The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • I didn’t like the way the turkey looked at me; but, in the Spirit of the Season, I’m now ready to forgive

    ‘Tis the season of love and forgiveness, so I have decided not to seek revenge against PHCN (dead or alive), Okada riders, taxi drivers or GSM providers

    As the year wore on and the yuletide season approached, I found myself doing a mental reconnoitre of some of my relatives’ and friends’ houses, particularly those whom I knew kept a chicken coop or two. Visiting a particular one, I found a coop with chickens old and big enough for the pot, to my mind, but since they were clucking freely around in complete defiance of all logic and knowledge, I refrained from educating them on the approaching season, or of their rights for that matter. So, I simply marked one down for a ‘due date’. Turning, I espied some turkeys quietly observing me. I returned the regard but I saw that they looked at me with something closely resembling malice. I really did not like that look. However, I did not let that stop me from marking one of them for another ‘due date’, look or no look. It’s Christmas after all, the season to love and forgive all.

    Honestly, if it were not for the season, there are many corporate bodies and institutions and manufacturers and people that I had determined not to ever forgive; well, until the critical hour at least. You know that hour, don’t you? Since I like to think that that hour is still a long way off, I was quite prepared to carry my grievances like a cross, was I not? I don’t know about you, but lately, I have found myself going around with a permanent scowl till my brows are literally meeting at the centre of my face. The reason is simple; there are so many problems and annoyances and more annoyances that accost me daily in this country till I feel I am either targeted or I am the only one really alive and the rest of you are just figments of my imagination. Just listen to my list and see if you can sympathise enough to offer me your own yuletide chicken.

    Let’s look at our GSM providers and the way they have been relating with me lately. I have found that anytime I reload my phone with what I regard as a whopping lot of cash and I do not quickly sign up for one or other of their infernal ‘packages’, I quickly lose all of my money. Honestly, I never knew it was possible to get robbed via one’s phone until I joined the group. Seriously, I am holding the phone, looking at it and I am getting robbed! And the world expects me to be placidly forgiving? No sir, someone’s got to pay `cause I didn’t even want to own a phone in the first place! Actually, the story of how I came to own a phone is for another day.

    And have you noticed how enticing all new phones look when you are just purchasing them? They all look so beautiful at the point of purchase that it never occurs to you to ask what their faults are. How can anything looking so fine have any fault, you think? So no, it never occurs to you, until you start to use them. Then, one after the other, the faults begin to pop out like rabbits from a hat. Your newly purchased beauty is either discharging all its power as soon as you start your conversation or else dying out on you at the most critical point of the conversation when you are about to be told who did it. Don’t ask me what, I don’t know either; the blessed battery has gone dead. Or else, it is erasing names from its storage, or even blanking out all together!

    Then there are the Nigerian institutions. Throughout this year, I can count on my fingers the number of watts or even slivers of light I received from the electricity company. When the company was very busy not giving me light, it decided to blow what few equipment I had in the house. Well done, sirs; but I assure you the elephant has a long memory. Then there is the water corporation that did not give me a drop of water but was kind enough to distribute hefty bills. That kindness will also not be forgotten, even if you are.

    I don’t know what our unnecessarily segmented Nigerian security arms are doing on the roads, but one thing I know, they are not keeping us secure. There are still unaccompanied learner-drivers endangering theirs and everyone else’s lives on the roads; there are still women and men drivers who perpetually and ignorantly place children in the front seats of cars while driving as if they were on the highway to hell; there are still Okada riders who pick up fares consisting of pregnant women with children on their backs and in their arms and you ask what are they holding onto for support… and the list goes on. But what are your road-security outfits doing? They are holding me up to seize my own two-week only expired papers; they are catching me talking on the phone in a stalled traffic and making me part with some money… Right now, I am all fist and fury I assure you.

    Now, I am sure you will agree that your taxi and Okada transport services are anything but services. They are two different institutions against which you cannot win any argument, except in a law court. Sure, occasionally, I find myself in a taxi but that happens when all else has failed. For me to take an Okada ride is right now not on the cards. I took it only once in a city that offered no other type of public transport and I think both the rider and myself came away from the experience vowing never again: he would never take me again, and I would never ride on it again. Perhaps that was why one of them removed the rear guard of my car one night in retaliation. Now, you understand my grievance.

    My list can go on and on, but what’s the use; it only makes me grumpier and grumpier. To lessen the scowl, I resolved sometime last week to liven up my life by purchasing one item or the other. You know that kind of comfort purchase; you don’t really need it but you sort of hope that it would bring that miracle of healing. I know, I know, one could try being kind to others by giving out rather than purchasing an unneeded item. I’m talking about after wards now. As I was saying, there I had packed my car neatly, even if I did say so myself, only to come back from my purchase and find it had been crashed into by a taxi driver. Believe me, if I was sure I would get Jonathan’s amnesty, I might have tried my hands at murder. Since I knew Jonathan had his own hands full dealing with Obj.’s letters to Aso Rock, and my application for amnesty might not reach his eyes before the yuletide, I refrained myself.

    More importantly, ‘tis the season of love and forgiveness, so I have decided not to seek revenge against my tormentors. Instead, I have decided to give them all a general amnesty. This means I quite forgive PHCN (dead or alive), water corporation, road maintenance company, etc. I will also forgive my dog for not barking, Okada riders and taxi drivers for aiming at my bumpers, GSM providers for making off with my money in broad day light, and the turkey for looking at me maliciously. That way, maybe, I can frustrate them into doing some good for others and spreading the cheer around. Have a very cheery and merry Christmas!

  • Here are some reactions to last week’s ‘the widow’s millions’…

    This week, dear reader, we are going to ignore OBJ’s epistle to GEJ and pretend the two of them do not exist. I have closely examined the two of them and the only difference I can see is that one is a politician with lines; the other is a politician with a hat. On that point, I am tempted to call them black pot and black kettle but don’t let me be too hastily dismissive. I’m sure there’ll be others to dismiss them in the media. Today, we will be doing something else – reminiscing.

    I really pity our action governor, Mr. Adams Oshiomole, because I believe nearly everything he has been doing has been for the good of his state. Yet here he is drawing so much flak because of a well-misplaced good intention. I want to state here categorically that my sympathies are with the governor, because I believe he is one of the few governors who are actually working in this country, but he must own that his reaction to his first action towards the widow has caused a lot of confusion and perplexity, and in some quarters, ire.

    The unexpected volume of reactions to last week’s write-up on the subject cannot be ignored. While some got the spirit of the essay and agreed with me, some got it and disagreed, and some did not even get it at all. Indeed, I can actually say they did not care for my style, but you know me; I’m nothing if not objective. So, I thank you all. I am here presenting some of the reactions, though I must warn you that you will require parental guidance: some contain scenes and strong language that are not very pleasant. I have taken the liberty to remove the unsavoury limitations placed on writings by the text message genre and straightened many abbreviations, but have left the words and sentences all alone.

    Re: The Widow’s Millions’. Thanks a million for not being a gender hypocrite in this matter. Like lies once told require bigger lies to cover up. Oshiomole’s first blunder of thoughtless outburst (“Go and die”) demands another blunder (“million apologies”). 07018889236.

