Category: Oyinkan Medubi

Too often, the teacher’s employer has interpreted his/her cry for help as a war cry and demanded proof or brought out the armoury

I’m sure you’re going ‘Oh no, not the matter of teachers again!’ and I’m going ‘Oh yes, it is the matter of teachers again!!’ You remember those famous lines pupils throw at teachers when they arrive late in school? I think they go something like ‘Sorry I’m late to class sir, but I have an excuse’. Well, this column is late celebrating teachers this year but it has an excuse. You see, on my way to, err, the school last week, a plane crash occurred. Which teacher will believe that? Now you know why teachers never believe students’ excuses. But, as we say in Never-never-land, it’s better late than never.

Today, however, we will be chewing our curd on why the teacher has to perennially provide the burden of proof when he/she cries for help, as in ‘Come on, give me something to work with’, ‘Your child is not behaving well’, or ‘I need more pay in order to even eat decently, you know, like a human being.’ Too often, his/her employer has interpreted it as a war cry and has demanded proof or brought out the armoury. So, the teacher is not only deprived, he now carries on his already scraped head the burden of proof. He must show that his stomach is empty by throwing up bile.

At various times, secondary school teachers have gone on strike to draw attention to some extremely egregious things. And, as we all know, the members of the academic staff of Nigerian universities and polytechnics have been on strike for a while now. Everyone also knows that is a perfectly legitimate way of crying for help. No matter how serious or frivolous that cry is, however, a decent society should immediately bring out the microscope and swing into action. It would critically examine the issues on their own merit. Certainly, you would not expect a sensitive society to laugh at or deride or even be scornful of a grown man’s cry for help. However, the reactions coming from the government is proof that these cries have been seen as nothing but war hoops to suspect.

I have always believed in this Chinese dictum that says if you have a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail. The government of this country obviously has a hammer (politics), and it is seeing every problem as a nail (politics). It is therefore swinging that hammer wildly, heartily and with all its strength. In other words, it is going at it with great abandon. First, we are told, those negotiating for the government laughed at the teachers’ demands because they appeared to be outrageous. That laughter must be contagious because right now, the world is laughing at these same people for erecting or buying houses at the deranged sums of billions of Naira. Many who built such houses have since bowed to the merciless hands of death. Sadly, the houses are still there – derelict, unkempt, and ignored by the living – serving as monuments to human foolishness and selfishness, and reminding us that no fond dreams of living on forever can live forever. Pardon the pun.

Obviously, the laughter treatment did not put the teachers off. Instead, they continued to press on and the government now swung its political hammer wildly at the enemy within. Or is it without? Never mind. The government now says that the teachers are being sponsored by political enemies to score political points. This is called arguing against the man. It is a falsely persuasive tactic that I chide my students for using when they run out of points. Don’t mind the lazy things; when they can’t knock out their opponents’ argument, they then try to knock out the opponent.

I don’t think any teacher needs to be sponsored by any political foe to prove that he is being underpaid. All the government needs to do is look at the teacher living nearest to Aso Rock. They are many I assure you; they are the thin ones who look mistily at The Rock as they pass by each morning when going to work. Nobody passes by the place except politicians? Are you serious? Pardon me, I really have no idea where the blessed thing lies, being such a stranger to the high and mighty places and people in this country. Then, the government should just ask a few flowing, excessively starched, Agbada to take a trip to a Nigerian classroom for proof. I would have said the cloth alone will do because they will be less prejudicial, but then you need the wearers as well. They will find that it’s worse than a Nigerian police college dormitory.

Those starched politicians would certainly swing their political hammers less wildly when they are accosted by sights meant only for museum houses. For instance, when they enter a secondary school classroom and find one hundred pairs of eyes staring back at them where there should be only thirty five, with one wretchedly dressed teacher in front, a shudder will pass through them like lightning bolts from their consciences. Then, when they move to a university classroom and find a thousand pairs of eyes sitting, lounging or standing to receive a noon-day lecture in one airless room (the students are now the windows), and all breathing heat and fire on one tiny lecturer, they will exclaim involuntarily like Chief Zebrudiah, ‘Chineke!’ They will wonder why they bothered to send their children abroad to go and learn about human nature when those ones could easily have been in those classrooms sharing all the fun. But wait, there’s more proof to come.

