The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • Looks like the best is long since gone

    One of the best things about looking over your shoulders is that it helps you measure your next step in relation to your previous one. If the previous steps have been too small, you can gently coax and persuade your feet to please take larger size steps so you can get to your neighbour’s yard before nightfall. If, as happens to most of us, the feet appear to be going faster than the brain, then you find yourself again gently persuading your feet to go, shall we say, a little slower so that you don’t find yourself ‘putting your feet in it’ too much. That’s when a husband goes at the wife: ‘Did I ask you to write to the president about my financial troubles?’ ‘Did you have to proclaim to the whole world that I was having financial troubles?’ ‘Did I even tell you that I was having financial troubles just because your house keeping money is short by a few miserable thousands? You this woman, be careful yourself o; don’t be putting your foot in your mouth o!’

    I am aware though that most people who have to look over their shoulder do so because there is someone aiming an invisible rifle at them and they don’t know which of their fat shadows that rifle is going to shoot at. And it’s mostly because they have done something wrong, such as performing illegal clones of themselves, their girlfriends or their spouses. Or, it may be because they stole some meat from the soup pot. No, I’m joking. Mostly, it is because they probably stole some meat from the soup-pot.

    When we in Nigeria look over our shoulder, we are not looking out for any rifles (those come from within) nor are we looking out for how not to put our feet in it. No, none of that. We look over our shoulder in nostalgia at the age of our innocence. The age of our innocence was the age when we all believed that we had a country, a place we could call our own, a place where no one in particular felt out of place. It was a place that accommodated everyone’s names within its walls without flinching. It was also a place where one’s brawns, mixed with a little brain, got one a good living off the land.

    Then, there was no creed, no religion, no race that was looked down on. I remember growing up in a vigorous Kaduna in the swinging sixties with every tribe and religion in Nigeria represented on my street and with very little consciousness of the differences between us. Indeed, those differences were for referential purposes only. Now, it appears that Kaduna has become a hotbed of a one-sided religious passion and fervour, a place where people are regularly killed in the name of God. From my recent visit to the city, I could see that the place has indeed grown, physically. However, there was a sombreness to it that could not be shaken off as my guide pointed out the areas that I used to know so well, buildings old and buildings new, all of which were there but now wearing colours of great unease. This is the new Nigeria. Yes, I saw that too, the New Nigerian Newspaper (NNN) building where I had some teeth cut in writing and reporting in many months of training. It was just sitting there where it had always been, but now forlorn, the building that is, not my teeth. Gone was its vibrancy.

    Barack Obama’s recent second victory acceptance speech titled ‘The Best is yet to come…’ includes the following:

    I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you live. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.

    I want to believe the forefathers of the Nigerian state also had something vaguely resembling this in mind. I think they sort of hoped that you and I, wherever you may be reading this, may be able to stand anywhere, shoulder to shoulder across our various divides, doing our best to raise this country up from its supine position. In this venture, what should count are the things which will not let anyone down in moments of stress. No, not a rich parent, no; it is character and skill. These were the things which marked our glorious past, the things we now peep at over our shoulders hoping that somehow they would once again catch up with us and even catapult themselves right into our present and future like magic.

    Sadly, our present is riddled with an insatiable craze for money that has every one of us tearing our hairs and eyes out as we aim for each other’s jugular. The civil servant preys on the innocent populace, the teachers on their hapless students, the traders and businessmen on their buying public and the police and politicians on the entire country. Believe me, you cannot get a more disorganised food chain than this, certainly not what God had in mind, but who am I to complain. Good thing is, we are all partakers of the results of this penkelemesi. Daily, I find that I have to weave through all the barracudas to get a few comforts. Thanks very much; I get by with prayers and fasting. But it gets worse; Masters and Ph. D holders are even now seeking to become drivers in Dangote’s firm. Ha!

    Now, that is just something, isn’t it, when intellectuals are vying for positions that require lower-level skills. But these strange goings-on are not altogether new, are they? They have been happening for a long time. It’s just that they seem to be getting stranger by the day. First, we had military rule. Ideally, the security is supposed to bring up the rear in any organisation. But here we were, rear-ended and up-ended, we stood on our heads with our feet in the air for so long we learnt to stop thinking. For one thing, we were even afraid to think lest we be arrested for that treacherous exercise.

    Then we had marauders called politicians, who looked like they had been trained by the devil himself, take over the reins of the nation’s politics. Since they came, they have not only been looting, they have been mauling the country’s spirit, norms and ethics to bits and pieces, going at it like maniacs. And they would not have to answer for it, if Atiku wins, according to reports. For one thing, they wake up from their nationally sponsored slumber only when they hear money mentioned. For another, they have succeeded in tending the plants of tribal and religious bigotry deep within each of us so much so that everywhere you go, you are required to state clearly where on earth you come from and what creed you belong to. It is not enough that you are simply called a Nigerian. There used to be the Nigerian, now there is just a northerner, a south-easterner or a south-westerner.

    People, our glorious past is clearly behind us and before us stands nothing but glorious chaos. Every group is now engaged in battering the other, propelled by fears and primitive, destructive or acquisitive instincts or all. No nation can survive on that. It is only when a people’s fears lead it to a more altruistic collaboration that it can get understanding. With understanding will come individual and collective wisdom which can lead the group out of the path of destruction into the realm of statehood.

    • First published February 3, 2019.

  • The state of insecurity

    Today, reader, we are talking seriously, because things are grave indeed; and if we are not to consign this country to the grave, then we need to act now. Everybody agrees that the country’s insecurity is in the red. Why, it’s got so bad now that people don’t know which of the three ‘trades’ to follow because they are all paying so well now: kidnapping, armed banditry or insurgency. Look at the week’s headlines: 34 killed in four states; Cult war claims 11 in Edo; Boko Haram kills 11 in Borno; Herdsmen kill 11 in Taraba; Gunmen kill monarch in a Sokoto community, etc. The people who have been fingered with proof in crime have been unbelievably ordinary. They are like you and me. Take this example.

    In the newspapers, there was the story of a woman who went to the bank and in the hall, she recognised someone who looked quite familiar until she recollected just where she had known him. I told you the story before? Good, then I’ll tell you again; I like repeating myself. Anyway, she eventually remembered him as the man who had abducted her sometime before.

    Naturally, the woman’s instinct took over and she gave vent to her voice. She shouted. The securities came and naturally, the man denied and said he was just an ordinary tailor. The woman however told them to look for a certain scar on a certain part of his body. It was found. It was also found he had well over N90 million in his account. That man was just an ordinary man like you and I.

    Now, how do we tell which one among us has an extraordinary appetite for evil? Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for us all to admit the unthinkable: we have a problem. What is worse, all our problems are self-inflicted. That’s right. Our security problems are self-inflicted. I would like to state that we made our insurgents, bandits and kidnappers. We created our own monsters, and, unfortunately, we have all become their victims.

