Category: Olatunji Ololade

I do not hereby profess the gift of clairvoyance but very soon, Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun a.k.a Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Peter and Paul Okoye (P-Square) and very sadly, Olamide Adedeji a.k.a Olamide, will go the way of Dapo Oyebanji (D Banj). Each of their last albums and now ubiquitous singles are beginning to sound alike. Their music is criminally routine and devoid of soul. This is because they murder quality and artistry in a frantic jostle for money, unearned greatness and interminable minutes in the spotlight.

Every song is borne of a story. Every artiste should tell a story; the nature of message (s) contained in the artiste’s story however, depends on the artiste’s inventiveness and innate constitution. The essence and quality of their stories are responsible for their eventual rise to acclaim and even immortality. On the flipside, it could accelerate their descent into obscurity even as their music fades like the mad rant of  What are our artistes’ stories?

Olamide for instance, keeps screaming about the same thing in his music; it does not require much depth or discernment to grasp the essence of his music. This is an extremely talented young artiste who believes someone and everyone out there are out to kill or neuter him.

His mythical foes are legion and he squanders priceless seconds cursing and articulating puerile vituperation. The poor boy desperately seeks to intone menace and an insolent hip hop culture that has led many talented artistes to untimely grave and many more to their tethers end.

Worried music enthusiasts may however, seek solace in the fact that Olamide, like many of his ilk, are poor copycats of pathetic studio gangsters.

Many of these artistes engage in mock battles or microphone wars to project non-existent rancour among them. For instance, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that the oft rumoured beef or supremacy wars between Olamide and his over-hyped foe ‘Chairman’ is a ruse. Likewise the latter’s seemingly condescending jibes in response.

Lest we forget Eedris Abdul Kareem, Steven Ugochukwu a.k.a Ruggedman, Timaya, Terry G and so on who persistently refused to grow up and evolve until they faded into nothingness. While Ruggedman rode to acclaim criticizing Eedris AbdulKareem and his record label, Eedris, smarting from the sting of Ruggedman’s jibes, channeled priceless music industry wisdom and ignored him. Although he went on to outlive Ruggedman in the industry, the two artistes are virtually non-existent at the moment.

Save occasional appearances at the now ubiquitous red carpet events, very few of their fans would have glimpses of them.

Many Nigerian artistes , like the prototypical damaged good or fame junkie throng the ‘red carpet’ at major events like fashion shows, reality shows, younger artistes’ album launches and so on to assault our senses and peace with infinitely puerile rants and antics that range from the vulgar to the delinquent.

In one of Wizkid’s songs, the youngster lapsed into a hideous drone of “I want your body sleeping in my bed” intermittently lacing it with “Tinubu eleniyan, Fashola eleniyan…” and so on. The song is hideously woven together, ruining the airwaves and forming knots in the eardrums of discerning music enthusiasts. But like the deluge of infantile purring and drivel persistently churned out by new generation Nigerian artistes, you could still dance or at least bob your head to the beat.

‘If you make a record about a gun, on that very same record or album there’s gotta be a record about not using a gun. If you’re making a record on the bitches or the hoes, there’s got to be a record about your aunt who worked all of the days of her life to send all her children to college,’ said Darryl McDaniels of the RunDMC fame recently. The American rap artiste bemoaning the descent of the American hip hop culture – which Nigerian artistes are unquestioningly emulating – said: ‘It seems like stupid America celebrates a person that says “yeah I’m a drug dealer, I’m bringing the drugs into the hood.”

While admitting that his group intoned violence in their heydays, he argued that they backed it up with something good and positive. “The reason why hip hop exists is because it started out with good intentions, once all the good intentions left, the music became polluted, it became disrespectful it became immature,” he said.

At least, for Nigeria’s middling ‘hip hop,’ ‘afro pop’ or ‘afro hip hop’ aficionados, it foots the bills for the easy girls, flashy cars and bling-bling. More importantly, it provides the wads that fit into colourful envelopes of various shapes and sizes, the soul of entertainment journalism. Perhaps put more precisely, the life-boat of charlatans selling off news pages – that ought to be hard-earned – for as little as N10, 000 for two pages and N5, 000 or N3, 000 for a page, while passing themselves off as entertainment writers to the detriment of journalists who would remain true to journalism and music.

The music died because they’ve killed it. Shame on the artistes perverting the music for the love of fame and money. Shame on those of us who diminish the music in order to find it and sing it. Shame being the fitting apparel to those of us who make smaller, the luxuriant tropes of the bight of the muse.

