The Nation Newspaper

Tag: beasts

  • Women Are Not Beasts: A response to Olatunji Ololade ‘Beasts Of No Gender’

    We have too many women reading too much meaning into everything and agitating about anything, like the television commercial in which a joyous father of a newborn yells into his mobile phone’s mouthpiece; ‘Mama na boy o’. To them, such an advert constitutes an offensive patriarchal mindset.’

    ‘To be a feminist, if not a defect, is at least a fetish; like porn. The feminist is that woman who dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities, in order to satisfy her emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed’…like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, such woman is an emotion junkie – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her lust for unearned benefits…’

    And it goes on and on. There is a Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. The first time I read this very troubling rant by Olatunji Ololade against feminists/women’s rights advocates was three or four years ago when it was serialized in The Nation, a leading national newspaper  in Nigeria. I think one of two things must have happened. First scenario – Olatunji probably got so many horrified responses from women, it gave him a serious high which took him a long time to come down from, hence the need for another shot of adrenaline. The second possibility is that he did not get enough  push back the first time, so he became emboldened and decided to up the ante. In the interim, Olatunji became an award-winning writer, receiving CNN Multi Choice African Journalist awards back to back, as well as other local ones. Of course we are always proud of our fellow country men and women when they bring home well deserved laurels, it is great to have something to celebrate about Nigerians other than news about us being perpetual scoundrels.

    After wincing and grimacing through the January 2016 version of what passes for Olatunji’s analysis of the state of gender relations and women’s rights activism in Nigeria, I have decided to raise a number of issues with him in the form of some unsolicited advice as follows:

    Olatunji needs to take his responsibilities as a leading journalist and writer in Nigeria more seriously. Research, analysis, reflection, empathy and empirical evidence are critical to any nuanced understanding of an issue as complex as feminism and gender relations. The quality of debate you have in private spaces is not the same as the one you place on the pages of a national newspaper – in all its three part, problematic glory.

    I advise our award winning brother to do more reading. The more writing you do, the more you have to read. Olatunji needs to read the work of Nigerian feminist thinkers such as Ifi Amadiume, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Bolanle Awe, Ayesha Imam, Ronke  Oyewunmi, Amina Mama, Bisi Aina, Simi Afonja to mention a few. He would also do well to look at what other African women such as Sara Longwe, Abena Busia, Sylvia Tamale, Awa Thiam, and so many others have to say. These women, alongside scores of others, have worked to produce a body of knowledge and thought on African feminist theory and practice. The summary of their definition of Feminism is one of a global struggle against all forms of patriarchal oppression. Their analysis includes not only a critique of white, western feminist hegemony, but also serves to create a unique space for the conceptualization and practicalisation of a feminism that resonates with the lived experiences  of every day African women. One of the greatest contributions of African feminist thought, has been its insistence on locating feminist discourse within Africa’s historical realities of slavery, colonialism, globalization and marginalization. In essence, you cannot talk about an empowered woman in Africa without liberating her entire community from poverty and lack of opportunities. This includes the men and boys in her life. Some of these women I mention are my teachers and mentors, some are peers, and they are all my friends.  Most of them are mothers, wives and grandmothers. I am sure none of us ever dreamt that a day would come when a privileged, educated African brother would liken us to ‘porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists.’

    Mr. Ololade needs to broaden his analytical horizons. Patriarchy is real. It is not in our minds. It has never simply been about Men versus Women. It is about the use of male dominated institutions and structures such as politics, religion, education, economics, culture and tradition to create a universe in which one gender becomes superior to the other. Olatunji said women made a big deal out of a seemingly innocuous ‘Mama na boy ‘advert. Even his fellow men understand why the fuss was made. Let us call the new baby boy John. In some cultures, on the 8th day of his birth, a goat will be killed. If the baby is a Mary, they will kill a chicken for her. John will grow up to be the first to have a shot at education if his family is poor. Mary will have to learn how to be a good wife because that is where her career prospects will lie, if she is to lift her family out of poverty. Perhaps Ololade missed the drama we all witnessed,  approximately ten years ago, when a wealthy politician celebrated the first birthday of his first son after five daughters, with the gift of a Rolls Royce to the little boy. Yes, Olatunji, ‘Mama na boy’ means something.   (To be continued…)

    Mrs. Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi is a renowned feminist, women’s rights activist and wife to Minister of Solid Minerals,Kayode Fayemi.                       

     

    Re:Beasts of no gender…

    There is no gainsaying Mrs. Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi and her peer raised valid points reflective of their politics in response to my serialised article, “Beasts of no gender.” However, I reiterate, like I stated in the first part of the article that it is not an attack on women but a condemnation of feminist-misandry, the desperate politics and towering monstrosity of man-haters pretending to be pro-women.