    Someone once said something to the effect that the most brilliant among us become doctors and lawyers and engineers and professors. The not-so-brilliant become politicians. The ones who are not interested in reading become robbers and assassins. The ones who cannot read and are not interested in reading become medicine men. And now, the medicine men control the robbers; the robbers control the politicians and the politicians are controlling the doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors. How true.

    Clearly, what we have today as this land of law and disorder, social dislocation and disingenuousness masking deviousness and monstrous evil did not start yesterday. It was planted right from the beginning of Nigeria’s history, but do not let us go into the remote causes. From time, no one really had any stake in Project Nigeria. That perhaps may have remotely given the ground for our shameful behaviour and failure to see today yesterday and tomorrow today.

    Even then, with the right orientation provided in excellent leadership, we could have leaped over our shameful negligence of yesterday, and prevented all the things that have now come upon us today: banditry, kidnapping, insurgency, callous political class, raping of women, intertribal war, chaos and disharmony. We have lived most carelessly and have behaved most atrociously as a people, and have brought upon us this state of insecurity.

    Until Nigerians are able to get past themselves, there can be no headway. To start with, as a people, we do not seem to be able to get the idea that the tribe or ethnic group or religious group we belong to cannot be superior to the interests of the country. Not one of these smaller units had or even has a recognised flag or a national anthem; yet the flag and anthem we all salute and sing are flagrantly disrespected. When the average Nigerian perpetually defends his tribe or religion against the interest of the flag, there is a huge problem. This problem was pointed out long ago, but the media were thought to be crying wolf.

    The natural consequence of this was of course that criminals and offenders against the flag could hide, and frequently did, behind their ethnic unit or group, which vociferously and blindly defended the unrepentant sinner, no matter the flagrancy of the offence. Now tell me, which among us, being so empowered by our unit, would not go out and strut and cause more mayhem? This is what is happening. People know that their ethnic or religious units are more powerful than the country; so their loyalties are more inward-directed. Our state creations have not achieved the desired purposes. The tribes still rule, ok! The religions still rule, ok!

    For another, the state has found it difficult to prosecute socioeconomic and sociopolitical offenders. The reason the law exists is to reign us all in. However, when the law fails to reign in the first wave of offenders, the rest will also go free. Since the law has failed woefully to successfully prosecute and punish the first wave of state offenders, there can be only one lesson to learn from that; that it is okay, folks, to commit fraud against the state. Your tribe or religion will set you free. They are not supposed to be the examples that the young ones follow, but they are.

    I understand that in China, newly appointed state officials are given a tour of the prisons so that they would know where they would end up should they misbehave. In extreme cases, I understand they may even be executed. What we have here instead is a baffling condonement and tacit endorsement of fraud. People are stealing the country blind in billions and trillions, and the state is making deals with them just to be able to get back ‘some of it’. It is unheard of! State governors who have robbed their states into stupors award themselves pensions in billions and we are still looking on! Politicians are earning N39m a month while the minimum wage is a mere N30 thousand a month. On account of these people, social amenities do not exist and we are all looking on! What kind of people are we?

    Add to that the fact that the young ones see the greedy hearts of their elders, and they want the same things these elders are flaunting before them, naturally. However, they become angry when they do not gain access easily because of lack of jobs, for instance, but they take it out on the equally hapless ones near them. This is not to excuse bad behaviour but to explain that we cannot plant thorns and hope to reap roses. The eighteen to twenty-somethings are the prime of a country’s work force but Nigeria appears to have donated its own prime age to crime because of the exampled greed of the country’s fathers. Nigeria needs to put in place a programme by which the young know they can access education, sustenance, and housing like any other citizen.

    The average Nigerian is greedy; it’s a heart thing. It is as much in the teacher, civil servant, lawyer, police, doctor, as it is in the politician, student, labourer, housewife, unemployed, or trader. The so-called Nigerian system breeds it and also permits its full exercise, but the time has come to tame that beast.

    The society needs to be sanitised. That is the only cure for this state of insecurity if we are to have any Nigeria to bequeath to the next generation. J. F. Clarke, a nineteenth century writer, says that ‘A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.’ Time we started breeding statesmen as models to follow.

  • May Day! (2)

    I am going to speak from many sides of my mouth today. The first May Day! article was written many years ago. Today, I am glad to be able to add a second installment, a tribute to all workers on Workers’ Day. I must warn you that in raising it to the power of two, it is doubly potent and even bitter, considering the many sides of my mouth involved.

    Jerome K. Jerome, the English writer said, ‘I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.’ Too true. I find I stare at my computer for hours before I can put in a word for you. Honest. When I read Oscar Wilde’s statement that ‘some people will do anything for money, including work’, I also nodded in agreement. Obviously, I am not one of those. For me, work is what I do to justify the air I take in. So, you see, me and them are not in the same category, like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang.

    However, as H. L. Mencken said, ‘I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.’ I think he means that, one, laying eggs is habitual for the hen – she can’t help it; two, there will be a hue and cry if she fails to produce those eggs; and three, her body will betray her were she to fail to produce. Am I not glad I’m not a hen right now!

    Today, dear reader, we are greeting all workers in the world, great or small, including the hens that lay the golden eggs. Oh yes, reader, golden eggs are now being laid in Nigeria. Have you heard the story behind the killings in Zamfara, the golden fields of blood? I don’t know much about it but I understand that the discovery of tonnes of gold is at the bottom of it. Yet, the big guns said to be gaining from it all do not go anywhere near the veins where the nuggets are mined. Dear reader, some poor workmen are the ones working and dying.

    You know what work is, don’t you? It’s that bit of labour you undertake in order to get something done so that something can enter your mouth as a result of something that you do so that something can… You get the drift, don’t you? Peter Dunne, an American humorist said, ‘Work is work if you’re paid to do it, and it is pleasure if you pay to be allowed to do it.’ The end result of work of course is productivity, which in turn attracts remunerations whether you’re paid or you pay.

    Don’t get me wrong. I love work. I love the pay-end of work, you know, the remunerations end. It’s the middle part of it that gives me problems, you know, that part that says ‘if you mix labour + sweat + rolling up your sleeves + getting off your bum, you might get results’ … yeah, well, that’s the part I don’t so much like. That’s the part that makes the hen cluck-snarl, ‘you think the egg just pops out? Come on!’

    For some reason, people do not seem to like their work. That reminds me of a joke about a man who was fed up with his work and decided to do something about it. So, he went to a bar and put his question in the air. ‘Is there anyone here who does not like his work?’ Everyone in the bar raised their hand, including the barman. ‘It’s called Everybody!’, they chorused to him. Abe Lincoln, the American president said, ‘My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it’. Like the hen, I do not like my work either but I do it.

    Today, we greet Nigerian workers. Unfortunately, Nigeria is one of the countries in the world with one of the most unsatisfactory work environments. Workers’ remunerations are so low they disappear too quickly into the market. The new minimum wage of N30,000 has just been signed into law but I’m not too sure how much comfort that will bring to many families considering many factors.