Then, we can ask our starched agbada to stay and observe a few lessons, and believe me, they will be illuminated on just how well or otherwise the Nigerian student is being groomed to take over from him. Actually, I think that is what will solve this whole problem. They will find that the children of the government functionaries who have not been placed in schools abroad are ruling our classrooms here at home. They bring into class those things the teacher does not even know exist or how to operate. I think they call them electronic gadgets. Then, they bring more money into class that the teacher dares not seize because the children have more access to the law than him/her. They bring more mannerisms into class than the teacher can ever hope to understand or correct because the children have more access to the law than him/her. In my depressed moments, I like to predict that by the time the children we are not grooming now take over the world, the word ‘sanity’ will no longer be a word; it will be a myth. ‘Once upon a time, there was a concept that went by the strange name ‘sanity’…’

In one of our universities, a student could not pay his school fees on time. A fellow student, related to a serving government functionary, lent out the sum (close to five hundred thousand Naira). The borrower was in for a shocking surprise, if you will pardon the expression, for when he tried to return the money, the lender was surprised and declared it was a gift. Now, how many teachers (primary, secondary, or university) can afford to see, hold or give out that sum in spite of all their labours? The government wants proof the teacher is not being used? Clearly, it cannot handle the proof, for there is your proof.

An enemy has done this, the government said? Pshaw! The enemy is within us if politics will make us so blind we call black white and white black. When that happens, it is proof indeed that the government does not have much understanding beyond its ears.

What gets me more is the fact that we seem to even think that it is all right to be lackadaisical about human life in this Nigeria

This is not meant to be funny but when someone greeted me on Thursday in the Yoruba fashion ‘A ma ku ti Agagu’, I immediately asked, half-joking, ‘What happened to him? Did the poor fellow rise and die again?’ That was when I learnt about the plane crash involving so many people and I thought, not again! How many crashes must we endure in one year? What is just so wrong with us in this country?

Many theories have been flying around since the crash of the plane carrying the corpse of the late governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Agagu, but I am not dealing with them here. Instead, I shall just be expressing my general sorrow over what we all have come to take for granted: the lackadaisical attitude to life in this country. Actually, what gets me more is the fact that we seem to even think that it is all right to be lackadaisical about human life in this Nigeria. Come, people, why, oh why, is human life so cheap and so cheaply held in this country?

In this year alone, there have been at least three notable air crashes. There are more we don’t get told about. Unfortunately, with the predilection of the governing class for private jets now, our skies are even less safe. True, there are air crashes all over the world, but those ones occur in spite of all the factors to prevent them. In other words, when they occur, they do so outside of everyone’s hands. In Nigeria, however, the reverse is the case: crashes occur in operators’ hands. The wonder is that any plane flown in this land comes down safely at all. It just makes you want to weep when you think about the reasons.

First, there is the anti-public stance of successive federal governments. Public services in this country went into a long coma a long time ago. They were not brain dead, just in severe and several states of coma: transport system (road, air, rail and sea), energy, water, city planning, and now universities, etc. Everything was indeed comatose. Next to that is the lack of will and interest, not to mention self interest of the governing class. But we have been talking endlessly about this.

However, rather than attempt to raise these public service sectors up from their several graves by yelling at them, ‘Come forth!’ in the fashion of our Lord, this government prefers to see to their burial. Our railways and their problems were handed over to the one man in this country who has enough trucks and trailers to replace all the rail carriages in the kingdom, Dangote, as well as the Chinese, the world’s next suspected colonisers. Now, what do you make of that? It sounds a little to me like asking Tom the cat to babysit a sick Jerry the mouse. If you don’t know who these characters are, please ask the child sitting closest to you. No, don’t shout; I said ‘closest’ to you.

Now, the government wants to do the same thing with our public universities. Not only has it refused to listen to ASUU and honour its own agreement with that group, the government has given so many licences for private universities there is no counting them. You cannot drive along any Nigerian road for more than five kilometres before you see a ‘Proposed Site’ signboard naming one university or the other – some with very strange names indeed. It gives you the distinct impression that the licenses were given before the names or the locations are ready. Clearly, a floodgate of licences has been opened and the veritable deluge requires the intervention of Noah. (Sniff, sniff). I think I smell a drowning in the offing. Interesting, considering this is a country that would not give a licence to anyone to operate a primary school without the Ministry of Education coming to inspect the buildings to be sure it has light, water, enough colours and air for the pupils to breathe. By killing the public universities, the government will now give room to private universities to murder the children in the name of educating them. Someday, we really should talk some more about this.

The most galling and appalling of the wastage of public utilities is the fact that the national air carrier was dismantled and given over to barracudas. We all know barracudas, don’t we – those things out just to devour flesh. Well, that’s your present airline operators, because flesh they are devouring. Yes, the airways have been handed over to ignoramuses who have not the faintest idea of how an airplane works other than the fact that it makes a lot of noise when it flies. So what do they do? Order the oldest looking, retired and tired, maintenance-resistant airplanes going for a song from abroad to build their ‘fleet’. With the fleet in place, the greater ignoramus of a government readily grants them the licence to convey Nigeria’s precious souls to and fro in them, with disastrous consequences.

Naturally, these consequences are weighty. There are governments in the world sustained on the proceeds from public services. Obviously, Nigeria is not one of them. Such governments not only effectively control and monitor what goes on in the sectors, they ensure that the people are not unduly taken advantage of. In Nigeria, private anything: road transporters, universities, etc., regularly fix fees that are out of this world, and the government looks the other way. Presently, airline operators regularly don’t just fix fees as they like, they regularly kill people. And the government still looks the other way.