    Adeleye-Fayemi has since asserted that she deliberately feigned ignorance of the thrust of the article in order to score a point against the writer. She disclosed in subsequent conversation with the columnist that, while she is aware that certain self-confessed feminists pervert the cause of feminism by engaging in misandry, she needed the author to know that it was insensitive of him to generalise in his postulations which categorised progressive African feminists with misguided feminist-misandrists.

    I see nothing wrong with feminism without its blemishes just like I see nothing wrong in the patriarchy without its shortcomings. We are hierarchical animals. Sweep one hierarchy away and another will take its place. The feminist movement thus flagellates between its campaign for women’s rights and an insatiable lust to replace the patriarchy with matriarchy. This is understandable as nature fluorishes by hierarchies.

    But as there are hierarchies in nature, there are alternate hierarchies in society fostered by survival of the fittest. Nonetheless, in Nigeria’s patriarchal hierarchy, there are protections for the weak. We simply need to weaponise them against the vile in patriarchy. Nigeria evolves even as you read, to protect the interests of every human constituent, the vulnerable girl-child, boy-child and woman in particular. This is good news.

    I understand that no form of patriarchal stricture could vitiate or supplant the traditionally-vested roles of a woman as mother, wife, vessel of life, nurturer of character, provider and conscience of humanity. Thus the need to protect and seek an expansion of the rights of the female folk within the ambits of fairness and probity.

    This is one of the reasons I engage in crusade journalism. With total humility, I stress that, my CNN African journalism merit award for “This marriage will kill me – Tragedy of Nigeria’s child brides,” addressed the evils of female genital mutilation and Vesico Vagina Fistulae (VVF) on underage girls forced into marriage in northern Nigeria. Most of my award-winning stories addressed vile cultural practices and atrocities being perpetrated against the country’s vulnerable divide comprising women, the girl-child and boy-child in particular. There is need to highlight this fact at the backdrop of injudicious feminist rage at my serialised article.

    I understand that misandrists that fall in the bracket I likened to ‘porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists’ and other emotion junkies would naturally pick a fight with me. I also appreciate Mrs. Adeleye-Fayemi’s maturity and brittle wit in all of these. Like most progressive feminists, she expressed her dissatisfaction like a mature human seeking to prick my emotive faculties. But many others, in juvenile fits of exuberance, sent hate messages and incoherent vitriol. The latter remain the bane of the feminist cause.

  • Beasts of no gender (3)

    To be a feminist, if not a defect, is at least a fetish; like porn. The feminist is that woman who dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities, in order to satisfy her emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed.’

    Like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, such woman is an emotion junkie – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her 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.

    To do American feminists justice, many of them have publicly repudiated the ideas they once held: Betty Friedan now talks of the importance of the family. Judy Goldsmith (former president of NOW) deplores the feminization of poverty due to easy divorce laws, and Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, laments the effects of sexual liberation and the feminist adoption of the lesbian cause: “We tried to make people proud of who they were” says Brownmiller, “…but then the sadomasochists came out of the closet and became proud of themselves.”

    Unfortunately, Nigerian feminists, always five leap years behind the American sisterhood, have not seen the light yet and attempt to pervert State and Federal policies even as they lay to waste, the traditional family. Feminists, without doubt, should not enjoy the natural ‘privilege’ of having children. They are taking care of that anyway – as you read; the “Free the Nigerian Woman” movement is working assiduously to achieve total liberation from patriarchal fetters for the Nigerian woman and girl-child.

    However, like their foreign feminist heroes, the feminism they propagate presupposes and necessitates male blame. It espouses man-hating as an intrinsic part of its modus operandi thus institutionalizing misandry as a central tenet of its crusade. Although, many a Nigerian feminist will contend that “the feminism we espouse does not require man-hating, we simply choose to liberate the Nigerian woman from servitude and patriarchal dominion…”; reality tells differently. Feminism cannot exist without man-hating and that is the cold-hard truth.

    Blaming socialization for women’s predicament constitutes the worst of feminist claptrap.

    The socialization-learned roles-sex stereotyping feminist argument to excuse feminists’ claim to  perpetual victimhood has no basis in fact. If social forces and upbringing have such a profound effect and influence on women’s choices then they must also have a profound effect and influence on men’s choices – if considered within the feminist parameters that both male and female gender are created as equals. This means that nobody, anywhere, under any circumstances, is capable of making a ‘free choice.’