    Thanks for articulating my thoughts in ‘The Widow’s Millions’. We need a follow-up on the other ‘angle’. In other climes, the Gov would be gone. Where are the ‘Women’s Groups’, etc. After the Money, let’s analyse the Baloney… E., Bayelsa State. 08037059145.

    Your today’s write-up: “the widow’s millions’ represents a bestseller. I hope the governor concerned and others like him will draw some useful lessons from it but ironically, do our leaders know what is called drawing lessons? This is where I pity our writers. They send good messages with their write-ups but do those who the messages are directed care? 08058382530.

    Please be reminded that we are being ruled by people who have equated themselves with the State. Adams did not know that he had endangered millions just to “apologise” to a widow who was prepared to die (or, has a woman who advertised her wares beside the road not prepared herself for death?) You only know a leader when the chips are down and there’s a need to take a decision that is not based on emotions. Alas, widow Joy Ifije has exposed Gov. Oshiomole’s feet of clay. S. O. Ogbomoso. 08101298511.

    You said it all, my dear. Wonders will never end in Nigeria! “Crime pays in millions” in Nigeria. Gov. Oshiomole should be prepared to make more TWO MILLION NAIRA APOLOGIES, but this time he should pay from his personal pocket. C. 08037468194.

    I may be wrong but Oshiomole didn’t say the money was from government coffers or from his pocket. So, what you should be asking is, where did the money come from first. 08070796551.

    Madam, as Gov Oshiomole lost you, you won me on a platter for your piece on widow’s millions. The truth is that Nigerians approach every situation with sentiments & emotion (rather) than reason and logic. I guess Oshiomole felt guilty about his gutter language. To make up he did the unthinkable. Nigerian leaders for you. M. K. 08020526339.

    …Thanks for letting Nigerians not to replace the constitution with religiosity. I’m one man who’s yet to know why Adams was uneconomical with apology. Hence, ‘Oshiomole, go and die’. Madam, you wrote my mind, although I had written an article with the title, “Oshiomole’s ‘woman, go and die’ & religionists narrow-mindedness”. Cheers. O. O. 08032552855.

    Re-The widow’s millions! Thank you for your write-up of today. You spoke the minds of many of us in Edo State. B. O. 08067949427.

    Well I dispute your claim that it is the dregs of the earth that commit infraction of our laws. The assertion has no basis in facts. Indeed our laws are honoured more in breach than in observance by the elites so called. I also think you should address the system that has impoverished a large chunk of her population. This pervading disorder is ordered from the top. Its street manifestation should not cause you to write so much. 08036054742.

    What informed you that the money Oshiomole gave the widow is from the state’s coffer? Please learn to know what you write. 08180585619.

    I agree with you that the people’s money should be used to build the country. The problem is that the regime does not know that what the poor need is social justice. That is a humane order that will accommodate all Nigerians. A. E. Kaduna. 08039727512.

    Your piece in THE NATION’s Sunday paper was pathetic. You tried to pass a message but failed pathetically. Your thoughts and writings were all jumbled up, confusing and uninteresting. A freshman in journalism would have done much better. What the hell? Really poor writing. 08039465504.

    Surprised, right, that so many people can read so many different things to a text while some cannot read anything at all? Mm! Anyway, nearly all of us are really saying the same thing to our leaders. Stop reducing every issue to the matter of money because there is a lot more to governance than the problem of money. Well, with the way Nigerians carry on about money, it is not too difficult to understand where the leaders are getting their ideas from. Someday, we will talk money, I promise you.

    It must be stressed though that in no way did that article point out that we the members of the lower classes are responsible for more breaches in the law than the other classes. I think this column has dealt most extensively on the culpability of Nigerian leaders in the social disintegration going on right now with their inordinate greed and unchecked grab. Most of us in the lower classes simply take our examples from them, and the widow has just been used to exemplify what fuels that group’s behaviour: anger.

    On the whole, I believe even the good governor himself has understood what the country is saying. If not, I will recap. People are saying that just as rich criminals should not be rewarded; poor ones should also not be rewarded for breaking the law. Apologising to anyone in monetary terms not awarded by the law courts is a debasement of the money and an insult to the personhood of the receiver. Actually, I’m surprised the woman took the money rather than cry out: ‘is it because I’m poor that you’re offering me money?!’

  • The widow’s millions!

    How on earth can one justify a two million naira apology? 

    It used to be called the widow’s mite; now, we can talk of the widow’s millions! Yes, dear reader, mother luck actually smiled and placed a rose into the sooty hands of a poor widow in Edo State, Nigeria, in a way that one can describe as ‘Only in Nigeria!’ For being insouciant towards the law, I say, this poor widow went home with a handsome sum of two million naira, a job, and the memory of tea with the governor! Tell me, what do you call this kind of luck? Rascally, that’s what!

    Now, let’s get this story straight because I am so indignant my thoughts are liable, nay threatening, to run ahead of me right into next year. As I understand it, the governor of Edo State, Mr. Adams Oshiomole, had been trying his very best to transform the entire state, particularly the horrible roads, into something closely resembling paradise here on earth. And I said, ‘Good man; bless you for trying’. Indeed, I not too long ago passed through Benin and was astounded by the many canyons on the roads that threatened to swallow my vehicle. As I heard it, many people before him did not deign to lift a finger in the direction of the roads. Oh, they lifted their fingers all right, but I will not say where for fear of offending the dainty ears of my readers. Anyway, from reports reaching us in this corner of the country, the man Oshiomole was doing quite well until a certain widow, Mrs. Joy Ifije, entered into the picture.

    Any interaction with members of a disadvantaged group is always fraught with danger, a little like walking on eggshells and even more like holding dynamites in one hand while holding a lit cigar in the other. You are bound to come away with egg on your face. That’s right, the word is angry sensitivity; for such people are forever trying to foist their failures on others. For example, have you ever held a conversation with a working woman on why she appears to have suddenly gained weight? If you are not wary, dear sir, you will be treated to a treatise on how members of her fair sex have been hewers of wood and beasts of sooooo much burden for centuries until your ears ache. Talk indeed, of the unfair sex. Now, how was Governor Oshiomole to know all this when the poor man did not study group behaviour or even English?

          Anyway, to cut a long story short, the poor man fell right into the hands (no, not arms, silly) of this widow, Mrs. Ifije, who had displayed her wares right on the kerb of the main road in defiance of the law and in anger at her fate. Two things strike one here. The first is that this behaviour is so typical of Nigerians that I still wonder that we have any roads to walk in this country. Actually, I have come to the conclusion that there is no group in this country with a greater disregard for the law than the low-income group made up of petty traders, artisans, etc. Collectively, they all appear to have adopted the philosophy that where poverty prompts an action, the law must yield its arms. So, the hapless driver or pedestrian must battle to put feet gingerly between wares that have taken over roads. Once, a vulcanizer graciously permitted me to park my car in front of his shed ‘for a few minutes only’. I looked up and down, just to assure myself that I was really parking my car along the town’s only main road provided by the government. Satisfied, I apologised and told him that I did not know he owned the road. Obviously, there is the law, and there is… Now, where is Sunny Okosuns to tell us who exactly owns the road?

