Danfo Chronicles: When masquerades go to church and gays become criminals

It was a few years ago, at the time citizen news reportage was gaining traction across the nation, that news of masquerades meting out corporal punishment on miniskirt and trouser wearing young ladies somewhere in the Nsukka  axis reached social media.

As usual, the Nigerian social media reacted true to type with that outpouring of anger that occurs whenever vestiges of the ‘devilish’ past of our ancestors appear to be in conflict with the sacred untouchable manifestations of the new religion.

Caught up in outrage, most of us missed the big story, which was not that masquerades enforced a dress code, but that this dress code stemmed originally from the Christian church.

Old Van in a New Bus

Most people who use the danfo or any other yellow bus to commute through the mad dash that is the average Lagos route are not unaware of the fact that the cars served as a goods conveyance van in Europe, this hardly registers. 

However, even if they don’t know what for sure, they know the tokunbo cars must have served another purpose in their previous incarnation, especially when they contemplate the dress-ripping makeshift seats and rough-hewn windows that just about serve the purpose they were meant for. They know that the iron-rimmed seats are not standard issue, at least from whence the car came, and that the chance of bodily injury if an accident occurs was amplified by their addition. They know the drivers are largely reckless—early morning shot of paraga and Igbo reckless—and the buses disasters waiting to happen. They know this, but throw their lives into the arms of in-time-of-trouble-and-need-gods as they clamper aboard the buses every morning, afternoon and night. The need to transit overshadowing fear, caution, and whatever sense of impropriety they might feel.

The other war we are not talking about

Photo from punchng.com

Back in the university, I was a politician; and like all politicians I had to form alliances—another way of saying I manoeuvred to be on the good side of other student politicians or popular students—to improve my chances at the polls.

I never had enough money to go beyond contesting—and winning (thank you very much) my Departmental Presidency—but after contesting for this and that, I knew most of the movers and shakers in my school—Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka. One guy I knew was Obiadada—a nickname, coined from his first name, Obi, and adada, Igbo for ‘one who does not fall’. Obi was the Director of transport when we were in third year.

It's my birthday!

he calender on my wall says it is my birthday, but I doubt if this day share much with the day I first tasted this earth's air. If indeed it shares anything, it must be the memory of the date I dropped gills for lungs. 

My siblings and I grew up without birthday celebrations and I can't remember me or my siblings marking our various dates or telling each other happy birthday--well, my younger siblings, because they grew up in a different age, should be exempt here . This is not to say that we did not look with longing at birthday celebrations and wished that it was us behind the cake, pressing a knife through yummy softness and smirking at the camera man through the flickering flames of candles marking our years on earth.

We yearned for ours but only ever came close to realising this dream by sharing those of others. I can still see clearly the colour fotos from a time past. I can still place people in the rows and replace babyish faces with adult faces here and there. Though many names have since faded with time, a lot of names still come easily to the tongue. EB 2 Dutse Close looms in my mind and names of the lucky few whose birthdays, usually the 1st birthday , form on my lips. Lips that draw into sad lines as I recall names that can only now be stated in the past, names of people now in the world removed from this one.

I did get my chance to celebrate a birthday. Then I was already in the university and the fun muted as the mind had bigger fishes to fry.

Perhaps the fact that I thought little of birthdays, mine or other's, had something to do with the lack of birthday celebrations in my house. Still, I forget even my own and can't readily without thinking hard tell that of most of my siblings. I have to key in a reminder a week or more before so that I don't forget my wife's. lol. I don't remember dates well at all.

Well Facebook have changed that. Now friends ensure I don't forget the joy of birthdays and I have a party in my head knowing many people took the time to say 'Happy Birthday'.

The calendar on my wall says it is my birthday . My chi says you are born, you live, and then you die, a straight forward life marked by days and nights and the changing seasons . My chi also says I am no longer a man alone, so birthdays have been added to those must-remember dates, for my daughter, for my wife, for my crazy sister who tells me not to be 'too old school joor'.

Today, another circle is complete and we are officially older. Much thanks for everyone who sent a shout-out, may you be remembered too.

Boko Haram and the finger pointing nation

My constantly changing Twitter and Facebook timelines are announcing news of another attack in Kano as I write this.

It’s Easter Sunday and I am lying sprawled on the now child-battered centre rug that used to be my pride and joy. Coming from the kitchen is the sound of something sizzling in oil and the scent of spices. My wife is cooking a feast for the Easter Celebration. I do not call out to her to inform her of the latest bomb story. I actually stopped telling her about the bombings long ago. On her part, gone are those exclamations, which used to be her response to news of another mass killing. Ewuchim o! She used to exclaim—an expression that encompasses the pain and helplessness that mark such situations. These days, when she hears of another attack she just shakes her head sadly and say “eeyah”.

A walk in the other side of music

Music is a part of human Culture. culture itself is universal. One aspect of culture that best exhibits this universality is music.

All over the world, from Lagos to New York; from manila to Rio; from the icy deserts of Greenland to the tiny islets of New Zealand, musicians, just like others involved in the arts, shape the way the world is viewed. Be it through the captivating moves of Michael Jackson, the mind numbing guitar tunes from Carlos Santana or the soul stirring vocals of Sade Adu, the world feels music and music fills the world.

Perhaps, my choice of music acts is not universal, but still, my point is out.

 

Like world shapers, artists mould culture. Consciously or not, they manipulate the choices of their subjects, shaping what we wear, where we sleep, what we eat and even in the extreme, who we marry.

