Blessed people, low will, little direction

Nigeria is indeed an interesting place to live in and to observe. The expression “never a dull moment,” is hardly more aptly descriptive of the antecedents of any other country. Even amidst the current global economic meltdown and a concomitant urgency by governments and other corporate institutions to keep their countries or institutions going in the right direction, all we seem to, in our characteristic comical manner, demonstrate is that we cannot be bothered to change the status quo, however unbeneficial it may be to us. What with the likes of grand old Rilwanu Lukman back in power as petroleum minister more than 20 years after he first held the same position while Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili positions the horse right behind the cart as we run into a blind alley chanting “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation.” I have picked bellow, three current/recent issues, to encapsulate my meaning.

Iwu, INEC and the rest of us

Thirty-six state election results, 12 nullifications on first instance or appellate proceedings, five partial or full re-run; and so far, two unseating without re-run. By all accounts this represents the outcome of a shambolic process. And these are figures from the election conducted by the Maurice Iwu-led Independent(?) National Electoral Commission, INEC, in 2007.

Statistically put; 12 out of 36 is exactly 33.3% of the total number of governorship elections that took place in 2007; five re-run means that approximately 40% of the 12 nullification so far has led to the preventable sacrificing of voters’ precious time and scarce government resources. In saner climes whoever oversees such a shoddy process would throw in the towel or be shown the exit as soon as tongues start wagging about inconsistencies in the process. But Nigeria is an appalling exception on such issues - here, such people are even canonized. Any wonder then that rather than throw in the towel, the man who oversaw the elections has remained as steadfast in his resolve to remain in office as he and his cohorts had been about holding those mock elections? Little wonder also that those who should show him the way out have decided that, as tainted and culpable as Iwu’s INEC is in the mortgaging of our political soul, the man is still morally and intellectually fit to continue in office as Nigeria’s principal electoral umpire.

Tragically, we have reduced a serious social, moral and economic subject matter to a mere legal issue in which few seem to be interested in the fact that precious resources of the masses are being wasted in the electoral trials and re-runs that have been and will be the game until 2011. No one is paying attention to what should happen to the likes of Olusegun Agagu and Osarheimen Osunbor or those who put them in office wrongfully for two years. As we are all engrossed with legalese, few are saying anything about what this mess could do to the attitude of the electorate during futures elections in this country.

Once again, therefore, we are inexorably setting the stage for another round of political simulation come 2011. And from there, of course, another manic rush to election petition tribunals across the land until 2015 and then we start again. What a circus!

Siasia, the Messiah of Nigerian football

Talking about circuses, that the powers that be in Nigerian football, in their wretched wisdom, have decided that Samson Siaisia is the solution to our acute lack of knowledge of modern football business surely qualifies as one.

Since the last FIFA U-17 World Championship in 2007, youngsters like Bojan Krkij (Barcelona and Spain); Dan Gosling (Everton) and Danny Welbeck (Manchester United), both of England; and Toni Kroos (Bayern Munich and Germany), to name a few, have continued to rise to football prominence. Our supposed equivalents to these players from the same tournament - the likes of Ganiyu Oseni, Chrisantus Macaulay, Rabiu Ibrahim and Lukman Haruna – have continued to move in exactly the opposite direction, football career-wise. And there are no prizes for guessing the reason this is so.

However, if you argue that the problem does not begin with our players’ ‘certificated’ age and you try to tell me that others cheat also, I will feign agreeing with you and tell you in plain George Orwell Napoleonese that: ‘all national cadet football teams have over-age players, but some teams are more over-age than others,’ fin.

Given his coaching antecedents, Siasia could go on to win the U-20 Championship for Nigeria in Egypt in September. After that we may also require him to handle the Super Falcons or any of the female national teams. In the same breath, we shall await the fortuitous discovery of the hidden talent of the next footballer anywhere in the world, with the minutest amount of Nigerian blood in his veins, to try to convince into wearing the Nigerian colours in international football.

After all, because Siasia is that good, because we have perpetually failed to plan, because we must win at all costs, because we lose our moral footing once a few wads of whatever currency are involved and because we cannot separate priorities from everything else, we may well never have any discernible sports policy. We may as well also never have proper football academies or train our coaches and respect those of them who have what it takes to do a decent job of coaching any of our national teams in any sports whatsoever. Let serendipity continue to rule in our sports.

Painting warped pictures and begging topical questions

As for priorities, where exactly do you start relating to a man who does not know but does not know that he does not know and does not even have enough independent judgment or inclination to wanting to know?

I sit here typing away furiously because I fear that the electricity that miraculously beamed into my house this morning will go off soon. The Niger Delta is still simmering, amnesty or not. There are even more graduates without jobs to hold on to today. ASUU is still on strike while the blokes in Abuja want us to believe that education cannot exhaust its budget for the year. Children and mothers are dying every second in hospitals across the country, and those who can afford the fee daily fly out to China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Israel, and even Ghana, for ailments as common as dental surgery.