    To start with, there is inflation. Then there is the fact that this monthly minimum wage is going to struggle with the other maximum wages such as National Assembly men’s (and women’s) monthly wages of N39m in the same market. Do you seriously think this is a fair fight? There is something very seriously wrong with our wage system in Nigeria which allows this huge disparity. No economy can expect to grow if this stands. The average Nigerian worker is the end loser in this very unfair fight.

    Then, there is the matter of the worker’s security. The worker is not only not valued; he/she is practically unprotected. Very few workers in high-end-dangerous jobs such as electricity, mining, painting, drilling, food swallowing (that’s me), etc., are insured by their employers. Many work concerns are not bothered about the safety of their employees unless they are forcefully reminded. I suspect though that many Nigerians are too busy being content with the illegal monies they make from their jobs to truly appreciate their precarious positions.

    All together, the Nigerian worker has a bad deal from the government’s inability to regulate wages in line with the factors that determine work remuneration such as the nature of the work, the productivity, the power of the economy to carry burdens, or the quality of the worker. It does not make sense that elected officials in the land should get (not earn) as much as N39m for sitting for some days in the month while a worker exposed to the vagaries of life gets only a paltry sum. It is important that the economy be made to grow so that the burden of inflation can be less cumbersome on the worker.

    Having said that, I have a few bones to pick with Nigerian workers. If truth be told, many Nigerians no longer do their work. Period. Teachers do not teach as they should. Civil servants do not serve as they should. Engineers are not engineering our roads or bridges. Health workers are not doing enough. The few people still working in Nigeria now are tax collectors, lawyers, armed robbers, kidnappers, assemblymen and women …. And they are happy on their jobs mainly because they are making others miserable.

    When other Nigerians work, you can be sure it is because they are getting an illegal fee somewhere. No one really values their job again in this land. Yet, should those jobs be touched, heaven and hell will be turned over to get them back.

    Have you noticed the spike in insecurity again in Kogi and Kaduna States especially? Yeah, the kidnappers are back after a small hiatus. I think many of these kidnappers are under the illusion that seizing people and making their families buy them back, kind of like holding private slave auctions, is work. I think it is all a fallout of our political market economy: make money at the people’s expense, and live like politicians … We have reached rock bottom all right.

    Work is that thing you do that brings in a legitimate income which enriches you. Illegal proceeds from our jobs do not count; neither do proceeds from kidnapping. Those never ever end well. It is the work experience that enriches and builds us. We should enjoy that more than the accruements from it. Don Herold, another American humorist said ‘Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow’. Honestly, I don’t know what he is talking about there, but, reader, we should know that work is the greatest thing that ennobles the soul. Legitimate work should be respected.

  • So, we have enough doctors, eh?

    As usual, I am seated on my vantage, comfy chair on this twenty feet high and ten feet broad wall standing between us and the Buhari government. From there, I have watched with some kind of sad bemusement as our Minister of Labour, Dr. Chris Ngige, inadvertently put his Size Eleven foot in it. How do I know he wears Size Eleven? I don’t; but have you noticed that people in government tend to abandon their former shoe sizes called ‘Size C-caution’ and take on these large sizes called ‘Size C-carefree’ that go flip-flop? The Minister of Health, Prof. Adewole, also has that same size! Don’t get me wrong; I’m firmly on Ngige’s side, and I’m firmly on the people’s side. Indeed, I’m firmly on everyone’s side who has a side to stand on.

    When people put down stakes on a side in an argument, it’s usually because they have something to gain; may be a house, a jet or a future vote as in ‘it’s your turn today to need my vote, it may be my turn tomorrow’. It’s called buying your tomorrow vote today. Nations have been built on such bargains because, really, arguments are bargain chips held in trust.

    Our Minister of Labour caused something akin to a stir by stirring the hornet’s nest. How was he to know that he would be stung so sharply by so many angry wasps? Indeed, the reactions that have trailed his utterance, that Nigeria presently has enough doctors so it can afford to export the surplus, have come very close to a ‘calling out.’ You know what that is, don’t you? It is that act of asking satisfaction from someone to explain himself (no, not herself; in a woman, it would be considered vulgar) on account of an utterance. The demand usually took different dimensions in the past: a duel of fists, swords or pistols. Very interesting spectacle then. The ones I witnessed in the sixteenth century (truly!) sometimes had people blazing at each other with guns simply for saying someone had told an ‘untruth’! And pouf!, a life would be lost.

    Anyway, Nigerians appear to have called out the minister to explain himself, which he did. I’m not sure though if the explanation was not longer than the main; you know, like the photocopy being longer than the original and one is not sure any more where the truth lies. It sounded too much like an apologia. However, for anyone to have said, originally or in photocopy, that Nigeria has produced enough doctors has never been sick enough to visit a Nigerian hospital. Or, he has forgotten what it is like to be sick and have had to go to a hospital in his fatherland. The truth is that that statement caused the people’s emotions to boil, then broil over, then froth and finally be vomited. The statement brought to the fore once again, just what the people think about their government functionaries: not much.

    So, let me see if I can be on the minister’s side here, not that he needs anyone to fight for him; he appears quite capable of putting his foot in it by himself. You know, it’s a little like the advert of a suicide hotline that said, ‘Thinking of killing yourself? Come, let us help.’ So, I have not come to help the minister. No, I have certainly not come to hang him either; my name is Oyinkan, not Brutus. I appear to be clowning around today, don’t I? Never mind me, it’s just one of those days.

    There are certain truths that the Ministers of Labour and Health need to accept about the country’s health facilities: they hardly exist, and to say that people are not happy about that is to put it very, very mildly. Naturally, when things like the minister’s utterance come into being, then facts that have been socially ignored begin to emerge from people’s angry reactions.

    For instance, I did not know that the ratio of doctors to the populace stands presently at 1: 6,000. I have no idea what figures the two ministers have been working with, but it could not have been this. I think they probably were using themselves to do the calculations: if the medical field could spare them to go into the political field, then certainly, there must be a surplus. The medical field can also spare more doctors to become tailors, singers, interior decorators, doctors-in-diaspora, etc.

    Apparently, our two political doctors were only using the absence of training spaces for our budding resident doctors to draw their conclusion. No, no, no. The parameter needs to change sirs. We must shift our attention to the country’s needs rather than the health sector’s affordances. For a country of one hundred and something million people to have only forty thousand or thereabout doctors is far from hitting the mark, hence the absurdity of the ratio mentioned above. The health sector’s needs are enormous and a frontal attack on these needs will serve better than a frontal attack on doctors’ desires for greener pastures.

    Let’s take the physical needs to start with. I think that every right thinking person has made enough noises about the state of our health facilities. Anytime you have to pass through the public hospitals as a visitor, teaching hospitals included, you have to pray that you should only pass through. If and when you do find yourself becoming a patient, your prayers will now be that you should not contract anything heavier than what you went in for. The hospitals are standing contagion zones.

