It is time to thank you once again, dear reader, for patiently wading through these write-ups each week. To celebrate, I will reproduce a few reactions to last week’s thoughts on the matter of the political terrain of the country. As usual, I have applied the hammer, spanner and chisel to the constructions. All the same, the sense comes out clear and bright in each of them.
National Assembly members ‘… decide to know only dancing or singing…’ to quote your column. Are they not better than the clueless, clannish clowns in government who are ‘so silent over so many killings in the land…’ to the extent that ‘the victims have been blamed for (so-called) excessive retaliation by both the government and the killers…’? S. A. 08032159249.
Your article on Sunday on… what we need is a mass movement of the people! No individual can do this for us! Unless this present set of politicians are sent packing no meaningful success will be achieved in this country! It is now or never. 08034423949.
Re yours 29th July. You are correct. NASS members earn so much that they do not have sense again. They have run MAD ooo. We must do something now before it is too late. They took us for fools ooo. They will run away any time law and order breaks down!!!. Well done. A. I. 08033519702.
Folks, there are the thoughts and passions of your average man on the street towards the happenings in the land. Let’s take the first response.
Neither divide in that response bests the other. Our purported political leaders should earn our respect by their seriousness and the way they apply themselves to the task they agreed to take up on behalf of the citizenry. So, I think that the approach of both sides to governance is not acceptable.
As to the second response, I would say that a mass movement has to be led by people who are knowledgeable about leadership. It is not enough to just call the people out. I think it is a lot more important to help the people to first appreciate the ideals of democracy or governance. As someone pointed out, the tragedy of this country is that the very victims of this bad political leadership are the ones hailing and supporting their oppressors. They are the ones who agree to carry the guns that kill opponents, mow down all those who seek to liberate them, and who come out in large numbers to close down streets, walking long distances or riding dangerously on the sides of rickety vehicles, when their oppressors are passing by from their London or American residences. These victims are the ones who tacitly uphold the dictum, ‘some animals are more equal than others’. We need mass education first.
Yes, to my third responder, there is no doubt that our politicians are all poised for flight at the first sign of trouble. That has been the pattern from the start. The problem, however, is that the country empowered them to be ready for flight at the first sign of trouble by tacitly endorsing their unrealistic wages. If this nation had banded together like beer drinkers against the extremely high wages of NASS members as we did against fuel price increase during the time of President Jonathan, we would today have had something to toast.
True, we cannot raise our glasses to toast anything in this country right now. Indeed, I believe the mood among the right thinking ones among us now is to cast out some individuals we believe are ruining this nation. And, after that, we should even expunge all their names from our memories through surgery. In the face of our inability to do that, I think we should spend our waiting time to celebrate with those who are celebrating, and hopefully, they will also celebrate with us when the country is liberated. Reader, spare a thought for beer, the toaster’s favourite. Today, we celebrate THE BEER.
Have you noticed that beer drinkers always band together something tighter than blood brothers? You couldn’t get the edge of a razor blade to slide down between two blood brothers, nor beer drinkers. They stick together through thick and thin, sick and sin, sip and piss, even to the last behaviour pattern. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the contents of beer. Take the following story, and I’m quoting.
‘Recently, scientists revealed that beer contains small traces of female hormones. To prove their theory, the scientists fed 100 men twelve bottles of beer each. The scientists observed that 100% of the male test group gained weight, talked excessively without making sense, became emotional, and couldn’t drive. No further testing is planned.’ Now, isn’t that giving female hormones a bad name? But, we must not pick a fight in a bar seeing that the 100 men may still be under the influence…
Anyway, you will agree with me that there’s just something about beer that makes people behave somehow… Take another story. ‘An angry wife was complaining about her husband spending too much time at the bar, so one night, he took her along. ‘What’ll you have?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know. The same as you’, she replied. So he ordered a couple of beers and he drank his own in one gulp. His wife took a sip from her glass and spit it out. ‘Yuck, that’s poison!’ she spluttered. ‘I don’t know how you can drink this stuff!’ ‘Well, there you go,’ cried the husband. ‘And you think I’m out enjoying myself every night!’
Anyway, the first politician to toast beer was said to have been F. D. Roosevelt of the U.S.A. After signing the document that ended the prohibition era, as I understand the story, the man was said to have declared, ‘I think this would be a good time for a beer’. I imagine that, as he said that, he raised his glass.
Like that wife, I cannot take beer, not even a sip. I will reach instead for my waterlou, THE ALTERNATIVE. Ah ha, wouldn’t you like to know about that! Before I raise my waterlou glass, however, I would like beer drinkers to tell me what mystery lies in beer that makes people behave the way they do. Take the story of a man who had so much to drink at a party that he felt he had had enough and sneaked out to go home. After a while, his friends called him and asked him where he was. In a taxi, he said; he was going home. But, said his friends, the party was taking place in his house! It was his birthday party. Now, howzat, sir?!
There are yet thousands more of such stories. Take the man who ran around the neighbourhood screaming one morning after the night before, when he had been going at it something bad at a party, that his car had been stolen! It was not in the garage where he normally parked it. His wife let him sweat a bit before asking him to look behind the house. He found his car sitting quietly where he had managed to bring it, as we said, the night before the morning after.
Right, we’re not bashing beer drinkers today, just toasting THE BEER, and wondering what goes into it that changes people: removing inhibitions, suppressing memories, affecting reasoning, changing intellect and generally making comedians out of drinkers. To THE BEER then! Now, I wonder just what can change our politicians, considering that they are already comedians…