Shame on all powerful and giant telecommunication networks spending a few millions to rip us off hundreds of hard earned millions in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)…in the name of perverse music reality shows. Shame on the producer, director, video-jockey (VJ), dancer, artiste and songwriter perpetually burying the essence of the music for the sake of a few desperate Naira, and more.

And yet the greater shame on the Nigerian press for whom and what we have become to the music; we, the hideous trolls dishing discordant tunes to the sound of music; we, the standard-bearers on whose watch the music skits and grinds to a stop.

Thus we go nameless and artless in music; the music we make becomes the echo of something else, like nothingness and vile. The artistes we make and celebrate annoy us, disrespect us and confound us. And the music they make is hardly the work of genius. It’s simply deafening and hogwash. Bet you hear their crinkle and chirp like crickets gone nuts: Senge Menge…Wiskolowiska…Je ka collabo…Baby je ki’n sangolo, sangolo eee…I’m in love with two women; I don’t know which one to take; and you could still dance to it. Do you?

The readers whose interests we ought to serve and whose interests we continually compromise for the love of the “flava” have decided to jettison their loyalty and reverence of our approximation of how a particular song sounds or what emotions it evokes, however articulate it may be, ever since they discovered that it’s not just that we have sold out professionalism for the “flava” but that we have increasingly become shorn of the mandatory musical gen and artistry – while parading an army of bedazzled wanna-be music critics and bootlickers masquerading as entertainment reporters and writers.

Truth is, our music suffers and flutters due to the dearth of competent music journalism, among other factors. The best that we have done and that we could ever possibly do is to serve as errand boys and publicists to every wanna be music star, acclaimed star and charlatan with N10, 000, N5, 000 and well slanted interview plants, prepared in question and answer formats by individual artistes’ in-house publicists and managers.

Just recently, an esteemed reader and music enthusiast marveled why seven national dailies would parade a struggling music star and music talent hunt finalist on their entertainment cover. The answer is simple: she got “flava.”

The journalistic cult of poverty has a supreme theme; the morally-deficient journalist. This theme is pitifully projected by journalism’s highly celebrated ambassadors in the corridors of power and the public space. Rather than evolve as heroic shiners of light and provenders of truth, speaking to keep all savagery in straits, in the true tradition of modern, high-cultivated men of letters, they choose to manifest  like an accident to society.

Picture a severely skewed news story bearing the newspaper Daily Editor’s byline and the curious tag: “With political intelligence unit reports.” Picture how ridiculous it must be to witness the metamorphosis of presumed intellect into dimwittedness. At first glance, his touted investigation rankles an ominous note, at closer read, his heartfelt truths wander in logic and polemic like an untamed gypsy, burnishing a world in which he ought to serve as a bastion of love with hate, urging it into bitterness and everlasting darkness. Severely compromised by greed and lack of pride, he served former President Goodluck Jonathan’s propaganda train like a junkyard dog with neither tact nor freewill. His brief was to impugn the name of Muhammadu Buhari now President Muhammadu Buhari. Today, that desperate editor is shamelessly courting camp Buhari, in frantic bid to reclaim his slavish role to the ruling class.

As you read many more newspaper editors and their reporters are manifesting at the ruling class’ bidding and your bidding, into the stamen that lets down the azalea, the comforters that bring grief, the emissaries of needless orchestrated in the interest of the ruling class.

Today, tyranny attains ultimate refinement in the news columns; this brings to mind that memorable jest by Norman Mailer that “Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.” Journalists are still the butt of the most demeaning jokes and premeditated put-downs in the social arena. Nobody thinks much of a journalist; in the eyes of big business and the ruling class, the journalist whatever his designation or job title, is the manipulable pawn and necessary evil that has to be courted and tolerated. The descent and humiliation of the journalist still persists in the hands of his employer; salaries still range from N15, 000 per month at entry level to N70, 000 per month at managerial level in most media houses. Just three media houses endeavour to pay fairly and this has led to the metamorphosis of the journalist into an aberration of the watchdog he ought to be to society.

This resonates badly for the Nigerian mob; the nation’s critical mob to be precise. Mob culture requires that he who would adorn the cloak of defender of the masses’ rights should be upright and flawless in character, work and personal ethics. Such admirable traits are rarely attributable to the Nigerian journalist manager and the press in general.

The Nigerian mob, like every other rabble, seeks fulfillment of tyrant fantasies; such fantasies often vary between the destruction of an unpopular government, despot or worn-out civilization. Reality however, affirms the impotence of the Nigerian mob. The latter is continually tamed and kept on a leash by a ruling class that capitalizes on its obvious handicaps: its impulsiveness, insensibility to reason and judgment and overt sentimentality.