    The concept is arrant nonsense; if it had any validity then none of us could be held morally or personally responsible for the consequences of our actions. Picture a society that operates by this belief system: thousands of men locked up in prisons could use the same defense for shooting, robbing, raping, drug dealing and so on. Why not argue for example, that the culture of masculinity, a background of poverty, and a materialistic and religiously intolerant family  makes them behave in anti-social ways? Individual men are held responsible for their decisions and actions, so how can feminists legitimately claim that women should be exempt from personal responsibility?

    Misandry and demonization of men, has devalued men’s worth to the extent that it has made society blasé about the disposability of men and the boy-child. This is responsible, for example, for the shocking bias in the lack of attention to men and boys’ health in general while the mass media and health advocacy groups perpetually obsess about women’s health and the girl-child’s.

    The idiocy of this mindset is that while girls are badgered with crucial health information even before puberty, boys, with whom they engage in random acts of sexual misdemeanor and experimentation are virtually ignored.

    The cultural and institutional misandry perpetuated by the feminist aggravates the destruction of the family system and denies the boy-child the comfort of an external role model especially when he has to seek outside his family for his role models.

    This is one reason boys are perpetually in trouble; due to the lack of positive male role models in their lives, they would get what they could from TV, violent films and video games. All they need is someone whose exemplary footsteps they could follow but the society provides them only men they could dumb down to.

    A recent analysis of 2, 000 mass media portrayals of men and male identities, found that men were depicted mostly as villains, aggressors, perverts, and philanderers. From this stock-pile of anti-heroes, the boy-child is expected to navigate for a good male identity. Promoting the image of men as juvenile, mean and stupid is cynical and exploitative; which makes the tide of inverse sexism that has swamped out television screens for instance, even more appalling.

    In modern Nigeria, boys and young men have a dire lack of good role models; especially if they are raised in a single-parent home, as one in eight children now are. The situation is worsened by the lack of positive role models in government, and the perpetuation of overwhelmingly negative images of men by the media and feminist scholarly research. Ultimately such portrayals lead to negative social costs for society in areas such as male health, rising suicide rates and family disintegration.

    Women need to be thought of as ‘victims.’ Without the banner of victimhood to rally around, feminist coffers would run dry, career feminists would be unemployed and mortgages would go unpaid. Hence thousands of professional feminists can’t just declare victory and go home, because without the feminist movement they would have no homes to go to; they would have no jobs, no families and no job prospects. And neither would they have a platform from which to pound their ideological drum.

    The irony of feminism’s ‘forever feminism’ is that the sense of perpetual victimhood precludes the concept that the members of the victimized group, women, could actually rise above their assigned position in society and meet that society, and be part of that society, on equal terms. To do that would mean taking personal responsibility for their choices and the condition of their own lives. Instead, feminism has designed an ideological crutch to serve as the average woman impediment to self-actualization.

    Feminism has gained a monopoly on the subject of gender studies.  Men don’t have a gender identity anymore, only women have a gender identity and an intrinsic value to society and this sentiment is perpetuated by carefully articulated propaganda and research.  The concept of authoritative, strong, independent, passionate and intelligent manhood is persistently repudiated except it exists to serve the feminist cause. So when a young boy reaches the age where it’s appropriate for him to be initiated into manhood, we find the whole idea of “reaching manhood” laughable.

    On the flip-side, a new womanhood is fast evolving. Stripped of its swathe of fortune and status symbols, it reveals a kind of corpse in future argument with itself, a dead voice hollering and bearing witness to its own achievement, passionate in self-love and incest with its past.

  • Beasts of no gender (2)

    Today, a creepy trend ensues: the Nigerian man is incidental. He has become disposable means to self-indulgent ends. But the Nigerian woman isn’t; she is hopelessly accidental, even as she giftedly uses and disposes of her men. But she does not know that. That is why, despite their touted talents and depth, the best of Nigeria’s female icons pale irredeemably, against the colourful rainbow of hope and expectations that heralded their emergence.

    I will not agonize on the wantonness and serial silliness of successive occupants of office of the “First Lady” yet as their tragicomedy furnishes interesting discourse for another day. Apology to the “First Lady” with substance and the will to be truly humane; if she ever truly exists.

    The antecedents and on-going travesty of the Nigerian “female icon,” “alpha female” or whatever, hurts the nation today. It devastates the Nigerian girl-child and woman alike simply by injecting a false and gratuitous default amount of animosity in them towards men and Nigeria’s established patriarchy.

    By their politics, they neglect the boy-child, girl-child and woman living in extreme circumstances to burden impressionable females with gifts of obscene chips on their shoulders and axes to grind. These impressionable youngsters breeze through the processes, as you read, internalising every anti-patriarchy psychology they could glean along the way until they learn to give vent to internalised discontent.

