The Nation Newspaper

Tag: metaphor

  • Ogun: Ten-lane road as a metaphor

    Ogun: Ten-lane road as a metaphor

    “We have built this six-lane road but made the bridge a ten-lane. Another whiz kid may come in ten or twenty years’ time and decide to expand this road to ten lanes. He will not need to break and reconstruct the bridge.”

    That was the voice of the Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, at the Isale-Oko bridge in Sagamu, during the “see-with-your-own-eyes tour” with media executives in 2014. It was equally the most affecting moment of the trip to the three senatorial districts of the state.
    All the international standard highways constructed by the Amosun administration across Ogun State have 10-lane bridges (built over rivers). For those familiar with highway construction, the bulk of the money goes to the construction of bridges once there are rivers on the road. A bridge can take as much as 30 per cent of the entire cost of a road. While you can easily construct a motorway on a dry land, it is a colossal economic cost to have to destroy a bridge in order to expand it from, say, four lanes to six lanes or from six to 10 lanes.
    The foresight of Governor Amosun therefore deserves plaudits. And this point was not lost on the editors who saw the massive infrastructural development across the state and futuristic considerations of the governor.
    It can then be safely concluded that Amosun’s 10-lane bridge or the ongoing Abeokuta-Sagamu 10-lane road is a metaphor for foresight, development and prosperity.
    Of course, I have heard and read the “lectures” of the opposition elements. But wait a minute! Were they the ones that taught Amosun how to raise the Internally Generated Revenue of Ogun State from a paltry sum of N750m per month he inherited to a whopping N5 billion per month within a space of two years without imposing any burden on the people of the state but simply blocking the loopholes through the introduction of cashless system? Does Amosun need any sermon from the opposition on when to complete a particular project or the other? The governor, a grassroots man par excellence, is in constant touch with his people and they know he will deliver on those promises.
    Do these opposition elements have any facts about the Abeokuta-Sagamu highway? Do they know the matrix and the socio-economic calculus that made the construction imperative at this time?
    But does it really matter for these critics? I remember one notable politician who stated at a public forum that he was not aware of a road construction in his area, yet his own house directly overlooks a major six-lane road complete with modern furniture, constructed by the Amosun government! That is the ridiculous level criticisms have attained in our country. No explanation about the content and character of the Sagamu-Abeokuta motorway or any project for that matter will satisfy them. They believe in politics of “let’s share it”, but Amosun is an apostle of politics of “let’s develop the state!”
    By way of analogy, and only for illustration purpose, these hidebound politicians still believe that in this 21st century, the best way to fight wars is the use of sticks, stones, bows and arrows. They can continue in such mentality. But we know we are in the age of armoured tanks, submarines, ballistic missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, etc. They may continue to use their hoes and cutlasses to farm. But we will make use of CAT bulldozers, MF 275 Xtra tractors, Baldan Disc Ploughs, Baldan Disc Harrows, Row-planters, etc. provided by the Amosun administration. Let them continue to use their pin-hole cameras, abacus or pascal’s calculators but we will scale up the use of digital cameras and computers. Indeed, they may continue to build and renovate their “face-me-I-face-you” roads, but the Amosun government will continue to build six-lane highways complete with modern furniture, flyovers and ten-lanes! The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
    Let there be no mistake about it. Criticisms, of course, are expected in a democracy. I recall the governor often tells journalists to put public officials on their toes. But what is clearly against the grain in a democracy is destructive criticisms, which appear to be the stock-in-trade of some of our politicians.
    We should have expected these politicians to learn from history. You do not wait for tomorrow before you plan for it. Our revered leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was equally criticised for being ahead of his time. When he mooted the idea of free education, he was criticised.
    When Awo built the first industrial and housing estates in Nigeria, what was the socio-economic situation at the time? When he established the first television service in Africa, how many Nigerians at the time had television sets? When he constructed the Liberty Stadium, the first in Nigeria, what was Western Region’s position in the world in relation to sports or how many children of the region were in school? Yet, but for the mismanagement of the country that followed, which greatly upset the golden era that Awo had launched the region into and the pace of its developmentt, the Western Region should have been like Europe today.
    But for the Awolowo-like vision of Amosun, Ogun Sate would have remained today the narrow and myopic image of the opposition elements. They want foreign investors to come, and in the same breath want the state to remain a 17th century backwoods of civilization by conduct! Do investors flock to a place that lacks modern infrastructure and semblance of a forward-looking government?!
    These critics now move about freely in the state without fear of insecurity, yet when Amosun bought the very latest technology of Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) in 2012 at a discounted price, the first of such APCs in Nigeria, they criticised him for not buying relics of outdated-technology World War II APCs that would work this hour and break down the next hour, thereby gulping millions of naira to maintain, yet not giving value for money!
    Our people do not have such a “pound-foolish-and-kobo-wise” mentality and Amosun will not be the governor to promote such. He won’t spend the hard-earned money of the people of Ogun State to maintain a completely failed highway in order to pander to the wimps and caprices of a few politicians.
    The future, as earlier observed, belongs to those who prepare for it today. Amosun’s 10-lane project remains a metaphor for foresight, development and prosperity.
    I shall end this exercise with a paraphrase of a portion of Awo’s address in the heyday of the Western Region:
    This government will press forward in the execution of the laudable projects which our people have overwhelmingly endorsed, confident also that our beloved and trusting masses, when they begin to enjoy the delectable fruits of the current investments and sacrifices, will now and in future years, remember us with gratitude and adoration as their faithful and devoted servants, and their only true friends and benefactors.
    **Soyombo, Special Assistant on Media to the Governor of Ogun State, sent this piece via densityshow@yahoo.com