    The reasons are not too remote for us to guess: The Honourable Ministers and their families have become twice removed, like remote cousins, from the average Nigerian and can no longer patronise Nigerian institutions, like the schools, the hospitals, or even the road-side bukaterias. This is just not fair; those bukaterias are missing them.

    The monies government functionaries are said to be spending on their blood pressure alone outside the country are enough to take care of the illnesses that deprived Nigerians across the land shove in my face in traffic: abnormally swollen scrotums, cheeks, breasts, legs, arms, or fingers. Our hospitals, big and small, lack facilities, and the government is pretending not to notice.

    The dichotomy between the governed and the governing is clearly wide, as the minister’s statement shows. If it wasn’t, he would have known that, according to my research especially from those around me, doctors’ desires for greener pastures is motivated by the absence of fulfilment at home. There is a lack of opportunity because hospitals at home are too few, too primitive, underfunded, lacking in attention, and inadequate in service delivery. Nothing about their situation spells adequacy or surplus of doctors. The governed know all these, but not the governing bodies because they both inhabit different universes.

    The kind of gulf exhibited in the minister’s utterance is what actually gets the people’s goat. People are angry because the governed and the governing are not feeling the same pain, and yet someone undertakes to rub salt in the people’s wound. The anger that spills out must necessarily flow from the belly.

    Most Nigerians agree that one of the reasons for the low influx of funds into education or health sectors is this overly large cost of governance. Politicians are paying themselves sums that checkbooks cannot contain as remunerations and pension.

    On the other hand, I find it marvelous indeed that people are making their feelings known on the subject of the minister’s utterance. This is a good sign; it means that the people wish to repair a very bad situation. The government should listen.

     

     

  • So, madness is good for you, eh?

    Oh, for the days of great passion! No, not the type that makes your breast heave in rapturous wonder at a lovely creature standing before you. I’m thinking more of the type that makes men to go out in search of great discoveries for the benefit of mankind. I’m thinking, for example, of scientists who offered, not just their time, but their bodies for science out of passion for the job.

    Take Humphrey Davy for instance. (No, please, don’t admire my science savvy; I got it off the internet.) He was said to have sometimes performed all kinds of experiments with nitrous oxide (or laughing gas) on himself, his pets, his friends and his friends’ friends en-route to discovering anesthesia. Ho, ho, my friend, all I can say is that I’m glad I was not his friend, for with friends like that, you don’t need enemies.

    I bet you there are many husbands conducting unrecorded, unacknowledged experiments on their wives right now. When half of the month’s salary has gone on illegal activities like the pool or the bar, then out will come the test tubes, beakers, tripods and the pronouncements. ‘Listen, Mama Bisi, we have to tighten our belts this month. Our employer has cut our salaries into two this month.’ He then watches for her response to determine whether to cave in and simply hand over his life (you know, as in, ‘Your money or your life’ and you say ‘Take my life but please leave my money’).

    Finding a need to somehow provide herself with the required intimate articles, Mama Bisi wonders aloud if she may not just cream a little off the top of the house keep, as they say, and see what effect it would have on the family. Whoever used to eat ice cream may find him/herself eating a finger of banana and whoever used to eat two pieces of meat may have to make do with one. I’m not sure but I think it is on that last note that the various experiments may break down and substitutions may become restitutions. Don’t you just love this free market economy where everyone goes home happy?

    Anyway, back to our scientists. You have just got to admire their sense of total commitment to the cause which, you’re quite sure, can only be propelled by madness. What else but madness would prompt a man like Davy to go contracting tuberculosis by inhaling carbon monoxide just to be able to find a cure for it? If my dress maker were to be as committed as he was, believe me, I would be better dressed.

    There, I digress again. Commitment means totally giving over one’s mind to a cause in a way that can raise suspicion in others. I would imagine that friends of Davy or Joseph Priestly would be mightily suspicious of them and would only associate with them if they needed their services, such as when they had to go through surgery. But there cannot be any doubt that their efforts resulted in something that benefits mankind today. Now, people need not go through amputations again without anaesthesia, unlike before when they had only a bottle of whiskey between them and the surgeon’s blade, although I can hear a few people mumbling, ‘I’ll pick that bottle of whisky any day.’

    That is the problem. Many of us Nigerians, including me, are choosing too many easy ways over trying to create something beneficial to mankind. Many of us have only one vision in our heads – a picture of Aso Rock. All of us, to a man, have lost our ability to pursue our dreams with the required zeal and necessary passion. Too many of us are pursuing either money (ask our politicians) or our enemies (ask our religious zealots), even if those enemies reside right inside us. And so, we go on living with our potentials untapped, unexplored, unexcavated, and unexposed.

    You see, for dreams to rise to the surface, one needs a good measure of madness, without which nothing can be achieved. The madness will take you through days of hunger, poverty, deprivation and any other effects your tests may wish to visit on your little body. This madness will also mean a great deal of aloneness, aloofness and total lock-in. Finally, the madness we are talking about will mean a readiness to burn down the house. I guess this is difficult to achieve in Nigeria.

    Well, to begin with, there are your relations. I believe the major problem Nigerians have is this inability to divorce themselves from their relations. This is why, come every weekend, caps and geles are criss-crossing the country to attend ‘a relative’s’ burial or child’s marriage ceremony. Then there is, of course, the most important relation to you who would refuse, on point of death, to allow you burn down the house because you are conducting one ‘yeye’ experiment. If you persist, she would simply go to the village, ferry in your eldest, dying relatives to come and convince you to see the error of your ways.

    If you insist on going on with your mad desire to discover something beneficial to mankind, your relatives may cease all arguments with you. You would just wake up one morning in Aro Hospital to find that you have been wrapped and parcelled there in the dead of night while you were sleeping. After all, all it takes is for a relative to sign you in, and no one is ever short of those. In fact, I have recently discovered that mine are giving me suspicious looks… I don’t know, but it may have something to do with the things I write…

    So, this madness thing is difficult in Nigeria, but not impossible. First, select your dream. Scroll down the road of your mind and pick that activity you love doing which brings that special joy to you and benefit to mankind. Please note that adding more people into this already over-populated world hardly counts as beneficial. Painting, inventing, writing, or just making things like radios, TV sets, computers are more acceptable. No wait, those have been discovered. So, go find your own article to invent.

    Then, assemble your materials as cheaply as possible. Note that expensive materials cannot be discarded in times of failure without you bursting into tears. Now, select a quiet spot around you where you can carry out your experiment in peace, such as your mother’s or wife’s kitchen. Lastly, gently persuade your spouse or parent that you are full of good intentions, you only want to discover something beneficial to mankind, and no, you hope the house will not burn down.

    I do agree with you; the government’s yo-yo economic policies are right now not very favourable to us all. Nevertheless, we can still do a great deal in spite of it. Let the government carry on with its work of self-extinction, let the citizens carry on with their own seriousness; and one day, with a great deal of luck, the serious citizens will leave the unserious government behind.