Despites it handicaps, the Nigerian mob conveniently picks on a scapegoat for its infinite timidity and cluelessness: the press. The journalist is expected to serve as the conscience and moral compass of the society, challenging the government and checking the excesses of the ruling class, uncompromisingly and selflessly.

As utopian fantasies go, these are noble expectations of the journalist but the Nigerian mob ignores the cultural shift of the society from conventional morality to unbridled hedonism. It assumes, hypocritically, that the press will continually give it honest and developmental news even as every segment of the society strive to unmoor the journalist from his role as a crucial appendage of the nation’s critical mob. The public, comprising big business, the government, and civil societies among other mob segments, vilify any journalist or news medium that seeks to educate and engage rather than entertain and perpetuate their biased definitions of reality.

Contemporary Nigeria embraces the emotional pageant that has turned news into paid publicity and mindless entertainment and the journalist in response kowtows to lusts and vanities of modern society. Beneath the mindless glamour and cultural decline however, an insidious reality festers in the death of hope and incandescence of tragedy. Prevalent socioeconomic tragedies necessitate the emergence and elevation among the citizenry of the bungling and sadistic, and the beginning of a differentiation cum tyranny of social grades.

At the centre of the turmoil is the journalist whose fate is so critically bound with the country’s but he obviously does not know that hence the cluelessness, treachery and brazen recklessness that characterizes his work. Consequently, the Nigerian journalist manifests as an accident to society. He perpetually loses his grasp of the issues at stake; fundamentally hollow and benumbed to valor, he shamelessly resigns to the powers that be, blaming the tyranny of the ruling class and the proverbial ‘system’ for his inability to fulfill his professional and moral obligations to the society.

Rather than pose a challenge to the system that domesticates and enslaves him, he chooses the easiest way out and plays junkyard dog to tyrant cabals and the predatory bunch constituting the nation’s ruling class. He assumes the role of a poseur and pretends to fight for the interest of the public. This sad charade is continually perpetuated across esteemed leader-writers’ polemics in foremost newspapers’ columns.

The contemporary journalist trades in all manners of truths, deploying sophistry and shades of impressive fallacies in the interest of whatever social divide fulfills his lust for relevance and economic survival. I am a journalist and I shamefully acknowledge that my clan and I hardly epitomize hope to our world. Not yet. Rarely do we signify hope, self-sacrifice or a promise of future honesty and gallantry in the interest of all. We can blame the society and advance all forms of isms and ostentatious arguments to justify our descent the steep slope of amorality and socioeconomic expediency; it wouldn’t excuse our treachery to our calling and the Nigerian citizenry.

If Nigeria chooses to exist as a land of savages, it’s our responsibility to nudge her back on to the path of humanity and progress – for only in such clime can we positively evolve and prosper. Our failure as journalists indicates severance from a progressive and moral culture while we institutionalize bigotry, lies, depravity, base sentimentality and pitiful fantasies.

The traditional, conscientious journalist is going extinct today along with true, dependable news culture because Nigeria obsesses and migrates to the pseudo-reality of the internet and reality shows. It is no doubt ironical that the masses would turn around to blame the press for not fulfilling its roles to the society.

It’s about time we stopped narrowing the debates and spotlight to the shenanigans and petty differences of the ruling class and instead aspire to serve as a true voice to the voiceless. There is no magical antidote to our decline and death as a crucial part of the nation’s critical mob.

Real progress will manifest in the country when we start demanding that the ruling class march in virtual lockstep with promises they make. Whatever the tone and dialect of intellectualization that characterizes our news culture, posterity will judge us by how truthfully we fulfill our roles as conscience and watchdog of the society.

Banks destroy and scarcely create; beyond the industry and gated walls of high society. Ask Tejumade Adeyemi; the hapless trader now understands that the Nigerian bank is a pitiful pickpocket, her bank to be precise. Until her ugly experience, Adeyemi reposed high hopes in her personal bank, Union Bank. She believed in the bank’s mantra of dependability that touts it as: “Big, Strong, Reliable.”

If only she knew that like several other banks, Union Bank is mired in arrogance, behind a wall of capitalist disdain for lower level customers like her. For all its touted efficiency, elegance and professionalism; Union Bank had its self-acclaimed glories sullied by devious plots inflicted on one of its loyal customers, Adeyemi.