          The second thing is the ambivalent attitude of the law itself towards the low-income group. Nigeria is considered one of the most lawless countries in the world because the people as a group seem to have adopted this attitude of indifference towards rules and regulations. For the most part, the law condemns the attitude but does nothing to punish the offenders. This is why there is no fear in the land. So, traders take over streets and policemen walk by or walk home with freebees. No one talks. No one, that is, until Gov. Fashola in Lagos who managed to keep his mouth shut while talking, and now Gov. Oshiomole, who could not keep his mouth shut for very indignation. Up to that point, I had been with him.

    Gov. Oshiomole lost me, however, not because he could not keep his mouth shut (no, I certainly do not support the ‘Go and die’ tirade) but because his apologies were too effusive. I do not understand how on earth one can justify a TWO MILLION NAIRA APOLOGY without having gone through a law court. Actually, I have several objections to that very expensive apology. First, where does that gift of two million Naira come from? I am sure the good people of Edo State are very well disposed towards their governor. I would be too if I lived there. I am also sure that the governor is a genuine leader at heart. However, I do not think that gives him the licence to apologise to people with the state’s funds. It is not an argument to say that all the money belongs to the people after all; that is only an apologia that implicates helplessness. It is the people’s money but it is for building the state not for funding apologies.

    My other objection concerns Gov. Oshiomole’s logic. After giving the widow a monetary offer, he went further by giving her employment to go and ‘fight’ (other widows?) against trading on the streets. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Here was a woman who had nothing in the world save her children, and suddenly, because of what someone has tagged the ‘Go and Die Encounter’, she found herself a millionaire and you are now asking her to go out and fight what made her rich. I would not. I mean, how can anyone expect me to attack even in the mildest form that very thing designed to take me out of poverty? That is one madness to which people will not listen.

    That’s another thing: who exactly is expected to listen to her – other widows hoping for their own ‘Go and Die’ encounter? If I were any one of such widows, I would not take kindly to an encounter with Mrs Ifije. I would look her up and down in a typical fish-woman fashion, beg her to please leave me alone and not stand in the way of my own ‘Go and Die’ encounter. Who knows the next person to pass by, insult me in indignation and turn round to apologise handsomely? I would therefore turn my back on Mrs. Ifije.

    Then, how is the poor widow to now begin to cope with the hordes of relatives who will now besiege her hitherto poor home in a renewal of avowed long-stemmed relationship? It’s the kind that starts with ‘don’t you remember, I am your long lost, great-great-great-grand-father’s long lost cousin seven times removed.’ Now, how can anyone forget something as simple as that?

    However, it is possible to get it right. In the course of providing governance, toes will be stepped on, but care should be taken that wrong signals are not sent out. Governors can sympathise, empathise, have fellow-feelings with and towards us the citizens, but let a reprimand be a reprimand. Otherwise, we just may find that gestures such as Gov. Oshiomole’s can easily be counter-productive. For instance, what lesson is Mrs. Ifije to learn but that crime pays in millions?

  • Bring them in

    AIDS is just like any other disease which calls for a sense of realism, right information and a positive attitude

    Man, I heard someone say recently, is more often a victim of his circumstances than otherwise. Even when otherwise, such as when he becomes a victim of his choices, he is said to be a victim of the circumstances which led to the making of those bad choices. Frankly, I just love this theory. I had always thought that any day I chose to wolf down a large bowl of ice cream in a greedy disregard of my limits, I was merely displaying bad choice and bad taste. But now, that theory completely exonerates me, as when it happens now, I am only a victim of the creating circumstances that make me not to know my stomach’s limits. And the name of those circumstances is legion. First there is the hot, hot sun, then there is my hot, hot thirst, and finally there is my hot, hot greed. Good, I think that’s told them.

    While I agree with that tenet only for as long as it exonerates me from every responsibility from the consequences of some of life’s choices taken on my behalf, such as by my creator, I am sure you will agree, as I do, that it is difficult for anyone to want to completely distance himself from every responsibility for his bad choices. For instance, when I choose to taunt the dog and he to bite me, now please who is to blame: him that to bite the finger that feeds him or me who chooses to feed him that finger? Wherever the responsibility lies, there is no doubt about where the ensuing pain lies: in the body.

    The pain of AIDS, the dreaded disease caused by the virus called HIV, also lies in the body. The trouble about AIDS is that once it strikes, it does not ask questions. It also does not discriminate between the wise and the foolish, the young or the old, the ugly or beautiful. It just mostly strikes wherever it finds some careless choices going on.

    For instance, it can strike when it finds some carelessness in the exchange of blood through transfusion or drug needles. Luckily for us in this country, our hospitals have since begun to screen, test and frisk every blood they receive before giving it out. Good for us, I say, because that as good as eliminates the hospital as a source. Don’t you just shudder when you remember the story of Arthur Ashe, the famed American tennis pro who got AIDS from the hospital? I mean, here was the poor man running to the hospital for safety only to come out with something worse, death. Now please, snap your fingers over your head; that will not happen to you and I. I thank you, noble sir, for exercising your faith on my behalf.

    Funny thing though that many people, even after snapping their fingers over their heads still go out to court death. They insist on injecting their daily rations of ‘high’ directly into their arms with used syringes by themselves. I mean, it is one thing to want to take trips into some airy La-La land where the reality of a missing Pension Fund, SURE-P Fund or any fund with ‘P’ running into billions of Naira does not exist. Honestly, if there was a legal and safe way to get into that land, I would be the first to volunteer to go with you. I want to live in a land where Nigerian politicians or military do not exist too, just me and… and… Oh, never mind. It is quite another thing though to want to get there by injecting oneself with used syringes. I think just seeing the syringe is enough to kill me.

    AIDS can also strike the careless ‘un through exchange of bodily fluids, we’re told. I think this is the one that many of my countrymen and women have trouble swallowing. So, they prefer to have their physical relations on the straight, like, without fear. Goodness knows how many obscene text messages I have received since this column started. I hate to think that people fling themselves around the way they insist on flinging their declarations around. If so, then the 2014 theme “Getting to Zero in Africa” is endangered, like the continent itself. I think the operative word here, people, is fear. You know that famous quotation that’s been going around, ‘if you can still keep your head in this confusion, then it means you do not understand the situation’? By analogy, a Nigerian man or woman who blithely ignores the safety precautions our medico-administrators have been preaching quite clearly does not understand the situation. Sometimes, I think it is safer to fear a thing first even before understanding it. Then understanding will bring more fear. Quite the philosopher I am today, no?

    Anyway, I’m sure you would have guessed that today is being marked specially as World’s AIDS Day. That’s just to draw attention to the scourge and its sufferers, to give them hope and encouragement and let them know that they are not alone. And also try and eradicate it altogether. Sadly, there are many silent sufferers agonising on their own for fear of what the society will do to them and only ‘come out’ when they are beyond help or reach. I know, I had a relative like that who never let out until it was too late, and even then never faced the reality till the end. I think AIDS is just like any other disease which calls for a three-pronged approach.

