The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Ladies, ladies…

    It is possible for a woman to transmute to an elegant lady if she remembers that the measure of a woman is still the health of her family

    Today is the International Women’s Day. Hooray! I don’t know what it means exactly but I think it has something to do with me abandoning all my womanly duties, kicking off my shoes and just going altogether harrobarahoo! What’s that word? Honestly I don’t know, but I don’t care. This is the day that women are not allowed by law to care about anything. So what if the rest of the house does not eat, or joins the world body of the great unwashed, or even goes hoorabarroha? So, let them! If you are a woman and are reading this, you are covered by the international law not to care. If you are a man and are reading this, well, you are doing so at your own blessed risk!

    Actually, I think it’s a good thing they have not declared today as the international ladies’ day. I would have had a lot to say on the matter. As it is, I still have somewhat to say to us women because it seems to me that many have already thrown many cares to the wind on the matter of their womanhood. When I look at them, I despair very deeply of any hope of their transmuting to ladies any time soon. Nope, not in this century; because it appears they have already transmuted into something close to the intermediary stage of the mutant family, something like X-Women. Let me show you a few slides (more or less) of what I mean.

    During this recent fuel scarcity which God alone knows how we’ll get out of, many frighteningly long queues occurred. And you know how rowdy the pump areas can be with everyone, car and Okada owners, wanting to buy fuel for their cars, bikes, generators and maybe to drink. Well, you know how those queues are enough to stretch a woman’s ladyship qualities to the limit. As I heard it, when this woman saw that queue, she determined that she wasn’t having any of it. So, she determined to use every ounce of womanly wiles in her puny possession to get fuel at all costs without paying the price of queuing up. Taking a deep breath, she reached down into her bag of artillery and bellowed at the sellers: don’t you know, she said, don’t you know I belong to the nation’s armed forces? I think she thought that should immediately throw everyone into the quakes and scramble to serve her, but she was mistaken as only an angry, frustrated silence greeted her. Retreating like a dog with a tucked-in tail, she muttered something to the effect that people should begin to learn how to value women.

    I also think, a woman should be valued by the society. A woman should not be subjected to the many insane horrors that go for the Nigerian story such as struggling for jobs, customs style; struggling to ensure that the house has enough electricity; or struggling to keep the cars fuelled up. I tell you, these are enough to turn any woman into a fangs-baring fiend. Whenever I have had to use the generator and there has been no man around to undertake the sweaty job of turning it on, I have found myself transmuting, I will not tell you into what; the children may be listening. Ok, ok, it’s nothing too sinister.

    When the public light fails (more often than it does not), first, I turn into something like a barking dog: is anyone at home to help me? I need to get this blessed document out of the printer. No answer. That’s when I become a moaning seal: Ooooooooh, what is wrong with these people that they can’t do the most basic thing, give one light? I move to the generator anyway, like any well tuned Nigerian. Then I move to the changeover, where, I suspect, I am getting these wrestler’s arm muscles as I need to wrench the stick up and down with all the grunt I am capable of. Now, as soon as I get the whirr of the generator going, what do you think happens? The public nuisances restore the electricity. Then it’s the whole process all over again in reverse order. As soon as I turn off the generator though, the electricity company strikes again, and shaking my head, I repeat the process like a fetch-it dog. On a particular day, I found myself doing the yoyo dance four good times. I was that desperate, but not as desperate as I was to strangulate someone belonging to the electricity company.

    That is not a very ladylike sentiment I agree, but who can help it? Not you, I’m sure. I believe that desperation prompted our lady of the armed forces to ignore the general, pervading mood in the country and declare what she took to be a potential advantage: force. I believe it is this force that many women are now displaying on the road when they drive. I tell you, many women drivers leave me feeling shame for the entire woman-race. They weave in and out and cut other drivers off indecently, display rugged stubbornness on the road, swing right and left and refuse to acknowledge other people’s rights on the road, and generally carry on as if it were the bronco era of the Wild, Wild West again.

    I get it; women are now living the life their great, great, great grandmothers wished they could have lived. Women now get to work and have a family. That is some serious advantage I tell you. Unfortunately though, trying to juggle the two advantages has left many women not knowing where or what they are any more. They need to be men to survive in a male dominated workplace with all the intrigues, rivalries, scrambles for posts, underhand cuttings, and other unsavoury survival things. On the other hand, they need to be women to bring up well-rounded children and provide the needed human sentimentals to counter-balance the absolute male aggression coming from the males.

    Someone stirred up a controversy the other day by writing an article titled something to the effect that women can have it all. In a logic-filled treatise, the writer tried to show how women are trying to balance the art of child or family rearing with the intricacies and demands of the work place. Her conclusion? Women can have it all but not today, not just yet. And that got people really talking.

    In the same way, I believe that women’s attempt to have it all is killing them mainly because their needs are diametrically opposed to each other. Family needs require that women stay in tune with their naturally endowed qualities of gentleness, patience, kindness, and love. Workplace demands require that women acquire unnatural and unsavoury qualities of harshness, rudeness, hatred and self-advancement, all of which kill the woman in a woman. So, I would say, the evolutionary process in women is at a cross-road just now when a woman puts forward her force of occupation over and above her for force of nature.

    Perhaps, a woman can have it all in this century, I don’t know. I do know that it is possible for a woman to decide just how much of the ‘all’ she wants to have and how much she is willing to pay for it. If she decides to get it all, then of course she must give all and transmute into a mutant of her race. I think it is possible for a woman to transmute to an elegant lady though if she remembers that when all is said and done, the measure of a woman is still the physical, psychological and social health of her family. So, ladies, ladies, kick off those shoes gently now…

  • It’s the Lord of the flies again, but now with the adults present

    For money and power, we are showing our young ones that life in all its sacredness must bow its lovely head; sacred blood can flow irreverently

    In the Lord of the flies, for those of us who have not read that classic by William Golding, a group of British school boys are marooned on an island during a raging war because their plane is shot down. At first they are afraid. Soon however, they begin to organise themselves as they think the adults would have done under the leadership of the reasonable boys among them. Very quickly though, all the boys fall under the influence of the not so reasonable ones who lead them all down the path of certain destruction but for the timely arrival of a naval ship to rescue them. The novel symbolises resident evil in man’s heart.

          That evil seems to have gone abroad in our midst here where stupid games are playing out with people’s lives as stakes. Sometime during the last couple of weeks, someone reported something that happened in his quiet neighbourhood in one of Nigeria’s quiet cities. It certainly was very far from your boko haram territory. In the early afternoon of that day, a young man ran into the neighbourhood, apparently running away from someone or ones running after him. Soon, those ones caught up with him right about where our reporter was and, there on the street before everyone’s eyes, descended on him with machete blows, cutting and cutting until he was dead. To make sure he really died, one of the young men was said to have stood over him, superintending the taking of the last breath.