  • Mimiko and metaphor of cluelessness

    SIR: Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State was upbeat in trying to repudiate the label of cluelessness rightly festooned on PDP and its leaders.The label was not the creation of APC as surreptitiously being insinuated by Mimiko; rather the clueless label was an elite consensus on the 16 years of rudderless legacy consummated and completed by President Goodluck Jonathan. Mimiko failed to assail the popular opinion of Nigerians on the clueless congruence of PDP and its leading lights by laying claim to the achievement of the party on security. The festering of insurgency under PDP with an insensate diversion of resources to fight it into private pockets is a major vitiating element in governor Mimiko’s narrative. Also to use the nebulous GDP contracted through fictitious statistics as a proof of PDP’s performance is fallacious.

    If President Muhammadu Buhari’s landmark achievements in just 12 months widely acknowledged to have dwarfed PDP’s many years of peregrinations means nothing to Mimiko, Fayose and their apologists, the PDP as a party should admit failure and support the transition into developmental governance never witnessed in the history Nigerian democracy.

     

    • Bukola Ajisola.

    Victoria Island, Lagos.

  • Ogun Institute as a metaphor

    The diamond anniversary of the Social Development Institute (Shasha), Iperu literally caught me flat-footed. The news clip on the Ogun State Television (OGTV) on Thursday afternoon somewhat jarred me. The human lenses that beheld the ruins of this college should have been part of the historic 60th celebrations. It was a brisk moment of self-flagellation.

    This imagery extract from one of the works of Wole Soyinka is most fitting for this exercise: “Usually one sees them in still photos – images of dying cattle in a land overtaken by drought, now landmarked by carcasses and skeletons, withered shrub and dry water holes. Occasionally however, the cine-camera takes charge, lingers over a calf that is reduced to nothing but skin stretched over a cage of ribs, and the final contractions of emaciated muscles. Flies settle and crawl over what remains of moisture on the prostrate beast, mostly around the eyes, ears and nostrils. It makes a feeble attempt to lift itself, scuffing dirt with the sides of its hooves, then settles back on its side, immobile. Its enlarged eyes stare blankly into the lens. This disproportioned frame with extended ribs sinks slowly into immobility. At some point, you know the calf is doomed, its life slowly ebbing into the sands. The lens lifts towards the desiccated horizon, rises directly upwards to reveal a cloud of swooping vultures, suspended, circling, blotting out the pitiless sun.”

    This allegory of “dying cattle” could perspicuously substitute for the narration of this author in 2013 after the visit of the Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, to the institution that had sunk into atrophy due to decades of neglect: “…Just picture structures abandoned in the bush for decades or that have lost their innocence to wars or some natural disasters… The termite-infested hall – the best of the buildings – the (high) table and chairs standing grudgingly on legs that had lost their souls to the rage of termites, the pock-marked asbestos ceiling, windows without covers, roof threatening to collapse at the slightest fury of the elements…”

    What made that visit by the governor in June 2013 more poignant was that there were actually some students in that school – doing what then? Studying? Were they up to a hundred at the time? The sight was most affecting as one took time to know the mission of those hapless youths in what might pass for a deserted jungle.

    It was not totally an overcast day, and nothing had really forewarned the governor and his small entourage on how the day might turn out to be when the convoy left the state capital after noon and pulled up about an hour later at the Social Development Institute (Shasha), Iperu, a college established on February 20, 1956 by the government of Western Region, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to offer leadership training to community leaders, traditional rulers and politicians. It  offers Certificate and Diploma in Social Works and Social Development to youths in affiliation with the Olabisi Onabanjo University.

