man hit a taxi and, rather than apologise, hid his fault behind the support of his fellow Okada riders who one by one stopped by to lend a hand in the quarrel. The union support was so much that another Okada rider was said to have pulled up on the opposite side of the road, jumped across and slapped the taxi driver before asking what happened. We have become that lawless.

    Can you also tell me why else someone would take a look at his parent’s house and set fire to it because his parents refused to give him a certain amount of money? Or, how can one explain why an individual would spend his section’s entire subvention on a car for a girlfriend? Yesterday, I heard a new one. A man, someone said, would even go so far as to buy an air-conditioned car for his girlfriend while he and his family would use a non-air-conditioned one. Now, I have heard the common saying that people give out only what they have but surely this is loving one’s neighbour more than oneself when you give out what you don’t have!

    My third plague? Take the banditry story. Now, that is a plague that no one has explained to me to my satisfaction. From all reports from the official media, social media, radio rumour, word of mouth, etc., there are bandits everywhere, on roads, in forests, just name it, waiting to do what, I don’t know. Yet, no one has told me where they come from, how they got in here, and what the heck they want the whole blue sky for.

    Shall I go on with them plagues? Try the (un)civil service… (a)public service… uneducated teachers… unknowledgeable students… lawless politicians… militants without ambition… and… Oh, what’s the use; it will just be one plague after another and we will be no wiser at the end of the day, like Pharaoh. We are in dire straits then, caught between the absence of good governance, and those plaguing plagues. A shucks to them things!

    Many of us have carried on as if this fourth republic democracy is built on the blood and sweat of June 12. Oh dear, so it is! Actually, to claim otherwise would be hypocritical. So, we can give kudos to the government for declaring the day a national holiday. That’s a start, I guess. But, we are still very far from the starting point. Until we instil in every Nigerian the spirit of patriotism, justice and fairness, our democratic journey has not started. Only these virtues can defeat the elite-class gangsterism plaguing our leadership today and the sociopathic blood coursing through our collective veins.

    We need more than a national holiday. One would have thought such monumental losses of human resources as happened around the June 12 matter would sort of knock some sense into us and bring us, at least, to the edge of self-realisation instead of down this labyrinthine path of self-interest and self-gratification displayed by our leaders. Self-realisation as a people is the only way we can define who we are as a nation, a people and a kind. Hopefully, it would also assist us to determine our goals, purposes and place amidst this troubled brood of sociopaths currently peopling the leadership world of this country.

     

    • This article was last published 16th June, 2019.
  • Unmasked

    Unmasked

    Oyinkan Medubi

     

    The worst example of dissipated living is still going on under our very noses and we are all quiet. Why should the country ask the education, health and other departments to slash their budgets … but the national assembly gets to keep its own budget? Why, eh, why? Is it because I’m not in the assembly?

     

    TODAY, I have decided that we are not taking things seriously, just as Nigerians are no longer taking coronavirus seriously. I mean, we are still in COVID times, but my fellow citizens are going about ‘unmasked’, if you will pardon the pun. In other words, they go around without wearing any mask. I walk, drive or stroll through the streets and I see people huddled or walking in groups, mouths nearly greeting mouths in deep talk, and not wearing any masks. And I wonder: were we not the same people who practically huddled in the innermost recesses of our homes in dread of this fearsome, invisible enemy? What has changed?

    You know though that there is unmasking, and there is unmasking. Ladies’ masks come from bottles in a semi-liquid state. When women rub these things on their faces, the liquid hardens and forms a mask. I think the purpose of the mask is really to rejuvenate the skin and strip off the age from a lady’s face so that she does not look anything like her sixty years, but when she is unmasked, well, the story changes. A man once woke up in the middle of the night and found someone rummaging in their refrigerator. He smacked the life out of the intruder before discovering that the person beneath the mask was his wife. Other ladies’ masks come in the form of make-up, which, I hear, is mighty big business these days. This is why most bridegrooms don’t quite know who (or what) they are marrying now because when the unmasking is done, great surprises await.

    True, most world governments are reporting a downward turn in the rate of COVID infections in their countries; meaning that infections are still occurring but not as much as before. Yet, judging by the situation on the streets, it’s as if the people have decided to let the government do its business on one side of the street while they do theirs on the other side without any cross communication. In other words, nothing doing where the disease is concerned. Wonderful, I think, something is wrong here as I observe people go about their normal business without a care in the world. Either they know something I don’t know, or they have found the secret formula that keeps corona at bay.

    To find out which, I approached a few to find out what they knew that I didn’t. One laughed in my face. Another guffawed as if I were a little child asking him what the moon was made of. Still another looked at me blankly. Clearly, the silent message was loud. Coronavirus was and is a figment of the imagination of our world leaders. And all the coffins I saw lined up in one Italian Church, I asked? I was told clearly that that was sad, but that could not happen in Africa. Why ever not, I asked? Many shrugged in indifference.