Adeyemi recently accused the bank of complicity in the alleged illegal withdrawal of the sum of N251, 447 from her account with the Oba Akran, Ikeja branch of the bank. Adeyemi is threatening to take legal action against the bank, if her money is not refunded. According to her, she received SMS alerts from the bank on May 4, 2015, notifying her of unauthorised withdrawal of the sum of N30,000 from her account through ATM.

Worriedly, she rushed to the Iju branch of the bank to report the matter and was advised by officials of the branch to report the incident at the Oba Akran, Ikeja branch where her account was domiciled.

On her visit to the Oba Akran branch on May 5, Adeyemi said she was shocked to discover that the illegal withdrawals actually started on May 2 and May 3 and that she was not notified by the bank to date. She explained that even after she instructed the bank to suspend further transactions on her account, she was utterly shocked to receive more text messages indicating that the remaining balance in the account had been withdrawn by unknown persons.

She said: “On May 4, 2015, I received an alert indicating that the sum of N30,000 had been withdrawn by unknown persons from my account. I quickly went to the nearest branch of Union Bank at Iju Road, Ifako-Ijaiye, from where I was advised to visit the branch where I opened the account on Oba Akran Road, Ikeja, after I explained to the officials of the bank that my ATM card was with me and that its details were not in any way compromised by me. The next day, May 5, I visited the Oba Akran branch and I asked that further transactions be suspended on the account until further notice. When I asked for the details of the transactions, I was shocked to discover that the illegal withdrawals started between May 2 and May 3, wherein about N45,747.35 had been taken from my account and no alert or notification was sent to me till date. I also discovered that there were other illegal withdrawals totaling N180, 000 made on May 4, yet the bank did not notify me.”

According to Adeyemi, she was assured by both the Manager of the bank and the Head of Customer Service that further transactions on her account will be suspended including ATM withdrawals. “By then, I was having about N25,190 as balance in my account. The money was still in my account as at May 14, when a statement of account was given to me but I was surprised to receive further notification of illegal withdrawal of the remaining balance a few days later. Immediately, I called the secretary to the manager of the branch on his mobile phone and I was assured of prompt remedy that has not been fulfilled to date. In all, N251, 447 was illegally withdrawn from my account and I strongly suspect an insider in the bank is behind the illegal withdrawals from my account. The bank has refused to take blame for its complicity in this fraudulent withdrawal of my money and I am going to consider a legal option if the bank refuses to refund my money,” she said.

When The Nation’s Chief Correspondent that handled the story, contacted the Head of Media and Special Projects of Union Bank Plc, Francis Barde, via an email, he initially said: “Thanks, for your patience and understanding on this issue. I will thoroughly investigate and revert to you.” Barde, however, did not make categorical comments in his official response via another email he sent to the correspondent afterwards.

He said:”Kindly note that Union Bank values the relationship of every customer and it is our goal to handle all customer relationships with utmost integrity. Therefore, Union Bank does not divulge details of customer relationships and transactions to third parties for privacy issues. The bank has a clear and documented process for investigating and resolving claims of fraud on customers’ accounts and will work to ensure that all claims are addressed and resolved in an expedient manner.”

As at press time, Adeyemi complained that Union Bank had been maintaining discomforting silence over the issue. The poor lady’s case is particularly pitiful given that, she struggles to make ends meet by her small scale enterprise.

Besides Union Bank’s apparent disregard for the misery it has inflicted on its hapless customer, the bank predictably persists in its gross misdemeanour riding on a wave of invincibility and disdain characteristic of Nigerian banks’ relations with customers that fall outside their classification of deep-pocket clients.

Though the monstrosity of local banks’ insouciance to customers of the lower income bracket is undeniably obvious, the facts have always been suppressed or completely stifled in the media, at the behest of the banks. To prevent a newspaper from exposing such scandalous crime and infliction of hurt on a client, a defaulting bank would spiritedly place a coloured page advertisement in the newspaper, banking on the condescending notion that as long as a newspaper enjoys advertisement patronage and bribe to the journalist in charge of the story, the bank will suffer no bad press.

Acting along this premise, several banks have succeeded in ‘killing’ or stopping publication of major stories that would have revealed their infliction of pain on a customer and pilferage of the latter’s account without any hope of reparation.

In several other instances that the journalist insists on publishing the story, banks persuade the journalist or the editor in charge to remove their names from the story although The Nation never shies from naming the culprit. Hence you get to read: “Mr. XYZ suffered a raw deal in the hands of his bank (name withheld), a popular first generation bank,” to mention a few. How does this do justice to the report? How does it enable the journalist and newspaper fulfill their ethical responsibility of objectivity, honesty and fairness in news reportage?