          Reader, I would like to report that someone made an attempt to stop them in the act but I cannot because nobody did. Everybody was afraid of the devil that was afoot during the noon day that made some able-bodied young men not to be afraid of spilling another young man’s blood. Rather, the neighbourhood did the most natural thing: people ran inside their houses or shops and motorists sped by.

           Reader, we the people of Nigeria have become very casual about lopping off our neighbours now. No one’s life appears to have any sacred value anymore; so no one’s blood is too precious to shed. For me, the height of the insult to our collective sense of humanity was the audacity, intrepidity, boldness and insouciance of the one who stood over the slain man to make sure he was really dead. That insult just stings for two reasons.

            The young men represent the crop of young ones we are breeding and teaching now to have no respect whatsoever for living humanoids. The sense of value we are upholding now respects only two things: money and power. For these things, we are showing our young ones that life in all its sacredness must bow its lovely head; sacred blood can flow irreverently. We the adult ones are showing these young ones that a life that is not holding either money or power is not worthy to draw any air. That is the cave man for you all over again, whose cudgel was his bargaining chip.

            Worse, the young men did what they did because they had no fear of the nation’s police or law. Clearly, between the law and order, they have found their niche: disorder. As a matter of fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that you can walk the entire Nigerianery without fearing the law. For one, there are so many unsolved murders, so many headless corpses, bodiless heads, ritual killings, etc. No explanation has come to us little ones to clear the muddled air on many of them. This was why the young men had all the intrepidity to wait and ensure that their comrade dutifully drew the last breath in their presence. As always, the police came to remove the body with a great deal of silence.

          Sometime in the week, the story broke somewhere in Lagos that a couple’s quarrel over valentine allegedly ended violently with the man falling down from a one-story building to his death. Then the story ended with the fact that the wife, a party in the quarrel, had travelled to her hometown. Wonderful, I thought; where was the police to give this woman the third degree inquisition on the matter? Even if she would be declared innocent at the end of the investigation, we should at least see that efforts had been made to account reasonably for the man’s death.

           Seriously, there are just too many cases of death going unaccounted for. Take the riot that broke also during the week in a Lagos park between rival gangs. Throughout the recounting of that story, there was no indication that anyone was investigating anything. Yet, weapons were used, people were involved, the scene of action falls under the jurisdiction of Nigeria, and four people died.

           It seems now that everywhere you turn, people are playing games with other people’s lives. None of the incidences recounted so far warrants the loss of a single soul. Take the first story. It turned out that the participants were all cult members who decided to visit every infringement with machete. I don’t know, but I think that whatever might have caused the disagreement could have been taken care of by the limping laws of the land.

           I used to think that life should be casual (because you have little control over much of it) and death should be scarce (because only the Almighty has control over it). Now, many Nigerians are playing god over the lives of others for unearthly reasons forgetting, quite forgetting that NOBODY, BUT NOBODY, GETS AWAY WITH MURDER. Even for partaking in the decision to commit the blasted thing, nature will recompense through that which we love most when we least expect it, if the police will not.

            I am positive I have told this story before but I will repeat it anyway for those of us who missed it the first time. A radio station aired the story somewhere in Lagos some years ago. A retired police officer had gathered his relatives together to celebrate his child’s graduation from a Nigerian university. The plan was that the young fellow would come with his friends to join the family who left earlier for the graduation grounds. After waiting in vain for the young one to join them, the restless relatives demanded that the father find out what was delaying the celebrator from coming to enjoy his day of glory.

           After calling all around, the father eventually found out that his son had been felled by a police bullet at a checkpoint. Stunned, the crowd broke into different crescendos of wailing but the father held up his hand and asked that no one should wail on his behalf for he believed that what happened had come from the throne of justice. Some twenty something years before when he was a young policeman, he said, it was his bullet which felled a student during a students’ riot. Only the family of that student grieved the act at that time. The act, he said, had come home full cycle as his own son was felled by the bullet of another policeman.

            Space and time will not permit us to tell the stories of other young men felled by bullets from their fellow cult members’ guns on their wedding days, or graduation days or one day of glory or another. There is certain truth in the saying that he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind, but the point is that the absence of deterrents in the land is not helping these young men curb their exuberance, enthusiasm and wild, tempestuous natures in their Island games. Let us all begin to do our work to help these young ones grow up properly.

  • I’m thinking, I’m thinking…

    I know a thinker when I see one. He/she generally goes around with his/her hands folded behind, face downwards, brow knitted and lips moving in a silent fashion, speaking words not even his guardian angel can hear. Nope, I have not seen anyone like that around here since I came into adulthood.

    I don’t know about you but anywhere I turn now, I find myself facing, eyeball-to-eyeball, one or another larger than life portrait of a political candidate vying for one post or the other in advertorial messages. Worse, each message is declaring the superiority of the fellow’s talents and gifts which even he/she never suspected he or she had. My fear is actually that by the time we are done, they may begin to think they are supermen and attempt to fly off into the stratosphere or parts unknown.

    We have no way of knowing where these advert writers have sprung from, but they are making my head swivel. Here, I am told a candidate has been tested and so can be trusted; there, a candidate is sure because his name ends with something that rhymes with the word; here, a candidate is Nigeria’s lost answer because he is on the winning questioning team; there, a candidate is the only panacea to corruption; there, a candidate is boko haram’s only poison… When I put all these together, I am tempted to ask, did anyone put much thinking into how not to make Nigerians look like gullible fools?

    Incidentally, today, February 22, is World Thinking Day, but you’ll never guess who is celebrating it. This I will not tell you in case it makes you think you are not qualified to be in their midst. I am also not qualified to be in their midst; they think too hard for my liking. For starters, how can anyone think of naming a particular day, World thinking Day?

    With that question in mind, I went to Google and searched it up. There it was, complete with theme, history and raison d’etre. Humbled, I ate my pie quietly and fell to ruminating, goat style. The page began by telling me that the day was instituted as far back as 1926. Imagine that. Who could have guessed that thinking had been around for as long as that? Next, it told me that the theme for this year’s celebration is ‘We can create peace through partnerships.’ I really like the sound of that one. Now, what remains is how to break the news to Buhari and Jonathan that they can be partners in this electoral thing that seems to be dividing the country straight down the middle. Gently, I guess, very gently.

    Well, reader, I told you a while back that my PVC was hot and rearing to go to the electoral day. I am sad to report that it has not gone anywhere near its supposed duty post as I am still holding and staring hard at it and wondering if it will not expire in my hands, right before my very eyes. One of the first things that occurred to me from viewing those posters was that the sellers seemed to think each of their candidates was a hard sell. Let’s start with Jonathan.

    There are those who believe that the man Jonathan is deeply troubled by his present. They are saying that in his very presence, the electricity situation seemed to grow worse. Entire families are managing to die from inhaled generator fumes; casualties of generator explosions are increasing, all because of irregular supply of electricity to the citizenry. Among other things as well, the country seems to be sliding into the doldrums right under him with corruption kicking wild and unshackled, making the gulf between the rich (on government money) and the poor (without government money) larger. All together, they say, he is leaving the populace disenchanted; but he says he is ready to transform all that.