This is not how to privatise. Privatisation does not mean that the government washes its hands off the affairs of a particular sector. Privatisation, as I understand it, is building a unit to a near perfect state and giving it out to someone else run while keeping a wary eye on it. The government owes the people the duty of looking out for them, not to sell the public sectors off to the cronies of officers to rip the people off. Right now, the people are being ripped off by unconscionable barracudas who are not businessmen but killers. Now, when you undertake a simple road journey, you literally have to hand your will over to the driver. And to take a plane in country is to literally hold your soul in your hands, hand it over to your maker while muttering all the way, ‘into your hands…’

Many of those Nigerians who flew the Associated Airline last Thursday literally handed their souls to their maker, and I am pretty sure it was not out of choice. I feel for them and their families. I feel angrier at a Nigeria that daily hands over the lives of its citizens to barracudas who have no will, no interest, no training in making such lives safe. The consequence is a catalogue of such losses, such needless losses you won’t believe. These things ought not to be so, considering; the story can be different, if only we would make it so.

Dear reader, today is World Literacy Day. You know what that means don’t you? It is the day people examine themselves and seek a genuine answer to the question: how would I like to be that man or woman in my village who looks at the letter S on a page and declares ‘my goodness, how like worm it looks! Will it crawl out of the page?’ I know I would cry. If I cannot recognise the letters on a page, how on earth am I going to read the instructions on my favourite cereal pack?

I have always regarded illiteracy to be a little like that poem by the nineteenth century poet, John Godfrey Saxe entitled ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’ based on a story said to have originated in the Indian subcontinent. As you can guess, the poem is not only famous, but it has been used to illustrate many things, the most famous of which is the fact that truth has many sides and there is a need to respect other perspectives outside of our own. The poem tells us that six blind men examined the elephant and declared it in turn to be a fan, spear, wall, rope, snake and tree. Worse, each of them was sure he was right. Now, the point is not so much the perspectives which were all wrong but the fact that each was so wrong and so sure! That is just one of the things that illiteracy does to one. It makes you blind like the blind men. For instance, I ask myself, were they unable to apprehend the elephant because they were blind or were they blind because they could not apprehend the elephant? Are you confused? Good, so am I. There is nothing like blindness to make people stumble.

No doubt, literacy has many advantages. For one thing, you must be very literate to persist in reading this column for many readers have told me many times to tone down my English so that they can read what I have to say. But I don’t trust Nigerians; if I were to go lower than this, I fear they are not altruistic enough to say, ‘Come up higher’, you know, like you tell someone who deliberately humbles him/herself so that he/she can be elevated in front of a crowd. Nigerians will just forget me there. So, this is not a very good example. But what about traffic signs? Oh, you would not believe just how many people think that the one who has the right of way at a roundabout is that one who gets there first, such as the donkey, Okada rider, mule, taxi, etc. Believe me, I often cannot tell the difference.

As I was saying, many advantages attend literacy. Only the literate crowd in Nigeria knows for instance that all governments are insincere with the truth and the economy, and are ignorant to boot. That’s funny, because the government also thinks that the people are insincere with the truth and the economy, and are ignorant. Clearly, people who go into government suddenly develop severe bouts of illiteracy, but who’s to know? That’s why we’ve had all kinds of brain-deprived policies: selling mobile phones instead of tractors to farmers; changing licences and vehicle number plates three times in a year, increasing fuel prices once a year, and other policies not mentally well enough to be mentioned. Forgive me if I exaggerate … I am not exaggerating? You mean, all these happened? Well, who would have believed it?!!! Wait till I tell my dog. ‘Mr. Bones, have you heard …’

Jokes apart, we have said it again and again. This government would write its name in gold if it began to take the literacy problem in this country more seriously. There are far too many people in the land who cannot read and write. There are far too many people in the land who cannot count, read newspapers or sign their names. But they can read the currency very well. Now, let me tell you something. Failing to read a newspaper in a day, literate or not, is failing to contribute to the development of the country because one would not know what is going on, react appropriately by taking the right steps and generally help to stop the bad guys in their tracks. When I heard the rumour that our president was in the habit of looking down his lucky nose at Nigerian newspapers, I gulped. Had he never heard the expression, keep your friends close but your enemies closer by visiting, playing, eating and dying with them, etc., eh? But I’m glad he has since repented. No? Oh you!; you must be one of those enemies he really needs to keep close.