    First, hard as it may be, one should be realistic about one’s situation. Facing up to the reality of an illness is very difficult, I grant, but living in denial is a lot worse. As the people around me have always maintained, my knowledge of medicine is little, therefore dangerous. But, even they will grant that denial has never made a disease go into remission. While it is also true that there are all kinds of AIDS cure claims, there are no records that sufferers have found them. For this year’s theme to be realisable therefore, it is important to report early enough for the drugs that are available and which are heavily subsidised.

    The second thing is for one to obtain as much information as possible on one’s problem. Let’s face it; diseases deliver bad punches both foreseen and unforeseen. It is important to forearm oneself so as not to be knocked out. Luckily, we live in an information age with facts flying left, right and centre of one; so it is very easy to get informed on any topic under the sun from the internet to your neighbours. The other day, someone wanted to know how to cook rice on the internet and the silly thing answered. I ask you, what is this world coming to? Anyway, my point is to assure people that one needs not suffer alone anymore. The world is not called a global village for nothing: the reason is to let you know that if you crane your neck ever so slightly, an American hamburger will fall into your laps right there in your village. So will information.

    The third approach is to maintain a healthy attitude no matter what. This is difficult, particularly when the fellow is in pain. However, I am a firm believer in the notion that a positive attitude can not only make my pocket look like it’s filled with cash even when it’s empty but that it can give any group of bacteria a good run for its money. It’s just when those high heeled shoes keep pinching my little toes that my positive attitude fails me. Seriously though, World Aids Day is for us to remember that AIDS sufferers are people too. Bring them in.

  • Our wanton, wayward ways translate to national rascality

    You and I know where rascality will lead so I implore you, let us take ring-side seats and watch in discontent

    Anyone who says that life is a school has never met an earthquake, a volcano or Nigeria. Listen, I am whistling and mopping my brow as I tell you this. Nigeria has this powerful, schwas buckling, rodeo-rider life style that takes the breath away from the rest of the free world and proves to all that it does not necessarily need to learn a thing. And I am talking about both living and governance styles. Seriously, any observer of events, natural occurrences and manipulated natural occurrences around these parts will whistle and conclude that every Nigerian is a moving volcano and is completely detached from history. A volcano is never aware of its history; never tracks its own course; and does not ever, ever remember swallowing up anyone. No volcano ever goes ‘I do remember flowing down this path before; it certainly won’t do to flow over this village again.’ Thoughtless, that’s what it is; and unfortunately, that is also what Nigeria is. Nigeria has never once said to itself, ‘wait; we don’t think we should do this again because we did it before and lost so much.’ Oh no; it’d rather go, ‘this is so wrong; how come it feels so good?’

    Just look at the news as they have unfolded lately. First we heard that the funds conned out of our already impoverished pockets by the federal government in the name of fuel price increase had been kept in an account to grow mould and become nothing but filthy lucre which they call SURE-P! It sure rhymes. Anyway, tired of seeing it sit there all day many days doing nothing, some clever fellow had gone and dipped his filthy hands in the filthy lucre and suddenly, eighty billion, nay, fifty billion, nay, only eight billion was said to be missing! Phew! For one minute, I actually feared they would say the bank was missing!

    That only proves the point Nigerians have been making all the while. The government has never needed to increase fuel prices because it has never needed the money. The subsequent pilfering of those funds have certainly shown that the government did not have plans for the funds before gathering them and has been too hazy to sit at the drawing board to fashion out any judicious uses for the funds afterwards. Now, look, those funds are sitting out in the sun moaning off siren music, beguiling passing itching fingers and luring them to their doom.

    Then there was the news that it hath pleased some people in one of the security outfits to amass properties unto themselves with the funds of the said body. And I thought, come, how old is that body that it has settled so easily into the Nigerian system? Anyway, clearly, Abuja, we have a problem. How is it that the entire nation cried foul when a woman beat all men to the game and acquired over a hundred houses illegally within the first half of her lifetime and we still feel compelled to repeat that rascality? Why can’t Nigerians ever repeat the wanton ‘mistake’ of the person who discovered penicillin or waywardly tested anaesthetic gas on himself for the sake of humanity? Why is it that, at the first sign of success, it is money we feel compelled to wantonly help ourselves to? Oh yes, I forget; we also steal votes too.

    Now, one of my favourite persons is Prof. Jega mainly because he manages to keep his cool even when everyone else is poking their dirty little fingers up his academic nose. But I don’t think I want to be him right now. I think I’d rather keep my skin mostly because everyone who has done anything wrong in the Anambra elections is looking for someone else to blame. You guessed it; their favourite person of blame is the poor ol’ professor. I’m sure many of us are even blaming Jega for Jonathan’s win at the last presidential election, even though we all near-massively voted for him – you know, young blood and all. I think it’s mostly because we are so disenchanted with the guy now. My point? – it is only convenient to let Jega be our fall guy right now.

    But let us look at our antecedents before we cast stones carelessly. I honestly do not know what right Nigeria has to conduct any election in Anambra State when she has not solved the debacle created over the Governors’ Forum elections. Heaven only knows I have no iota, drop or gout of interest in any governor or their antics. Yet, principles must be allowed to be principles. If any ol’ body of people get themselves together and conduct that kind of election in the name of democracy, then all observers must be helped to understand the results. Till now, the presidency has not informed the rest of the known world why sixteen is greater than nineteen, making the part to be greater than the whole. Oh yes, there is a world that understands that election but you and I don’t live in it. Obviously, when the governors were voting, and when all of us were watching, we were all under the illusion that the person with the greater number would win. Now the presidency is acting out its own belief by recognising the lesser number as the winner, leaving the rest of us eating the bottom of our pens in perplexity while gazing at the greater number.

    The same federal government that has trouble recognising numbers is now conducting elections in Anambra State. Now, tell me, what are we expecting from there? Clearly, not much, and indeed, we have got ‘not much’. Not only are we told that all kinds of anomalies pestered that election, no one can believe the results. All the excuses – voters’ register being incomplete, voting materials arriving late or not at all, agents being manhandled – point to one thing. Nigeria is not ready to let go its rascally ways. Have you noticed? Only those who understand the country’s rascally ways become politicians, chiefs of the economy, contractors, government personnel, etc. So, with so many such rascals – politicians, chiefs of the economy, contractors, government personnel, etc. – interested and involved in the Anambra elections, how do we come to expect miracles from the professor?

    Clearly, there is a great deal wrong with the Anambra elections but calling for the head of the INEC chief is nothing but scapegoatism which, in itself, is a symptom of escapism, a very grave disease. Escapism gets one nowhere. Nigeria is to blame for those elections, and with any other elsewhere in the country. There has developed a tendency to see a post as a winner-takes-all ticket to wealth in this environment of impoverishment; and this in turn has tended to wake up the disorder gene which is normally dormant in all humans. Sadly, this will continue until Nigeria is able to look itself in the eye and agree that somehow, it has over the decades, donned the garb of a wayward, wanton and schwas buckling rodeo rider in the way it conducts everything – business, government, traffic or politics. And that garb speaks nothing but thuggery and gives fine colours to rascality.