    On the other hand, there are those who believe that the opposition candidate, Buhari, is deeply troubled by his past. They say that as a past military head of state, he was rather brusque, brutish and talked largely in decrees, so did not have much patience for democratic things. Imagine, they say, he never smiled at anyone. As a matter of fact, he was said to have sent some people to prison for displaying too much freedom. Suddenly, they say, here he is canvassing for their votes in a democratic fashion; but he says he is ready to change all that.

    Now, I hope you understand why I am holding my card and thinking over which is more momentous: change or transformation. It’s not as if I particularly chose today to do my thinking because it is the day the world chose that we should all do our thinking in; like a cow, I have chewed the cud several times over the matter without really coming to a conclusion.

    I think the real matter is that no one appears to have been doing some thinking over many matters in this country. I know a thinker when I see one. He/she generally goes around with his/her hands folded behind, face downwards, brow knitted and lips moving in a silent fashion, speaking words not even his guardian angel can hear, save he/she alone. I think they generally call them poets. Those were the signs a king in a far away land once saw in a man and ordered him arrested. What was the charge? He was arrested for thinking too much. Have you seen the way Nigerians move around? Phew, I believe it’s worse than an epileptic frenzy. So nope, I have not seen anyone looking like a thinker around here since I came into adulthood.

    I guess then it is safe to say that Nigerians are not thinkers; if they were, this country would not be like this. People would not illegally stack up billions of the nation’s currency intending to use it for himself or herself alone, not knowing what would become of him/her the very next moment. People would change their attitude to work, neighbours and their diet. People would realise that their stay in this world is often no more than seventy years with a little plus so there really is no point wasting any of those precious years quarrelling or fighting or even sleeping too much. Like someone said, there is plenty of time to sleep in the grave.

    If Nigerians did any thinking, they would realise that money does not answer all things, contrary to popular belief; faith, grace and love are much readier currency. More, if Nigerians were thinkers, they would be more interested in leaving a country where their progenies can comfortably call home. On this World Thinking Day, let us take a few moments to think, think deeply about how we can make peace through partnerships: eating together maybe, working together maybe, and definitely loving this country and our neighours as we ought. As for me, I’m once more holding my card and thinking. Seriously, I’m thinking, I’m thinking…

  • ‘The triumph of hope over experience’

    This administration can avoid being the object of nature’s derision, and let its word be its bond

    The triumph of hope over experience’, was the comment of our erudite Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) about a man who was said to have remarried immediately after the death of a wife with whom he had been very unhappy. Obviously, some people learn from experience; and some, from experience, never learn. But, whether we learn or not, nature continues to teach us. Take the simple matter of time: it ticks on, no matter how you literally hold back the hands of the clock. Take also the seasons: they change no matter how much you want to hold them back. Seasons come, seasons go; governments come, governments go; only the universe remains.

    Enough of our philosophising, dear reader; we are talking today about the sudden, some would say even unnecessary, postponement of Nigeria’s general elections. I am having trouble understanding it; but then I generally have trouble understanding anything because the people around me have all agreed that I am somewhat slow to comprehend things. I think they had to hold a meeting on the subject or something. I am still scratching my head on why it took them so long to come to that realisation. Anyway, I am so slow it took me a long time to know my left from my right, my friend in my enemy, and that what I took to be a creeping plant giving off hisses into the air in my garden was really a green snake looking for sunshine.

    I must confess though that the postponement took many of us by surprise. There I had been, believing that the word of the government was its bond. There is an unwritten code that says that your word is your bond. That code has guided many for centuries. I remember growing up in a community where this word-bond agreement ruled the farms. If a farmer needed extra hands on his field, he did not go to hire. No sir, he simply asked his fellow-farmers to leave off farming their own field and attend to his own needs for the two or three days he might need them. And they often did, barring sickness. The unwritten law was that should any of his friends ever require his services, he would willingly abandon his own needs and meet that one at his point of need.

    Thus when the government gave the word that the elections would hold as scheduled, we took it to be its bond also. Alas, not so! We had no way of knowing that the word belonged to the government while the bond might belong to us. Imagine a farmer being left holding a bond in that fashion, after having given his own time and energy to develop his fellow-farmer’s farm, only to be told that the time chosen was no longer convenient, particularly in view of the fact that the weather is not under any man’s control. Like that farmer, I am still holding the election bond in my hand, much to my chagrin and definitely not to my pleasing, or even Jega’s. Indeed, the postponement has made nonsense of all our personal programmes which we all, to a man across the nation, strenuously strained to postpone just to make sure that, should movements be restricted, no important thing would suffer during the elections.

    I do not want to go into the reasons for the postponement, contrived or not. I’m only interested in what effects it has on me. The first thing that struck me was the question: don’t the rest of us count? Is it possible for all of us who constitute the electorate to be as negligible as all that and maybe more? The story is told that someone remarked to his father, at his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, that the said parents never seemed to fight. His father replied that they sure had their many battles, like any other couple; it was just that sooner or later in the fight, one of them would realise that he, the man, was wrong. That is one version.

    Another version has it that the man replied that early in the marriage, they had decided that in order to avoid all conflicts, he, the man of the house, would take all the big decisions while the wife, the woman of the house, would take all the small ones. In the fifty years of being together though, the man found out that there had not been one big decision to take. That was why the union had lasted for so long.

    The reason that we the electorate don’t count much in electoral matters should be the subject of a treatise for a political scientist, but not for us here. You and I must nevertheless be struck by the deep, deep irony and amusement in the situation. If you possess this knowledge, my friend, you possess a great thing indeed – that the land belongs to the people; the instruments of governance belong to the people; the power deriving thereof belongs to the people; therefore the state belongs to the people. My friend, I congratulate you for knowing this; not all of us do. You see, at critical and crucial moments, most government functionaries think it nothing to yield to the temptation to use the same state against the people, or to forget them altogether. Now, say news reports, there are soldiers circling people’s houses. When will we learn?!

    Naturally, it never works, mostly because the protection of the people against such misuse is writ large in nature. Take the example at hand. Postponing these elections is not really to the people’s liking: the people did not ask for it; the people did not want it; the people still do not understand it. The thing just went right over the people’s heads. That just gives one the feeling of déjà vu, does it not, and makes one rather tired.

    Let’s take one or two government functionaries who have gone over the people’s heads like this and have rued the action. At the height of his power in France, Louis XIV was said to have claimed, ‘L’Etat c’est moi (I am the state)’, and as he was dying in 1715, he was claimed to have said, “Je m’en vais, mais l’Etat demeurera toujours (I depart, but the state shall always remain)”, while Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, also absolute monarchs, departed via the guillotine. The June 12 saga in Nigeria is still fresh in the collective mind. The then president singlehandedly cancelled an election that was said to have been the freest and fairest to date in this country. I believe that president is still smarting from some of the consequences of not respecting the owners of that election, the people. The State remains, always.