    After a tour of the college, the governor was downcast. Although he managed to lighten up the shoe-string cultural display of the students, it was evident that the mind of the state’s helmsman had been taken up in some cogitations – the ramifications of his Mission to Rebuild Ogun State, knowing full well that Shasha was just one of the thousands of institutions across the state that had paid the heavy price of decades of neglect – the Nigerian factor – not just in education but health, agriculture, etc. The journey from Iperu to Lagos afterwards was expectedly sombre and I fantasized the governor retiring to his bed by 1 a.m. or thereabouts mulling the ‘sight of the day’ over, imagining the number of such scenes of regression yet to be identified in addition to the thousands already known, in the face of scarce resources of the state.

    Efforts had to be redoubled in the renovation of existing schools while building new ones in order to expand access to education. Any new school built that does not factor in the age we are is not worth it. So the state government had to be futuristic in the design of its new schools, a template that can now be imitated by any individual, group or future governments. Indeed, in every new project embarked upon by the Amosun administration in every sector of the state’s economy, compliance with the 21st century was an article of faith. Reclaiming the state is not a work of one, two, three or four terms. As one observed then, “Even if you devote the entire yearly budget to education alone and consecutively for 10 years, you will still be left with one or two dilapidated buildings.” But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. What is of moment now is that the pace and tempo of the ongoing development must not abate…

    At the end of that enervating tour of Shasha, the governor promised to rehabilitate the institution. Did I hear some heckling? Such promises were not new to the school; they heard them for decades. But to the glory of God, it was a renovated institution that celebrated its 60th anniversary last week Wednesday. You only need to request from the state television station the video clip of the college when the governor visited in 2013.

    Indeed, as I watched the news flash of the 60th, the state’s officials that sat on the high table, in the very space that the governor was received in 2013, it was evident that from the ashes of neglect, a bright future had emerged for the students of Social Development Institute (Shasha), Iperu. I congratulate the students and staff of Shasha and laud the state governor for fulfilling his pledge to the premier institution. Of course, the government still has plans for the second phase of the reconstruction when finances of the state improve, but the image of a dying calf, some neglected jungle or moribund institution in the throes of death has now been supplanted with prospects of a bright and flourishing future for the students and people of Ogun State.

    • Soyombo sent in this piece from Abeokuta via densityshow@yahoo.com

  • The agbegi lo do metaphor

    Hardball cannot help but feel like an agbegi lodo or even think like one. For convenience, let’s say agbegi lodo is an old wagon used in the hinterland for ferrying stuff. It is a wagon that has lost its identity and indeed its chasis. Even its manufacturers would never recognise it anymore. Agbegi lodo is like a wizened, weather-beaten old man but who is strong, up and about. He is a man Friday; he hefts things and plods the difficult rustic terrains… mere sinews and wiry, he never says die.

    Agbegi lodo the wagon has been so badly tinkered with over long decades that it has become a rugged, soulless contraption. All its mechanism had long become conjectured or in fact, non-existent. The kick, the electricals, the engine block and braking system have all become non-system. None else can operate agbegi lodo apart from its weary operators. Only their calloused palms can connect with and crank an agbegi lodo to life each time it conks out. And that is almost always.

    You must have noticed those nondescript, oft-broken down wagons on our highways ever laden with logs or foodstuffs from the hinterland? Those are agbegi lodos. And how do they end up? One day, they just stall for good, never to respond to the ‘entreaties’ of their owners anymore. These days, Hardball cannot help being tormented by this sinking feeling that Nigeria, our dear fatherland, is akin to an agbegi lodo. The current energy crisis exemplifies the point.

    Nigeria, an oil-rich country, has in the last two decades or so been synonymous with such odium as ‘fuel scarcity’, ‘fuel subsidy’ ‘fuel strikes’ and oil theft. Hardly any good news is told about the black gold, Nigeria’s rich natural resource. We know all these and we have almost grown used to the curse and malevolence that have attended our good fortune.

    But this time, like an agbegi lodo, it’s different. Petrol has been scarce across the country for a little over a month now. It started slowly late October after a brief spell of respite. We thought the new government of President Muhammadu Buhari has brought us new wagons. Thank goodness we had not hurriedly burnt our agbegi lodo. We thought the era of petrol curse and shame was over. But we were mistaken; we are still mired in agbegi lodo conundrum.