    As a country, Nigeria must make a successful and conscious u-turn and agree to embrace order in every way. Since you and I have an idea where rascality can lead and we certainly do not want to go there with those who insist on going, let us then, I implore you, take ring-side seats and watch in discontent as the wanton and wayward lead the country on or off, depending on what’s in the charts. Do please bring an ice-cream along to offset both the boredom and gripping fear as we watch and learn in this hard school of life.

  • As good as gone…or?

    Professor Iyayi died in the hands of Nigeria

    I have always believed that what makes an individual poor is not so much his/her lack of material resources as his/her lack of the requisite imagination to deal with that lack of resources in an integrative way. At any point in time, poverty cannot lead to the destruction of any man or woman. What destroys is this frightening vacuity of mind. When a man reaches that stage of flailing his arms around the air wildly hitting out at anyone rationally or irrationally, you know he is as good as gone. I know this because I see it a lot in my dog. Whenever I see him uselessly flailing his paws and looking wistfully at passing birds flying high up, I know he has lost it, at least for that day. For, I never can tell whether he is thinking of dinner or of flying.

    By the same token, a country is not poor because it lacks enough resources to cater for its citizens or even develop itself. A country is not poor because it cannot pass muster in international or cross-border competitions. No matter how rich or ennobled at starting point, a country is soon rendered poor and stricken when it has leaders who are not leading it or enriching it. When the major preoccupations of a country’s leaders are the deadly combination of self-gratification and self-justification, then you have a problem. Indeed, that country is poor because of the vacuity of mind of its leading statesmen. This vacuity will sooner or later destroy the country and its citizens. Any interested researcher or even disinterested observer can come quickly to the conclusion that Nigeria as a country is already destroyed, thanks to, yep, its vacuous leaders. Now, that leadership has started to destroy its own citizens.

    There is no sane individual who plies Nigerian roads that is not shoved aside DAILY by one governmental convoy (ferrying frolickers!) or police convoy or bank convoy! This column, along with many others, has repeatedly stressed that no sane society should allow any group of people tear furiously through traffic the way Nigerian governmental functionaries, police and bank vans do. Now, look what this country has gone and done to Prof. Festus Iyayi, one of the most distinguished and respected academics in this country through the convoy of Gov. Wada of Kogi State.

    When I heard the news that the Kogi governor’s convoy had killed the professor, I was sad for many reasons. First, that death represented for me a sealing of the fate of Nigeria. Prof. Iyayi was one of those who believed in the Nigeria project because his faith in the ability of ASUU to make Nigerians and its leaders understand the reason for applying reason in national affairs was unshaken. I never met him yet I met his commitment to being unwavering in his belief. He believed where many of us had lost faith. If he did not, he would not, at his age, have committed himself to travelling the length and breadth of this country to attend meetings. The tendency is there to believe that ASUU fights battles for its own ends and thus Iyayi died in an ASUU struggle. That view was expressed by someone who reacted to the online version of the news but it was heartening to note that practically every other respondent dressed the fellow down for failing to see beyond his nose. Clearly, anyone can see that when ASUU goes on strike to press for something, the nation is often the better for it as universities are raised to higher platforms of performance, and the staff and students are the ultimate beneficiaries. Iyayi did not die in an ASUU struggle; Professor Iyayi died in the hands of Nigeria.

    That is my second reason for being sad. Nigerian leaders created and are maintaining the present social disorder for personal aggrandisements. Listen as I tell you. Now, every single government official uses not just sirens but convoys – the executive, legislative, army, state functionaries; police, local government, palm-wine tapper functionaries… And where are they all tearing through the traffic to get to? Just name them: in Nigeria, we use convoys to convey oga-on-top to the offices or hospitals or girlfriends’ apartments, the wives to the markets, the girlfriends to their friends’ apartments, etc. Now, traffic in any Nigerian city is chaos on the throne as people need to become wild behind the wheels in order to get home. There is no law, there is no order. Everyone flails uselessly and wildly at the others’ throats, along with the commensurate verbal insults and deprecating abuses, just to get that advantageous edge to get home first as if trying to breast a tape.

    Sadder still is that the drivers of these vehicles are all drawn from the society. They do not come from Mars. They are therefore, our neighbours, friends, husbands, relatives, sons; we who walk or drive along these roads. When governmental vehicles drive in a tearing hurry against every sense of traffic reason and safety, they therefore have to shove us their own neighbours, friends, wives, relatives, sons, daughters out of the way, sometimes damaging their neighbour’s, friend’s, wife’s, relative’s, mother’s or father’s vehicle or legs in the process. Yes, the very many people who have died in these unruly road behaviours simply increased by one last week. They have been relatives of these drivers and commuters. Imagine a driver getting home and being told that the accident he caused had claimed his nearest and dearest. Just imagine that deep, deep irony. That is what literature, and the courts, feed on.

    Wait, there’s more to be sad about. We all know what power is like: it assiduously takes over an individual. S/He finds that s/he can do anything and get away with it until s/he begins to act like a monkey. Power in the hands of an educated man or woman is safer because the voice of his/her education would tell him/her again and again that with great privilege comes great responsibility. Not so the not so educated. Power in such hands is at best a very risky business and at worst a destructive gale. To them, ‘Just drive’ means ‘you own the entire road’; ‘let no one come near the vehicle’ means ‘gun down all ants, cockroaches and rats pretending to be people that cross this vehicle’; and ‘escort this money’ means ‘suspect and kill everyone you meet along the road whether or not they come near the vehicle’. Thus it was that once, while travelling along a Nigerian highway, the vehicle I was in was unfortunate enough to accost the convoy of then Vice-president Atiku. Only the savvy driving of my companion saved us that day as the convoy took the entire two-lane road and it had everyone else jumping into the bush over culverts. The alternative was to wait and be hit head-on by these semi-illiterate relatives of ours holding in their hands the illusion of power and understanding very little or nothing of it.

    For goodness’ sakes, no life in this country is less or more important than any other. It cannot be said indeed that any government functionary becomes indispensable once he/she gets there and has to be protected at all costs. That’s a capital NO for that, unless of course you want to count their parasitic existences. So, why should they be so interested in protecting themselves at the expense of the people they are supposed to watch over?

    Worse yet, and this is the last, every government official caught out has always found ways of displaying inhumaneness by blaming the victims. This is exactly what Kogi State press officials did by peddling falsehood over the Iyayi matter. That is just classless. Such utterances show more than anything else that the country is as good as gone. Only serious social engineering can bring us back from the brink now.

  • Let us have a good heave down, rather!

    This dialogue is a day late and a dollar short.