Since Human minds are attuned in different ways; the artist, being human, are given to diverse idiosyncrasies that have a bearing on their creations. This character can either be infused with good or suffused with the dark side that we all obviously have.

Recently, just like in the distant past, the arts seem to lean more towards this dark side, exemplified by the runaway success of films like ‘Twilight’ and others of like ilk.

Music, like the movies, appears to be interpreting the times through lyrical content and visuals –the disturbed imagery of accompanying music videos- that some have interpreted to somehow glorify the darkness, personified by a Judaeo-Christian Satan. 

Artists like Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce, Rihanna, Lil Wane, to name a few, are some of those walking the part already taken by metal rock artists in the past.

Undoubtedly, Jay-z is one artist that has over the years delved into what many would consider the occult, if not in fact, then by insinuations.

Jay-Z, who has long been rumoured to belong to an occult order—probably Freemason—fuelled more speculations with the use of occult imagery in his latest video called “Run This Town” (featuring Rihanna and Kanye West).

But this is not the first time Jay-Z is showing signs of occult affiliations. Years earlier he propagated the massively popular ‘Roc sign’ that incorporated a widely known symbol of the Illuminati cult, the left eye within a triangle. Wild fans usually throw the salute during Jay-Z’s stage performances, probably not knowing the origins of the sign or perhaps, not caring.

 

Jay-Z also has appeared in public wearing a black hoodie with the words “Do What Thou Wilt” engraved on it. Though the words are suggestive in themselves, the fact that they are the official dictum of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and of its reformer, occultist Aleister Crowley, leaves a whole lot to imagination (The O.T.O. is a hermetic order modelled after Freemasonry and German Illuminism).

Truth is, Jay-Z knows a lot about occult imagery and seeks to either make their use more mainstream or just wants to build an aura of mysticism around his persona, thereby tapping into the growing leaning of the west’s teenagers to the dark side. A phenomenon that has resulted in the cult like following of various vampire movies of which Twilight is a very good example.

Both Beyonce and Rihanna have done songs that centre on possession, with Beyonce taking it further by naming her possessed/possessing persona: her alter ego Sasha Fierce, who she affirms is the fun, sexual and aggressive side of her.

She says: “I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am”.

Sasha Fierce is at times depicted wearing a dress adorned with an occult symbol of a goats head, otherwise known as Baphomet’s head.

On her part Rihanna, in the video of her song Disturbia explores the bleak world of mind control and demonic possession. Not only does she play with the dark side, she appears to have recently embraced it completely as her recent videos show.

Though this use of occult imagery in video did not start with rap and Hip-hop acts, they appear to be taking it to the next level. If they do this to get recognition, then they have definitely succeeded--if the number of awards some of the artists mentioned above garnered at the last Grammy awards are anything to hinge ones assertions on.

Article first published by Side View magazine in 2010

Governor Chime has done well, but...

The continuing absence of Enugu state governor Sullivan Chime leaves a sour taste in my mouth, but it is not for the reasons you might think.

I am from Enugu state and the present state of affairs falls, as they say, on my doorsteps. It is unprecedented in Enugu history for a governor to—if we are to believe the official statement—be on accumulated leave for this long. Despite all the political and constitutional rules this lengthy absence is said to be breaching, I do not intend to dwell on what laws has been broken or how that will impact the polity. Rather, I want to dwell on how much the man’s tenure has affected my community and what his absence means to my constituency and me.

I am from the hills of Anike. My ancestral home is the hilltop town of Nkwe: one of those places that development seems to ignore perpetually, until recently that is. This lack of development may, or may not, have something to do with the fact that aside from meagre cassava, vegetable and palm produce that our women take to the markets in Awgu—where our LGA headquarters is situated—and neighbouring  towns, we appear, on the surface, to largely lack much to offer in terms of commerce. This argument, that we don’t contribute much to the state to warrant attention, was used to justify the lack of government presence in the villages that make up Anike for decades by successive governments.

Rape and the Nigerian society

I encountered rape very early in life. I was perhaps 14 when a random visit to the home of a local ruffian presented me with my first glimpse. A girl, lying on the bed, with only a tiny towel to cover a miniscule part of her honour, stared at me from a threadbare mattress, her eyes pleading yet seemingly resigned to her fate. I had been sent to the room to “take kola”. I remember her clothes were in a bucket by the door, a bucket filled with water. Her story was sad. A visitor from the east, she had only asked for directions to her brother’s house in Angwan Kanawa and was lured to the house of Baba Wani’s aged grandmother, where he and his boys took turns on her. I got to the house on the second day. The monsters were clearly done with her and were offering her as kola to any young man that came to the house. I recall crying as I begged them to let her go, I recall the girl saying nothing, defeated I think. I recall she kept her legs parted, tired of fighting, she existed in a state of ‘cooperation’.

They let her go the next day. Fate however, knows how to mete out poetic justice.

My next BIG Thing!

Social media will be celebrated whenever and wherever the story of the generation of Nigerian writers that I belong to is written. And that story will surely feature how writers of my generation, managed, despite the odds, to create something grand out of the possibilities inherent in social media. The story will be big and surely, the tales of how aspiring writers searched for and connected with thousands of like minded individuals would be an integral part of it. While I don’t particular feel I am qualified to write this story, I won’t deny the fact that what you are reading now is a facet of that story.