    It can be said that we never had scarcity lasting so long and with no concrete solution in sight or coherent response. We are beginning to get used to sleeping in fuel stations and we seem to live happily with the grueling traffic, which spill over from rowdy fuel stations. More galling is that the president, who is also the oil minister, does not seem to feel our pain; he would rather be abroad. And the junior minister seems to be at sea, not knowing what to do. He tells us everyday that there is enough fuel; that we shouldn’t panic-buy, yet we wish we could even find to panic-buy. It gets worse and hazy as if brought on by the on-coming Christmas wind.

    The marketers had warned that it would linger till Christmas. Where is my agbegi lodo?

     

  • Metaphor of the round leather (2)

    • (The burden of journalists as European soccer groupies)

    Some would level to their dullest perception always and praise it as common sense. Even as it becomes clearer by each passing second that the dullest perception is only ever common; it hardly gets to make sense. But sense too, like the gospel truth is always relative, according to the temperament of the individual that is trying to make sense.

    Brings to mind an argument I had with some Nigerian youths recently; the passionate soccer lovers see nothing fascinating about the Nigerian Premier League (NPL), rightfully so too. In an exclusive section of a popular elite bar, the youths comprising a doctor, two lawyers, an accountant, a PR consultant and four journalists – excluding me – derided Nigeria’s soccer league.

    Their derision was heartfelt and yet devoid of the barest pang of lamentation. And there in subsists their tragedy. Had they, despite their acerbic wit and mockery, betrayed even the slightest twinge of regret about the deplorable state of the country’s soccer league, they could be excused for their unapologetic disdain for Nigerian soccer.

    They didn’t and according to them, they cannot for the love of Nigeria, subject themselves to the agony of supporting the Nigerian league. “The coverage is poor, the pitches are the worst and it parades no stars. I would rather watch the English Premiership than waste my time,” noted a journalist. Few days earlier, colleagues in a Lagos newsroom had espoused vitriol about the Nigerian league. Their disdain was predicated predictably on very bad pitches, poor coverage and absence of world class stars.

    When a colleague stated that he would rather support Enyimba FC of Abia state, he was smothered by die-hard groupies and fans of European soccer teams. They dared him to mention five players of Enyimba FC but they did not wait to see if he could; then they went on to tell him that they would rather invest their time, passion and money in supporting star-studded teams across Europe.

    They do not care that the coverage of the Nigerian league is poor because journalists and soccer lovers like them will never endeavour to see and report a match at the nearest stadium. They do not care that issues of bad pitches, corrupt sports administrators, insecurity and fans’ apathy among others are aggravated by such disposition as theirs’ to Nigeria’s ailing soccer sector.

    They conveniently forget that there was a time Nigerians were truly crazy about the Nigerian league.

    With remarkable enthusiasm, they understate the potentials of the local league that paraded Kanu Nwankwo, Celestine Babayaro, Stephen Keshi, Rashidi Yekini, Daniel Amokachi among others, for their beloved Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC to mention a few, to exploit.

    Indeed, no amount of persuasion or ideological protestation could convince such characters to cultivate a smidgen of the love they profess for Chelsea FC, Arsenal FC, Real Madrid et al for local teams like Enyimba FC, Nassarawa United, Gateway FC and Ocean Boys.

    The Nigerian journalist, apparently, is not left out in the mad scramble for escape from his societal insanities, however temporal. Thus he devotes quality time on and off work to European soccer while he scoffs at his severely underreported local league.

    Like other fanatics of European soccer, he seeks to forget infinitely, that he is no different from the proverbial wretch who rejects his penis because his Caucasian neighbours’ seem bigger; with whose shall his wife scion his kids?

    Thus is the tragedy of the Nigerian soccer fanatic. It gets more interesting when he is a journalist. Then, his mystifying love for European teams as his barbed vitriol against the NPL attains a perplexity of sort; oftentimes he attempts to intellectualize the unintelligible.

    He desperately engages in the pursuit of happiness like a bliss-bandit seeking joy where he has sown none. Thoreau would equate this to seeking safety in stupidity whereas Lord Byron would dismiss such passionate disdain for one’s heritage as the petrifaction of a plodding brain.

    This is the predicament of the Nigerian journalist and other European soccer groupies. Perhaps it’s because he is only human. Were it that he would dedicate a similar amount of time and effort as he commits to the coverage of the English Premiership, a “reality TV” show or shenanigans of Lagos and Abuja’s “high societies” for instance, on one NPL soccer match at a time, the fortunes of Nassarawa United, Dolphins FC, Wikki Tourists to mention a few, may eventually improve.

    It’s not a shame to seek entertainment by the sportsmanship and fortunes of a European champion like FC Barcelona or popular English club side like Manchester City; it is, when a Nigerian, particularly a journalist, does so believing that his nation is incapable of elevating soccer to such fantastic height.