    National discourses are always very interesting to listen to. First, you are dumbstruck when you realise that, indeed, there are very many intelligent brains idling around the nation with little or nothing to do. Then you begin to ask yourself, why are these brains not in government changing things? Secondly, you are surprised at the vehemence with which people oppose each other, both sides presenting infallible proof that convinces you that the subject of discourse must either have come from the very bottom of Druid Socrates’ pot of wisdom or Satan’s brewing pot of infernal matters. Then you ask yourself, how can something be both wrong and right? Thirdly, you are struck dumb by the many ways people use public matters to serve their own varied interests. It just makes you want to go, how is it possible for so many colours to hide themselves in black and white?

    Take the matter of the current national discourse as an instance. When the calls began a long time ago, people asked pointedly for a Sovereign National Conference and the presidency ignored them, even completely turning its back on the vociferous ones bent on destabilising the state. Then suddenly, the presidency slept, woke up and declared it had had a rethink. Rather than grant a sovereign national conference though, it would remove the words ‘sovereign’ and ‘conference’, and grant a ‘national dialogue’. I’m quite sure it did not remove the word ‘national’ too for reasons of exigency. And I ask, what, pray, are we to do with that? It is a day late and a dollar short – too little too late.

    Calls for a sovereign national conference have been strident for as long as I can remember, and this elephant has a long memory, but this is no time to start boring into it. There are too many things I really want to forget. Let it suffice to say that past heads of state, including Obj., shied away from it. Indeed, Obj. went as far as watering it down and conducting his own conference where he and the members all mumbled together. I sort of guess that they all thought that somehow, with sufficient mumbling, the problems would go away.

    I think the major problem has been that these past heads had been reluctant to press on with a full-fledged conference for fear of what might have come from it, such as the breakup of the country. None of them had wanted the country to heave down for a cleaning under their watch: supposing the boat heaves down and cannot heave right up again?

    In response to such guarded responses, the problems have multiplied. Not only have the problems multiplied, they have developed many heads. Where there was one problem before, there are now two or three. When these calls began to be made, there was no boko haram insurgency; there was no Al-Qaeda terrorism; there was no real problem with religion; there was no uncontained militancy; and kidnapping was restricted to playful youths who were not allowed to marry the beauties their hearts throbbed after. Now, in addition to state-instituted problems of ethnic, political and linguistic bigotry, terrorism, insurgency, militancy, kidnapping, etc., have joined the fray to muddle the already nervous water flowing beneath Nigeria. The result of course has been more nervousness, hence the louder shrieks for a sovereign national conference.

    Yet again, the nation’s rulers have responded with more nervousness of their own. Still afraid the delicately balanced nation may break altogether under their watch, they have looked intently at that three-word call, spotted the real trouble makers among them, and have sent those ones to jail. In short, the two most important words ‘sovereign’ and ‘national’ are now in jail. The presidency is now calling for a national dialogue and I call it ‘not fair’! This amounts to sweeping the problems under the carpet yet again.

    Egad! Me thinks I can hear the president intoning, baso-profondo, that the results of his dialogue will surprise many. Indeed, I am willing to be surprised. Don’t call me a pessimist though if the reports, all one hundred tomes of them, do disappear into thin air as they are meant to. Oh yes, I can see that far into the future. Just a minute; let me clean my crystal ball properly again. Let’s see now. Oh dear, this is bad! I foresee that the presidency will swear that it sent them to the Assembly. And the Assembly will do a nice dissembling: poker-faced, it will swear it never received them! People, we need to be on guard, no, not en guarde! You see, thin air can be powerful; it eats up stuff that concerns the people, so we need to watch out, not draw swords! Phew, that was harder than I thought!

    Right, now where were we? Ok. This watered down version of a national conference is nothing but a mockery of what this country really needs. All the voices that have spoken on this thing agree that things are bad, very bad. People agree that the very structure of the country is a problem in itself: too few people feel any sense of patriotism, of belonging to the country, rather than to a section; and only direct confrontation can help us. Yep, I agree, confrontation can be on two levels: problems and people. The problems need to be confronted and the people need to confront each other. For example, there’s a great deal of anger in the land that needs to be managed, not petted. It’s a little like a disease that must be tackled to restore health; no one in his/her right senses will placate malaria by giving sugar to the sufferer instead of the required quinine. When a disease strikes, pain is the only way to good health. If the sympathy is too much, even the sufferer will be quick to declare: no thanks, I like my pain.

    Fear of giving the country pain has led many past heads of state to run away from declaring the conference a sovereign one. I have pored over, ruminated, reflected on, looked at and thought long and hard about the matter and have failed to understand why on earth we are having a dialogue and why the national assembly will have to vet what will be purported to be the people’s will. Truth is, people are not exactly besotted with today’s national assembly, what with the excessive emoluments of those assembly members which are not in tune with the realities of the people’s situations; and the fact that the assembly has really not impacted the people’s lives to any appreciable level. Now, the people that the people do not trust are the very people to decide on what the people have decided. Get my drift?

    Anyway, this conference thing is a simple matter. It should really be an opportunity to address and change so many things we are doing wrong as a nation, not cover them with concrete. It should address things like inequality, religious divides, adoption of wrong ideologies, the why, how and what of our co-existence, low interest in nation building even among leaders, etc. Seriously though, I think the first thing that should be addressed is why 18,000 Naira cannot be paid as minimum wage in some states and a leader in senate is purportedly earning 100,000,000 Naira a month. If we were to have a real conference that is the first question I would ask. But then, that is why we are not having one, and I am not taking part.

    Anyway, let the presidency think again. We need a sovereign (where the people have the rule) national (where everyone is carried along) conference (where we all speak frankly and seriously to each other). That is the only way to ensure that perfidious manipulations of the people’s will no longer rules, ok.

  • In Search of… good health

    When heads come together in a well-meaning, genuine, round-table knocking, I believe that doctors, jingles and pounded yam can indeed mix to translate to more health.

    As I am writing this, there are many people in this country who are right now traversing Nigerian roads to attend the burial ceremony of one close relative or another, most of whom have died prematurely. Whenever I have heard that someone who had died and have asked what killed the fellow, I have often been told ‘Death’. How is it, I ask, that death can kill so… so… so… irrevocably when it has no hands? Turn left or right and you see your fellow Nigerians of all ages dropping off like… like… flies from all kinds of diseases! Just the other day, someone mentioned how she had been to an office one day in search of a contract and had chatted with everyone at each desk only to have gone back the week after and been told that one of them had died. Talk of a surprise.

    No, I am not talking about life expectancy today; I am talking about how Nigerians are allowed to eat and die in ignorance with very little intervention from the body that should be needling them into long life. It’s often been said that ignorance is bliss, but no one has ever tried to sit down to calculate whether the level of bliss is commensurate with the ignorance that spurns it or even calculate the very high cost of blissful ignorance. When someone eats him/herself to death in ignorance, the costs are borne by the survivors who have to carry on in his/her absence. Sadly, some of them never recover.

    Ultimately, everyone holds his health in his hands, with complete responsibility devolving on him or his family. However, when an individual takes decisions from a vantage point of blissful ignorance, then we are dealing with weighty matters indeed. Worse, he may even find himself not taking any decision because he cannot. So, leaving all issues concerning health in our hands is downright dangerous I say.