I met Gbenga Awomodu, online, I can’t recall if it was on Facebook or in the early days of Naijastories, but we connected online and since we both live in Lagos and shared an interest in event reviews and journalism, the chances of us meeting outside of the electronic world of social media was high. We met a couple of times outside of social media before the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop brought us face to face again in August 2012. The story of my generation of writers actually played out in that workshop. Of the 22 participants, I had only ever met Gbenga in person before the workshop, but Richard Ali, Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, and Samuel Tosin Kolawole were already (Facebook connected) friends of mine, even though I had never met them in person. I still shiver at that social media strangeness that allows you know people intimately before you meet them in person. I was also meeting Yemisi Ogbe for the first time, but I knew her work as a food writer with the now sadly defunct Next Newspaper, where I also had the privilege of contributing articles, and we happen to have mutual admiration for each other’s work—I  discovered that out during the course of the workshop. I summarised my workshop experience here and Yewande Omotosho did here, so we can skip all the long tori and bite into the meat of this one.

Of traffic snarls and the land of the rubber men

It is a hot day.

Another of those days that traffic stretches as far as the eyes can see causing people in cars to share something other than the unity of crawling traffic and sweltering heat: short fused temperament.

This is Lagos, the heat and traffic snarls are constant realities that we have learnt to live with, no matter how hard that is. Nigerians, we are special breeds, rubber men that defy the laws of elasticity—we are yet to find that elastic limit and we continue to adjust to constantly shifting challenges. Nothing seems to shift more constantly than our traffic laws. Perhaps they don’t really shift, change, rather the government finds new way to express them. That way they keep us on our toes, sweating in choking traffic.

We do have constants, those things that remain the same year in year out. The danfo bus, a modified Volkswagen van that perhaps ferried goods from one point to another in the European country that hosted its first incarnation, is one of the things that remain the same. A testament of our dump mentality, the danfo, like millions of other automobiles in Nigeria, comes second-hand: Europe’s discard serving faithfully here, still.

There is little to see in the scrap-like drabness of the danfo bus I boarded in the hope that their street and alley meandering ability would perhaps shorten the time I would otherwise spend in the traffic snarl—a vain hope. The clammy intensity of the heat that comes from within and without did not gift concentration, so Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I will Write About This Place rests in its place in the side pocket of my well-used bag. Yes, I had discovered that the three hours spent in traffic heading to work and the three hours spent on the way back is a good time as any to catch up on reading. Before One Day I Will Write About This Place, one of those Ikeja-under-bridge-paper-backs—a novel by John Varley—occupied the space in the bag. Victor Ehikhamenor’s brand new book Excuse Me!, a testament of where Nigerian literature is headed, will replace Binya’s in a few days.

Omawumi: Wonder woman?

The intro for Omawumi’s debut album ‘Wonder woman’ was supposed to show off Omawumi’s humorous side but it did not really work; as the humour is not immediately obvious.

‘Ma fi mi shere’ feat Eldee is the first song. The vibrancy of Omawumi’s voice is comes through in this track. But, both beats and lyrics are a little too high tempoed. The song flitters by before it can be assimilated (yes, even after several replays). Eldee delivers his lines too fast, as if chasing the quick beat and his short verse is not enough to convey his usual dexterity.

Whatever misgivings the previous track might have caused were cured by ‘today na today’. This is definitely Omawumi at her very best. The beat is again high tempo, with a techno feel, but unlike in the previous track it works here, the lyrics really get to you. Heads are definitely going to bob to this one.

‘Love nwantinti’ may not appeal to teenagers, but the older generation will have a blast rocking to the highlife flavour. Omawumi’s vocals in this track sounds one somewhat like that of Nigeria’s old school Diva, the Late Nelly Uchendu, yes, she has that kind of voice.

‘Love it’ featuring Shank does not quit cut it, the tempo, fast and unfocused, drowns out Omawumi’s voice most times. Shank, known more for his hit dancehall single ‘julie’, did not bring the captivating flow he is popular for into this track. In all Omawumi’s strong voice is the only redeeming feature of this track, once again she showed she can sing very well, even in an average song.

Nigerian girls should be mad!

In the last decade, since the Plantation Boys and Remedies before them began a revival of Nigerian music’s fortunes, Naija music has eclipsed Africa and is presently showing the world that Africa has got some groove. With YouTube views in the millions, brands such as P square, D’banj and Flavour have become household names and veritable representatives of Nigerian popular culture.

If music is the expression of a nation’s popular culture, whether adopted or not, one would expect the visuals that go with it to reflect that culture as well as the people that embody it, however, in Nigeria, this expectation doesn’t hold.

Close your eyes and call to mind popular Nigerian music videos of the moment. If you were true to yourself, you’d admit that these videos are very unfair to the Nigerian woman. Video after video, American copycat artiste name after another, all we see is the depiction of women as playthings, playthings that come with the money, the cars, the dope houses and the choice wines—a property that success acquires.

This disrespect of women jars the nerves and grates like mad. More so because most of the so called Nigerian feminists, ever ready to cuss a Nigerian man out on social media, pretend not to notice this constant demeaning of the sex they purport to represent—I don’t want to believe they are okay with this.

A good year to be a writer!

This is ending as a very good year for me as a writer.

First off, I finally got a publisher to take interest in my collection of short stories. The collection “Footsteps on the Hallway” will be published Jan-Feb 2013 by Melrose books Nigeria.

I was also able to attend the Farafina Trust Writers workshop on the third attempt and learnt so much from superb teachers.