    Experience, they say, is the best teacher. Of course, no one can singly go through every experience that he needs to learn from. That is why we have history and literature books. That is why we have others. That is why we have visions. That is why we have our religions. History, literature, visions and religions tell us what nature has always made clear: the land belongs to its maker. This in effect translates to the fact that nature has ways of correcting the errors of mankind when he attempts to play God. Nature does so because it knows that sometimes in the heart of some unknowing ones among us, hope triumphs over experience.

    We tend to think that the people before us were unlucky or they got it wrong somewhere. It must be different with us, just like motorists who come on the scene of an accident and then speed off. Tch, tch, feed in the same data, use same method and expect different results? This administration can avoid being the object of nature’s derision, and let its word be its bond.

  • This tension should not be postponed

    With the fears being expressed by everyone, one would think the third world war was imminent

    One of the most memorable passages I have read comes from a little story about a local football referee who had been rough-handled once too often by the losing side. His beautiful body was either beaten black and blue or his bicycle was mangled by the losing side. After having to walk away with pain from the pleasurable activity of football too often, he decided to be smart about the next match. One, he parked his bicycle close by the field. Two, he blew the last whistle as he jumped on his bicycle and sprinted off. So he was off before any player or fan could get their wits together.

    I do not envy Professor Attahiru Jega right now. I think he is perched on a hillside that is overlooking some jagged rocks ending on some more jagged rocks below on one side, and a deep, deep sea on the other. I bet you he has more white hairs than the polar bear to show for his efforts. Right now, all eyes are focused on him as the ultimate referee, umpire, middleman or whatever in this all-time race. Poor man, what he needs now is to have his wits sharpened some more. He also needs to have his bicycle close by, mainly because everything that goes wrong in this election week is going to be heaped on him.

    Right now, PVC distribution is somewhat awry, and we are all asking questions of INEC but everyone knows that means Jega; never mind that the distribution fault may lie somewhere between the blessed things not arriving on time or at all, and the local distributors being somewhat sluggish about the matter. When I went to collect mine, it took my steely resolve to get it that day to enable me endure the long standing outside the offices of the distribution centre, inhaling dust, car fumes and hisses from fellow voting hopefuls. The reason was that the offices did not open early enough. I also had to endure being pushed and pulled and pummelled on all sides by people desperate to be the first to collect theirs too. I assure you I did not do any pushing, pulling or pummelling: I was intent on using and keeping my head because I knew something the others did not: this is the jungle of Africa where everything is done by fire, by force, even praying.

    Were all things to be equal, you and I know that something like my voter’s card should have been sent to my home by post. There should not be any need for me to spend my precious man hours standing in long queues just to collect my driver’s licence, voter’s card or housekeeping allowance. My voter’s card should arrive at my doorstep by the concerted efforts of the INEC chairman, the Postmaster-General and anyone kind enough to find my mail lying around. But, like I said, we live in a jungle where everyone prefers to do things the hard way.

    Jungle or not, however, if election materials do not arrive on time, the country will want answers from Jega. That’s another reason I pity the man. I bet you that there are many Nigerians from all kinds of nameable and unnameable parties who have even now concluded plans to hijack, steal, beg for or borrow some truckloads of voting materials and guess who will be blamed.

    Right now, we are prepared to blame Jega for anything: not finding our names on the voters’ register; not being able to find the polling booth or the voters’ register; not being registered; being too busy to register; not finding the address of the polling booth; not being able to decide between the many candidates, not being able to press our thumbs hard on the sheet because of hunger; etc. That’s right; I hear we are even now preparing to use him as an excuse to postpone the elections! See what I mean?!

    Yep, the rumours are strong; and by the time you are reading this, the matter of postponement should have been decided one way or the other. It is surely another situation where we can decisively use that famous quotation of indecision: to be or not to be. Should INEC declare that it is ready (which I hear it has done) and things do not pan out for the candidates, the parties or the country, there will be a sea of troubles for the oga on top. In short, whoever loses is ready to blame someone for lack of readiness.

    Anyway, a postponement at this stage will not do for many reasons. First, Nigerians have become so worked up over the mid-February elections they are looking forward to the third week when they hope the tension should have died down. Secondly, that same tension has led many to practically put their lives on hold until after the elections. They are practically holding their breath. Thirdly, many have therefore postponed their mid-February programmes to after-mid-February. To postpone the elections would mean postponing people’s emotions, breathing, living, and other programmes! I beg you; this tension can no longer be postponed.

    Forgive me, but it’s a little like watching two equally matched medieval armies pitched on opposite sides of a hill ready for battle, waiting, just waiting for someone’s horse to spark off the battle. In these elections, we have an umpire to blame. The side that loses will query: why did INEC not do more to ensure that the fight was fair? The side that wins will also ask: why did INEC allow someone to tamper with their winning numbers?

    I don’t know whether we are taking some national examinations or someone is attempting to start a war of the worlds on our beautiful soil. With the fears being expressed by everyone, one would think the third world war was imminent. As we explained before, this is a voting exercise to elect a leader, not an exercise to partition Nigeria all over again. Whoever wins will only get the chance to govern the country for a while only before it passes on to someone else. The world will not or should not end for the loser. He is expected to go on and do something else to contribute to the development of this country. There is more than one way of doing this.

    The rest of us citizens also have our responsibilities. We are expected to retrieve our voter card from the recesses of our box, dust the blessed thing, give it some food if it wants it (no, don’t pour libation on it), find your way to the ballot box, and cast your votes. It will not do to inflame the tense atmosphere with careless utterances, cutlasses or guns. Remember, no election is worth dying for.

    Here, I would like to make an appeal to INEC. It would be a beautiful thing for INEC to allow those among us who do not have PVC to be able to vote if we can be confirmed to have registered. In other words, if our names can be located on the register (which is the most important thing), I think such a one should be able to vote. This should ease the PVC tension and reduce the load of blame that Jega may find himself carrying at the end of the exercise so he does not fall on the jagged rocks or the deep sea, or need his bicycle!

    Here’s wishing every one of us the best of luck. May we emerge from all these national examinations stronger and wiser! May your PVC remain strong in your hands (if you have one, PVC that is, not hands), your name be true on the register (if it’s there), and may you live to see the Nigeria you have prayed for (if you have prayed)!

     

     

  • This is some real confusion of the head now, eh?