On the other hand, illiteracy is not an excuse for the failure to know what is going on in one’s country for where there is a will, there is a way. It was said that the early settlers in America found ways of improving themselves by attending night schools when the day’s work was done. That way, no one could get the better of them financially, socially and most important of all, politically. So, they were often to be found at that time with a hoe in one hand and a pencil in the other, even if only to have something to bite on in the times of stress or depression. On the other hand, Nigerian illiterates are simply content to remain so because they feel no particular pressure to acquire the alphabet or numeracy. They wake up in the morning, bring down yesterday’s agbada down from its hook, sling it on, tuck their hands inside its folds, step outside their huts and just follow their nose to where the nearest aroma of food is wafting in from, which is usually a politician’s compound.

It has often been said that Nigeria runs a diversified economy. What that means is that the rural folks, who constitute the largest group in the illiterate class, have many sources of income. They get some perks from the village politician representing them in government; they also get ‘something’ from their close relatives who are rich and who are obliged to share or their reputation in the village will not be worth a kobo. Believe me, every family has a ‘rich’ relative. Then, they get a little ‘something’ from their sons and daughters who come ‘home’ from time to time and bring all the riches in the city for them. If you had all these diverse economic sources, would you be inclined to shift from your behind too? I know I would not.

The government has to move – crane, digger, and all – to make the illiterate know and believe that they need literacy in order to add more meaningfulness to their lives. It must activate the adult literacy unit of its programme to bring people out of the realm of darkness into the marvellous daylight of literacy. The government, and all of us, must aim toward making “Literacies for the 21st century” a reality by bringing basic literacy skills to the doorstep of all citizens, or die trying.

Everyone has a part to play too. You can regularly read aloud to your children from story books instead of leaving their imagination to what they can get on “Tales by Moonlight”. In your family, you can also do literacy adoption: help bring a child into literacy by reading to him/her regularly. In your neighbourhood, you can adopt an adult to teach the basic literacy skills to. We must somehow ensure that the light of literacy placed in our hands lights up someone else’s lamp.

I have just read your piece reflecting the subject above and could not agree more. I just have to react because it seems as though u and I were thinking alike from distance apart.

Just yesterday in Owerri, I was standing by to pay for a roasted corn when an “Honorable” member of Imo State Legislative Assembly drove past me and many others waiting to grab their own corn. Once the idiot in a larger-than-life SUV with ISHA plate insignia saw that traffic was heavy on a Right turn (we were at a T-junction) he turned Left against the traffic and was trying with all impunity to wave other vehicles (with the right-of-way) off the road so he may cruise more freely away.

Once I saw this, I lost my cool. I ran like I never did before, slapping my hands on the body of the car, shouting on top of my voice to attract attention: What manner of law do you guys make! Ehn! Tell me! What manner of law do you make for crying out loud! Do you realize what u are trying to do? ! Nigger you are breaking the law! The law you made!…and so many other invectives I was raining on the idiot as I could catch my breath. I was visibly mad, I tell you! By now people had gathered as he came to a stop as I was still shouting, banging on his Octopus of a truck, and acting, even telling him to take me to police or court for having “disrespected” an “Honorable Member”. Behold and Alas, he lost words, as more people had gathered; he rolled up his glass which was earlier rolled down to see the ant shouting and banging on his truck, and quietly turned back to join the legal direction of the traffic. So I agree with you that we don’t need laws when the law-makers are the law-breakers. As for their jumbo pays even as ASUU is asking for nothing other than Fed Govt honoring an agreement it already entered into in 2009, we cannot but appreciate the paradox Nigeria has come to represent. Where are we gonna run to? Shame on them for raping Nigeria in broad daylight. And for you: keep up the good work of informing and may you find peace and God’s blessings for “earning” your pay.

H. I. E. Ph.D. (Atlanta).

Just read ur piece on lawmakers. I worked with a senator from d biggest senatorial district in Nigeria. D constituency allowance which u d press constantly refer to as monthly salary is N106,000,000 every quarter for a Senator & N104,000,000 quarterly for a house of reps member barring the basic salary and other allowances.

Do the math for Abike Dabiri Erewa who has been there for 14 years now! Senator Ganiyu Solomon has been there over 10yrs now. Their various constituency project should definitely be in excess of 3,400,000,000 (Naira) per constituency!!!

We have 106 Senatorial Districs and 360 House of Reps Constituencies! But where are these projects? Where?

O. O. 2348086511995

… The politics in Nigeria is rob my back I rob yours. Not only the lawmakers are guilty, those fixing their wages are also laden with guilt. The executive (is) also rotten. Just recently a minister was accused of blowing N2 billion on chartered plane alone, no one has come up to deny that.

M. 2348033691236

Phew! I certainly appreciate the compliments, prayers and passion. I was ever so glad our communication was mediated by the networks or else I probably would have seen some eyes bulging out, neck sinews straining, spittle flailing in all directions and fingers tautly emphasising the words. However, two things struck me here.