    Well, you remember that joke about the man who goes to consult a psychiatrist because he says he cannot feel anything? Well, the psychiatrist is said to have asked, you must feel something for your family. Nothing, the man says. What about love? No, he replies. Hatred? No, says the man. What about indifference? Not even that, says the man. Then I can’t help you, says the psychiatrist. The man goes away, indifferent to the psychiatrist’s intervention. So, we should be grateful for little mercies, such as the fact that the people still feel indifferent to the visiting corona.

    The more eloquent of my responders ventured an explanation. Look, they said, if coronavirus struck in Africa, it would be triple jeopardy. First, they said, there is the constant African sun beating down on our African pates without any mercy day in, day out, all our miserable lives. Those lives, they go on, are made even more miserable by the effects of colonialism which we continue to feel today. If not for colonialism, they insist, why would many tribes not related in language, culture or religion be living together in the same country? Africans are suffering today because of this European misadventure in Africa. Then there are those who say that the bad governance we have all variously suffered in Africa is punishment enough. So, coronavirus has no business adding to the African’s burden.

    I honestly do not know whether they are correct to reason like this or not but I see where they are coming from. I understand them completely. No one under the law should suffer double, let alone triple, jeopardy. Truth is, by the selfish and self-centred acts of our leaders, we Africans have suffered and still continue to suffer. On account of their kleptomaniac tendencies, most African nations are now experiencing want, deprivation, poverty, ignorance, disease, unnecessary deaths and every other imaginable and avoidable horrors. Unfortunately, the story has not changed, even following the coronavirus experience.

    One of the most visible effects of the attack of this virus is the fact that it unmasked many. It unmasked the countries that had not been using their resources for the upkeep of the people, such as in Africa, in their lack of readiness to tackle such a disease. It thus distinguished such unready states from those that had systematically, over the centuries, been using their resources for the development of their countries, such as western countries, by some readiness to tackle the disease. In other words, the virus unmasked the pretense of African states to be called countries.

    Nigeria, like many other African countries, has been led by its leaders to dissipate her resources on worthless living. This space is too small to mention some of the unspeakable examples of dissipated living: chasing of mansions, armoured cars or private jets by government functionaries using state funds, and so on, while hospitals lack basic equipment and women continue to die in childbirth.

    Unfortunately, the worst example of dissipated living is still going on under our very noses and we are all quiet. Why should the country ask the education, health and other departments to slash their budgets each on account of the deficits occasioned by COVID-19 but the national assembly gets to keep its own? Why, eh, why? Is it because I’m not in the assembly?

    COVID-19 has unmasked us as a people. It has shown that we are not ready to even pretend to be able to run our own affairs, let alone be called a country. For goodness’ sakes, no public hospital was worth its name when corona struck. This is shameful. On the other side of the world, in a country where the resources are used to develop the state, their prime minister was able to go into a public hospital when the disease came calling on him.

    Nigeria, right now, has been called the poverty capital of the world. This showed during the crisis. Whereas other countries could pay their people to stay at home, Nigeria could not, because most of the money had gone into buying armoured cars and private jets for their leaders.

    I think that the time has come for some serious thoughts on the subject of growing up as a nation. Our leaders cannot be jetting around the world in private things and expect the world to believe that Nigeria is poor. It does not make much sense. Rather, this nation needs to get serious with its affairs so that when next the wind strikes, it will reveal a less unsavoury African rump. Let us work so that it will rather unmask the golden rump that lies beneath.

  • The burdens our children bear for us

    The burdens our children bear for us

    Oyinkan Medubi

     

    One can conclude that children are no longer safe on the streets, in their own neighbourhoods, in their schools and even in their homes… and an outbreak of wickedness so bad even the devil is surprised.

    Sometime ago, a time that seems like eons now, I wrote a piece on this column on children as heroes of our homes. In the piece, I tried to draw attention to the misuse many parents were putting their children to under the guise of bringing them up.

    I am all for not sparing the rod and all that; but I do believe that children are entitled to a modicum of regard to enable them grow up decently.

    It is only children whose learning experiences are decent that will turn round to respect the society that brings them up.

    Today, as we celebrate children’s day again, I want to draw attention to another aspect of our social deviousness: the sexual assault the society allows its adults to mete out on children.

    These days, nearly every newspaper gives a sick-making report of one child or the other being assaulted sexually by people who should know better.

    And the reports keep coming each day. It has got so bad one can conclude that children are no longer safe on the streets, in their own neighbourhoods, in their schools and even in their homes.

    From these reports, one gets the impression that there has been an outbreak of wickedness of tsunami proportions to children from the male populace across the world. Listen, it has got so bad even the devil is surprised.