As you read, Adeyemi wonders why it is that Union Bank, her preferred banker, and an institution that continually touts itself as “Big Strong, Reliable” have to subject her to such indescribable pain and penury. Her misery would have been mitigated had the bank deemed it fit to employ a humane and responsible approach in addressing her plight. Sadly, Union Bank could only muster contempt and brittle witticism, courtesy Barde’s correspondence with The Nation correspondent, in response to her plight. It’s painful. It’s demoralizing, and fraught with disdain towards loyal customers like Adeyemi, who still keeps faith with the bank through crucibles of grief and unmerited pilferage visited upon her.

• To be continued…

From the depths, their screams are getting louder, our fathers will cry hoarse. It is too far down below, they will never get heard. Our mothers are singing. But their requiem confounds wit. Why do they sing in tongues? Echoes of their buried narratives assail us like ghosts of the recalcitrant Abiku. Perhaps our fathers cry because they do not understand our chosen path; our mothers sing of bruised hymens and motherhood’s labour lost. But they do so from six-feet under, and their wails are barely a din far above their forgotten tombstones; even on the busy sidewalks of our history.

Our forbears may weep in vain; we that are deaf to reason and wisdom of the ancients will not budge. This leadership task confounds us, this citizenship brief too. But who cares? Nothing really matters, as long as we are “Proudly Naija.” Proudly Naija: our amoral equivalent of ‘Decadence is the new cool’ and ‘Corrupt cut is the easiest.’

The most prescient portrait of the Nigerian character and our ultimate fate as a nation shamefully played out in the last few days. It plays out even as you read; the persistent fuel scarcity and outrageous hike in pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), reveals our murderous obsessions, violent impulses, moral bankruptcy, our hubris and inevitable self-destruction.

The tiresome avarice and predatory lust that drove proprietorships of filling stations nationwide to hike fuel price from N87 to N500 per litre recalls very sadly to mind, that violence of the wild that holds motionless for endless hours, the kidnapper in his lair, the assassin in his ambuscade and the public officer in his plunderous perch – this violence belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey.

In the last few days, it manifested in uncontrollable spasms that saw us brutalise the helpless and enable our worst. As the fuel scarcity persisted, Nigeria gradually sputtered to a standstill, businesses shut down, banks cut short their work hours to midday, families starved – particularly those whose livelihoods depended on daily use of PMS- and the queues got longer like photographs of civil death in our homegrown dystopia.

It became clearer at some level that Nigeria was gradually hitting rock bottom, many of us groaned that we were damned—just as some of us know that our citizenship culture founded on a national enterprise that survives on  corporate greed, limitless exploitation and the continued extraction of crude oil is doomed.

For a few days, the possibility of Nigeria’s survival—like our tottering democracy—glowered in our faces like a mirage, the hallucination of an incurable fantasist desperately trying to substantiate his delusions of nationhood. The most frightening facets of the horror story unfolded in our filling stations and spilled over to our streets and neighbourhood mini-marts, utility service providers and  grocery stores. As fuel station managers hoarded fuel and closed shop in desperate bid to make a killing by selling it at outrageous prices to helpless motorists and folk whose survival depended on it, the neighbour next door on whom several families and businesses depended for supply of certain crucial products like cooking gas, kerosene, engine oil and so on, joyously inflated prices of the essential products, to the chagrin and discomfort of patrons in need.

Consider for instance, the case of a notable pastor and gas dealer in Agege; the family promptly closed shop and hoarded gas for two days even as neighbours and friends thronged their doorstep pleading with them to resume business and sell gas to them. Of course, they did after effecting a hike in price of the product. The ‘godly’ family dispassionately sold gas to friends and neighbours at N6, 000 per gas bottle. That was an astonishing hike from the product’s initial N3, 000 price before the fuel scarcity. Friends and neighbours of the family grumbled under their breath as they paid for the product; those that couldn’t recoiled to seek kerosene, accusing the pastor and his family for their ‘lack of sensitivity,’ ‘amorality’ and fraudulent claims to godliness. Of course, pastor and wife responded in kind, claiming that they were duty bound to separate business from holiness. “Na holiness we go chop?” said the pastor. The latter, a Lagos State civil servant erstwhile paraded himself as a noble businessman and compassionate ‘man of God.’