    Such journalist without doubt, is irredeemably less than. Measured with and without his vanities, he presents no exception to the Nigerian human social anomaly; he is essentially a perpetuation of it. Thus if you are a Nigerian journalist in your youth and you are reading this, chances are that you epitomise a similar state of mind. You are probably contemptuous to everything Nigerian.

    Chances are that you do not believe in the possibility of a star-studded Nigerian soccer league. Chances are that you do not believe that Nigeria could eventually become a Mecca of sort for international soccer players and pundits seeking to make a fortune and a name. Chances are that your inferiority complex cuts deeper than that. You probably consider Nigeria incapable of greatness of any kind. Chances are that you do not believe in the evolution of a truly conscientious Nigerian leadership and citizenship.

    Chances are that you do not wish to be judged by the same standards by which you judge others. You probably don’t believe in the continuity of the Nigerian project. You are probably reading this with undisguised contempt and you definitely wouldn’t admit that you personify all these and much more.

    Such is the temperament of a Nigerian journalist. He represents an abject negation of the vision, fortitude and sincerity he ought to embody. He hardly seeks to set an agenda or elicit positivity thus contradicting the agenda-setter cum social responsibility theories of the press.

    “No government or nuclear weapon is as powerful as the press,” it is said. This saw is definitely not about the Nigerian press; not because it’s bereft of such formidable power but because it has programmed itself to seldom exploit it.

    Recently, I asked that if the Nigerian journalist in his youth is assessed by the same standards by which he judges others, would he be adjudged as excellent, conscientious and honorable? Not a few colleagues bellowed an unconvincing “Yes!”

    When I suggested otherwise, someone claimed that I had made a sweeping statement. Another queried – albeit mischievously – that what is the yardstick for determining a distinguished journalist; he said: “Is it by winning a CNN or Nigerian Media Merit Award?”

    A good newspaper, supposes Arthur Miller, is a nation talking to itself; a good journalist, I suppose, is a patriot, pricking his nation’s conscience. Funny how convenient it is to loathe the proverbial looking glass by which we screen others and decry their faults. Guess we dread the reflection we might see.

    • To be continued…

     

     

     

  • Metaphor of the round leather

    The rambling youth who abandons his farm to seek greener pastures on his neighbour’s land is never as manly as the starving cow which kicks over its food bucket, leaps over the barnyard fence to run after its calf at milking time. Even the maternal cow commands greater respect than the Nigerian youth. Even a plough-wearied bullock tilling barren land excites greater dignity than the youth who passionately maligns Nassarawa United, Rangers of Enugu and Gateway FC to worship A.C Milan, Manchester United among others.

    Some would rave that I have made a sweeping statement but the tragedy of the Nigerian youth at home isn’t any different from that of his peer in Diaspora. A pitiful lust remains their woe; it’s a hankering for undeserved luxury, base sentimentality and unearned greatness. It is what drives a 38-year old Masters Degree holder and soccer enthusiast in the United Kingdom to call Super Eagles’ John Obi Mikel, a failure even though he, the 38-year old, washes the anuses of mental patients in a low budget geriatric home in the UK and Mikel earns about £80, 000 a week playing soccer or sitting on the bench for Chelsea Football Club in the same country.

    The 38-year old soccer buff was pissed with Mikel and his team mates’ performance at the recently concluded African Cup of Nations (AFCON) and at the ongoing FIFA World Cup qualifiers. He thinks they constitute monumental disgrace to Nigeria. And he painstakingly states so on his Facebook social networking page. Some would claim he has every right to criticise and condemn the Nigerian Super Eagles, like every other Nigerian who loves to see, breathe and talk ‘fantastic football.’

    But this is hardly about the ignorant youth’s debatable logic or Mikel’s deep pocket, it’s about the rabid inclinations of the Nigerian youth and soccer enthusiast to criticize and condemn everything Nigerian within and outside the exciting world of soccer. It was fascinating to see the nation’s youth unite in condemnation and virulent abuse of Nigeria’s Super Eagles over their perceived lackluster performances at international soccer tournaments. It doesn’t matter that the hastily constituted squads were meant to use the tournaments to fine-tune in depth and strength. No sooner than the tournaments begin than the Nigerian soccer enthusiast began to fantasize of the team’s incontestable right to excellence and invincibility even though it was ill-prepared to function and gel as a team.

