Grand King Michael (1958-2009)

Been too devastated to say anything about this huge loss to all of us. I was following the news on Thursday night up until 11.49 pm when PHCN did its bit and I went to bed praying that of all the conflicting reports, the one about MJ being in coma would turn out to be the truth the next morning, but it didn’t. And the import of it all has been numbing and draining to contemplate.

There is has only ever been one King of Pop, and for many, king of music itself. That king was in music for at least 40 years and was king of his genre for at least 30 years. He is was King Michael Joseph Jackson. He lived his life out in the open. From age five, this king could no longer live like the person next door. He was forced to become an adult even before he understood what being a toddler meant to him. But we never really sought to understand the implication of all that to him. Hence his latter life was more about the man than the music. But still no one could dim the star with mega sparks. Not where there were billions sleeping, eating, thinking, drinking and even dying MJ.

I have never really been a devotee of King Michael, but, like most people around the world, including your father, your grandfather and your children I have always been a follower of the true king of pop music. How could I not when he has been a phenomenon, a course in the study of the subject called GENIUS. I remember once being a panelist in a teenage hood discourse in which our subject matter led to us wanting to know who the most popular person in the world at the time was. I remember one of us advancing the theory that the three best known or most famous people/phenomenona were: Football(call it soccer or football, somehow everybody seems to know it); God (whther you are an atheist or deist or whatever else, everybody seems to have heard about Him at one time or the other, although worshipping him is another subject altogether); and Michael Jackson(your 2-year-old daughter born in 2007 for instance know about him already, just like your father and your do), in no particular order. Years later, I remembered that theory as I watched the Jackson behemoth in concert, and from then onwards I accepted that childhood theory as a semblance of the truth if not a fact in itself. That is the measure of MJ.

King Michael loved life and nature and truly celebrated it. He thrilled us all because he was forever desirous of sharing his life with the world, although the world did not know exactly how to relate with him. He believed we human could heal the world, of its myriad of disease, literally and figuratively. And for him, that had to start with our appreciation of true human nature. He was not bad, although the media made him seem terrible. Truth is, we could not just explain his enigma in black or white, perhaps that was why he needed to teach us some history and that is why even though he lived for us all and we enjoyed it all, we cannot but feel he has gone too soon. Rest in peace King Wacko Jacko. You are not alone, even in death,although sometimes we may have made you feel like a stranger in the moscow cold while you were here with us. We all love you. You have left a huge vacuum in the world. Thanks for ever being here.

No one to trust?

I am shaking my head with a mixture of amusement and amazement as I punch away on my PC’s keyboard. I had an encounter on my way home this evening, which I am still trying to get my head round.

I was at Egbeda earlier this evening walking down to where I was going to board an okada home. As I did, I noticed a small boy of not more than nine years old standing by the side of the road, a tray of fufu on his head, crying. I approached him to know why he was crying, and his story instantly touched me: he narrated how he had had lost the entire money he had made from the sale of his fufu – five notes of N200, meaning he had lost N1,000.

The boy further explained that the money had been snatched from his hand by some people from a moving vehicle, as he was counting the money. I felt his story was quite possibly plausible, so I sympathized with the poor boy. I asked him where he lived and he mentioned Iyana-something-I-could not-comprehend. On whether he lived with his parents, he answered that he lived with his aunt. I felt some chill course down my spine on hearing that. Some aunties would skin any child who dare throw away a N10 note and only God knows what this aunty could do to this poor thing this night if and when he got home without that ’whopping’ N1,000. So I started to think of how exactly to help him. I concluded that giving him another N1,000 would not exactly be the smart idea to adopt, so I toyed with the idea of going to see his aunt and help him explain to her.

At that point another man noticed the agitation of the boy and joined us. He also expressed empathy with the boy’s situation. Between the two of us, we decided to put the money together to give to the boy rather than follow him home. The man was rummaging in his pocket while I was trying to find out more about the boy’s plight, when another man passing by said, calmly but sharply, “You this boy, na everyday you dey come cry for here?” He said that without waiting or looking back. I tried to call him back to shed more light on what he had said, but he wouldn’t budge. “I no know am o,” was the only thing he added. But he had sounded honest and the import of the conviction with which he said those words was unmistakable.