    Politicians tend to think that once they get into a representative seat or office, that seat automatically converts to being theirs to keep and to hold, till death do them part. In many instances, death has been the perfect gentleman; it has obliged them

    Have you ever stayed still long enough to observe children at play? They call it play, but the earnestness on the faces of the children almost belies the fact. First, they agree they want to play hospital. Then they assign roles to each other. Then they gather what materials they can lay their hands on that closely resemble those used in the hospital. Then the conversation starts. That’s when you begin to hear the instructions flying left, right and centre from the leader; you hear the reproofs shooting straight at erring ones, and the open threats coming out of young, innocent lips when other innocent lips howl their protests, ‘why do I have to be the one to take the injection all the time? Why can’t I play the doctor today?’ And when it is time to take injections, you begin to hear the threats, ‘I’m not playing with you anymore; you are baaaad.’ Indeed, the declarations from the innocent lips are so bad they rival the sanctions coming out of the globalised lips of the United Nations.

    Since the beginning of Nigeria’s latest experiment in democracy, I have been hard put to it to distinguish between politicians’ antics and children’s play. At all levels, whether representative or delegate, your politicians have found ways of cornering the biggest chunks of the nation’s resources to themselves, just like the children, as if that is what politics is all about. And just as children also forget that they are only play acting, your politicians also forget that their power is not real but temporary. Somehow, however, they convince themselves that they are there forever. To me, that is some real confusion of the head.

    Not long ago, I read the story of a woman who had been stricken by a rare autoimmune disease which attacked her brain and made her imagine many impossible things. She imagined that her parents were plotting against her; she was being watched on her hospital bed on national television through cameras strung on helicopters; she was being pursued by enemy forces … the list goes on. Actually at a point, she had to be pursued by nurses who strapped her down as she kept trying to escape from the hospital.

    This woman’s story is pathetic, no? Our politicians’ story is even more pathetic. I would pity them if I wasn’t so outraged by their audacity, carelessness and devil-may-care attitude. Usually, it’s that kind of attitude that causes many a cartoon character to whistle his way right into a pothole, manhole or deep, deep gully. And, if you are like me watching these cartoons, you will laugh heartily because you are sitting there in your comfy chair, righteously thinking that the character only got what he deserved. I mean, when you can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is delusionary, and you’re whistling and not watching where you are stepping, it can make for some real scratching of the head and some loud guffaws.

    I will be honest. I scratched my head at the utterances of Buhari while he was campaigning in 2011. I believe he was said to have said (I was not there) that he would make the nation ungovernable should he lose the elections. (Indeed, he lost, and the nation became ungovernable for a while). What made many of us scratch our heads? I think we thought something like: what was he thinking, like the state was his? I believe he has since learnt not to make that kind of utterance.

    Not so our brothers from the south-south though. They have fallen, whistling in a devil-may-care attitude, into the same pothole, manhole or deep, deep gully that Buhari had to struggle out of. I would honestly have been laughing from my deep, deep armchair if I wasn’t so disgusted, outraged and scratching my head. Did they really say they were ready for war if their candidate did not win the election? What the…?! Well, if they did utter those words, then I can only say: what were they thinking of, like the state was theirs?

    Illusions, delusions, make beliefs, false convictions, you may call them what you like; my encyclopaedia is not helping me. Perhaps, I should appeal to higher authorities: say, Aro. Anyway, pardon me for mixing them up but they do nothing good for the soul because they deceive. Unfortunately, our politicians and their supporters are suffering from them all. Supporters can often be pardoned. One, they are poor. Two, they are mindless, mainly because they are poor. Three, they are often full of drink, mainly because they are poor and mindless. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Anyway, supporters often think at the behest of the suppliers of their passion.

    So, when people make such utterances as credited to the boys from the south-south, it sends a few signals about the delusions that Nigerian politicians are labouring under, the suppliers of thought to the supporters. First, they tend to think that once they get into a representative seat or office, that seat automatically converts to being theirs to keep and to hold, till death do them part. In many instances, death has been the perfect gentleman; it has obliged them. Nevertheless, it is a wonder just where this illusion sprang from. Could it have come from the fact that people are hardly thrown out of office, impeached or not given a return ticket unless they inadvertently displease their godfathers? Who knows?

    Secondly, people tend to think that the seat they have won has become an inheritance from their father’s house. They think it is a permanent win to pass down to the son and for the son to shoot bullets into the sky over (just to frighten away all goats that may want to nibble at it). I honestly do not know where this also came from. Maybe it’s the fact that Nigerians have ways of worshipping their representatives who throw crumbs at them in the form of money, jeeps, or marrying their daughters while dissipating everyone’s future in useless fritters.

    The third signal these winners pass across flows naturally down from the above: that the nation which houses the seats they have won belongs to them. Big illusion, huge! Somewhere along the thin line, the illusion translates to the nation even existing for them. I think this is the grandest delusion of them all, pure fantasy. The source of this is not clear. Perhaps, it has something to do with the docile nature of Nigerians who do not cry foul unless you tamper with the source of their daily corruption.

    I have been thinking. Should Nigeria go to war now over the loss of an elective seat, what is to be gained? Nothing, except for losses, huge losses. For one thing, history will judge us most unkindly. Have you noticed that you can distort your face, your car but not your history? The blessed thing has a way of recording exactly what happened, just like children. ‘Question: Children, what was the cause of the year twenty-something war in Nigeria? Answer: Someone lost an elective office.’

    I end as I started. If you have ever observed children at play, you would have you noticed that when their play ends (usually when the leader gets hungry or when someone breaks into howls over the imaginary injections), they all leave the scene of play to go home. They don’t go to war, but wait to reconvene the next day to play at something else, say housekeeping; they don’t remember yesterday’s howls. Let us clear the confusion from our heads and remember that Nigeria belongs to nobody but Nigerians only.

  • The truth about political posts

    It is only in Nigeria that a politician can campaign for a position with the word ‘serve’ to mean ‘occupy’ the position or to serve the people up to the god of his palates

    Indeed, true is the aphorism that change is the only permanent thing in this life. I remember clearly that as recently as the 1970s, if you had a government job, you could not be considered to have been gainfully employed. You were there ‘just for the time being… until you could find your feet’. A job with any government agency was not expected to enrich anyone who had just graduated from school. So, job seekers preferred to direct their feet towards manufacturing companies all around the country. That was where the real work was then, and the realer money. Government jobs only taught people to push papers; for that, you did not need to be paid much. Did I mention that unemployment was also low?

    Then something changed. From the eighties through to the nineties, I guess the government began to get so big it thought it could turn all powers to itself and still have a country. So, it broke the back of manufacturing companies, turned the job-seeking boys’ feet in the direction of the government agencies and parastatals, thinking to … I don’t know. What was it thinking?

    Alas! Many years down that lane of thoughtlessness, what do we have? We now have a people conditioned to believe that unless you are employed by the government, you do not have a job yet. This is why a fresh graduate employed in a privately funded school to nurture young minds does not consider himself employed until he can struggle to be absorbed in some local government where he goes to push papers and be paid much. How times change. I remember Lyte’s song of 1847 — change and decay in all around I see. Now, how many nurses are working in private hospitals? Few: most prefer to be paid by the government for sitting down and doing … well, not much. How many certified teachers are not in local, state or national schools? Again, few.