    It took Clemens Westerhof four years or thereabouts to build the excellent squad that served Nigeria for well over a decade but the Nigerian youth and soccer enthusiast wanted former Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi, to parade a perfect team in three months, at the 2013 AFCON. When the team drew against Zambia and Burkina Faso, not a few of their peers cursed and demeaned them as the worst things to ever happen to Nigeria. When they beat Ethiopia 2 – 0, their peers at home ridiculed them endlessly, claiming they shamefully managed to win by penalties. However, nothing compares to the ill-will accorded the team as it prepared to face the Ivorien team.

    The “Super Chickens” will fall to the might and soccer prowess of Didier Drogba, Yaya Toure, Africa’s former best footballer and their Ivorien team mates, claimed the Nigerian press and other soccer buffs. Eventually, the Super Eagles put a lie to prophecies of doom by their peers at home and abroad; they simply outclassed and dominated Drogba, Toure and team mates from the first blow of the whistle to the end of the match. The Super Eagles beat Ivory Coast 2 – 1.

    It hardly mattered what final fate awaited the Super Eagles at the tournament – which they eventually won – what truly mattered was their spirited disavowal of the abject disloyalty and rabid sentimentality of Nigeria’s soccer loving youth.

    Currently, Nigeria is afflicted with youth irredeemably dim and misty in persona and worth; like spent shadows, they incarnate an insensible perspiration towards the sun. Their contempt for Nigeria extends beyond their disdain for Nigerian soccer. Like the beautifully dull and half-witted, this generation of youth encapsulates an inordinate contempt for everything Nigerian. They would dump the Nigerian dream for scraps and crusts of the American dream, British dream, South African dream, Malaysian dream, Ghanaian dream and even the Malian dream to mention a few.

    One cannot pontificate enough – even by unrelenting self-righteousness –to lay a foundation of true understanding and compassion for their plight. I speak of the unrepentant critic forever mounting the soapbox in his living room, courtyard or public bar to curse our leadership and curse the times even as he does nothing to improve the times.

    It’s even more tragic to see a journalist in his youth incarnate such pitiful citizenship despite expectations that he ought to know better. Such character that will play muscle to the most hideous politician for the paltriest fee often turn around to blame politicians for everything that is wrong with Nigeria. Such young members of the nation’s Fourth Estate espouse more bleakness and disdain for the Nigerian dream than their contemporaries from other professional and class divides.

    I speak of rich, spoilt brats acquiring the best of Ivy League education abroad with money pilfered from our coffers by their parents in the ruling class. I speak of Nigerian youth and self-styled intellectuals washing the anuses of the senile in geriatric homes and hospices abroad, even as they return home to belittle the impoverished teacher and farmer burning out under the worst living conditions, with dignity.

    I speak of postgraduate alumni from Nigeria driving cabs, cleaning public toilets, robbing, scamming and trafficking their sisters, daughters and mothers to foreign brothels for a fee. Then I speak of the very successful living abroad and yet propagating as much venom as bloody solutions to every problem in our fatherland.

    Lest I forget the maddening horde of Nigerian youth whose clamour for change is meticulously smothered no sooner than they gain access to vulgar privileges they whole-heartedly condemn as the excesses of the ruling class. With this shameful lot, the average youth brazenly casts his lot every time he incites cheerlessness and contempt for everything Nigerian.

    What pleasure is there to be derived from ridiculing one’s heritage just for the pleasure of doing so? The one who derives his thrill from doing so, himself becomes an everlasting jest, oftentimes to his great loss. The Nigerian youth who does so besmirches the essence of true citizenship and grace. But aren’t we all identifiable with such character?

    To this, many will vehemently object but it still doesn’t belie the fact that left to our devices, we shamelessly espouse and glamourise degeneracy. Little wonder, the hue and cry over the removal of fuel subsidy abated to a burp. Little wonder the profligacy and sleaze of the Nigerian ruling class became acceptable to hordes of cowardly revolutionaries that threatened to “Occupy Nigeria.” Little wonder several misguided youths have joined the campaign of calumny against President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign.

    The infinite cowardice in our hearts will continually betray our mutinous battle cries against the corrupt ruling class. The Nigerian youth is undoubtedly a researcher’s delight; every hour he substantiates the fraudulence of grief and the revolutionary march on this side of the divide.