    Eventually, we have too many women screaming ‘women’s lib’ and professing to protect women’s rights. And we have too many women reading too much meaning into everything and agitating about anything, like the television commercial in which a joyous father of a newborn yells into his mobile phone’s mouthpiece:  “Mama na boy o.” To them, such advert constitutes an offensive patriarchal mindset. Such paranoia is wholly enabled by the emergence and practicability of Nigerianised version of Western feminism.

    Many advocates of Nigerian women’s rights and greater women empowerment today, comprise what a “discerning” and “assertive” female friend has described as “closet feminists” and “liberated feminists.” Together they seek greater women participation in politics, commerce and other crucial aspects of society claiming development cannot be achieved when Nigerian women have been excluded from the decision making process.

    However, not much credit can be ascribed to the few privileged females involved in Nigeria’s decision making process. No thanks to the latter, an anti- female power structure has emerged purportedly for the advancement of the Nigerian woman, but is unable to do so because it is dominated by two cliques of women. The first clique comprises of women married to powerful men and spoilt brats of aristocratic descent. The second comprises ambitious, Ivy-League-trained and dazzling females who have risen to the apex of their careers through meritorious service. Together they constitute Nigeria’s greatest nightmare.

    That is because by their citizenship, Nigeria suffers devastating blows to its value system and family structure. This band of self-styled fortune hunters like their male counterparts, conveniently choose to ignore the balancing, nurturing and conscientious roles they ought to play at checkmating the unbridled excesses and terrorism of the male folk.

    They shamelessly perpetuate an oligarchic female power formation leveraged on patron-client patriarchal structures – the same structure that incites their revolt. They owe neither moral nor legal obligation to further the ideal of their fellow women rather they exploit their positions and opportunities for economic gains and political relevance. But lest we castigate this new breed of Nigerian female, it is important to acknowledge that they constitute an unavoidable response to the unspeakable insanity and insensitivity of the Nigerian male folk.

    Lower down the ladder of this band of fortune bandits however, exists an even more desperate gang of insufferable women advocates. Think advocacy gurus, women’s rights activists and female C.E.Os, students, youth leaders etc.

    Their modus operandi involves reading too much into everything and projecting their own neurotic views of reality over far simpler and true reality. They redefine the world upon straw men where there are none and fight needless battles against a ghost army. Yet this fantastic quest of theirs is hardly about maximizing under-privileged women’s lot or improving the lot of the country hence in doing battle with their ghost army of straw men, they alienate their actual allies and indifferent peers – consequently, they attract more blowback to themselves.

    The blowback of course, is relative to each feminist and whatever incites her discontent. And as this never-ending discontent becomes the primary source of their righteous victimhood, they desperately lust for and seek to acquire wealth, power, status and any other enablement that would guarantee their comfort and rebellion against the established order.

    When they acquire it, they loathe letting go of it and become addicted to it, like junkies. Just like their men. And they will stop at nothing; even if it means adopting both destructive and constructive measures to craft and sustain power in their lives as a dependable safe-guard against the proverbial monstrous man. This breeds a self-perpetuating cycle of hate that keeps such characters unsatisfied and their men, eternally less than.

    The consequence is that instead of enjoying life naturally and as each situation peculiarly demands; the new Nigerian feminist reduces her own quality of life by seeing the world through a sexist filter and not as it truly is. This goads a considerable segment of the female folk to pursue whole-heartedly, the perversion of certain established social and universal absolutes that had at one time or the other served as their moral and psychological compasses and comfort zones. Think custom and religion. Asides family, the church is a major casualty of this anomaly as the gospel currently asphyxiates in the heat waves of “expedient evangelism” of Nigeria’s dandy female pastors.

    If religion stands no chance, culture doesn’t either. Traditional and divine absolutes of old are of little or no basic worth today; that is why the average Nigerian woman today stands the scripture and tested norms on the head as she spiritedly seeks to emasculate her man and call the shots at home, in the boardroom and even the temples of God.

    The central goal of an average Nigerian woman today is to attain self-actualization at whatever cost, often times. This change in ambition is inherently liberating; as it frees a multitude of women from the drudgery of injurious marriages and societal norms. However, this radical change in disposition negatively affects their life arc as a whole; it perverts their relationships, self-esteem, stress levels, pastime, sexual culture, and time and resource allocation – a reality they never actually bargained for.