The first is that Nigerians are understandably angry at the macabre dance of deception that politicians are doing in the name of governance. Development responsibilities have been ostensibly shared between the federal, states, local governments and the national assemblies. But between the federal, states, local governments and national assemblies, as the tradition goes in story books, nothing resembling development has really touched the people’s lives. All over, the farmers still go to their farms with little hoes slung over their shoulders, feet shod in rubber flip-flops, skins stretched by the sun, eyes hopelessly vacant and stomachs still as flat as when Noah worked on his ark in the heat of the noon day sun. The women too are still hewing wood for supper, fetching water from long distances, cleaning children’s running noses (thick with the stuff) with their bare hands (and sometimes, yerk!, with their mouths!), walking bare feet transporting the farm’s produce on their heads. Worse, Nigerian roads are still some of the worst in the world, and my house still does not get electricity during the day. PHCN now waits for me to be fast asleep before grudgingly giving my house some slivers of the stuff. I ask you! I ask you!

With the kind of money mentioned above, added to the development allocations from the federal, states and local governments, I honestly expect to have begun to see changes in the lives of the people. By now, I expect farmers to be wearing something closely resembling boots as they ride on their tractors across their endlessly stretching acres of farm. Naturally, tobacco-stained smiles will replace anxiety-induced frowns and I assure you skins will fill out through the power of the milk of kindness. By now, I expect the women to be using Kleenex for their children’s noses. I also expect clean water to be running through my Jacuzzi. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with dreaming about owning one. Someday.

The second thing that struck me is that even though the real power belongs to the people, they are more cautious about exercising it than leaders are about brazening their own acts of perfidy. The leaders know this and take advantage of it. Only when pushed to the wall will the people act. Acts narrated above are not frequent, but they have begun; and this is why leaders should begin to beware. What started the Arab Spring was really no more than pent-up anger that was looking for where to happen. The recklessness of the state provided the playground.

The recklessness of the Nigerian state seems to be rising daily. Murmurings about the emoluments and allowances of the assembly men and women had hardly dried up before we began to hear rumours about how the presidency and state executive members are giving gifts worth more than a billion Naira to the newly wed son and daughter of some government functionary in Abuja. Frankly speaking, I don’t know what they expect those children to do for a living. Work?! Yet, many Nigerians there are who technically ask their children to ‘focus’ on WAEC or GCE and leave JAMB for a while. Truth? They can afford only one or the other at a time. The wonderful thing is that the government pretends not to know these things.

Now, you do the math. The people are angry, and the people own the power. The day is not long when anger and power will come together in one cataclysmic gale. I would prefer that happens in the ballot box rather than on the streets. In the ballot box, you can control your emotion. You can restrain yourself by only punching a hole in the offending party’s box rather than poking your fingers in the eyes of people who are doing little or nothing and being paid in billions. A word is enough…

Nigerians are genetically growing greedy at an alarming rate by the year such that no amount is too large for their illegal appetites

I don’t know about you, but I have lately formed this habit of talking to myself. So, one day, I stopped to actually listen to the contents of my monologues. That was how I knew I said things like ‘what do ghosts look like; where do snakes come from in the evolutionary tree; why does earth and heaven seem to be merged in my bowl of ice cream; why do we have law makers in Nigeria…’ No, I have not got answers to them all, cause till now, I still do not know what ghosts look like (consider your offer politely turned down; thanks all the same for offering to show me). Also, I can never understand snakes and their place on the tree. But law makers are a different kettle of fish altogether. The more I monologize on the subject matter, the more I conclude that they must have come down from the moon; this is why they do not seem to understand their own place here either. Aliens, get?

Isn’t this country one lovely land of paradoxes? Here we are, with prisons filled with the piously innocent while those who should really be in them are not only free but are ruling us, embezzling going on in the face of the law, people driving along our roads without any regard for any written codes of the road. There is a code? I don’t believe you. Just this morning, I saw that a woman had parked her car with the windows all rolled up while she went into a building not too far from the road, and a child was standing up in the front seat waving to all passers-by. Report to what police? Don’t traffic policemen regularly pass on unaccompanied learners in traffic, drivers with unstrapped children in their passenger seat, government vehicles’ drivers who drive against traffic, policemen who stand by and watch people being lynched, etc? Well, don’t they? So law keepers, we do not have. Why then do we need law makers?

Abuja, we have a problem. What exactly are our law makers doing to earn the pay they are reputed to earn? God forbid that this should be true, but I heard that the Senate leader, David Mark, earns more than a hundred million Naira a month. When I heard it, I did the most natural thing. I rejected it immediately (IJN) and snapped my fingers over my head, like, as in, you know, God forbid! How can I be here, in dire need of just one miserable million Naira and someone is earning a hundred million of it at the end of every month? Whatever for, I ask you?