     

    • To be continued…

     

  • Judas as metaphor

    IR: The term “Judas” can be found in many languages as a synonym for betrayer, and Judas has become the classic exemplar of the back-stabber. To illustrate this, let us take look at three figures and their impact in the Niger Delta Region and Nigeria as a whole:  former President Goodluck Jonathan, former Governor Rotimi Amaechi, and Governor Nyesom Wike. Enter Jonathan: This former President is perhaps the luckiest politician in the history of Nigeria. From his incidental emergence as the Governor of Bayelsa State, to his ascension as Vice President, and President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is an epitome of unmerited favour, and his story is best told in a movie or bestseller. But the irony of it all is that like the colloquial ‘money miss road’ cliché, Jonathan will score the highest mark as that President who did little or nothing for his motherland – Bayelsa/Niger Delta – all through his six years in the saddle. From zero Federal Projects allocation to Rivers State, his refusal to implement the UNEP Report, non-completion of the second Niger Bridge, to the substandard Federal University of Otuoke, among many others. The only difficulty I have in expressly tagging this one a Judas, is my limited knowledge as to whether or not his wanton negligence of his people was in exchange for silver or gold.  Meet Amaechi: Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi is perhaps the most intriguing character in our recent political history. From his highly competitive emergence as the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, his landmark victory at the Supreme Court, and subsequent eight-year reign as one of the strongest governors in Nigeria, to his two- term victorious survival as the Chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum during the ’16 is greater than 19′ saga, Amaechi is nothing short of a colossus. During his years as governor of Rivers State, Amaechi became almost restless about the condition of the masses. He embarked on numerous people-oriented and capital-intensive projects, many of which he completed before his exit from office. He also championed the course of Education, the UNEP Report, Treasury Single Account (TSA), Subsidy Probe, and he ferociously fought against the ceding of Rivers State Oil Wells to other states by Jonathan.  The man Nyesom Wike represents different things to different sets of people in Nigeria. The more enlightened people see him as the worst Minister of Education in the history of Nigeria – during his tenure, students and lecturers roamed our streets like touts for almost a year, simply because of his refusal to keep to government’s agreement with lecturers. He is seen as a man whose governorship ambition cost him the friendship of his political master and brother – Amaechi, and according to some of his Rivers supporters, he is the ‘the high tension,” meaning that he has the ability to ruthlessly cling to any political interest, not minding the outcome. Throughout his stay as Minister of Education, Wike was of little or no advantage to the Niger Delta Region, rather his main focus was the entrenchment of a volatile group of young people in the political system of Rivers State, for the sole purpose of achieving his unpopular governorship ambition. The only time that Wike mentioned the UNEP Report was when he visited Ogoni land during his campaign tour, but sadly, he made a mockery of the report when he lied that it would be implemented in two weeks. You know the rest of the story. I have  highlighted the advent and political growth, public view, and overall impact in Niger Delta and Nigeria as a whole, of the above-mentioned characters in order to ascertain whose participation in the politics of our country has brought good tidings to us or not, and who sold us out because of politics. Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus is a subject of many shades.

     

    • Solomon Okocha, 

    Abuja.

  • Port Harcourt stadium as metaphor

    The PDP’s presidential campaign rally in Port Harcourt has come and gone. True to the boast of the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, the event held in the newly-built Adokiye Amiesemeka Stadium which Governor Rotimi Amaechi had refused to release.

    His excuse was that the facility was being repaired and offered the Liberation Stadium as an alternative. The response of the ruling party was to deploy soldiers to occupy the place.

    I believe Amaechi was wrong to have attempted to deny PDP use of the facility given that APC had used it twice for huge rallies. Not many were convinced that whatever repair work was being done was of such magnitude as to preclude its use for the one-day event. The governor’s action was clearly just another episode in his arm-wrestling match with the president.

    But even if he was wrong, the decision of the president to deploy the Nigerian Army and force his way into the stadium was even worse. The facility is state-owned and not the property of the Federal Government. The governor was within his rights to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – even if we judge his action to be faulty.

    By breaking and entering, the President and his party confirmed once again that under their watch impunity reigns. Their claims to be committed to the rule of law are only in words only. But even more ominous is the fact that Nigerian soldiers whose constitutional roles are clearly defined are increasingly being pressed into carrying out partisan political errands.

  • Traffic as metaphor

    Take a casual look at the Lagos traffic — or at traffic in any Nigerian bustling city or town for that matter — and you might just glimpse the metaphor for the country: disorganised people, directionless leaders.

    Watch that danfo or taxi cab driver that darted out of its legit lane and headed against traffic, honking and blaring all of the way. Then with equal drama and flourish, it veers back into the legit lane, after gaining some 100 or 200 metres.

    Normally you’d expect the traffic police or any agent of the law to apprehend him.  Besides, you’d expect drivers on the legit lane would at least block the cheat, if only to teach the morals that cheating does not pay.  What, however, do you find?