    Driven by lust for financial independence, they seek to achieve every other kind of freedom even as they close their eyes to the tensions and contradictions consequent from the interconnectedness of those freedoms. They choose to ignore the fact that with freedom comes a future that can neither be predicted nor controlled and that changes they seek will oftentimes, negate their heartfelt dreams.

    Consequently, they constitute a rehash of a more aggressive trend of radical Western feminism, like a breath of fresh stench in Nigeria’s mortuary of hope and humanity. Female icons we have now are ultimately harmful to Nigeria’s womanhood and State; they are insidiously worse than the patriarchy they seek to eradicate. Why?

    • To be continued…

  • President Buhari, beasts of ‘Naija’ etc…

    Another year gone; let us begin to intuit its truths. Are we different from what we signified and who we were? We have President Muhammadu Buhari. He is the shining beacon of our hope. With Buhari, we hope to cross our threshold of tragedy, death and plunder, come 2016.

    Until then, our roads will remain cratered and ditched with death. Our youths will remain unemployable and bereft of hope. Our hospitals will remain corridors of death. Are our schools functioning yet? Are our lawmakers mature now? Has the executive grown in wisdom, the judiciary too? Have we wizened with age and grief as a people?

    Change is here, and at its dawn we encounter truth as we hardly knew it. What really is the tenor of the truth? Our truths? Shall we continue to weep like the fanatic, over our dying dreams and the faded fantasies we struggle to forget? Shall we begin to rejoice despite all odds, in spite of misery and death; our lives’ constant staple?

    There is not yet a Nigeria of defined, stable boundaries, and economies. There is not yet a sense of shared destiny save our unity of the downtrodden and the damned. The most prescient portrait of the Nigerian character and our ultimate fate as a nation shamefully played out over the last few months and 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 at the twilight of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime 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, of his administration, 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.

    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. 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.

    A similar malady manifests even as you read as fuel station managers persistently hoard fuel to sell at higher pump prices despite President Buhari’s directive that PMS pump price remain at N87 per litre.

    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,” noted Dr. Aisha Mahmood of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

    She said: “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.”

    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.

  • Of beasts and birds

    Of beasts and birds

    A tiny creature she was. At about 8:35pm, in leaps and bounds, she replaced one leg with the other, the left hand bracing her tray and the right firmly locked onto her skirt – keeping it from succumbing to the gravitational pull of the earth. The lass of not more than six years and hardly standing beyond three feet above ground level declined the offer of a lift.

    Where are you headed?

    “Agelaso.” She replied, a tiny suburb of Ajara, Badagry.

    I took a second look at her and the two wraps of Agidi left in her tray kept me wondering whom to direct my silent indignation at. Is it her parents whose difficulty in sustaining the family was so extreme that their ward had to join them in the bread winning adventure, or the country whose sons and daughters have become no more than vermin whose existence is irritable to the aristocrats?

    She sells each for N10 and with the size of the metal on her head, hardly would she have left home with the edible corn extract of a worth above N200.

    Can you identify your house on a bike?

    Yes, she said.

    As the discussion went on – perhaps as a sign of warning never to converse with strangers – she leaped on with giant steps.

    Wait, let me get you a bike.

    No, she retorted.

    I walked to catch her at the same time trying to get a bike. On getting one, I pleaded with her to ride on it, yet she refused. And that was the end of it.

    As she disappeared into the umbra of the artificial lighting from bulbs and lamps, every step took her a step toward a possible disciple of ritualism – those sick souls who see dollars in intestines and bulletproof in skulls – and every movement, a step closer to a bleak future. Now she will be beaten, not because she misplaced her school bag which children of her age are wont to do but because she lost track of time and sold till dusk. She was supposed to be asleep – entertaining the household from the dream world with sonorous replay of live events on the playing ground – but the “drive for wealth,” which Robert Heilbroner, in The Worldly Philosophers, says “is the most worldly of all man’s activities” has pitched her against an odd world at an odd age, carrying out an odd trade at an odd hour of the day.

    It was an acquaintance of this sort that a 20th century American senator made which prompted his April 1934 address titled: Every man a king. “Is that a right of life,” wrote Huey P. Long “when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 than is by 120 million people?”

    He continued: “That you must not let any one man be too poor, and you must not let any one man be too rich; that the same mill that grinds out the extra rich is the mill that will grind out the extra poor, because, in order that the extra rich can become so affluent, they must necessarily take more of what ordinarily would belong to the average man.”

    A nation can be forgiven for the murder of mothers but never for reducing their children to chaff. I beamed my thoughts on this tale in order that it may serve as a precursor to the foundation of the rot that has reduced a once promising nation of ours to this Hobbesian state.