I tell you, this land is full of paradoxes, and if we are not careful, those blasted things will swallow us all up, paradoxes, I mean. Just think about this. Have you noticed that the religiousness level of the citizens of this country is in direct proportion to our wickedness? Indeed, it has got so when someone tells you he/she is a faithful, you are best advised to run. Nasty, blasted things they sure are, aren’t they? Listen, let me give you the greatest of them paradoxes. Have you noticed that it is the so called poor beggars supporting the wealthy able-bodied? Let me explain.

Lately, I have seen beggars from the northern part of this country working in serious, perhaps unregistered corporations of two in my city: a disabled person who is pushed around on a wheelchair by a strong, able-bodied person. Talk of ‘Beggars: Incorporated’, eh? Anyway, the arrangement seems to be that the disabled does the begging while the able one pushes the wheelchair and occasionally also lends a hand in the begging. At the close of the working day, the proceeds are shared on a previously agreed basis. Normally, these corporations also experience the same problems that all corporations are prone to: misunderstandings, fights, greed, sacking, dissolving, bankruptcy, etc. However, this strange arrangement hones home two points.

The first is that this nation has an army of youths that it does not seem inclined to consider worthy of any consolidated developmental programme, but we have said that before. The second is that the weak can support the strong. In our ‘Beggars: Incorporated’ arrangement, the disabled, no matter how young, is the source of livelihood for the able one, no matter how old. So, on a wheelchair, a disabled feeds an able one who is strong of limbs and presumably, head. The argument thus holds that if a disabled person can be the source of livelihood for an able-bodied person, a poverty-laden person can the pillar of the livelihood of a wealthy one. Yep, I am thinking of our law makers and their jumbo pay.

According to reports, each of Nigeria’s law makers earns $189, 500 (roughly N30 m) in a month for a job they hardly stay at. Furthermore, we are told that the earnings of these law makers amount to a quarter of the nation’s annual budget. Honestly, if I was not so envious, I would be downright appalled. No wonder people climb over the earth, fall into the black hole, get roughened up in space, kill and maim irreverently just to get to that position. Now, who on earth fixed that kind of pay – tooth fairies? And these are quite apart from other sundry expenses such as travel, contracts, contracts, travel, con… which they seem to pursue endlessly. Now, my question is this: how many laws have cost us these whopping sums since 1999 when this experiment started, and how much per law? What law is worth that colossal sum? Quick, somebody, bring out the calculator and the weighing machine. We need both.

That the law makers alone have cost this country trillions of Naira is a gross understatement, and for what? To think that their costly highnesses have not got around to legislate a credible system of transportation, potable water, twenty-four-hour electricity supply, etc., for my house is shameful. It makes me want to cover my eyes. Worse, to think that sixty per cent of the so-called ‘people’ they are representing have no knowledge of what exactly the law makers are doing is also bewildering.

Clearly, this pay is not in tune with the reality of Nigeria’s present and future. It bespeaks either or both of two things. It could be that people have really given up on the future of this country and any access to government coffers is used as an opportunity to forage out whatever amount one can to keep in a safe country for when this house should fall. It could also be, and this is more likely, that Nigerians are genetically growing greedy at an alarming rate as the years go by such that no amount is too large now for their illegal appetites. Now, that will be serious.

So, the question is this: going by the level of illiteracy at these chambers among those who should know better, can Nigeria afford this kind of democracy? No, I do not believe Nigeria can afford it; people are just pretending it can. If it could, it should not go cap in hands for external loans, neither should it even need foreign aids. Both of these show that something is really fishy in that kettle after all.

In reality, the job of a law maker is no more arduous than that of a policeman or a kindergarten teacher or medical doctor or any other Nigerian worker. What then entitles your law maker to such out-of-this-world pay is quite beyond me. But then I am no politician. I think we should seek out the one nearest to us and ask. I am prepared to be surprised.

Sometime ago, I had the privilege to take a young man, no older than eighteen, to task on some of his country’s political policies which bordered on the treatment of a minority group in that country. As best, if not as testily, as he could, the young man defended the country with the excuse that the group refuses to budge from its old, tradition-soaked seats. I know many people who won’t budge from their tradition-soaked seats either, and no one dares ignore them. Yes, yes, I am talking about our great grandpas and grandmas in the parties.

As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by myself, my interviewee had emigrated, temporarily, from his country just to meet and know someone in another, that’s all. He was on a mission to satisfy his curiosity regarding the individual and had then set out. He met the person, stayed a while doing odd jobs for survival before going back home. He was on a kind of pilgrimage to satisfy a longing in his soul.

Now, no one can completely take care of all the longings on his/her soul, I grant, but sadly, it would appear that many Nigerians, particularly at the top, either do not have or have lost their souls. You know what they are, don’t you, souls I mean? They are those little things men and women carry around with them in the pockets of their shadows. Say what, shadows don’t have pockets?! You could have fooled me.