Then there are two of my short stories appearing in two PAN-African anthologies, African Roar and AfroSF in Dec 2012.

I sure have come a long way and perhaps should start feeling like a writer. We’re moving on. J

Aluu 4 and the state of our mind

I want to be numb, but my soul cries too loud for me to ignore. I am supposed to have grown accustomed to pain, but things happen that remind me that I am a man and that in the heart of man, pain has an abode, try as much as you can, you can never escape its grip.

As I type this, the voice of two promising young men cut down in their prime by the kind of unmitigated blood-lust that our country have come to identify with, booms out from my laptop speakers. Like voices from the grave, the young men cry out that there “ain’t no love in the heart of the city”. It is eerie, like prophesies of that kind are, especially when one considers that the boys had pleaded for their lives to flesh and blood men that refused to show them a little love, people that refused to spare their lives.

Achebe and the Igbo narrative: not a single story

“Shege Inyamirin, arne kawai!” the man screamed at me as I sprawled on the red earth, my 20 litre water container, which a few moments ago was balanced on my head as I hurried across the railway track, was not too far away. I looked from the container,  which jerked as it expelled the water I had just fetched from Isa Kaita’s Dutse Close home, to the snarling man that had just pushed me, wondering why my being Igbo merited that much callousness. I looked towards my father’s chemist shop a few metres away, more worried about what he would do if the container was broken than going back to the long queue of people waiting their turn at the tap Alhaji Isa Kaita (CBE) had graciously provided for the public inside His expansive compound. Yes, the man had pushed me, and beyond his expletives that can only be summarised as "Igbo infidel", he offered no explanation and people around did not ask. Surely, why he pushed me, hampered as I was by my large container, was a question that should have been asked, especially as I had not impeded him, or brushed against him. My crime was having tribal marking beside my eyes that identified me to be Igbo, an ethnic group that everyone not Igbo seemed to hate—at least that was what my young mind felt then.

The event above happened about two decades ago in Angwa Shanu, a town in Kaduna North LGA, Kaduna state. It was one of several instances where my siblings and me were singled out and abused because we are Igbo. I recall it here to buttress the point that the Igbo have not had it easy in post war Nigeria and that the hate for the Igbo runs deeper than many care to admit. However, we do not need anyone to admit anything, that we know this fact is what is important, to us that is.

Growing up, I can’t recall my father telling us to be cautious, or to deny our Igboness, but we knew the ability to survive in a society hostile to our kind is our only defence. So, we learnt Hausa, learnt to recite the more common Islamic creeds and learnt to deny our Igboness. To avoid the Igbo stigma, we became Southern Kaduna, Benue, Cross River, Bendel or any other grouping, but never Igbo if we could help it.

My Farafina Creative Writing Workshop Experience

It was my third application. I paused a while before I typed the address into my mailbox. Twice before, 2010 and 2011, I had answered the call for entries for the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop. On both occasions, I got an email informing me that though I made the long list of thirty five, I unfortunately didn’t make into the final list of fifteen.

What you don’t know about me

My earliest memories were of landscapes, or put in a better perspective, hillscapes: beautiful scenery of hills and valleys; the freshest green foliage infused with flowers of diverse make amongst the tallest palm trees imaginable, all swaying gently or violently, as the elements will have it, in a land that could rival any ever seen by man.

Both my maternal home and my father’s hometown are situated in the hills of Anike. While my ancestral home sits atop a windswept plateau, my maternal home was situated in a valley—my use of the word ‘was’ is acceptable here because as a result of the tragic influence of modernity, the people of my maternal homeland have moved en masse to a barren hill a few miles from the land that was their ancestors abode. Their new abode’s only importance is the fact that an asphalt road dissects its white soiled length.

The North burns: can we talk about us?

Once again, like uncountable times in the past, the north is in the throes of ethno-religious crisis. As usual, the security agencies are caught napping and aside from accusations of complicity in the crisis, seem to be all thumbs, with little or no idea of how to handle the situation – besides their age-old ‘shoot on sight’ solution that is.

In a previous article, written some years ago, I dwelled on the nature of the north and after examining the numerous crises I witnessed and luckily escaped while living in the north, concluded that ethno-religious crisis and the north of Nigeria are Siamese twins that may forever remain conjoined, unless the drastic is done.

I warned then that the north would blow up again way before the Boko Haram clash and the first Jos affair. My forecast was not based on any form of prescience, but as a result of a brief study of ethno-religious clashes in the north.

In the north of Nigeria, from Jos and beyond, the truth about Ethno-religious crisis is not if it would occur, but when it will occur, again.

Of Heroes, Villains, and dollar baits (1)

Superman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I grew up with comic books. I discovered comics in primary two or three. I can’t quite recall, but I think Voltron, Super Ted and other TV cartoon shows played a large part. Anyway, I discovered comics and life was never the same again. While my friends outgrew the habit I kept at it and still find it difficult to turn down the chance to read a comic book today.

Anyone who have ever held a comic book , especially the variety that made DC and Marvel household names, the sort that gifted us Superman, Batman, Spiderman and all the others whatever-mans, would be conversant with one thing: comic books are about the battle of evil and good. There are good guys, bad guys and some who appear to saddle the line between both worlds. In the world of comic books, called universe, the good guys are called Super Heroes and the bad guys are called Super Villains. The Heroes usually do not associate with the Villains and even when they do, it’s usually for the greater good.