We turned back to our little ‘angel’, with the other man asking shebi you hear wetin that man talk? I added, ‘na true im talk? The little thing seemed to be lost for words momentarily, then quickly gathered himself together and claimed, in a stuttering voice, that the only other time such had happened before was once when he also lost his money. And you happened to have stood at the same point as you are now standing that other time? How very convenient I said to myself.

Suddenly it all started to come together; his tray still had about 12 wraps of fufu . At N10 per wrap, that would amount to N120. Even at N20 per wrap, that will still be just N240. If truly he sold part of his wares to the tune of the N1,000 he claimed had been stolen, that would mean that he initially had about 62 wraps of fufu on his tray – that is not impossible but it is highly improbable and, in fact very doubtful considering the size of the tray. Pray also, a fufu seller who only has N200 notes, no N10, N20, N50, N5? That is quite interesting. Interesting indeed that those N200 notes conveniently rounded off to N1000 and not N850, N700, N520 or some other figure not so round in total.

The other man was already too pissed off and was raring to go, urging me to leave the dubious thing there and go my way, too, but I tried one last time to salvage the seemingly unsalvageable: I asked him once again, where the incident had happened and he shifted the crime scene to ‘inside estate, I come shout but them hold me, come run’. I don’t think the other man heard everything else he said after that before he turned and walked off in anger and disappointment.

I gave the little imp a you-are-lying-through-your-dirty-teeth-you-little-con look and also walked away as he stood there determined to act out the remainder of his script to an imaginary audience. I felt the urge to go back to him, give him some good spanking and haul him, kicking and screaming, off to his house, wherever it was. But I reconsidered that. Beside a little twine that can cook up such obvious deceit is sure capable of a little more. And God help me if he suddenly yells out for help, claiming I was trying to kidnap him or even worse. So, quietly, I pocketed the Samaritan in me and took the next available okada home, asking myself what the world has come to. But did I hasten into conclusion on that little thing? I may never know now.

Obama in Nig... eh, Africa

Shhh... this is from the grapevine. Have you heard? They say President Barack Obama of the US will be coming to Africa on a five-nation tour this week. But he will not be coming to the ancestral home of one in every three Africans. It's his first visit to his mother continent as president of the most powerful nation on earth, but his tour will not take him to the giant of Africa and most populous black nation in the world.

Obama departs Friday June 19, on a 15-day tour that will take him not only to his father's homeland, Kenya, but also to South Africa, Congo, Djibouti and Sudan. Why not Nigeria? Is there something we are missing in this picture? Methinks this tells us how relevant we have become in the scheme of things around the world. Can you imagine Obama on such a tour to the Middle East without touching down in Saudi Arabia. Again maybe it is my oft reckless imagination, especially where political matters are concerned, that is again in overdrive here

Anyway, welcome, karibu, ukwemuleka, boyei bolamu, merhaba to Africa, Mr. Obama. Hope you are not offended that I can't find the ka 'abo, sannu da zuwa or nno, to usher you in here? Have a nice stay all the same.

Mount her, she's yours for the grabbing

I'm not a fan of fuji music, but one of my favourite lines in music is taken from a fuji song. The line, from one of Abass Akande Obesere's songs (I think it's Oba Idan or Fuji Gyration), reads: ko ni ragba fun eni ti'o like obinrin. Literal translation: ‘It shall never be well with anyone who doesn't like a woman’. Now, if you try to explain that line a little further or take it slightly out of context, especially as the translation does not do it much justice, you could end up with anything in the region of: May God punish whoever mistreats a woman; woe betide every misogynist; he who does not appreciate the gift of woman in human existence is not fit to live; only an idiot would dislike a woman; women are a must-have, and so forth. This, I assume covers for all women – mothers, children, sisters, in-laws, wives, aunties, you name it, although it does not give any woman the right to maltreat any man either. However, not every man shares this belief. To some men, women are just objects and are a must-have only like the chairs, plates cars, etc in your house. In the best case scenario, they are merely to be tolerated rather than be valued.