    They have stolen that which belong to previous men as they continue to steal those of future generations. They inflate contracts and apply for loans, all in a bid to satiating their insatiable appetites, thereby reducing the citizenry to pigs and worms.

    Ours is a b-space. In algebra, the intelligentsias’ in that arcane field of study calls it b-tuple. As one spent billions to run computer software, another allotted huge amounts to the sinking of a few boreholes. It’s a huge mess they’ve made of the country, one that although the new government is fighting to set a template of sanity, only a miracle will make the fruits blossom in this generation.

    What could make a man steal so much while his neighbors die of thirst? The lanky activist, whose heroics made him a father of sensitive activism, summarized it all. “Turn to the birds and beast, and what do you find?” says Mahatma Ghandi, “They never eat merely to please the palate, they never go on eating till their inside is full to overflowing. And yet, we regard ourselves as superior to the animal creation. Surely, those who spend their days in the worship of the belly are worse than birds and beasts.”

    They stole so much that they began stealing what they did not need, making their bellies gods’ and anuses, their Satan. As Ghandi wrote, even the birds don’t do that. May sanity reign in this nation.

    • Modiu Olaguro, NYSC, Jebba.

     

  • Beasts of no gender

    To be a ‘modern’ feminist, if not a defect, is at least a fetish; like porn. The ‘modern’ feminist is that woman who dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities, in order to satisfy her emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed.’

    Like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, such woman is an emotion junkie – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her 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.

    To do pioneer American feminists justice, many of them have publicly repudiated the ideas they once held: Betty Friedan now talks of the importance of the family. Judy Goldsmith (former president of NOW) deplores the feminization of poverty due to easy divorce laws, and Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, laments the effects of sexual liberation and the feminist adoption of the lesbian cause: “We tried to make people proud of who they were” says Brownmiller, “…but then the sadomasochists came out of the closet and became proud of themselves.”

    Unfortunately, Nigerian feminists, always five leap years behind the American sisterhood, have not seen the light yet and attempt to pervert State and Federal policies even as they lay to waste, the traditional family. Feminists, without doubt, should not enjoy the natural ‘privilege’ of having children. They are taking care of that anyway – as you read; the “Free the Nigerian Woman” movement is working assiduously to achieve total liberation from patriarchal fetters for the Nigerian woman and girl-child.

    However, like their foreign feminist heroes, the feminism they propagate presupposes and necessitates male blame. It espouses man-hating as an intrinsic part of its modus operandi thus institutionalizing misandry as a central tenet of its crusade. Although, many a Nigerian feminist will contend that “the feminism we espouse does not require man-hating, we simply choose to liberate the Nigerian woman from servitude and patriarchal dominion…”; reality tells differently. Feminism cannot exist without man-hating and that is the cold-hard truth.

    Blaming socialization for women’s predicament constitutes the worst of feminist claptrap.

    The socialization-learned roles-sex stereotyping feminist argument to excuse feminists’ claim to  perpetual victimhood has no basis in fact. If social forces and upbringing have such a profound effect and influence on women’s choices then they must also have a profound effect and influence on men’s choices – if considered within the feminist parameters that both male and female gender are created as equals. This means that nobody, anywhere, under any circumstances, is capable of making a ‘free choice.’

    The concept is arrant nonsense; if it had any validity then none of us could be held morally or personally responsible for the consequences of our actions. Picture a society that operates by this belief system: thousands of men locked up in prisons could use the same defense for shooting, robbing, raping, drug dealing and so on. Why not argue for example, that the culture of masculinity, a background of poverty, and a materialistic and religiously intolerant family  makes them behave in anti-social ways? Individual men are held responsible for their decisions and actions, so how can feminists legitimately claim that women should be exempt from personal responsibility?

    Misandry and demonization of men, has devalued men’s worth to the extent that it has made society blasé about the disposability of men and the boy-child. This is responsible, for example, for the shocking bias in the lack of attention to men and boys’ health in general while the mass media and health advocacy groups perpetually obsess about women’s health and the girl-child’s.

    The idiocy of this mindset is that while girls are badgered with crucial health information even before puberty, boys, with whom they engage in random acts of sexual misdemeanor and experimentation are virtually ignored.

    The cultural and institutional misandry perpetuated by the feminist aggravates the destruction of the family system and denies the boy-child the comfort of an external role model especially when he has to seek outside his family for his role models.

    This is one reason boys are perpetually in trouble; due to the lack of positive male role models in their lives, they would get what they could from TV, violent films and video games. All they need is someone whose exemplary footsteps they could follow but the society provides them only men they could dumb down to.