    The danfo driver makes a triumphal entry, with people in the right lane sheepishly giving way.  Even while zooming on the wrong lane, the traffic warden, if any, happily cuts a deal and waves the rascal on to more future mischief.  The public looks on helplessly — and everyone chokes happily ever after!

    But that is even the literal picture.  The symbolic picture is more telling.

    For starters, with due respect to the decent infinitesimal number among this wild breed, danfo drivers behave — and proudly — as the worst crust in society.   They know it.  The society too knows as it rewards them with scorn.  Yet, they reserve the right to boss the very best on the road, with dire risk of vehicular or even bodily damage to their betters.

    That is a sound metaphor for Nigeria’s governance. As a rule, only the very worst are good enough for high office: the cretin, the megalomaniac, the conceited.  Yet, the society suffers them gladly, so much so that there is hardly any sense of wrong or right.  The leaders throw down anything; and the people just lap it up with obsequious love.

    As the danfo driver recklessly dashes to and fro in the traffic, daring his betters by all standards to do their worst, so do temporary occupiers of office dare the people, their supposed masters, to go jump into a lake.  The popular word is impunity.  Sure, a carry-over from the military era, but the civil-rule-era version is germinating fast and taking firm roots, despite the pretence at democracy.

    As for the traffic warden schmoozing with traffic criminals, so has the order of the Nigerian state made its peace, for a huge and hefty bribe, with the few but loud felons, leaving the generality of the people numb and helpless.

    Worst still, the skewed morality appears to have weaned the people of their supposed outrage and condemned them to subversive thoughts of “joining them” if you can’t “beat them”.  Of course, a value-neuter society is doomed; just as a value-neuter state faces eventual decay and extinction.

    The buzz words: a failing and failed state.

    How about this for a ruthless clincher?  Abuja is Nigeria’s glittering federal capital.  But A-bu-ja, given a certain tonal bent in Yoruba, simply means (illicit) short-cut.

    That is what traffic in Nigeria is all about — and that is the overweening symbol of contemporary Nigeria as it stumbles along.

     

  • Traffic as metaphor

    Take a casual look at the Lagos traffic — or at traffic in any Nigerian bustling city or town for that matter — and you might just glimpse the metaphor for the country: disorganised people, directionless leaders.

    Watch that danfo or taxi cab driver that darted out of its legit lane and headed against traffic, honking and blaring all of the way. Then with equal drama and flourish, it veers back into the legit lane, after gaining some 100 or 200 metres.

    Normally you’d expect the traffic police or any agent of the law to apprehend him.  Besides, you’d expect drivers on the legit lane would at least block the cheat, if only to teach the morals that cheating does not pay.  What, however, do you find?

    The danfo driver makes a triumphal entry, with people in the right lane sheepishly giving way.  Even while zooming on the wrong lane, the traffic warden, if any, happily cuts a deal and waves the rascal on to more future mischief.  The public looks on helplessly — and everyone chokes happily ever after!

    But that is even the literal picture.  The symbolic picture is more telling.

    For starters, with due respect to the decent infinitesimal number among this wild breed, danfo drivers behave — and proudly — as the worst crust in society.   They know it.  The society too knows as it rewards them with scorn.  Yet, they reserve the right to boss the very best on the road, with dire risk of vehicular or even bodily damage to their betters.

    That is a sound metaphor for Nigeria’s governance. As a rule, only the very worst are good enough for high office: the cretin, the megalomaniac, the conceited.  Yet, the society suffers them gladly, so much so that there is hardly any sense of wrong or right.  The leaders throw down anything; and the people just lap it up with obsequious love.

    As the danfo driver recklessly dashes to and fro in the traffic, daring his betters by all standards to do their worst, so do temporary occupiers of office dare the people, their supposed masters, to go jump into a lake.  The popular word is impunity.  Sure, a carry-over from the military era, but the civil-rule-era version is germinating fast and taking firm roots, despite the pretence at democracy.

    As for the traffic warden schmoozing with traffic criminals, so has the order of the Nigerian state made its peace, for a huge and hefty bribe, with the few but loud felons, leaving the generality of the people numb and helpless.

    Worst still, the skewed morality appears to have weaned the people of their supposed outrage and condemned them to subversive thoughts of “joining them” if you can’t “beat them”.  Of course, a value-neuter society is doomed; just as a value-neuter state faces eventual decay and extinction.

    The buzz words: a failing and failed state.

    How about this for a ruthless clincher?  Abuja is Nigeria’s glittering federal capital.  But A-bu-ja, given a certain tonal bent in Yoruba, simply means (illicit) short-cut.

    That is what traffic in Nigeria is all about — and that is the overweening symbol of contemporary Nigeria as it stumbles along.