    Look, there are two matters compounding this problem. The first is that what we know as the Nigerian diet is seriously in need of divine intervention. It is a given that the larger part of the nation’s population is rural based with little or no education; therefore, the likelihood is high that they would mostly be the victims of the diet situation. Now, you and I agree that what constitutes our diet on this hemmed-in island is mostly what you would call the sugars with little relief. What I mean by relief is this. In this here parts, when a child is given his dish, his face breaks out in grins larger than that of the Cheshire cat at the sight of what he believes will fill his stomach. That is the main concern; what will fill his stomach. So he, least of all, notices that the contents of his dish are designed to satisfy only one aspect of his ravenous hunger. He hardly notices that there are other parts of his body also badly in need of satiation; those parts in need of protein, vitamins and minerals. Too often, these are absent. On a steady stream of that starchy diet therefore, your young Nigerian child grows into an adult who is more developed in physical terms than in mental ones. Either way, officer, we are being cheated by our consummations. Now, I wonder indeed if I know what I’m talking about.

    Anyway, one notable result from this skewed consumption pattern is the rise in diseases. Now, doctors tell us that diabetes and hypertension are almost in epidemic proportions. Nearly every one of two people you meet in the city is swallowing something to fight something else. On the other hand, nearly every rustic you meet in the hinterlands does not even know he/she has anything to fight until that something comes to punch them in the face, belly, arm, leg, blood, head or any other susceptible part. That is when the doctor’s questions or admonitions concerning the badness of the culinary habits handed down from ancestors without end really sound like Greek. Then you don’t know who to pity more: the poor man who is obviously sick and does not understand why it is not his neighbour ‘doing him’, or the doctor who is vainly trying to marry two incompatible people – modern medicine and traditional man. Me, I stay in their middle: firmly on the fence.

    The second matter is that there are just too many folk beliefs firmly ranged as arsenals against the doctor’s doctrines. Our rural folks do not believe that taking things like milk and eggs, etc., is morally good. One, they spoil the teeth and they encourage children to steal. Two, those things spoil children rotten. I have visited a number of villages having large, lush lands for growing things to take to the market while their children have skins that look like crocodile’s scales. The villagers just do not believe in feeding milk and eggs and chicken meat to their children. Come to think of it, neither do many chicken farmers. After raising their chickens, do they not cart the whole lot off to the economic market to sell, leaving the neighbours with only the scented whiffs of chicken droppings?

    Interestingly, even many parents living in the city are not much different. Their credos revolve around preserving the children’s honour rather than their lives. Then people find that in the face of ill-health, honour is not as valuable a premium as good eating sense. Oh wait, there is this health insurance scheme that is as incomprehensible to me as I think it appears to many. The reason is that there are still many questions not yet answered. Many civil servants do not know the limit that can be spent on their health; many of us do not know what happens when big illnesses strike; who takes care of the rural folks who succumb to these big illnesses; etc. Right now, health insurance or not, most people are bearing their health expenses out of their pockets and the health care providers are smiling to the bank.

    Doctors have sounded some warning bells on the rising phenomena called cancer, diabetes and hypertension, which, together are killing people off silently. Sadly, most people put such deaths down to ‘spiritual attacks’ or ‘wicked home people’. I am not here to argue with them though because everyone is entitled to a second opinion, so I am consulting my own crystal glass again. Yep, it tells me such people are suffering from severe cases of ‘deep, debilitating ignorance’.

    Honestly, this country can help itself preserve the lives of its citizens. Even in advanced countries, the government still sponsors advertisements which advise citizens on the proper diet to follow, the consequences of wrong diets, as well as admonitions on taking the right stuff such as milk, eggs and greens. This country can borrow a leaf from that. There must be a way of letting us the uninformed people know why we should keep a wary eye on the calorie contents of our steaming, mouth-watering plates of well-rounded eba, amala, pounded yam and rice, and why we should also keep the other eye on the meat to be sure it does not walk off the plate in indignation about its tiny size.

    How about we try radio jingles? They are catchy, cheap to produce and are definitely more far-reaching. Yeah, I know, in many cases it’s not the knowledge that is lacking, it’s the financial will. Even with that, there must be a way. All that this country – government, corporate world, people, etc. – needs is for heads to come together in a well-meaning, genuine round-table knocking. That is where we will find that doctors, jingles and pounded yam can indeed mix to translate to more health.

  • What a world we live in!

    Along with their Excellencies, our honourables are creating a world in which the haves are plundering and the have-nots are gnashing their teeth in hunger and anger

    I am an unabashed student of the many-worlds theory. The theory says many things, among which is that you and I don’t live in the same world if we don’t share a viewpoint, a purpose, a government, or even a tube of toothpaste. Come to think of it, when we do share toothpaste but don’t both believe in capping it after use or that it should be pressed from below, then your world is as removed from mine as Mt. Everett. I just love that theory. Oh yeah, it also says that whatever you can imagine to have happened really did happen, in another world. So, I shook my head when I heard about the Aviation minister ordering and paying for two armoured cars at the rate of 255 million Naira. I just thought, now look what you’ve gone and done! How could I have gone and imagined such a horrid thing? What in the world was I doing? Because of my stupid imaginations, now we live in a world where Stella Oduah actually went and purchased two vehicles for the price of six!

    When I watch a programme where some westerner who is bored to death about the monotony of his world where everything is so readily available he is spoilt for choice, and he takes off for the wilds for some camping experience, I marvel at his/her hankerings. You see, all he/she wants at that moment is some kind of change: a scenario where the bed is a sodden mass of hay; the cooking stove is a soaked paraffin lamp; the food is enriched by bush roaches, centipedes and crickets; the paved walk-ways are actually pot-holed ditches. He/she wants that world where nothing works; he/she experiences that world by soaking it in, revelling in it and sniffing it appreciatively! What a thing to do! I say, when I see such people, I usually go, ‘there is no pleasing mankind’. Here we are in Africa, hankering after the perfect world of the West; and there they are in the West, hankering after the world of Africa where nothing works. I suspect though, that should you ask them both to exchange worlds, they would soon get bored with what they’ve got and begin to hanker after the other’s world all over again. There is just no pleasing mankind.

    I think I’ve told this story before but I will repeat it nevertheless because, yeah, you’ve guessed it, I love repeating myself. It’s a little like the man who says he repeats his jokes because no one is listening to him anyway. Perhaps it never occurred to him that perhaps, just perhaps, people would start listening to him were he to stop repeating his jokes. Anyway, there is this story told of Paul Getty, the then oil magnate. At an interview, he was said to have stated that were the world’s riches to be gathered together and then redistributed to everyone equally, the sharp gap between the rich and the poor would reappear within five minutes. Why? Because within five minutes, some would have lost theirs, some would have had theirs stolen, some would have gambled theirs away in exchange for something else they value more than the riches, some would have given theirs away, and some would have hidden theirs and pretended to be poor again.