There is little difference between the family’s bestiality and the savagery of the ruling class and fuel station managers who accentuated the scarcity by hoarding fuel in order to sell it at N500 a litre. The pastor and his family for instance, received no fresh delivery of gas during the period; they simply hoarded what they had in stock, and sold it at double the cost. While their variously savage peers may advance arguments to support their monstrosity citing certain dreadful norms of commerce and industry, it need be told and understood that it is desperate, savage acts like theirs that ruins nations and enable the perpetual dominance of the haves over the have-nots.

What is happening in Nigeria is a precursor to a dreadful war between the country’s elites and the impoverished, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, overpopulation, declining crop yields caused by climate change, and rising food prices; capital and operating costs belie hope and prosperity for industry. The unfolding doom has nuances, put precisely, it has a thousand meanings.

A recent Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report generated ripples over its summations on Nigeria. No thanks to the Economist magazine’s sister publication, the Nigerian newborn may arrive knowing he has come where the sun dies everlastingly for the bliss of the fig. The EIU report ranks Nigeria 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its ‘Where-to-be-born’ index.

The 2014 Human Development Index (HDI) report ranked Nigeria amongst countries with low development index at 153 out of 186 countries that were ranked. Life expectancy in the country is placed at 52 years old while other health indicators reveal that only 1.9 per cent of the nation’s budget is expended on health; 68.0 per cent of Nigerians are stated to be living below $1.25 daily while adult illiteracy rate for adult (both sexes) is 61.3 per cent.

”As the population is growing, the resources that we all depend on, the food, energy, water, is declining. The demand for these resources will rise exponentially by the year 2030, with the world needing about 50 per cent more food, 45 per cent more energy and 30 per cent more water.

“In Nigeria, there is the issue of youth and employment; 70 per cent of the 80 million youths in Nigeria are either unemployed or underemployed. We are all witness to what happened recently during the immigration recruitment exercise and this is simply because 80 per cent of the Nigerian youth are unemployed,” she said.

This will inevitably lead to a class war as the deprivation of the working class will eventually morph into violence. In the background, a severe and scarier grotesqueness emerges; it is the acquiescence of presumably humane folk to the bemusement of prosperity. This blunts the sense, inflates the ego and inspires disdain for the less privileged. It is the affliction of the ruling class, fuel station managers and the gas-dealing pastor and his family.

An Ivy League education without ethics makes a trust fund ‘baby’ an expensive toy without batteries. Substandard education makes the middling youth even worse; it moulds him into a broken toy without appeal. They are both disposable but they enjoy patronage anyway – by the ones Wole Soyinka eloquently described as the wasted generation.

The Nigerian youth is a breed with all the personality of a paper cup. Thus like paper cups, we are used and disposed by men and women unfit to be elders. Yet whatever callousness we are forced to endure, our elders are not to blame. They shall not be blamed, for we made ourselves unbidden offering on the altar of vultures.

It is the malady of this age that the youth are too busy preaching that they have no time left to learn. In Nigeria, we are too busy dumbing down that we barely have time left to grow. It is a sad manifestation of stunted growth that we evolve into foetal adults and spend the rest of our lives seeking the comfort of debilitating “life boats.”

It is even more disheartening to see us adopt as a favourite past time, the pillorying of our elders and the rapacious ruling class. Many a Nigerian youth love to prophesy the worst about our fatherland thus it is never surprising to hear the average Nigerian youth pronounce with emphatic pessimism and relish that “This country is doomed,” and “Nigeria is finished.”

The Igbo youth laments his persistent marginalization from the scheme of things/bounties. He believes Nigeria is skewed to work against him and fellow Igbo because his peers from other ethnic groups are wary of his towering acumen, industry, courage and political savvy. The Hausa youth believes he has inalienable right to statutorily and heavenly accorded rights to reign supreme and lord it over his peers irrespective of merit. And the Yoruba youth, goaded by sentiments of his higher wisdom, towering depth in diplomacy, culture and politics believes that he is entitled to the best the country has to offer, on a platter of gold.

Every youth desperately perpetuates his sense of victimhood and entitlement. The idea is to keep whining until he gets lucky and corners an immense portion of the proverbial national cake – with minimal exertion and at no cost.

We used to be regarded as the promising youth, the gifted generation that would rescue Nigeria from the brink of irredeemable ruin. But that spell of hopefulness has dissipated now. Our “wasted” elders have seen through the swollen belly of our pride. They know we are increasingly handicapped by greed and lack of creed. By creed, I mean a coherent and specific set of goals, a consistent series of norms according to which society is to be remade.

Since we have learnt to blame the ruling class for everything, what is it that we want from the ruling class? We don’t need their permission to make something of the world where they have failed but we still live our lives seeking their permission to evolve positively and mature.