That noted, how many times have we all been faced with people or situations that make us feel like throwing expletives, however, raw and obscene they may sound? Well, last night I had an encounter that almost forced me into directing Obesere's line, in its pure, most serious-intentioned, untranslated and unadulterated form at a specific person. I often hear about female rape victims, but I have never been close to anyone who I know had been a raped. But this almost changed last night on my way home from work. Time was about 11:12 pm as I was walking towards Egbeda from Iyana-Ipaja, having being forced to trek the rest of my way after the bus I boarded from Iyana-Ipaja broke down mid-way. As I approached Banire Bus Stop, just a few yards from the market in Egbeda, I heard some voices - one of them being unmistakably feminine - in frantic conversation behind the wall that separates the main road from the rest of the market and the adjoining Gowon Estate. At first I could not make out what they were saying to each other, but as we drifted closer to each other, the picture became clearer - it was the female voice against two male voices.

The exchange was something like:

Female: leave me alone o.

First male: leave you for where?

Second male: wetin you come do here?

First male: fear no even catch you to come pass this place.

Female: (more frantic now): why can’t I pass here?

Second male: you still dey get mouth to talk? See the kin cloth wey you wear come dey pass for here?

First male: block am for the other side. No let am escape.

Then their footfalls became heavier and more rapid as the two young people, half in fear (I felt) and half in lust (of course), engaged the young girl (who could only mutter a low, H-e-l-p) in a run-walk as they all turned a bend darting across my path. As they did so, I quickly steadied myself, cleared my throat and in as commanding a voice as my nerves could permit, let out a: ‘What is happening here?’ This startled the two men and gave the young woman some leverage to quickly jump over the gutter and dash across the main road. One of the men gave a brief chase but returned after the woman slid into the nearest street. The other man was now face to face with me as his partner returned to us, actually charged back towards me. With nerves jangling inside me and unable to think of anything else, I repeated my earlier line: ‘what is happening here, I say?’, trying hard to keep my voice steady.

From the hasty estimate I made, the one who had gone after the lady was about 6feet tall while his accomplice was almost 5 inches taller than me. They both easily towered above me and of course, had the numerical advantage, plus what if one of them suddenly thought to himself: ‘wait a minute, when did they start recruiting dwarfs into the Nigerian Police Force’ (for I was actually hoping they would pass me for a policeman)? Thankfully though, they both showed enough nervousness themselves for me to seize on to and ask them if neither of them had a sister or any other female relative at home and whether they would like it if she was raped by men like them. Six-Feet replied, ‘wetin the girl sef dey wear trouser dey find for this kind place?’ Without any further word they both hissed and muttered some words I couldn’t understand before they went back through the way they had chased the lady from.

That lady had been lucky for the fields around the corner from where they had chased her are verdant with criminals and criminal activities of every ilk. Therefore, she could have been raped there for as long as those filths wanted without anybody coming to her rescue. Whether she would have made it without my intervention or not, I am not to know. And I know I was staking my safety and even my life by being so rash, but hey what if that lady was wearing just undergarments? Does that give anybody the franchise to her body? For all we know she might have been a commercial sex worker. Afterall the space just off the main road behind Egbeda market from where they had chased her is usually lined with commercial sex workers at night. But even if that were the case, those women are called commercial sex workers because you have to pay an agreed fee to be able to have sexual encounter with them.

One of those dogs blamed the lady for wearing what she wore, (a tank top as top garment, from what I noticed)for their advances, but how does that concern his phallus or groin? How does that rationalize the fact of him or anyone else forcefully having their way with her? You hear people often blaming rape victims for inviting trouble on themselves by the way the victims dress, but I will believe that the woman is to blame only if and when any man will be so titillated by what they see in a woman’s dressing as to grab her and mount her in the full glare of all, whether at the market, school, mosque, church or any other place filled with people. If you claim to be aroused by a woman’s dressing, yet you only satisfy your randy craving when you are alone with your victim in a secluded area, then you must be disturbed by some other demons other than the woman’s. You are simply a lecherous, vile and depraved cowardly beast. And if anybody throws the most serious intentioned ko ni ragba fun e… or something worse your way a zillion times over for so existing, believe me, they are only just starting.