Anyway, let me tell you what happens when we lose our souls. No; contrary to popular belief, we do not gain the whole world; it would just appear so for a while. Believe me, the feeling soon palls, particularly when you get the bill. I can give you so many examples of people who got the bill of losing their souls in exchange for the whole world and soon realised they did not want the whole world, just their souls. There was Dr. Falstaff, the figure that looms in English literature as a classical example of the soulless man and his deep, deep regrets; then there was Fraser’s Bedazzled and his deeper and deeper regrets; then there are Nigerians…

Nigerians sure constitute one classical group of the soulless. It’s only in Nigeria you can find someone prefer to pack the nation’s billions into his account like one crazy winner at a poker game, not to do anything in particular with it, but for the sheer pleasure of seeing it there. It’s only in Nigeria you can get old, tottering politicians insisting on staying in power to continue to wreak havoc on a hapless nation. It’s only in Nigeria you can get an ineffective government but tall on excuses insisting on remaining in power so it can continue to make the people miserable. And it’s only in Nigeria you can get youths so beleaguered they have no youth to speak of.

Nigeria is guilty of a lot of things, but the most heinous to me is still the fact that it has stolen the innocence of its youths. First, it forgets to draw up a programme of development for this group so that each one can find his/her solid identity as a Nigerian whichever part of the country he/she may come from. Guilty. Next, the country builds a large nest, for its own youths to copy, of the worst kinds of examples anyone can possibly lay down for his/her children: lack of patriotism, murderous politics, selfish soldiery, gingham-like patterns of reckless unaccountability and irresponsibility, unabashed national selfishness, and other things for which names have not been invented. Guilty. Then, it steals the future of its own children. Imagine that. Because of the irresponsibility of the adult group, Nigerian youths now have anxiety syndromes over what may become of them in the country. How does it manifest? It manifests in the rabid dream of every Nigerian child to run to the United States of Heaven… sorry, America. How do I know this?

Nigerian youths have no dreams regarding the country. They do not lie awake thinking of that age-old question: ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. They cannot dream for the country because they have not been handed any tools to work with: no housing system, no credible transportation system, and no food that can satisfy the average greedy person. So, the youths do not dream for this country, they dream about leaving this country. This should make each of us stand trembling before the mirror, look ourselves in the eyes and ask the mirror: how did I contribute to killing the ability of the Nigerian youth to dream?

There is worse yet. Many youths there are whose only goal in life is to make money, at any and at all costs and too many adults there are ready to teach them. Oooooooh, this troubles me so. The baffling thing is that many of them have no idea why they want to make money except that they have noticed that their papas and mamas worship at the foothill of money every day. They have seen too many adults in their environment listen to what the rich man says (that’s why they say money talks); consult the rich people in their lives (money is powerful); or obey what the rich man commands in the family (money can do anything). They have seen that to bury any family member, people wait for the rich; chieftaincy titles go only to the rich; obaship succession chains change only for the rich; to take someone to the hospital, grown men wait for the rich in the family; and sometimes to eat, people go cap in hand to … Yes sir, the youths have seen the fear in the eyes of their hapless parents and have found a solution: get rich quick.

Nigerian youths have been shown by the adults that it is no use having any youth if you do not have cash backing. So, they have taken to either running out of the country if they want to keep their souls or staying in the country and pursuing money into the hole by hook or crook (quick, cross yourself for those who pursued it to the last hole) or by turning their family members into money. Somewhere in the east, a young man was said to have killed his mother as part of making money rituals, and somewhere in the west, a young man killed his mother for reportedly being ‘behind’ the fact that he was not ‘progressing’ in life. Those who are not killing are either militants (north, south) or in one religious vanguard or the other. Oh yeah, they are also killing.

Nigeria has turned the youths in its charge into ravenous wolves, hungry to consume all the money they can find in their paths. In effect, the poor youths have lost the sanctity of their youths: the zest for knowledge, the beautiful experiences that define life in its purest form, or searching for the kind of associations that show the true meaning of existence. They have not been taught that real enjoyment does not lie in holding a gun to a helpless person’s head, or in spraying walls or people with bullets, or in some mindless pursuit of bawdiness.

Nigeria must teach its youths to pursue happiness, love, beauty, and self fulfilment in ways that are in complete harmony with nature. The country must teach its youths how to reach deep within them and bring out their tucked-away talents to help the society. It is not too late. If it is never done, that is when it will be too late.

Men should at least pretend that women are part of the human race and should not be beaten, scarred or raped

I am sure you would like to know what that formula stands for, dear reader, but you will have to bear with me a little while I vent my anger and release it into space, or I might be forced to commit murder. On the other hand, I don’t want anything tampering with my housekeeping allowance. Indeed, I am so cross now my mouth is shut tight, my brows are in a deep scowl, and my eyes are so crossed they are literally looking at each other balefully. That is how mad I am about the spate of rapes weaving across the land: boys raping girls, men raping little girls, old men raping toddlers, young men raping old women, young men raping mad women, fathers raping daughters, fathers impregnating their daughters, fathers having multiple children by their daughters… Oh men, what is going on?! Why is it always the men?!