It takes courage and an enormous reserve of decency to evolve a humane ideology and establish it. We haven’t the courage and will, and this interferes with our ability to accomplish progressive change. More worrisome are our violent attempts to be radical; eventually they resonate too feebly as a kind of rudderless activism.

We identify all that is wrong with our society but we are never specific about what must be done to correct them. It is relatively easy to join a picket line and tirelessly castigate our elders and ruling class for everything that is wrong with our lives but these actions, while they demonstrate frustration, in some instances even heroism, deal generally with symptoms of· our problems and not the solutions. All the picket lines in the world will not resolve ills of fraudulent and impatient youth, perverted values, greed, racism, disillusionment with study and substandard education.

A broad wave of disillusionment and darkness persists above the silver linings we desperately wish to succeed our darksome clouds. Yet with precision and unfaltering devotion, we work ourselves up into such a state that we can only see the volcanic flare of our destructive acts as glitters of grandeur. We have perfected the art of standing on barrel-heads to spout and be seen, while we engage in pursuit and acquisition of mostly unearned wealth and greatness. Eventually, we luxuriate and spread out like a green forest with sour fruits and severed roots.

Apparently, we suffer a throwback to the 70s – the era that launched a trend in which Nigerians became preoccupied with themselves more than the survival of the nation. Self preservation has become an inexorable obsession of many youths seeking to escape the slow, steady path with its craters of mishap and socio-economic vagaries. What Joshua Lubin identifies as the “Me” decade has indeed, recoiled inward rather than concern itself with crucial national issues, like national progress and ethical rebirth. Therefore, popular culture attracts dubious labels such as “narcissistic” and “decadent” from critics and the “wasted” older generation.

The Nigerian youth has become so self-involved that almost every action and train of thought perpetuated by him serves as an instrumental resource to situate this generation in historical context, as perfect illustration of the much-hackneyed and over-exploited “Lost Generation.”

Our inordinate quest for self-fulfillment further establishes us as the worst that could possibly happen to a heavily endowed nation like Nigeria.

But we aren’t actually so bad. If we could look inwards to summon latent will and channel it towards the rejuvenation of outdated mores of morality and simple decencies, our lot might yet change, for better.

It shouldn’t hurt to evolve faith and be steadfast in it. If we could discard whatever sentiments we hold about Bukola Elemide aka Asa, we would find in the musician some worthy anecdote about the quality of faith. Asa believed in her dream of stardom. And she relentlessly pursued it through the stark streets of ambition, the wilderness of failure spasms and institutional adversities to become whoever she is and whatever she is today. If I had used Soyinka, or Late Babatunde Jose, many would claim they grew up when Nigeria neither smothered dreams nor murdered hope. Hence my choice of Elemide, the minion who managed to become a poster icon for generations of Nigeria’s music hopeful.

Yet many would read this and consider it “Pollyannaish.” To this lot, any hearty lunge at hope or belief in a brighter tomorrow manifest as blind optimism and a pathetic attempt to be patriotic even while it’s absolutely idiotic to do so. They would love to see the nation ruin in order to justify their inordinate cynicism and yearnings about the pointlessness of the Nigerian dream. They continually affirm their ill will and prayers of doom for the nation by tirelessly projecting separation and insurmountable bleakness on the Nigerian state. Individually, their contribution towards nation building is virtually non-existent or abysmally low, they are amazingly adept at sowing seeds of doubt and disillusionment amongst their peer and younger generation. But they love to be seen as heroes of truth and the new world.

Our virgins no longer quicken. They become women before they learn to be girls; baby hymens ruptured at the cold, hard strokes of men. Now the girl child understands ‘bottom power’ better than our mothers. Sometimes, mothers teach them stuff. They say they teach them to survive.

Enter Barbie dolls, butt vixens, cold, grotesque army of career freaks. Every girl child wants to be lady, every lady will be independent. BSc, HND, MBA, PhD, a pretty face and pliant job ensures interminable freedom. And those that are without brains look out for the randy boss, then they jiggle their hips. These days, they up the ante, they agree to an inviting bump or two, or simply offer it.

No more shall womanly wiles be subservient to impenitent machismo. Our daughters have learnt to tame men. Our women have discovered how to be men. A new breed of womanhood has evolved. It foists upon us such quality of womanhood that dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities in desperation to sate the feminist emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed.’