    Yes indeed o. Every Nigerian knows that government is the biggest employer now, and also the least fussy about making sure its job is done well. As a matter of fact, many government workers do not have to report daily at work to be paid. Just look at your MGAs – they scream job abuse to the heavens.

    Talking of job abusers, no group is guiltier than politicians. We have been told that the Nigerian assembly parades the highest paid group of politicians in the world. The Nigerian populace has screamed enough blue murder over that fact till we are all hoarse. Yet the group concerned has not flinched from continuing to collect their illicit gains. But, it is even more illicit when we remember that many of the members are not regular at work and even less regular in the country. We now know where they go: they go to Dubai to read newspapers.

    Government politics, like government jobs, obviously pays the highest and no one asks you for results, except godfathers who only ask for returns. This is why it is possible for people to be desperate about government positions. Sadly, the many stories of politicians killing off their political rivals stem from no other cause but the excessively lucrative nature of those positions. Yet, we all look on.

    In a small town somewhere in a foreign country, someone won an election into the mayoral seat. As he walked to his car on the road the next day, someone called out a congratulatory greeting to him, and hoped that he would have a good term. He graciously accepted the greeting but took pains to point out that the mayoral seat of the town is not won so much as taken in turns to serve their little town.

    Sadly again, that word ‘serve’ has been given various connotations in Nigerian politics. It is only in Nigeria that a politician can campaign for a position with the word ‘serve’ to mean ‘occupy’ the position or to serve the people up to the god of his palates. Perhaps indeed, the said politicians mean to go and serve the public. Who is to say what someone’s real intention is? Perhaps, somewhere along the line, this plentiful government money becomes a distraction. Who is to say?

    I have often asked myself this question: why are so many people struggling to get into politics, and be elected into some position or the other? I have some answers but I seek a better one of you, dear reader, if you are minded to give it. Basically, it appears to be on account of the ‘free money’ being doled out by the government as so-called allowances and emoluments.  Now, everybody wants their share.

    But how did it come to this? I think one of the reasons appears to be the rather lazy disposition of the Nigerian mentality: as a people, they just love the line of least resistance – to wealth-making, educational pursuit or keeping the law. Nigerians have been known to offer up as sacrifices their mothers, fathers, spouses, children or relatives (in short, their nearests and dearests) as sacrifices at the altar of wealth creation. The relatives are not only cheaper, they do not need to be searched for from far east, far west and far indies. They are ready made by the creator, sometimes just for that purpose, if you get what I mean. Worse, on account of this national malaise of slothfulness, it appears even the country’s earlier vaunted quality education is in great peril. And the law? The less said about the people’s attitude, the better. Let’s just say it’s easier for Nigerians to break the law than to keep it.

    Anyway, quite another reason for how all these came to be is that the government has effectively killed private enterprise and made itself the only worthwhile venture for any serious mind in the land. Many factories are closed down; many are working at half or less capacity; many more are groaning under the weight of the costs of doing business in a hostile environment such as this. The only ones not groaning in the land are the government-employed, and it’s theirs not to reason why. But then, some of them have begun to moan under salary failure. So, when you get a situation where a government pays higher emoluments than the private sector of a country, that country is effectively dead. Sooner than later, it is bound to come crashing down under the weight of its own excessive kindness: it finds itself too expensive to run.

    Right now, the people have stopped struggling for themselves, only waiting to get into political posts. Like someone said just today, a political jobber who sets out with nothing begins to construct gargantuan edifices within three months of assuming duty. Only in Nigeria. Why should that be? Naturally, people are ready to maim, gorge or kill anyone who gets in the way of their edifices. Can you blame them? I blame the conditions that breed their actions.

    It is important to act now; we can begin by having a charter. The government must, as a matter of urgency, re-empower the private sector again. In a capitalist economy, the government can only act in a regulatory capacity, a sort of controller, not the one doling out, except in defence, internal affairs and education.

    It is also important to find a way to truly discourage people from going into politics to rip the nation off. For a start, we can begin to insist that anyone seeking political office must be gainfully employed and must show it. Let us chew the fat on these ones for a while.

  • Hail Corruption!

    This perverseness in all of us tends to make each one think only of himself and consign all other people to hell, all other members of his group to damnation, all other clients to Hades, and all other citizens to Halifax!

    I looked up my Microsoft Encarta for the definition of corruption. It described it as the ‘dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain.’ I liked the definition so much I did not bother to look for any other. I did not bother to consult our dear president’s dictionary which describes what corruption is not: stealing. I was too afraid of what it would tell me corruption is.

    We are all familiar with the national refrain: the government is too corrupt. I agree. Nearly, if not all, the governments we have been saddled with in Nigeria appear to have had only one item on their agenda: to be more corrupt than their predecessors; and to leave the country more depleted and disconsolate than they meet it. I must say they have all succeeded. The effect is that Nigerians have learnt to be corrupt in all their various places of watch. We have all imbibed the culture of corruption as a people and we are not liking it.

    The definition I stayed with – in case your English is worse than mine, dear reader, which I doubt – simply means that when we overtly or covertly use our position to gain something, no matter how trite, we have engaged in corruption. So, advertently or inadvertently, the only one not guilty of corruption is standing still. That definition rolls practically everybody into the carpet of guilt, beginning with me.

    I think one of the hardest things to manage is power: over food, money, children, properties, students, clients, proselytes, adherents, citizens, etc. Let’s take the first example. It is my belief that the area generally demarcated as the cooking stove offers a super-great temptation to be corrupt. Anyone who has ever found himself or herself in charge of the cooking will testify that you need superhuman strength to resist tasting everything in the pot to death when various kinds of aroma waft up your nostrils. I think the worst of the lot is the barbecue.

    When the grill is hot and the meat begins to sizzle, your tongue pushes itself against the palate, forcing the throat to constrict as it bobs up and down in involuntary saliva swallows, and paroxysms of desire prompt you to reach out and cut a piece to taste. Suddenly, like one in a dream, you reach out for a small piece, then another small piece after another, until you find that you have tasted an entire steak. Of course it goes on until someone with foresight knows that an entire joint would be liable to disappear if the utensils are not rescued from you. To be honest, I have always believed that what I eat at the table is not enough to account for my weight gain; I still believe that the corruption at the stove has a lot to do with it! Ladies and gentlemen, what I have just described is a metaphor for the misuse of all the national treasures kept in our care: food, money, children, properties, students, clients, proselytes, adherents, citizens, etc.

    Now, I have a very bad habit: I hate counting money, not even at the bank counter. Naturally, I have been victim to many a deliberate underpayment. I believe that counting money reminds me too much of how short it is in supply in my purse; so I just spend what little I have until I run out of. The other day, someone wanted to send some money through me to someone else and was surprised that I did not bother to verify the sum. Well, I explained, if it falls short, the fellow should know that the shortage would not have come from me.