    The moral of this story is that men ought always to go more in search of madness than money. Just listen. When you have madness, you will be pushed beyond the limit of endurance as you chase your dream to leave humanity a little better than before, and men will remember you always for your efforts. Today, we credit and remember Priestly and Davy for what they did for mankind, not for how rich they managed to get by having access to government coffers. No one remembers such. Thanks to inventors like those, you and I can now have our appendix removed while watching our favourite shows on TV.

     

     

  • If laughter is indeed the best medicine, why can it not cure toothache?

    According to the sages, laughter is the best medicine. They go further to say that a merry heart does the body good. They go even further to claim that life, love and laughter are intricately melded together. Even more preposterously, they claim that those who know how to laugh at life’s situations live longer. This means of course that those who don’t know how to laugh soon wither off. Well, all I can say is that whoever says these things has obviously never had a toothache.

    Anyone who has ever had a bout of toothache can testify to a number of things. One, it begins quietly, often when you’re cracking a bone. The ‘crack’ sound you hear from the cavernous yonder often catches you by surprise. Two, it is no respecter of persons. It would have a king writhing in pain, on the bare floor, underneath his expensive throne, crown flung aside most disrespectfully, the same way it would seize a market maid.

    Three, it never strikes in the morning when you can quickly redirect your route towards the dentistry. No sir, the blasted thing always strikes deep in the night when help is anywhere but right where you are; or else it strikes at the beginning of the weekend, ruining your every chance of enjoying that cow-leg pepper-soup you skimped, saved or accepted bribery to buy. I tell you, when the toothache comes on one, there are no age restrictions on the shouts of pain as you writhe and respond with irritated malice to any question from the rest of the healthy world. ‘Where are the car keys?’ ‘Un hoe, un mo mont’, which, under normal circumstances, would probably have come out as ‘In here, in my mouth’.

    I have been a faithful student of laughter; I have even done researches on the sort of humour that produces it. And they are many. The quirky twist of understanding of particular words is one source. Take the instance of a well-known thief caught in the act of stealing someone’s purse only to turn around to claim that he actually thought it was the one he had lost earlier. Or, take the case of a man addressed by his wife as ‘Hon’. Asked what it meant, his wife replied it was a term of endearment to which the man replied, ‘After forty years, it is a term of endurement’.

    The readiest source of humour of course is when animals are given human characteristics and they are depicted slaving away at the stove, playing cards or tennis or even driving. The act of animals replicating human frailties brings out the ridiculousness of those humans more, and makes you ask, why give these poor animals such a bad name? And, all the while, the poor animals are thinking, ‘Are you sure human beings do these things?’

    Has it struck you that no matter how much you prod and joke, Nigerians do not seem to appreciate humour? I am willing to be corrected on this but most Nigerians I meet appear to have given their sense of humour a permanent holiday. Indeed, they all go around as if they are all suffering from toothache and so cannot generate or even respond to laughter. Everyone is going around with dead-pan seriousness as they grapple with the reality of life in Nigeria – a life of no water, no electricity, no food, no health, no money. It is all they can do to stay alive, let alone smile. The market woman has no joke for the buyer, only a frown of ‘I beg commot for my front if you no fit buy’. Ditto for the petrol attendant, the taxi driver. Everyone you meet these days is going around looking like Mount Etna in the throes of a volcanic eruption.

    Don’t get me wrong. I occasionally come across genuine humour factories. No, not from Baba Sala and his professional colleagues – those are simply plying their trade; I mean, people who can generate spontaneous laughter from any given situation they find themselves in; but they are too abominably few. Just the other day, I cut into someone’s lane in traffic with my car and, quite offended, he shouted, ‘Stupid woman. Go get a driver!’ Now, how is that for a response? I mean, how was that supposed to help my driving? Such responses are too deep for me; they strike at the Nigerian’s comical reaction to one of the many contradictions that surround them.

    Indeed, I always find the Lagos traffic to be a humour factory. It is always amazing to watch the mass of humans there screech their ways around the land like crazed, drunken mice, in the name of making a living. Everyone walks so purposefully and so fast, even armed robbers, that pedestrians can collide heavily against each other. You can stand and watch helplessly as those who drive around zoom around you like bullets, driven by crazed drivers with speed in their eyes. Yep, you’re right; the same people would love to shout ‘please slow down’ if they could when they are being driven to the cemetery in their caskets.

    Oh yes, we can also find some humour in the Nigerian government too. In the name of central control, the government has made itself the only viable employer in the land, and yet cries that no development is taking place! How can?! Development is when the citizens are given certain resources and asked to go and multiply what they have. Studiously, the said citizens creatively use their share of these resources to bring out finished goods and/or provide services for other citizens. That way, different goods and services are spread around the country. Nothing but chaos can attend the present arrangement. It is confusion reigning supreme and feeding my sad mirth.

    Humour resides elsewhere too. Look at the same government’s road agencies in the land – not a bit of humour between them to make a baby laugh. Altogether, they seem to have come to the conclusion that only one brief connects them and the public – not to represent the government. Whatever they do, they do not do it smiling. I think that is mainly because they do not appreciate the humour of public service, which is so funny.

    Me, I continue to find humour all around me. Just look at the social media; it’s full of budding humorists, pranksters, and people who have no idea how to use it. Facebook alone is full of people who are suffering from mild attacks of narcissism. If they have not put a picture of themselves in different modes: sleeping, eating, walking, standing, angry, pretentiousness, mouth-agape and other modes on their walls for the whole world to marvel at the fine specimen of human beings they are, life is not complete. Facebook should be a complete dossier of the people we know. These days, it is turning out to be a complete dossier of the people I don’t know anymore.

    Perhaps, I should correct myself. Nigerians do have a great sense of humour. It just does not lie in the universally acknowledged quirks of character, actions or even words known to send one reeling backwards. It does not lie in attempting to make light of different situations that accost us daily. Nigerians challenge us to understand their sense of humour. It lies in doing exactly those things that go against nature, reason and universal good judgment, that defy any human understanding, or that belong in the animal kingdom. They are the things that give us toothache, which laughter obviously cannot cure.

    • Part of this article was published some time ago.

     

     

  • Now, who’s the Fool?!

    Reader, have you noticed how bizarrely hot and unbearably, absurdly, unbelievably high the temperature has turned? You have? Then why have you not done something about it? I’m waiting for someone to have a good talk with the sun so it would turn down the volume of its intensity just now. I’m hoping that person will be you because the gentlemen I am seeing around me are only moaning.

    I can see someone going around with his fan which he has connected to a generating set which he carries around on his head. I confess I cannot do that. I just did my hair. I can see another one watering himself constantly like a plant from a bucket of water which he carries around with him. Again, I don’t think I can do that. My dress may get wet.