Thus like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, our daughters have become emotion junkies – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by their lust for unearned benefits. And when she seems truly deserving of sought benefits, gluttony and wile pervert her claims until her agitation attains the tenor of a ruckus, much like the ghastly cries of feral cats jostling for the largest chunk of carrion flesh. Misandry and demonization of men drives her to perpetually devalue men’s worth to the extent that she has become blasé about the disposability of men and the boy-child.

In the wake of the ensuing abnormality, we treasure the good old days, when daughters agreed to be led like brainless lambs to the slaughter slab. We bemoan the loss of the epoch, when wedlock was arranged even before the girl child was conceived and delivered.

But then, there was no internet and our mothers pounded yams and provided bath water for our fathers and their mistresses. Tell me, who would wish such on his most precious daughter? It’s been four decades since papa visited mama’s bed. It’s been five years since he untied her wrapper. I wonder how she got along. Now that he is dead, I wonder how she would survive.

I used to think that she was made of wood. But recently, that changed; awareness drummed by the hard, cold palms of truth. Just the other day, while the sun set, in Morpheus’ warm embrace, I heard her playing with herself. I tried to challenge her, but my guts failed me. I would love to advise her, but I am ashamed to accost her pain lest she recoils in shame.

But what do I know? I am only a child. My curiosity should be meant for more childlike things. I shouldn’t become the cat that died prying. My hard earned knowledge fits me for such tasks but I lack the nobility to fulfill such. Oftentimes I wonder if it was love that killed Adunni, my grandma’s friend.

Now a breathing corpse, the poor old woman has sashayed to her watershed, in the dark. Hence for her, there would be no defining moment. These days, she has forgotten how to do the walk.  The sway that endeared her to Ajadi, the gravel merchant, has turned her to a reject in his house. Every time she tries to reenact her magic, he screams ‘ashawo.’ These days her co-wives taunt her to her face. They ask her to relinquish her turn on the bed. She has decided to do so because her in-laws have joined hands in the mockery. They ask what more could she want from her husband’s manhood.

And she just turned 40. But she cannot leave lest she puts her family to shame and her four daughters go hungry. It has become the way of her husband to deny her daughters, his kids, food and fatherhood every time she incurs his wrath, however petty. He threatens to throw them on the streets.

The village belle of yesterday has become the laughingstock of today. The maiden who taunted the hood of men have fallen by the honeyed – tongue of Ajadi, the virgin hunter.

Passion she fanned to lighten her heart died in the full blaze of her first love’s passion for another and others.

‘Curse papa and leave!’ her children scream as they attempt to smash the picture of her only love, their father.

Suitors she left to clutter her father’s door recline in the chilly atmosphere of her spent youth. What are they looking for? Perhaps the cold acknowledgement that at last, she values their love, the shallow pretense of appreciation offered in a dream? A note, a sign, a telltale to console them that their ardor was never misplaced?

These days, they too, join in the mockery. They jeer at the unreciprocated love whose misery cries out, silently. Shakara don end o, Adunni has reached her twilight, at 40.

When Ajadi dies, she would be willed to his drunkard brother and driver. Her co-wives would be inherited by two others, but they would be better off.

Her four daughters would be cut from their father’s bequest, because they would be women.

That is why they have vowed to never marry. Vile astir, fire at heart, they forswear men. Every day, they vow to become ‘career ladies.’ They say they would see men like the latter sees them, objects to be done with, disposable means to self-indulgent ends.

Adunni is mortified. Should we too? I admit that I am. I have some issue, she is no longer a child, neither is she an adult yet she seems to understand what it is to be an adult, mostly the sordid details. And she is just 10.

The present breaks my heart. We treat our women badly, worse than slaves. We shave their heads when their husbands die and put them in a cage. We force them to sit and eat on the bare floor over the most trying days. Some, we force to drink body fluid secreted from the husband’s corpse even as we drive many more to the brink of madness by our sheer inhumanity. How monstrous can we get?

Would a true man recoil because his wife earns higher? Would a true man pay a child prostitute for sex? Would he liberate her from such villainy? Would a true man flaunt a mistress to his wife’s face? Would a true man deny his wife the right to speak? Would a true man manage the tantrums of the most troublesome of women or flee from it?

Would a true man marry for money? Would a true man defile his own daughter? Would a true man mourn his wife for 90 days or would he untie the next wrapper at her demise? Would a true man allow the dehumanization of his widow, if he could help it? What do dead husbands think on their way to yonder? What do they do when they look back? Do their glands thicken and moisten with tears? Do they applaud the monstrosity we savagely dole out to their women?

May our daughters marry the husbands we have become to their mothers; shall we say ‘Amen?’