Holding a Nation to Ransom

As has become customary, the murderous Islamist group, Boko Haram, attacked three churches in Kaduna state on Sunday, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Also, in what is becoming a saddening routine, youth affiliated to the Christian faith carried out reprisal attacks on nearby mosques and many innocent Muslims got caught up in the ensuing violence.

Death And A Mourning Nation

Before that Dana plane crashed into a tenement building in Iju-Ishaga suburb of Lagos, Nigerians died in the hundreds every day. They died on the road, victims of bad roads or the highwayman’s bullet. They died in their homes, bodies riddled with bullets fired by armed robbers. They died in churches and mosques, victims of those who say evil deeds can be used to achieve godliness. They died across Nigeria, untimely and unpleasant deaths, victims of a government’s insistence on continuing paying lip service to progressive social development.

While some of these untimely taken belong to the class people have come to believe are elites, the larger percent are masses, the new age commoners, without renown beyond their immediate environment, these ones are not mourned by the nation. No media adverts extol their qualities, no social media buzz is generated around their pictures, no websites are created to tell about their lives and the deep pain their passing wrought on those they left behind. Nothing is heard of them other than the wailing of relatives and friends, and that too is soon muted as the world winds on. While the government habitually gives last warnings to those who kill the masses and promise to fix the roads that mangle their flesh and suck their blood, the dead are buried, sometimes in mass graves, their deaths in vain still, unknown in life, silent in death.

However, these are the nameless dead, the ones without keys to the fabled rainbow’s end. Their fate is not for those who could zip around in airplanes. For these ones, the passing is loud, with a nationwide call to tears.

It is common street knowledge that planes are not for the poor, even those who eat three solid meals with meat to spare have nothing to do with it. For many of us, it is a privilege to travel from Lagos to Abuja on a plane. Why not, the cost of a one-way ticket is more than the national minimum wage. So it is a testament to the privilege and position of the victims of the Dana Air crash, at least those on the plane proper, that the buzz generated by their fate remains at giddying heights, or how else would fellow elites and wannabes mourn the passing of their peers?

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Democracy: An African burden

English: The King of Swaziland Mswati III at the reed dance festival 2006 where he will choose his next wife.. Deutsch: Der König von Swasiland Mswati III bei dem Reed Dance Festival 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Uneasy, they say, lies the head that wears the crown. That adage, apt for a time when kings were a law unto themselves, when they had the power over life and death, still finds strong expression in this age.

These days, kings, except they are of Middle Eastern or Asian stock (let’s add Swaziland to the number), are largely without the powers to decide the fate of a nation. The powers that made them all-powerful in the past now reside with the commoners; or so it would seem.

Nations, having shed that feudal system that perpetuates the lordship of one family over the whole generation after generation, have now generally embraced the one that allows people to have a say on who rules over them. People now have the liberty to put their views to vote and the purview to remove a leader that is not working up to par—in an ideal scenario.  Democracy, the system of having a say in the selection of one’s leaders, in its ideal sense, is one that cannot be faulted.
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A black Sunday in a Nation already in darkness

The first news of a suicide bomber attacking a church during Sunday service was not strange or overly surprising, not in a nation already used to bomb blasts and the attendant casualty rate.  The second news, of a plane ramming into a Lagos suburb, was more alarming and elicited more than the resigned “not again” that greeted the first. With social media abuzz, two things struck me: The plane crashed in Iju Agege and the proximity of my house from the scene.
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The General, GEJ Voltrons and Hyperboles

I used to admire General Mohamadu Buhari a lot. In him, I saw an Incorruptible Nigerian, whom given the chance, could rid our country of its greatest challenge—corruption in high places.

My view of Buhari’s incorruptibility remains unchanged, but in view of his actions and inactions in the wake of the crisis that followed the April 2011 elections, I do not consider him qualified to air ideas about Nigeria’s snail paced crawl towards political and economic emancipation from the brigands that now hold her captive.

Buhari, I have said before, lost all rights to talk when elder statesmen are called upon, just as he has lost the goodwill that has ensured he returned time and time again to compete for that exalted but oft raped position of this nation’s president. While I still say that Buhari did not ask his supporters to take to the streets and slake their rage on innocent Nigerians, doing nothing to call them to order painted him in colours that are not so different from those he was seeking to oust.

Anyway, this post is not really about what the man did, or didn’t do, after the elections last year. This post is about what the man is doing now and what he intends to do come 2015. Buhari as he is wont, warmed his way back into national consciousness by declaring in no small words that come 2015, naija masses will revolt if INEC does not allow for free and fair elections.

Hmm...here we go again, was my reaction when I saw reference to the statement on twitter, knowing the dams would soon burst and all hibernating GEJ Voltrons, as tweeps call them, would awake and be up in arms. My, my, was I right? Reno Omokiri, a young man most armchair activists like myself have come to expect the most uncouth behaviour possible in the course of defending his government pay cheque did not disappoint—kind of reminds one of pre-activist FFK’s brashness. Reno attacks on Buhari’s audacity to attack the hallowed PDP machine signalled other hibernating voltrons into action and the battle to ‘call Buhari to order’ was on in earnest.

While I think the PDP, and GEJ’s camp, are right to defend themselves if someone wrongly accuses them of wrong doing, in this instance they are absolutely wrong.

Why? Simple.

First: Because Buhari, though he might have accused them of rigging elections in the past, was only warning of the fall out of any attempt to rig the 2015 ballot. Second: Other, both highly and lowly placed, Nigerians have issued similar warnings in the past, and no one bothered to send out the verbal attack dogs.