Not too long ago, one of my readers, presumably a male, wrote in and asked me to say something on the rising wave of rape in the land. Then, it had not quite risen to the popularity it has since assumed in the country. I declined to because I felt rape is really best left to the police while we citizens concentrate on searching for money to purchase gari. Alas, my thoughts were misplaced, just like my hopes. The police are too busy with em, internal problems, to take much notice of rape. In short the police have failed in their duty to sufficiently frighten the men into totally submitting their libidinal will to reason. So, I have no choice but to pick up my pen, err, computer.

True, there are natural expectations on both sides of the sex divide. Take the men; they expect their women to provide the 4Cs: cooking, cleaning, childbearing and companionship. They are What Men Need (WMN). As I always say, most men cannot boil water without burning it. And the woman who manages to burn food once in a year is taken to the cleaners. ‘Why is this food tasting burnt? Did you travel while you were cooking it? Do you know how much I worked to provide the money for it? You should go out and work and let me do the cooking.’ As Fela knew very well, ‘that na shakara’. Still, men take it for granted that women are taught these things in heaven before they descend to earth. That’s why they marry women who look like their mothers: they take the abilities in the chosen ones for granted because such women are primed to fulfil these needs for men. Who says cloning does not work? As soon as a female child is born, the father takes a good look at its arms to be sure they have sufficient crooks in them and the hips to be sure they are sufficiently wide enough and he nods to himself, ‘this one will fulfil her heavenly roles well.’ Obviously, men no longer see beyond their needs any more. Is this why some among them would even proceed to test their daughters’ role readiness by raping/sleeping with them? Haba! Please!

In the interest of peace, and also to maintain world order, women go along and provide men’s needs, believing that men in turn know what women want and provide it. Women take it for granted also that men are primed from heaven to fulfil the wants of women. This is why the birthing women take a good look at the arms of the new born male to be sure they have enough strength in them to actualise some woman’s wants someday. They also check if his fingers can crook well enough to cock a gun some day. Tough world we are in, no? The difference is that women only stay at ensuring; they do not test. At least, we have not heard of a woman who sets out to have children by her male son. I have not said it does not happen; I only said we have not heard. As a father said to his son one day, ‘I have not said ‘don’t steal’; just don’t get caught.’ Seriously.

The trouble is that, in spite of the strong arms and all, men still do not seem to know what women want. Once, men thought that if they dragged food home to the family, all would be right with the world. The women soon put them right there by dragging home sometimes bigger food. That’s why some women have come to now earn more than their husbands. Then the men thought if they built strong shelters for the family, keep out the wild elements and provide protection, all would be well. But the Cecilia Ibrus of this world soon set their minds at rest on that score. She and her ilk told them they could go hang with their shelters by procuring same in their hundreds. And I said ‘Tell ’em, sister!’ No, no, don’t get me wrong; I do not condone fraud but there’s just something about that spirit… So now, men are at a loss as to what exactly women want. And you know, when men are confused, they resort to… The story goes that the women had taken over the administration of a certain city and, to the consternation of the men, were even preparing to go to war for the city. The men simply got together to hatch a plan. They collectively got all the women pregnant and went their own merry way to fight their war themselves.

Obviously now, there is an impasse: women know what men need (WMN) but men do not know what women want (WWW). To make up for their lack of knowledge and total confusion, men have been going around employing and displaying their strength in the market place. Imagine that. Good wine, they say, needs no bush. When a man begins to regard rape as an instrument of office and manhood, then he belongs in Jupiter where the people there do not ask questions, just like the early American settlers. Perhaps, that will mean evacuating all the men into outer space and have a world without men (WWM), who cares? If that is what we need to give the women what they want, then the price may be just right.

So, what do women want really? Oh, wouldn’t I just like to know! One day, all a woman wants is to look delectable, have the means to look delectable, and be seen and appreciated by her chosen one to look delectable. Another day, when the fancy takes her, what she wants is to be appreciated for her brains. So she barges into boardrooms and causes a war or takes over, into corporate offices and becomes the boss, or wanders into some poor government official’s heart and takes over his job. Ask our politicians. Naturally, the men’s retaliatory weapon of hate is rape. When that happens, you just know it is a statement against all womankind. This is why the women are calling for the heads of the men in the formula: WMN + WWW = WWM (What Men Need + What Women Want = World Without Men). If the women cannot get that, let us try the next best thing.

Let us try giving the female folk respect, from the littlest of them to the oldest. In this case, respect means consideration. Men should at least pretend that women are part of the human race and should not be beaten, scarred or raped. They should be treated with the utmost courtesy and nurtured carefully: i.e., given compliments, assistance, real love (not some pretentious thing) and companionship. After all, it is only wise to respect where one’s food comes from, especially if all one can do is burn water.