    A recent analysis of 2, 000 mass media portrayals of men and male identities, found that men were depicted mostly as villains, aggressors, perverts, and philanderers. From this stock-pile of anti-heroes, the boy-child is expected to navigate for a good male identity. Promoting the image of men as juvenile, mean and stupid is cynical and exploitative; which makes the tide of inverse sexism that has swamped out television screens for instance, even more appalling.

    In modern Nigeria, boys and young men have a dire lack of good role models; especially if they are raised in a single-parent home, as one in eight children now are. The situation is worsened by the lack of positive role models in government, and the perpetuation of overwhelmingly negative images of men by the media and feminist scholarly research. Ultimately such portrayals lead to negative social costs for society in areas such as male health, rising suicide rates and family disintegration.

    Women need to be thought of as ‘victims.’ Without the banner of victimhood to rally around, feminist coffers would run dry, career feminists would be unemployed and mortgages would go unpaid. Hence thousands of professional feminists can’t just declare victory and go home, because without the feminist movement they would have no homes to go to; they would have no jobs, no families and no job prospects. And neither would they have a platform from which to pound their ideological drum.

    The irony of feminism’s ‘forever feminism’ is that the sense of perpetual victimhood precludes the concept that the members of the victimized group, women, could actually rise above their assigned position in society and meet that society, and be part of that society, on equal terms. To do that would mean taking personal responsibility for their choices and the condition of their own lives. Instead, feminism has designed an ideological crutch to serve as the average woman impediment to self-actualization.

    Feminism has gained a monopoly on the subject of gender studies.  Men don’t have a gender identity anymore, only women have a gender identity and an intrinsic value to society and this sentiment is perpetuated by carefully articulated propaganda and research.  The concept of authoritative, strong, independent, passionate and intelligent manhood is persistently repudiated except it exists to serve the feminist cause. So when a young boy reaches the age where it’s appropriate for him to be initiated into manhood, we find the whole idea of “reaching manhood” laughable.

    On the flipside, a new womanhood is fast evolving. Stripped of its swathe of fortune and status symbols, it reveals a kind of corpse in future argument with itself, a dead voice hollering and bearing witness to its own achievement, passionate in self-love and incest with its past.

  • Brutes, beasts and bullets

    Brutes, beasts and bullets

    JUST how much more can a country take?

    Furious floods washing away lives and property that represent so many years of sweating and toiling, sparing neither the weak nor the mighty. The President’s home in Otueke is submerged. The once strange staccato sounds of guns firing bullets are now common. Streams of blood all over as more and more gangs of brutes and beasts stalk the land.

    Piles of natural and home-made disasters. Calamities upon calamities. Just how much more can Nigeria take?

    When Boko Haram, the insurgent group, murdered National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members in Bauchi last year, we all vowed it would never happen again. Little did we know that the worst was on the way. On National Day in Mubi, Adamawa State, some unknown gunmen stormed a community hosting students and, in a most absurd manner, killed 40. They called out the victims’ names one after the other, shooting them dead as they showed up. Some had their doors smashed, dragged out and shot. Three University of Maiduguri students were also killed on that day. The motives for these killings remain unclear.

    From Mubi, the absurdity moved onto Aluu community in Rivers State where a mob lynched four University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) students for allegedly stealing mobile phones and laptops. The police alleged that the community’s chief supervised the savagery. The police got a distress call and stormed the scene only to beat a hasty retreat. One of the suspects said a policeman actually joined in beating up the boys; another was pleading that they should be spared, he claimed.

    It was a bad day. The police said reinforcements came too late and that they couldn’t save the “UNIPORT Four” because the mob pelted them with stones. Were they not armed? Couldn’t they have shot into the air to scare away the mob? Didn’t they carry tear gas? At what point did they call for help? Why was the community leader not allowed to speak at the press conference where the suspects were paraded?

    In Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Itohowo Offiong Asuquo, a student of Uyo City Polytechnic, stabbed his cousin Uwana, whom he accused of stealing his phone. Asuquo found his phone, but the row that followed the incident turned bloody when he allegedly stabbed Uwana. He died. What is there in a telephone – or any material thing – to kill or die for? How will Asuquo be feeling now, assuming that he has some conscience?

    Before the Mubi and Aluu madness, there had been other exhibitions of pure insanity. Four NNPC engineers, who were sent to Arepo, Ogun State, to mend a vandalised pipeline from where thieves stole petrol, were murdered. This, the corporation said, is responsible for the shortage that has shot up price to between N100 and N110 in Lagos. Who killed the “NNPC Four”?