    The antics of the leaders of this country certainly post an impression to the rest of the known world that we in Nigeria live in a world where the majority still have their own riches intact in their hands, pockets and banks. The streets in this here world are just flowing with the stuff. Just look at the way the presidency spends the stuff; see how lavishly the government functionaries live; see our shameful list of national purchases; see the latest national purchase – the armoured vehicles. Once upon a time, our Obj. used to fly around the world in commercial planes. Now, we hear the presidency and government houses have so many planes and jets that regularly ply the routes between their Excellencies’ living and bedrooms the places are practically hangars. In this kind of world then, how can we ask the Honourable minsters to be quiet?

    The Honourable ministers, not to be outdone, have thus joined the fray. Rather than construct hangars, they have taken to constructing super garages built of impenetrable armour filled with vehicles exotic enough to make the car plants in U.S. and Tokyo gnash their teeth in envy. That is all Stella Oduah did. So, along with their Excellencies, our honourables are creating a world in which the haves are plundering and the have-nots are gnashing their teeth in hunger.

    The sad thing is that the have-nots, the rest of us not so excellent and honourable Nigerian people, are really gnashing our teeth in hunger and grinding it in anger. The world where we live in is not in need of hangars and garages. We are not there yet. The real world we live in is just interested in constructing soil heaps where we hope to raise some yams and tomatoes to ward off a world where hunger, famine, death and decay follow one another in uncanny succession. But, being such excellent and honourable people who live in a world of plenty, the Nigerian leaders would not know a thing about that. In these parts then, there is none of that ‘the people are starving’ plea bargaining meant for the ears of the sympathising judges in the West.

    I ask myself, what does anyone around here need an armoured vehicle for? True, there are security challenges (and that’s putting it very politically mildly), but they certainly do not warrant this armoury of armoured vehicles being stockpiled. One, that kind of armoury will not fight the security war; two, unless the user has a bathroom, kitchen, streets, offices and all the people he/she would ever have to interact with in a lifetime inside that armoured vehicle, I honestly do not see their use. What I am saying is that the user has to come out of it sometime, if only to pee. Then he/she would be accosted by the real world we live in. And what a world that is!

    Oh yes, very obviously, these infernal purchases do not reflect the real world of the average Nigerian. In that world, the streets are paved with potholes and there is no knowing the roads from the fields for the grass. That world contains the majority of us watching the drama of the absurd, albeit in hunger and want. We watch as our leaders tell the entire world that the country is on a rigid diet; no alcohol before breakfast, please, and then go on a binge afterwards.

    Nigerian leaders need to begin to take themselves seriously, if they want the world to do the same. They need to show that statecraft is not about satisfying their personal wants and desires. That is more likely to drive the country into penury. It is about leading the nation out of want and danger, poverty and silliness. By their antics, our leaders are giving the nation a world of want, danger, poverty and silliness. And what a world it is we live in!

  • In search of food sufficiency

    It does not make sense to first kill the people in order to feed them sufficiently

    There is a simple but strong dictum I believe in and it goes thus, ‘when all else fails, eat.’ Well, there must be an awful lot of failures around me for I suddenly find that my pair of bathroom scales has begun to tell lies again. (Sigh!) That’s p-u-speak for saying that I seem to be gaining weight. But, you really cannot believe everything these scales tell you. It’s a little like that joke about a grandmother who told her grandchild that when people die they turn to dust. Well, what does the child do but to look under her bed and conclude that people are dying there because it is full of dust? So, I now wonder, what failures can be causing me to take refuge in the traditional comfort that food provides? Actually, there is a long list. First, there’s government’s failure, then there’s government’s failure, and then there’s more government’s failure.

    Seriously, any average newspaper reader would have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of government bashing in the press. True, but there is a reason for that; ya see, every blessed thing in this country is woven around the pleasures of the government. Ya want to breathe, beg the government; ya want to eat, tention. What was the government doing about food insufficiency? I learnt the answer in a village. Not too long ago, a complaint came from a village that some people had come asking, nay, telling the people that the government had asked them to take over their entire land to use for planting crops. Were they government officials? No, they were not. Well, we thought it was better to make sure, like; since the government is so powerful here. Well, if they were not officials of the government, what were they?

    As it turned out, they were from the government and they were not from the government. I suppose that makes me sound as dubious as the government. Apparently, in its drive for food sufficiency, the government had desired and secured the involvement of private entrepreneurs willing to invest in farming. This to me is a most excellent idea which I welcome with every breath I’ve got. I still believe that the best way to feed this country with its teeming population is to grow the food within, not bring it from without. For someone as related to the soil as I have been (in more ways than one, obviously), I know it is not only possible, it is fairly easy to do. I also know that the best farmers in this world are not governments; they are individuals willing to bend their backs.

    But that is as good as it goes. It is not a good policy to ask private individuals looking for investment opportunities to go out and help themselves to people’s lands in order to make profit for themselves. If that is what is really on ground, then it stinks for many reasons. Well, there is the fact that villagers are unschooled and unsuspecting people who rely entirely on the government to give them direction and also protect them. Here, however, is the government throwing them to the wolves that are not only devouring the lands but even the people. Now, how fair is that?

    It is possible though that the government did not ask the enterprising individuals to go around seizing people’s lands. It might have asked them to negotiate. However, knowing how sensitive the matters of land can be, and how also very costly lands have become, your enterprising individuals may have found it easier to use federal muscle and might to ease their ways across the land. If indeed this is the case, then the government needs to be wise to the antics of its messengers. It does not make sense to first kill the people in order to feed them sufficiently.

    Let’s face it, the only insurance any helpless group of villagers has is the land. It is God-given, people protected and a sign of independence. This is why entire villages are ever so willing to go to war, fight to the last man or lose all. It is the only thing they have to hand over to their future generations; well, never mind if that future generation does not come. Now, should that generation eventually come, it too must be willing to protect the land in order to hand it over to the next… Honestly, I failed to understand it all before but I think with advancing age, I am getting a glimpse of the reason behind this protective custody that lands enjoy. It is a little like saving for the rainy day.

    True, most pieces of land just seem to sit out their days lazing under the rains, unused, untapped, unspoiled, and uncultivated; but consider, now that they are falling into private hands, whose progenies will they be handed over to: the private developer’s or the villagers’? Then, where does this policy leave the professional, soil-grown, rural farmer who owns much of the land even if he cannot cultivate or farm it? Should he watch on as his land, handed down from many fathers along the line, goes into the hands of his government’s private partners? Seriously?

    Honestly, I think this is a good policy. I have always thought and said that the backbone to any technological drive is agriculture. It not only provides much of the raw materials, it provides the impetus, challenges and adrenalin to invent stuff. However, the policy needs to have been thought through before being implemented. There are just too many questions that need to be answered. I mean, are the village’s lands leased, bought or acquired for this public-private partnership farming? At what point do they cease to be called the village’s properties? More importantly, the immediate challenge of growing so much food at once is where to store the surplus. Does the country possess enough storage facilities that will not malfunction mid-season while holding all our food?

    Now, how did I get to this point? Oh yes, I came out in search of the government’s solution to obesity but I guess I need to comb through the gazettes to find that. Perhaps, I should just stop doubting the official’s insincerity and accept that obesity is not a problem in this country; that fatness, along with the land, has been handed down from our forefathers.