I think GEJ is still missing the whole point of being president. He has to understand that as president he is number one and therefore the first target when things go wrong, and also the first when praises for things being done right are dished out.

Also, most of the technocrats drafted into government to help this unassuming man navigate foggy landscape of government-citizen relation are still dozing in the zombie days of military dictatorships, where any and every ‘his/her Excellency’ is sacred. Gaddem! This is a democracy, no matter how flawed, and people should be allowed to have opinions. I think it would serve GEJ and those who purport to speak for him to stick to the substance of opinions, not insinuations and hyperboles.

For PDP and its supporters: you may have ruled naija for the past 12 years, but you are not Nigeria and do not represent the masses. It is not given unto you to react to every statement from perceived political opponents as if you are Nigeria.

For Buhari: you lost your chance when it was clearly there for the taking. Go home, rest and advise younger protégées on how to take political opportunities. Also, talk smart, you are no longer in the army.

For the naija people: it is coming again, and we are losing ourselves once again to that sectional divide. When did Boko Haram stop being a PDP invention abeg? We need to wake up and smell the beans before it burns once again.

Our Roads; Our Death and a Nation Where Life is Cheap

It is almost impossible for anyone travelling between towns in Nigeria not to pass a recent road carnage. These carnages, usually auto accidents with fatalities, are becoming more commonplace in Nigeria and are exacerbated by the extremely low road maintenance culture that is synonymous with every government since the Gowon years. If you are in a mass transit bus; as you pass by the twisted chunks of metal and mangled body parts, you hear gasps of sorrow and shouts of ‘Jesus’, as fellow travellers call on higher powers to ensure they do  not meet the same fate.

We do not really understand what is at stake when one talks about death on and by our national highways. To make it clearer and perhaps bring it home, I will dwell on my own personal experience. This year is yet half way through but I have lost three people close to me to auto accidents in the three geographical zones of Nigeria. The first was my cousin, Eddy Oha, whose journey to Lagos from Akure where he resides with his wife and children was truncated at Ijebu Ode when the commercial bus he was travelling somersaulted severally. He died later that evening at the University of Ibadan teaching hospital—where little was done to save his life.

A few weeks ago, I learnt of the death of Adolphus, a cousin’s husband, in an auto accident as he was returning to his base in Malunfashi from a business trip to Kano. Another shock came on 28 April when the news of Kenechuckwu Igbo’s death via an Okada accident in Enugu reached me.

The above mentioned people represent numbers in the statistics for those lost to all manners of auto accidents. They are numbers on a sheet of paper to the government employee that will type them out by this year’s end, they are numbers to the head of the FRSC that will read them out to show whether safety on our roads have increased or decreased when 2012 is reviewed. To people who study the charts for thesis and whatnot, they are numbers on a page. Whether those who write them down or those who quote them remember that these numbers represent individuals, represent dreams untimely broken, represent tears and sorrow, is a guess that I do not think of dwelling on at this time.

Millions of Nigerians are travelling along our highways as you read this. Chances are that many, passing wreckages not yet removed or recent carnages, will have tales of near misses or other gory scenes witnessed in times past. They will wail and gnash teeth at the thought of lives lost, but soon minds are forced to less depressing thoughts, after all, the death of a stranger is not much of an incident—or so the old Igbo adage infers. However, chances are, in passing vehicle, or even the unfortunate ones, there is someone heading to the funeral of someone who died in an auto accident. To people like the fore mentioned, the scene just witnessed poses deeper meanings, for them the statistics represent loved ones, untimely taken, for them it is more than just a number.

For me, the statistics stopped being a number about three years ago when I lost my best friend to an auto accident in Kaduna. My friend, Chimezie Okieyi, survived an earlier accident in 2003, which kept him at in a ward at the orthopaedic hospital in Enugu for a year and maimed his left foot, but the second one took his life—here again the hospital were helpless.

Our hospitals, our death

Of the people we have buried in my ancestral village this year, the vast majority died as a result of accidents, deaths I feel could have been prevented in more ways than one.

To give a perspective, I will dwell a bit about my cousin’s death. Eddy Oha was involved in the auto accident at about 9 am on Tuesday the 31^st of January 2012. As is the Nigerian experience, good Samaritans rushed him to a hospital, where nothing was done to save his life. It took calls on his phone for his friends to find out about his situation. His friends rushed from Akure to the hospital in Ijebu Ode to meet him lying on the floor with only a drip on him, still the hospital charged N25000 for that drip, a tranquiliser and the floor space he had occupied for about five hours before his friends got there and they were allowed to move him to another hospital. The debate of whether to take him to LUTH or University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital was quickly solved on account of Lagos’s perpetual traffic jam. All the hope of prompt attention expected for accident victims disappeared on getting to Ibadan where the hospital officials appeared more interested in documentation and payments than diving in an attempting to save a life. Eddy Oha, with broken legs but no external injuries, died at about five PM, two hours after arriving at the teaching hospital. In the two hours, he was there, only a drip was administered to him, while we ran around, queuing up to pay for this and that. I still believe that had instant medical attention being provided for him, my cousin would be alive today.