    ‘The weather, Madam; it is so hot I want to take off my flesh and sit in my bones!’, said the Rev. Sidney Smith. I have said this before? Forgive me, it’s this intrepid, scalding, sultry, superheated, sweltering, ultra-hot weather. I am so hot and bothered now even the dictionary has run out of words. The worst of the thing is that the only known remedy is not practicable just now in this land: no electricity to power the air conditioners. Enough of the weather moans.

    Someone tried unsuccessfully to play a practical joke on me on April 1, generally called April Fool’s Day, but I refused to believe it. The text tried to convince me that a machine had been invented that could uproot a fully grown tree and plant it somewhere else. The demonstration looked so life-like but I knew better; I knew that the magic for uprooting mature trees has not yet been invented. I ask you, where will the roots go?

    What I am waiting for is the machine that can uproot an entire house and plant it somewhere else. Yes, please, I have a few houses in mind. Have you noticed that Nigerians have this penchant of building their houses like ants, taking it right to the edge of their lot, whether it is sitting at the edge of a street, cliff or river? Well, I have, and I find it exasperating. I wish indeed that I could uproot such houses, and their owners of course, and plant them in this new place that has just been discovered: I think they call it Planet Mars. That’s right; there is plenty of land there for everyone who is land-hungry.

    Whenever I have had to look for an address in any locality in Nigeria, I find that I have to pass through streets that have been narrowed to mere slits by unconscionable landlords and land grabbers who have built their houses or fences right up to the very edge of the street so that you cannot turn the corner without making straight at an on-coming traffic! That is the foolish Nigerian mentality. He paid for the land; so he has to use every centimeter of it! Who will deliver us?

    So, I say, when I got the video of the tree-uprooting machine, I really wondered who was fooling whom. I mean if it was supposed to be an April Fool’s Day joke on me, it worked and it didn’t work but it got me really thinking, about so many things. It got me thinking about the month of April (very hot), fools (very many) and comedians (very funny). Let’s start from the beginning.

    Many people have written about the concept of April Fool’s Day and from it all, I have come away with one fact: the day commemorates nothing but a need for the world to go gaga on a certain day. As I said some time ago on this column, the day might have come about because a king in some far away land once asked his Fool, also known as Court Jester, to sit on his throne for one day. The only act that the said Fool was said to have enacted was that a day be set aside to celebrate, wait for it, tomfoolery. The Court jester obviously felt that everyone needed a day in which to let all their hairs down.

    Right. So, the person who sent me that tree-moving machine video wanted me to laugh at the improbability, and also marvel at the probability of the march of science. Even though science makes enquiries into natural phenomena and from it brings out other phenomena like tree-moving machines, however, there is an intervening variable, which is the human mind. In this case, the minds are from the western hemisphere. Someone did some nimble thinking to have devised that machine, if even in jest.

    Sadly, the minds of Nigerians (and Africans in general) are not so nimble. Someone said that the minds we carry around in Nigeria are festered and putrefied sores, that is why we cannot do any innovative thinking. Someone else pointed out that the country produces civil and structural and systems engineers without number, and yet the Chinese are building our rail tracks. There is no end to the number of our electrical engineers and yet there is no electricity.

    There are doctors without number in this country and yet people go to India for medical problems. Just yesterday, the president was lamenting that the country was spending tens of billions in Naira on medical tourism alone. There are enough professionals to power everything in this country, and yet nothing works. I can imagine the Court Jester taking one look at this country and giving this admonition to the king, if there was one. ‘Your country is more foolish than the King’s Fool, my Liege’, he would say.

    There are enough professionals to get everything running in this country, from the electricity problem to the rail track problem to the hospital problem, even to making the streets air-conditioned just to save me from this heat. Methinks that the bottleneck somehow lies somewhere between the government and the administrators of its policies. Certainly, since we always say that the buck stops at the king’s table, then the government carries the blame.

    It is certainly foolish to keep using our resources in this country to develop our manpower and then tell them we do not value them, and complain when other countries attract them with good work environments. Since we are running a free economy, no one can blame anyone for seeking good pasture elsewhere, particularly if, after developing them, we tell them that we do not value them. Then we turn around to import from other countries at exorbitant amounts other professionals to replace the very native manpower we surreptitiously chased out of our own land. Now, really, who’s the fool?!

    We really need to wise up. Our governments and the administrators interpreting the government’s policies appear to be either short-sighted, like me, or love their mess of porridge too much and too readily surrender our country’s birthrights. They forget too blithely two things: porridge soon dries up or becomes useless. More importantly, their failure spells someone else’s success. The failure of this country is the success of the beneficiary country, say China. In effect, our failure to develop Nigeria is a move to develop China using our hands. It is that simple.

    April Fools’ Day exists to help us remember that many a true word has been spoken in jest. Court Fools have been known through the ages to remind their counties’ Lieges that the ultimate comfort of the country is the comfort of the king. The entire country is one big fool if we let our national foolishness continue. To let it continue is to prepare to self-destruct.

  • The education of young Success

    Many of us are familiar with the story of Miss Success Adegor, the spunky little girl whose natural charm over the matter of her school fees took hold of the Nigerian scene. We met the little girl when a certain Miss Stephanie Idolor shot and distributed a video in which Success spiritedly expressed her feelings of grave dissatisfaction with the way her school had gone about collecting school fees from its pupils. According to that video, which is said to have gone ‘viral’ (like many computer-related terms, this is not logically comprehensible to me), little Success vowed to ‘show’ her school for sending her home over school fees.

    When I first encountered the video, I thought it was a put-up affair; you know, one of those short comical sketches done by a playgroup. However, the subsequent comments from the public soon convinced me it was real. The genuineness of people’s sympathies with the little girl’s plight also convinced me this was no job borne of idleness. What finally had me was the amount of money the public was said to have poured into the bosom of the girl’s family. I was in consternation. I mean, I thought, all those lollies had to be real, even if the story was shaky.

    Actually, rather than being fooled, the public sprang into action, from what I hear. From the news reports alone, I understand the family of little Miss Success has received donations well in excess of the girl’s school fees, while the girl herself has been given more than one scholarship. This is nothing compared to the sudden fame that has come to her. I mean, no one is likely to forget the note of stubborn despair in her voice any time soon when she said, ‘den go flog me, den go tire, the cane go tire…’ I really should like to see how a cane gets tired. Such creativity.

    The story has highlighted one of the facets of our modern social system that this column has grumbled and moaned about endlessly: that we are not paying attention to our children’s education enough! At this point in our story as a nation, it should not be said that a little child was sent home by her teacher in a public primary school for not paying her school fees. What school fees?, we should all be asking. Actually, this is what I am asking.

    The dilapidated nature of our public school system is only comparable to the dilapidated structures used to support it. The corruption bedeviling the Nigerian public life has not spared the school administration system too. Then, the classrooms are of ground zero standard in everything, from the teacher to the flooring, if there is one, to the quality of the stuff the children learn. I will not get tired of repeating myself until something is done; I only urge that you should also not get tired of reading my repeats too. After all, when DStv repeats itself again and again, no one sanctions them.