    Just last Sunday, it was the turn of a Kaduna State community to taste the wine of absurdity. Unknown gunmen killed 24 in Dogo Dawa in Gwari Local Government Area in what some believed was a reprisal for the losses suffered by a gang of robbers. A man, who is described as a “thief catcher”, and his two children were killed. The gunmen cut off his wife’s hand. The villagers had earlier organised a resistance against the robbers whose operations were crippled for three months. They returned in fury to spill blood, the blood of innocent villagers said to be returning from a mosque. Where were the security agents? Is Dogo Dawa so far from where help could have come? Doesn’t this kind of horror strengthen the case for state police?

    Add these to the massive canvass of blood in Jos where whole families,including babies, have been murdered. Gradually, we are losing our claim to decency and respect for human life for a disgusting descent into savagery–the jungle world of animals.

    How do you explain the case of a 20-year-old girl who was raped and disfigured by her assailants. Ruth Simon was returning home in Jos on September 23, according to The Sun, when two depraved youths grabbed her, pinned her to the ground and raped her. Disturbed by her screaming, one of the youths whipped out a knife and slashed off her lower lip. The police are holding a welder, John Akwara, and searching for a man who is believed to be his accomplice, Ezra Dachalon. It will be nice to find out why the duo did this to a poor housemaid. But, what can we say in a season of absurdity?

    Amid the aberrations , two Ogun State traditional rulers dragged royalty into the gutter, brawling like “area boys” at a police station in Itori, Ewekoro Local Government. Oba Fatai Akamo, the Olu of Itori, was said to have slapped Oba Adisa Akinremi, the village head of Lapeleke, following a disagreement over some traditional matters. What kind of royal anger led to this royal show of shame? Even nobility is not spared in this season of madness?

    In the flood victims’ camps, the depravities are hard to comprehend. Displaced women and girls are being raped in Benue. There are allegations that some of the officials whose job it is to cater for these traumatised people are the perpetrators of such unconscionable acts. Who will stop them?

    Even as the abnormalities go on, Nigerians are seeing some comic relief in the tragedy. Aluu community has become the subject of jokes. Consider this sent to my mobile by a friend: “Here is the news…Boko Haram condemns Aluu killings. Spokesman Abu Qaqa says, ‘this is pure wickedness’.”

    And this on a friend’s telephone: ‘ If you’re my friend and you’re from Aluu, please, I know we haven’t quarrelled. Biko, just delete yourself before you say I stole your BB charger.”

    Then, there is this other one with the picture of two young lovers looking passionately into each other’s eyes. The man asks the woman: “Are you leaving me because I’m from Aluu?” The woman replies: “Yes, my love. The youths may say I stole your heart.”

    Philosophers are finding it difficult to explain what is going on in Nigeria.

    Neurologists, such as Dr. Njideka Okubadejo of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), say many Nigerians have mental disorders. Does this explain the hell we prepared? Social scientists ascribe it all to the effects of a collapsed system in which values have been killed and buried. Spiritualists, who see this life as a cycle, believe that the strange events we are witnessing are signs of a closing cycle, which they insist the holy books have predicted. In other words, in their views, the end of time is fast approaching.

    Political scientists are talking of a failure of an overwhelmed leadership that is swimming in a pool of social and economic challenges. They compare Nigeria to a car with an overheating engine, even as the radiator and the fans that keep the cooling system in place are functioning. The engine, they stress, will get knocked if experts do not move fast. But the question remains, who will save Nigeria, the black man’s pride and hope? Who?

     

    As Ondo votes…

    In two days, Ondo State residents will go to the poll to elect a governor. I have been following the hustings, talking to my friends and relations in the Sunshine State. They say of all the parties, three – Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and Labour Party (LP) – are serious.

    PDP is wracked by a fratricidal war of attrition that has evoked the imagery of a torn umbrella. A torn umbrella is useless. It can’t provide shade against the sun or stop the rain from soaking its owner.

    Labour symbolises hard work and the dignity that goes with it. But, the popular thinking is that the labourers are weak and fagged out, having been poorly compensated with poor service delivery. Who wants to labour in vain? LP is buffeted by internal rancour that has sent many of its leading lights fleeing the labour room. The party has promised to do all that it promised but failed to do in more than three years – roads, schools, hospitals and more. Will it get another chance? Doubtful. Why? Its account seems to have been overdrawn in the bank of credibility. It is in the red.

    ACN is offering action. And change. The template is ready – in Osun, Lagos, Oyo, Edo, Ogun and Ekiti– and working. If I had a vote in Ondo, I will surely cast it for Rotimi Akeredolu, a tested lawyer, a fighter and a great defender of the poor. He will not betray the trust.