A few years ago, I witnessed an instance similar to the one that played out with my cousin when a fence collapsed on a woman in my then neighbourhood. We had rushed the woman to Ikeja General Hospital, thinking they would be better equipped to attempt saving her life. The woman was conscious, talking all through the episode, but it was obvious to all that she was in deep pain. We go to the hospital anxious and keyed for the type of haste we see in western movies in emergencies, only to be disappointed by the lackadaisical attitude of the hospital staff. We had to beg and plead before an attendant made the move to take the woman from the danfo bus we came in into the emergency ward. From there it was downhill. We were asked to go and register, pay for x-ray and whatnot. By the time we raised the money required (it was about 12 midnight) and the woman was wheeled into the x-ray room, she gave up the ghost, like my cousin, a victim of the careless attitude of our hospitals, from internal bleeding.

 

Our Commercial vehicle, moving coffins

How safe are our commercial vehicles? How sane are our drivers? How greedy are owners and operator of transport companies? How concerned is the government and it agencies?

These questions are very important if we ever hope to save lives on our highways. If we can find answers to why the people who are empowered by government to oversee the cars that ply our highways, fail to see dangers of improvised seats in commercial vehicles, then we are well on our way to abating premature deaths on our highways.

If no law exists to prohibit nonstandard seats in commercial vehicles in Nigeria, perhaps it is time to legislate on one. We all know how much research goes into designing cars, and how disastrous any alteration that goes against the design can be. People in other climes have claimed billions of dollars in damages from car companies because of defective parts. Here, we knowingly distort the design to create space for more passengers and make more money.

While the greed of the owners of commercial vehicles knows no bounds, the acquiescence of the security agents, who do little to secure the lives they are mandated to, should not be forgotten.

Why do we insist on having these little Toyota buses and van transport our people? We all know the bigger buses are safer and better. Is it not time we make them the transport vehicles of choice.

Our cars are death traps, our roads are death traps, our hospitals are no help, and the government looks on, mute to our spilled blood. Death, it appears, is our lot in our travels everyday—unless we have the means to fly.

That is our dilemma, our circles of inefficiencies kill our people, and no one cares enough to make a change.

I am all about change. We have to make a difference; we have to save lives, to force government to make the effort and accept that every Nigerian has the right for a chance at life. We have to question why almost everyone with internal bleeding, but without the means to go to a well-stocked private hospital, stands little chance of surviving at any government hospital. 

To do this, I say we put a name to the statistics as I have done above. If you have ever lost someone dear to an accident on a Nigerian road, please comment on this post and put a name to the number. We can change the attitude.

Before you 'kill' Zimmerman

There is no doubt of George Zimmerman’s guilt in the shooting that led to the death of Trayvon Martin, there however remains doubt as to whether the killing was in cold blood or an act of self defence. The trial that is ongoing is primarily expected to answer that question, at least beyond reasonable doubt.

Of the killing, Zimmerman says it was an act of desperate self-defence, against a boy he thought just a few years younger, an admission that many contest on grounds that he had a gun, and was more physically imposing that the unarmed youth he say he was fighting off. There is also that commonly held belief, within black America and elsewhere, that there is a racist undertone to Zimmerman’s action and the reaction of the police to the case afterwards. That Zimmerman insisted on going after the boy after the officer answering his 911 call indicated that he not do so, is a clear sign he racially profiled the boy and marked him as guilty of something, many contend.

Though Zimmerman and his backers say this is not the case, he couldn’t have profiled the kid that way, his background would not allow him do that—discriminate on grounds of colour—the doubt still rests heavily on his shoulders.

The whole argument on racial profiling seriously begs the question: what is racial profiling and how could that have led to the death of a boy that harmless and young?

Racial/tribal profiling exists in different forms in different places. Some are negative, other not so much so. In Nigeria, the belief that people from Warri have a high sense of humour, that the average Hausa man is honest to a fault, that the Igbo can do anything for money, that the Yoruba are cowards are some of the milder forms of racial profiling. The extra security that a green Nigerian passport or a Semitic appearance triggers in airports in the west is a more unsavoury form, at least for those on the receiving end.

For blacks in America, ethnic profiling of the negative kind is a reality and has existed for centuries in various forms. I read somewhere that the whites perceive the average black American as lazy. For a community that effectively raised America to its present status on the strength of their toil on the cotton fields, tobacco fields and countless other slave labour engagements, laziness should be the last thing that mention of them evokes. Nevertheless, there is that other one, the one that sees blacks as having a lower IQ than whites, one so well expressed by John Derbyshire is his viral article. Other unsavoury profiles, for both blacks and whites, do exist in the American society and they have for centuries and may well continue to for a long time to come.

No one can readily say when or how these negative profiling started or what their purposes are, but it is not farfetched to see in them the inherent mistrust man have for anything that looks or feels different. Perhaps, wanting to live apart from those of other races/tribes worked well in the past, but the world today is a global community. It is just not possible to be exclusive.

That said; one would not shy from arguing that the black American community have not exactly done much to dispel the negative profiles that have hung around it for decades, if not centuries. Unlike the white American community that tries hard to show it is a community of contrasts where you have the good and the bad, there seem to be an unconscious move by the blacks to cultivate the aggressive image, perhaps as a kind of defence mechanism after years of oppressive living under the whites. I really don’t know, just grasping at straws here, but the stereotype of the black American that is commonplace is that of highly strung individuals with ill repressed anger that is always threatening to blow up, with disastrous consequences.