    I explained to him that one of the greatest instances of corruption, is to ‘quickly borrow’ someone else’s money in your keeping to meet an urgent need until you can go to the bank to replace it! My sender was dumbfounded. I do believe at that moment he thought I was an angel, until I hastened to explain that I only knew that after the children had grown. When the children were young, I cannot now recollect how many times the monetary gifts they had received from visitors were ‘quickly borrowed’ for ‘something urgent’. Yes, you guessed it; I had the power over their money: it was in my keeping.

    Someone else now has power over my money because it is keeping it: the bank. Have you noticed that banks not only charge you COT but also all kinds of things including the VAT on the COT? I understand why I am charged some money on my transactions, but who on earth is supposed to pay the VAT tax on what they have charged me? Is it me or the bank gaining from the charges they have deducted from my own account? What kind of corruption of logic is this, I ask?

    Then, take the case of private transporters, i.e., drivers given charge of vehicles. It is well known that very few of them can resist the temptation to pick up paying passengers with your vehicle on their way to and fro or either of your errands. You would never be the wiser but for some tell-tale signs of forgotten or dropped items in some corner or the other of your car. You think it is the lure of the fare or companionship that makes them do it? No, it is the lure of the make-belief; the need to pretend that the car belongs to them at the point of departure; the power to decide.

    Have you ever had to deal with estate or house agents? My goodness, I tell you, they are one species of humans. I have never known a group of people to eat more from where they have not sown. They not only charge a great deal higher than the fellows who struggle to build the houses, they evict, discharge and acquit at will. Now, if that is not an example of the exercise of power and abuse of power, I don’t know what is.

     Time and space will not permit me to mention the various bodies and associations whose executive members, learned and all, appear to be only interested in using the resources of their associations to solve their own personal problems. What about civil servants and technocrats who are supposed to protect the state: e.g. certify that the road has been built or contract executed satisfactorily but who agree to look the other way at a fee when the job has been done shoddily or not at all? What about GSM companies that charge us the earth and then sell us to private enterprises to inundate us with offers of all kinds of unwanted services? What about parents, teachers, schools, villages who wangle unfair advantages for their wards?…

    It is easy to conclude that this country is all ‘messed up’ as we say up yonder because everyone is busy pointing accusing fingers at others, quite forgetting themselves. I don’t believe though that the situation cannot be redeemed; it can. As you can see, it may take more than one man or one party or one group. It requires each and every one of us.

    There is a perverseness in all of us which tends to make each one think only of himself and consign all other people to hell, all other members of his group to damnation, all other clients to Hades, and all other citizens to Halifax! In the end, we all suffer and groan and wait for a deliverer. The deliverer is you, you and me! Until we recognise that we have the power to undo this evil in our hands, we might as well continue to drone, ‘Hail Corruption!’ at wake time each morning.

  • The funny thing about Change…

    ‘Change will not come if we wait for some other person’

    This morning, I obtained my PVC. I know, I know, some of us might be thinking I was rather tardy about it, while others might be thinking that they might be so lucky. As they say in teenland, ‘whatever.’ Prior to getting it, I was a little worried that if I didn’t I could get into some kind of trouble. What if the government woke up one day and decided you could not send your children or wards to school, or enter a government building, or get buried, or God forbid, even vote without your PVC? So, you can imagine my relief when I got it. I immediately thought, now, the government has no right to prevent me from being buried, should I be so thoughtless as to die.

         As I held the card, it occurred to me that the picture on it was not quite to my taste. It was a reflection of me alright, but I thought I looked a little hazy and unsure of what the whole process was about, just like a woman suffering from dementia being woken up early in the morning to go and give a lecture on astrophysics. I however consoled myself with the fact that the candidates would hardly be after my beauty (they don’t want that), brains (they don’t need that) or brawn (ho, ho, they have enough thugs, thanks). Perhaps, I had that confused look because of the presidential candidates and what people are saying about them.

          I understand that there are about twenty-six registered political parties, out of which only about eleven or so have fielded presidential candidates. Yet, only two of them are said to be in strong contention. Wonderful, said I, we are having a personality-based election where you choose between one set of tribal marks over another; rather than a party-based one where you choose one ice cream flavour over another. In other words, this election is saying there is no difference between the parties: they are all about eating ice cream.

           You can therefore empathise with me I’m sure as I’m in a dither over which of the candidates to choose, or whether I am even going to vote at all. Right now, there are two gimmicks being peddled. The one is about continuing the process of transforming the old order while the other is about changing the old order. The one is about the old order transmuting while the other thinks the old order needs transmigrating. Here’s my objective take.

            My Encarta says transforming is changing things dramatically, and to change is to transform or make something appear different. So, clearly, both candidates are peddling words centred on how they would wave their magic wand and the old order would transmute in Nigeria. As of now, the programmes are not yet clear, but I guess as they become clearer to the participants, they would let us know. For now, it is enough for us to know, according to a TV ad., that Dr. Jonathan is comparable to Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama… I wonder, did the list include Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa…? I don’t know; maybe I missed those parts. Anyway, that ad parades the list of world figures who have given their brains, blood or even life to make a difference while gaining little or nothing, as a premise for us to understand how to view the achievements of our current president.

          Hmmm! Thing is, the copywriters of that TV add forgot one major truth: the people mentioned were made world figures by history not by ads or people. In other words, history judged them, they were weighed in the balance, and they were not found wanting. Sadly or happily, that same history awaits us all. So, I would prefer that we wait for history to add our dear president to that exclusive league of extraordinary gentlemen or… It is too early to decide whether the country has been transformed or not.

          For now, we will do well to remember that in most parts of this country, there is no electricity for more than three quarters of the day (if and when), pipe borne water is absent, many major highways are practically impassable, people are still being abducted as we speak, others sleep with one eye open, possibly waiting… One major culprit in all these is what many of us have pointed out, and that is corruption. Yet, the president has stated that if he would be given a second coming, he would not send anyone to jail for it (perhaps because of the first stone and all) but would rather study the phenomenon and decide on the best procedure, perhaps strengthen institutions.

          Anyway, on account of all the billions of the nation’s funds flying left, right and centre but ending up untraceable, the people are now clamouring for change in the nation’s body politic. In response, the other candidate has also been peddling the slogan of change at the end of a long hook for the people to bite. And are they biting! Now, everywhere you turn on the internet, the month of February has been turned to … Go and find out yourself; I am not the man’s campaign manager.

           Still, on my part, I am hesitant. For one thing, we have a presidential candidate, Rtd. Gen. Buhari, who has been a soldier all his life (I suspect even from the womb) suddenly transmuting into a politician. Something is not sitting well. Remember how angry he got when the nation did not vote him into power in 2011? That was a real, soldierly anger, forgetting that it was quite possible that people really did vote in Dr. Jonathan, in all their innocence. Can that righteous anger change? True, a few things are changing. For one thing, I think the candidate is realising that neither an insular north, nor south west, nor south east, can Nigeria make. A part, in this instance, can never make a whole; so to be wholly accepted in one part is not the same as being accepted in the whole part. For quite another, have you noticed his dressing lately?