    Anyway, most schools are faced with dealing with the government’s shortfalls in allocation either by charging their charges, or closing down. Most choose to charge their charges, hence little Success’s story. For this exposure, I don’t know if this is true, but I understand that the girl’s teacher has been made the scapegoat in all this and has been sacked. If it is, then I would cry foul on her behalf. It is not the teacher or school administrator that we should sack, it is the government. It is the responsibility of the government to provide funds and set the standards on how those funds are to be used.

    The plight of little Success has become a metaphor for this country’s failing educational and even socio-political system. Every animal species takes the education of its young very seriously. Mama bird would not rest until she has seen that her young can fly and hunt for food by itself. Mama lion would not consider her job done until her young one knows how to pin down an antelope for his/her dinner. Public primary education is supposed to be free and should be a spring board for greater life education, but this is not the case. This story happened because we have a country which does not consider the education of its young sufficiently important to engage its energy but considers political expediencies much more urgent. So, all the little Successes are left to learn to fly by themselves, often with painful results.

    I have, however, found the response of the public somewhat disappointing. It is too…too… fire brigade-like! I would have loved the public to have asked questions about how we got to this point where all our ‘Successes’ who are in their millions have become infected by this syndrome – having no money to pay school fees and being ready to suffer for it! We need answers. The public should not just throw money at one isolated case and ignore the remaining millions of other children who are also suffering like this girl in the hands of our insufferable educational system. That’s treating the symptom and leaving the engendering disease well alone to grow. We need to scrub the system clean.

    Certain things are basic concerning the education of Miss Success Adegor. The first is that in plying her with so much money, we are not really helping her. As it is, her life is already altered inexorably forever. From having no money before, she has suddenly been catapulted into the millionaire class, i.e., wealth beyond her dreams even before she can spell the word. So, before she can even add her math together, she learns that life can be unpredictable.

    Don’t count on her parents to help her add the math together, either. I suspect that they would be busy fighting off the vultures that will suddenly swoop down on the family in the name of family. I think that has begun to happen too, from news reports. Now, she knows nothing goes for nothing; no free lunch, baby.

    Then too, even success may also begin to go to the head of Success, after savouring all that admiration. First, all that money will certainly go to the little girl’s head. Then all the fame will collide with the money and we will have one colossal case of pride. Then she may learn that not all gifts are designed to make us richer. As a matter of fact, that is why they tell us to beware of Greek gifts.

    Certain things are basic to our education too as a people. First, we must fix our educational system so that every child can have access to quality education across this country. Spunky Success has helped to draw attention once more to an educational system that is not working and which we must make workable. We should begin by motivating our teachers, as we have said before, and overseeing their individual development, to the last of them so that they can be more effective. Well-motivated teachers make a working classroom. Then, we need to overhaul the supervisory system to ensure no teacher or headmaster/mistress is left on his/her own.

    Everyone should be interested in the education of our young ones. The children are our future so we need to show them the way, so goes a song. We should not wait for ‘tragedies’ like this to be written before we go into act one. I think our act needs to be well put together into one coherent whole for the sake of our children’s future.

  • Go to sleep

    Honestly, I am not joking, but it rained in my city for some minutes yesterday and I did not hear a single drop fall, and that in the morning too! I was that sound asleep. When I was told, I sat up on my bed, sad. How could I not have heard the rain fall? Obviously, if a large-sized meteorite were to fall to earth and land on my bed during that time, I would not have heard a thing. What kind of Size 10 consciousness impairment took hold of me that I did not hear the rain fall, especially as I like to hear the rain fall? I then decided to go search the literatures for help. Was I going downhill, you know, like slipping off the edge of reasonable wakefulness without knowing it and calling it sleep?

    Not so, say the books. Even though science admits that the science of sleep is still foggy (say that again – that’s why people don’t hear when rains fall), it is vital for the body, yet many are not getting it. Those are the great sleep-deprived.

    Sleep is so important in the body, there is even a World Sleep Day now, and that is the third Friday of March. No one has told me exactly what action the day stands for though, but I am guessing there should be only one thing on the agenda, sleep. Naturally. However, the website on World Sleep Day says that the 2019 theme is ‘Healthy sleep, Healthy ageing’. I think this means sleeping well promotes graceful ageing and the wrinkles show less. It also means if you don’t sleep well, don’t expect to age gracefully.

    Not so, say the books, again. If you don’t sleep well, it simply means you are prone to some sleep problem or the other. Not being a scientist, I’m afraid I cannot name the sleep disorders. All I know is that if you can hear the rain fall in the night when you should be sleeping and not hearing the rain fall, then please consult your doctor, and that’s hoping he himself has not been hearing the rain fall. If he has, then I suggest you both consult another doctor who hopefully has not … you get the drift. Who would believe the kind of problems caused by rain falls?! This is called playing it by the thumb.

    Anyway, I am trying hard to imagine why on earth a topic such as sleep should draw the attention of world scientists. Actually, the celebration of this day is due to the efforts of medical doctors who are concerned about the health implications of sleep, not sleeping beauts like me who just want to hear the rain fall. The scientists are simply drawing attention to the problems that come from not getting good sleep.

    Well, let’s start here. It is said that man and womankind spends a third of his/her life slumbering. Essentially, this means we are supposed to spend a third of each day sleeping. Like someone said, if we are supposed to spend eight hours working, and another eight sleeping, then what happens to the remaining eight hours? How’s that for disappearing acts? Well, the remaining eight hours are supposed to be for play but who remembers that? The thing is that some of us spend more than the eight hours working or sleeping and we shave off the rest from play. I know someone who works sixteen hours and shares the remaining eight between play and sleep. Guess who gets the lion share. Let him who is not guilty raise up his/her hands.

    The truth is, many of us spend more hours working than is good for the body. How then can the benefits of good sleep come? I think that the benefits of sleep will come if we meet the most rudimentary requirement, which is to sleep in the first place. Someone who cheats sleep cannot expect to gain from sleep.

    Everyone knows when they are not getting enough sleep. Someone once said when he gets very hungry, his sentences begin to fight each other. So also, when someone gets very sleep-deprived, his sentence constructions no longer have bearing with the discussion at hand. That effect however is mild. There are direr consequences such as road vehicular accidents. Sadly, I know many people who have lost their lives this way.

    Equally as devastating are the deaths that occur when machines are operated under the influence of sleep problems. There was one video clip sent round the social media, by insensitive people, of a man operating a machine but on which he had sadly fallen asleep. Reader, I will not disturb your sensibilities on what the machine did to him or did not do, but suffice it to say that … That was the result of the fogs of sleep descending at the wrong time because the sleep was not entertained at the right time.

    Of course there can be many causes of sleep problems. Science is however fingering your good old coffee, your irregular sleeping habits, the stress you accumulate from your job, spouse, children, friends, neighbours, news media and from wondering just when the world will come to an end.