While this description would in reality describe only a minute amount of people in the black community, the others chose to wear it as a garb, a kind of communal identity that only spells doom. I have heard mention of the nature of the American system and how it predisposes black to drop out of school and fail, how that is the cause of a higher percentage of them than whites in America’s prison system, how it makes it harder for them to find work. However, coming from where I am coming from, I say they, and only they, can make good no matter the situation. Well, that is my take, I know the debate of whether the system set black up to fail is still on and will continue for much longer.

Getting back to Zimmerman, if we are to agree with those insisting he racially profiled Trayvon Martin, then, we are agreeing that the common racial profiling of black Americans is negative. That being the case, Zimmerman, A neighbourhood watch volunteer (I think they operate in much the same way neighbourhood watches operate in Nigeria, with police as the authority and the volunteers referring cases to them), saw a black youth in a hoodie walking by a thought “crime”. He gave case, pulled his gun at some point and shot the youth dead, only it turned out the suspect was just an innocent boy out for some snacks.

Trayvon Martin is dead; nothing that happens now can change that fact. We have to keep in mind that black youths have been breaking into houses in that neighbourhood for some time before this incident, and that this might justify Zimmerman’s profiling, but does that change much? The boy is dead. In his death and in the death of thousands of people world over, we see further evidence of man’s inability to live with man without conflict, in his death lies the shame of our age.

In his death lie lessons for his community and everyone else. While incidents of history like this one may make it seem expedient to glorify the thug life, to see offense as a form of defense, we have to be wary that times have changed. The celebration of the criminal life, something sagging pants and a hoodie pulled over the eyes to hide the face at night tends to glorify, is not the way to go.

The world needs to take another look at the music stars that encourage the gangland lifestyle, who rap and talk about killing one another in glowing terms. Black America need to adopt more positive role models for their kids, they need to show them the many positive examples being set by the children of immigrant family, of which their president is one, who have taken the opportunities available and made good. They need to tell people like 50 Cents and Lil Wayne to stop being bad influences on their kids by mouthing negative lyrics, they need to learn to stay married and raise kids in decent homes. Most importantly, they need to stop complaining of white America’s ill treatment and take the immense opportunities their society offers.

For the zimmerman’s of this world, whatever reason caused him to kill the youth, the right to take a life is not yours, and “standing your ground” does not make it right when the person you are confronting is unarmed.

For the people angry and gunning for revenge, think about how many blacks were killed in black on black violence in America this week before you kill Zimmerman in your head.

Justice is from above.

Trayvon Martin: Beyond the Outcry

Everyone that pays attention to the media, especially international media from the west, must have at this point in time heard about Trayvon Martin. If by chance you happen to have crawled under a rock in Mars for the last one month and thus missed the whole commotion, Trayvon Martin is the 17-year-old boy shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer.

If you don’t know about the details of the case, as many still don’t, you might not think much of a headline that says “boy killed by guard”. But why should you think different, News headlines are replete with such news stories anyway. 


However, the Trayvon Martin case is unique in more ways than one. Not only is the late Trayvon Martin a minor, he was unarmed and not partaking in anything illegal at the time he was fatally shot by Zimmerman. Sad, you might say, another young boy at the wrong place at the wrong time. 


Yes, Trayvon Martin was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Wrong time and place for a black youth to be in 21^st century America. Wrong place to be, but right sort of place to get a bullet in the chest. A bullet fired by a white adult male who clearly outweighs him.

For those who have had the time in this dreary economic climate to follow the ruckus that emanated after the news sipped out that Mr. George Zimmerman, the killer of that innocent boy, was allowed to walk free after the fact, two truths ring clear: Zimmerman pulled the trigger of the gun that took the young boys life, the victim was armed with skittles and a cup of ice tea at the time of the shooting and was not doing anything untoward—except we follow George Zimmerman’s contention that the boy was walking aimlessly around the neighbourhood and agree with him that that constitutes a crime.

I feel profound sympathy for the family of the late Trayvon Martin and can only hope they find the strength to bear the loss, but the issue at hand is deeper than the death of a boy that made his parents proud.

I also feel sympathy for black Americans, who have had to contend with similar killings by high-handed and often times racially motivated white gunmen. I watch the news story and share the rage and confusion of those who ask that the boy’s killer face justice, not because I am of the same race with a majority of those I see carrying placards calling for justice, but because I never ever believed in extra-judicial killing by anyone.

As a Nigerian who has not personally experienced the blind racism that many allude to in the west, that one reads about, sees in movies and TV debates, I cannot claim to fully understand what it feels like to be discriminated against because of one’s colour. I know many say tribalism is similar, but I think it is only superficially so as one’s tribe cannot easily be decoded at first glance--one’s race is usually as clear as day.

However, as justified as my anger and that of millions around the world itching for justice is, I also know that getting justice for Trayvon Martin should not be the end of it. It is easy to march on the street and call for the arrest of one man, but forgetting that the arrest and possible imprisonment of one man does not change the situation on the ground that made his alleged crime possible. There is now greater need for people the world over to look at how we relate to ourselves. Should we continue hating because we don’t understand, or seek knowledge to make us better understand?

Across the world, people continue to hate more than they love, to kill more than they save and the destroy more than they build. Life, particularly human life is considered most sacred by religions world over. Yet, in this earth, man continues to see killing as a means of settling real and perceived disputes.

Trayvon Martin is just another notch on the pole that marks the billion untimely taken as a result of man’s resolve to take rather than give life to his kind and George Zimmerman, whether he pleads self-defence or not, broke the law of nature, he killed Trayvon Martin.