             Anyways, people clamouring for change need to do some sitting up. I checked the internet for quotations on change and I found a site that registered 2,536 of them! And what’s more, many of them agreed that change is not an external thing; it is an internal thing. Listen to these: ‘be the change you want to see’ (M. Ghandi); ‘everybody thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself’ (L. Tolstoy); ‘never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has’ (M. Mead). I like this one: ‘change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek’ (B. Obama); ‘and that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time’ (L. Bray). ‘We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted change you’re the one who has got to change’ (K. Hepburn); ‘I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples’ (Mother Theresa).

           I suspect that the Nigerians clamouring for change expect someone to come and change other Nigerians so they can continue to cheat and fleece them. Few Nigerians are ready to forsake the illegal perks they are receiving from their offices: misuse of office properties, funds, personnel, and misapplication of office rules and etiquettes, etc. People are not ready to give up their own corruption; but they expect someone to come and make every other Nigerian give up their rights to be corrupt. How realistic is that? So, I look at my PVC in my hands, and wonder what it is worth: promise of transmutation, or change that I’m expecting? I can’t decide, so I pocket it.

  • And as we ring in the New Year…

    I rather think that Nigeria is still the way it is because people are praying too much and doing too little to effect good governance wherever they find themselves

    I give you very hearty New Year greetings!

    I read a story in some book not long ago about the pastor of a village church, somewhere in England, who had accosted one of his supposed parishioners, known to be an avid farmer, and accused him of not coming to church. The parishioner indifferently replied that he would be seen in the church as soon as it was known that crop pests could be killed by praying rather than spraying.

    I was a little amused when I read the news report about how the president of our country, while speaking at a church service, credited the peace experienced over the recent holidays across the land to the prayers of the Nigerian people and the work of the government. Wonderful, I thought; wondering if the president really put it in that order. If he did, then he must be wanting to say something to the congregation, and by extension, the entire Nigerian praying public. I thought he might really be saying that prayers could not only kill slugs and pests but could sling enough anti-terror deterrents to discourage the activities of boko haram devotees, armed robbers, kidnappers, ritualists, and other sundry silent terrorists.

    Now, I think that’s saying something. Here we have been all this while, thinking that successful governance was all about maximally employing all state apparatuses to ensure peace at all times. This means engaging the army, police, guards and all armed and unarmed forces to do their job to keep the peace. In the process, they may, of course, catapult a few pounds of warning bullets at the foes. Somewhere in the background, the unengaged but serious Nigerian populace can stay on its knees and deftly direct some well-aimed and well-armed prayers at the good heavens as support. Then we would have peace. Now, it seems our eyes are being opened, according to that story, to the possibility that those prayers may very well have been our main armoury. What then does that make of our state forces: supporting actors?

    Don’t get me wrong. I know for a fact that there is no Nigerian who embarks on a journey now without first of all invoking all the heavenly powers to ban all destructive forces and loose all protective ones. Many there are who examine and re-examine all the possible cowries combinations at home to be sure the interpretation on their prospective journey is correct; not to talk of the ones who first visit their secret shrines backwards and front-wards before setting out, all just to travel on Nigerian roads. The reason is simple: it is in order to ensure that boko haram devotees, armed robbers, kidnappers, ritualists and other sundry silent terrorists do not have their own prayers answered so that you can return from your journey. Oh yes, I understand that even armed robbers pray for a successful outing before they set out…

    Truly, if you understand something of the Nigerian situation, you will be tempted to do all three before you set off on a journey, sit down to a meal, enter your car to drive to work, take a walk on the road, talk over the fence with your neighbour, see your friend off after a good visit… It seems life in Nigeria has become so dangerous that we require prayers at every turn. The other day, I heard a story about how a man was visited by his friend and he decided to see him off in the evening twilight time zone. That was the last his family saw of him and all enquiries led to nothing. His friend insisted that the man turned back after he got into a taxi. Anyways, he was found weeks later in a place very far from home, barely alive. Obviously, you also need prayers to visit your friend and when you are visited by your friend. So, I know all about prayers; you really should hear me pray.

    However, in the operatives of governance, the people do not want to be told that their prayers are holding the state afloat. When that happens, it is a quarter to disaster, because it admits to the helplessness of the state. Then, the people probably would not need elected officials: they would elect to pray all day and all night; and angels would come down and take over the reins of government.

    Rather, the people want to be told that the state has deployed this number of arsenals against the foes, this number of secret operatives to perform this action, this number of paid road troopers to perform that action. The people want a demonstration that the government is truly on top of the situation, not just figuratively so or because they say so. Then, the people would support the state with their prayers.

    As it is, there is no doubt that Nigeria is a praying nation. Oh yes, Nigeria prays, sir! Yet, I do not believe there is any nation of people on earth who are more corrupt, wicked, unserious, insensitive or uncaring than Nigerians. Just recently, I read of an army officer who was denied his entitlements for fourteen years by the army. Disabled by illness, he cried out and he was promptly upbraided by the army for going to the press. Presumably, they also pray.

    So, let’s talk about the efficacy or otherwise of some action or the other please and let’s have less of prayers. It is only in Nigeria that people use prayers to keep others awake all through the night in the name of night vigil! Only Nigerians head to praying grounds at seven a.m. before going to the jobs where they are expected to resume at half-past seven. But, let’s not go into all that again. I rather think that actually, Nigeria is still the way it is because people are praying too much and doing too little to effect good governance wherever they find themselves.

    As we ring in the New Year, let us reflect deeply. I am not throwing out the usefulness of prayers. I pray. It is, however, more important to first execute an expected right action in order to ensure others do not suffer as a result of our inaction or wrong action. It is more important to always practice putting ourselves in the position of the receivers of our actions. Above all, it is important to always remember that every action always comes back or boomerangs, good or bad. There is no exception to that rule.

    As you go through the year, I wish you everything I wish myself. I wish you more vibrancy than that of the famed tortoise whose instincts for self preservation made him one of the most interesting characters in fiction. Indeed, his vibrancy was such that if you hemmed your throat and mumbled ‘Story, Story’ to a group of children, you would immediately be asked, ‘Is it about Tortoise?’ He is the only four-legged animal known to have somehow contrived to fly in the sky (what has his not having feathers got to do with it?), survived the sulphur of pit latrines for over ten years, made a king bow to him, and what else not.

    I also wish you a sharper instinct than last year’s so that you’ll be able to step nimbly out of the way of the new, over-speeding, baby oil sheiks; or come up with the right and most appropriate repartee in every situation, again like the tortoise. Then, you will not be like me who only comes up with the wittiest thing to say after the situation has passed. Above all, I wish you the ability to carry out 365+ acts of kindness this year. Your life may depend on it.