    In fact, they say, the body regenerates itself during sleep. Some science facts even say that the period of sleep enables the cleaning of the DNA stables of all the horse-shit that accumulates during the waking hours. That probably explains why all the nonsenses I hear in a day do not leave any disturbing marks on my DNA by the next day. Makes sense.

    More importantly, good regular sleep can be good for heart balance. Now, I have no idea what that means but I’m thinking that the old ticker will stay good and regular at all times. Even when your teenager tells you he wrecked your new car while parking it, your heart will stay steady, won’t flip over in your chest and will not constrict in the arteries and shoot pains down your arms. At all.

    So, there you have it. I’m sure there’s a host more of such benefits that doctors are keeping under their hat. They can also tell you about the sleep dangers to run from. Whichever, it is important that we all listen to science right now. Science is telling us that healthy sleep is beneficial to healthy ageing.

    Ageing healthily depends on many things, I am told. If I can talk like a non-scientist, I would say there is the good food factor, the peaceful existence factor, the genetics factor and of course, the right friends, relatives and good family factor. Yep, there’s nothing like a devilish family to make one year seem like a decade. So, sleeping is vital to our health.

    Apart from maintaining the general health balance of the body, sleep helps to maintain brain health. A good sleep pattern, they say, cleans out the brain better than Omo. That’s why those who appreciate it do all they can to get it, like gold, and rue the night they can’t go to sleep.

    As we celebrate the World Sleep Day, I recommend that you stop worrying about when the world will end. It’s not in your hands, it’s not in my hands, it’s in the maker’s hands. Seriously now, Trump and Kim Jong-un are the only ones I worry about in my spare moments. They are the only ones who can make me stay up by accident to hear the rain falling. As long as I’ve got my eye on them, though, they’ll be no trouble. Now, shh, time to go to sleep!

     

  • Let us let her out

    The world celebrated the international women’s day on 8th March, but we are celebrating them today. As they say, better late than never. So, I’m just going to pretend that I do not have a woman’s blood flowing through my veins, roll up my sleeves and raise that heavy glass to toast the women folk, very well done to you!

    I can hear you breathing over my shoulder, well done for what? Just for being women, I say; that is onerous enough, don’t you think? In the present socio-economic and socio-political clime of Nigeria, women are bearing the ugly brunt. When the food bins are dry and the dust bins are drier, it’s the women who wail most in the house. It’s probably because they feel the hunger before the children. Worse, when the entire house is divided down the middle on account of their political alliances (I hear in some houses, some are APC and some are PDP), it’s the women who have to sew the middle partition together quickly and quietly.

    ‘A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can’, says Jane Austen. Yeah, things were that bad in her day. That was when women were not even allowed to be human beings. One reason for the enforced silence could have been that no one wanted to hear what she had to say. Another reason could have been that she really had something to say, and she might have been right in it too. That’s why the theme for this year’s celebration is ‘Think equal, build smart, innovate for change.’

    Anyway, thank God that some women did not keep their knowledge to themselves. Otherwise, we would not have had the accomplishments of many women to celebrate today. I’m thinking of the women who have distinguished themselves in the military or medical fields both at home or abroad. We cannot list all women who achieved things here.

    We certainly cannot list the women who failed to achieve things either here; I think the census board has already done that. The women who achieved things did so because they had some lettering. Many have not been able to do the same because of this lack of the ability to read and write. We nevertheless must celebrate them too because they are forging ahead to make their marks on their children, husbands, neighbours and communities. They are the unsung heroes of homes where heroes and heroines spring from. These are the ones who are addressed by the theme of the IWD this year: think equal, build smart, innovate for change. I’ve said that already, haven’t I? Never mind; put it down to old age.

    First, how can we think equal when we are not equal? One of the incontrovertible facts of the modern society is that men and women are not born equal. While men are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, women are born with a silver spoon in their hand. Ever since, the playing ground has not been plain for everybody. How then can they ever compete? Nevertheless, women must try. They must try to equalise and make that playing field plain.

    They could start by translating the language of the world into women-speake. Right now, that language is men-speake. The men-speake says that more men are needed in the workplace than women. Men-speake says that men, because they are the head of the family, need more pay. Above all, men-speake says that men have more enduring power than women. I don’t know if they do not have a point there. Listen as I tell you a story.

    I watched three people, one man and two women, search everywhere for a missing bag. Finally, having no luck, they decided to call off the search. On their way back to their car, they noticed a manhole sitting off the road. Now everyone knows that the lid of manholes need to be prized open and they are heavy. Right. So, the two ladies simply pocketed their hands and looked at the man expectantly. That man had no option but to bend down and pull off the lid. No equality there obviously.

    Women-speake does not argue against the muscles of men or the lack of it in women. So, equality is not about who has more muscles. It is simply about the fact that since men and women draw the same breath, they both deserve equal chances. This means that women should have the same chance at getting quality education, adequate training and a good job as men. There should no longer be any discrimination in the training opportunities given to children. Err, it also means that men should get the same chance in looking after the children too and doing the house chores.

    The theme also says build smart. Women need to apply wisdom in building themselves and their families and generally planning their lives. In Nigeria right now, particularly in some states, the teacher population is made up of mostly women. Yet, a larger per centage among them are indifferent to the quality of their stewardship. Whereas some among the female teachers (we’re talking about women today) are truly interested in their job and are teaching inspiringly, too many among them are content with giving their wards absolutely nothing throughout the day. In the end, the pupils are no better for meeting them.

    Women need to change themselves for the better. They need knowledge. Every woman should always have this invisible performance assessment form she fills out on herself each year where she fishes out her areas of strength, weakness, growth, retardation or retrogression for the year. I know I do. For instance, in one year, I found that I knew too little about birds. They surround me everywhere but I had only known them as the creatures from hell that drop their wastes on my car every day after they have had breakfast on my fruits. So, I set out to start noticing the flying things. That’s how I know that some are called long-tailed swallows. True, after a while I could no longer tell the difference between them and the tails of other birds, but at least I started somewhere. Now, I’m up to robins. Only, I’m trying to differentiate between those and starlets. I’ll get there. The point is, ladies, you’ve got to build yourselves up, be smart and keep growing, or else…

    Growth necessitates ideas, ideas bring innovations, new ways of doing things, new ways of loving our charges, teaching our pupils, engineering the bridge and the society, doctoring the patient at work and the hurt teenager in the house, receiving the visitor at the reception desk, or even cooking that stew. There are always new ways, and innovation leads to them. In turn, circumstances change, situations change for the better. Religion has its place, but the truth is that many of us women spend more time praying than applying our muscles to accomplishing things, but prayers must be accompanied by the brain and brawn. If a team don’t know how to play football, praying will not help them.

    The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) right now needs every segment of the society to contribute its quota. No woman or girl should allow herself to be left behind in this effort to grow the society. Every female in any endeavour is a woman of valour waiting to happen. Let us let her out.