    Just look at the headlines: ‘Lagos printer rapes a 15-year-old pupil’; ‘Lawmaker arrested for raping 14-year-old’; ’19-year-old molests 4-year-old’; ’65-year-old rapes friend’s 12-year-old daughter’; ’32-year-pld defiles 11-year-old;’ ’65-year-old molests teenage boy;’ ’75 remanded for defiling 2 girls’… All of these within a period of how many weeks or months?

    Looking at these reports, I want to join others who are screaming, what is going on? Are we not content with making our children carry the burden of our social irresponsibility, now we have to add our sexual perverseness too? I mean, let’s face it, the Nigerian society has never been considerate of her children.

    If she had been, she would have borne them in mind from the start of her social construction process. We all would have worked assiduously to leave a worthy legacy for them individually and collectively.

    We would have worked hard to bequeath to them a society that works: where electricity is not rare, where water flows from the tap, not the end of the child’s bucket, and where food is not a privilege for the child but a right.

    In not giving our children any of these, we have rather consigned them to lives of servitude and slavery. In that life, each child now finds himself or herself working as a fetcher of water, primer of generator and hewer of wood in the average Nigerian home.

    As if these burdens were not enough, we are now adding sexual servitude to their burdens. The question is, who gave us the right to make our children sources of cheap gratification for our sexual perverseness? The devil? How dare us!

    True, many of the culprits when caught claim that ‘the devil’ made them do it. Like I said, I bet even the devil is dismayed that his name is being used so freely; he clearly does not send anyone on such horrible errands.

    It is therefore no use ascribing these deeds to the devil; he is far too busy. I mean, is he not seeing to the emptying of my pocket, my pot of soup and our national treasury? Give him some credit; he has far more important things to do.

    Rather alarmingly, the use of children for sexual gratification appears to be growing. Children appear to be more in demand in the sex-slave trade which cuts across the world’s boundaries now.

    So, people who were nurtured and allowed by their own parents and societies to grow up into adults suddenly develop bodily lusts which only other people’s children can satisfy.

    On the other hand, those who cannot afford to participate in transnational sex-slavery defile little children within their own borders.

    Hence, what we are witnessing is a renewal of the slave trade, that cost many lives in the past, in a new and deadlier form.

    This new form is not confined to a particular country or known social circuits, so it would be difficult to fight. It is practiced by people to whom the world bows under normal circumstances.

    Thus, a seized child could end up being the sex-slave of lawyers, doctors, dentists, contractors, clerics, politicians or even unemployed labourers in one land or the other.

    These, with whom children should normally feel safe, are the ones who help to cut our children’s lives short or scar them for life.

    Why then are we witnessing this flare up? Among others, the most important reason is perhaps this absence of a well-ordered society where the police and judiciary truly work to apprehend and punish. It has been said that Nigeria has not been able to entrench the reign of justice in the land. I agree.

    There are many things I should have been apprehended for but which I have got away with so far because of this lack of justice in the land. Just look at my laziness; its colossal.

    I look forward to that day when justice will reign so that our children can grow up in peace without being sized up by some randy contractor who is licking his lips behind a window.

    Modernity may also have a bit to do with it. All these modern contraptions like cable networks, internet or films tend to expose people to social behaviour that is not necessarily beneficial to one’s own society.

    What the eyes see the brain wants to replicate. It is rather strange that the Nigerian government has over the years not encouraged the print information culture to flourish as the real reformer of character but has rather encouraged the digital culture to grow and become the real destroyer of instincts.

    Anyone can have any access to any kind of digital literature now from anywhere. This is not good. Too many unformed minds are exposed to the ‘devil’ in them things. Never mind, I still insist the devil may be innocent in many cases ascribed to him; just like the knife is, until it is picked up….

    Besides these, the population explosion of the eighties and nineties is coming home to roost. While the governments at that time encouraged parents to breed children indiscriminately, those governments failed to make adequate plans for what would occupy the products of these breeding programmes with.

    Most of those caught in the acts of defilement are those to whom the economy has not been too kind because of missed or absent opportunities. They are the products of poor planned governmental parenthood.

    The Nigerian society needs to wake up and stem this growing scourge. Our children are no longer safe in Nigeria, and I am not exaggerating. This kind of social misconduct is anathema to the traditional society in Nigeria.

    Children were much valued then and they still have the right to be nurtured and allowed to grow into adulthood, like others before them.

    They should be allowed to fill their heads with innocent nonsenses, great adventures, stories of heroic deeds, imaginations about great lands, etc. This will teach them to innovate and take initiative in their adult years for societal growth.

    Children should not have to worry about predators lurking around them, and adults should not be allowed to make our children bear the burdens of our various gratifications. We need to wake up, so that these headlines may change. Happy children’s day.

    • This article was first published on 27th May, 2018.