But in spite of and despite all of this, the only issue that seems to be of life-and-death value to our president and his cabinet is the existence of some so-called illegal Local Council Development Areas in Lagos State. And to tell you not to ever get your hopes up on him, the northern part of the country are up in conflagration but dear Mr. President has quietly and comfortably slipped out to Brazil to do some Salsa and Samba, I suppose.

But then this is all in keeping with the programme, isn’t it? It fits perfectly with the lack of direction and sense of priority in our economic, sports, political life, etc, that has made us buffoons before the outside world. And for these and similar shortfalls, Dora Akunyili, like others before her, is now in Sokoto in search of that which is right inside our sokoto.

I first posted part of this article to www.nigeriansinamerica.com two months ago.

Happy birthday to moi

Hurraaay! It’s my birthday today as I’m a year older today, and of course, another year closer to my grave, isn’t it? I don’t personally count birthdays or any other anniversaries as overtly special, as I believe every single day calls for celebration for the most wonderful gift of all: waking up to the knowledge that you are still breathing and alive, although whether you or someone else believe you are more useful alive or dead is another topic altogether.

This particular birthday is kind of special in that it was the same date, the same day, the same month, those many years ago that one morning, in some far-flung place amongst the innings of a certain woman, I, after adjusting my initial posture, jumped down into this world, feet first (yes I’m sure I came feet first) through a tiny hole between the woman’s legs. Some nine months or so prior to that, two young people both of Edo extraction, one estrogen-filled, the other testosterone-pumped and both certainly adrenaline-charged, had one hot afternoon (it has to have happened not on a morning or evening), cuddled into each other’s arms and proceeded into a little room where they locked the world out in the heat of canal passion. they had been that determined to display their erotic prowess to each other. A little boy had emerged from that tiny hole about nine months after, as a product of that brazen exercise of biological liberty and conjugal right.

Sometime afterward, someone somewhere had, after what I suspect must have been painstaking consideration, pronounced the new child Jibril. Later on, someone also added another name, calling the boy Oyake, meaning ‘it is a human being we desire’. The little boy later decided that Oyake was somewhat outlandish, even inane, in meaning. Bless you, what else should we expect to result from a pregnancy by a human being, a piece of rock or bamboo? Suffice to say that the boy changed that mundane name, first to Amhanoghena = ‘you can’t decide for God,’ through many others, before finally settling for the potentially tongue-wrenching Atsaguoghena (God’s ways are beyond prediction), a name he has only once ever used in writing and rarely even been called by. However, he pays pecuniary attention to the usage of his other name as he has spent the last one score-plus years protecting it from being bastardised with variants like Zibri, Jubril, Jubrila, Jibrin, Jubrin, Jibiri, etc. It is that boy - Jibril’s -birthday today.

Now, I know that since I am not blowing out any candles on a birthday cake today, then I should at least, make a birthday wish. So, I will make three. And dear God, I know that when earlier this morning I sat down praying to you for what I am about to ask of you again now, I, for whatever reason, shut only one eye while pretending to shut both (as if I even needed to close the eyes), I hope you can all the same overlook that tiny winy indiscretion and consider this particular request as I make it again.

You see, I have been under intense scrutiny lately from friends and relations who feel that I should have some company of the opposite sex each time they see me. They fear that I might not be doing something right, hence the fact that, as they accuse me of, they don’t know my girlfriend and I don’t seem to have any immediate plans to marry. If I must convince them of my desire to marry, they say it must be noticed in my ability to punctuate every of my contribution to a conversation with “my girlfriend,” “my fiancée,” and so on. Even the ones, both male and female, who are geriatrics compared to me and who are as unattached as a baby separated from its umbilical cord, also subject me to this verbal volley. And I am only just one score and some years old o.

Dear giver of wife (girlfriend and fiancée first), please let this be the day you start to direct my girlfriend-cum-fiancee-cum-wife my way. Actually my specifications are not that stringent. Please let her be in the mould of an Agbani Darego, but hey, not quite an Agbani. I mean lips like Angelina Jolie’s should be part of her bucal package, and they should not be quite as large as Jolie’s. Of course, you know Rita Dominic, ehen, just some hybrid of hers and Jolie’s, or preferably Salma Hayek’s. The eyes should be set like Bimbo Akintola’s, half asleep, half awake, but they should also carry as much fire as Regina Askia’s. That is not to say I want her to have exactly Askia’s eyes o, just telling you that they should inculcate an element from hers. In case that is confusing you, how about Ayo Adesanya’s eyes, I’d like those too, OK, maybe not entirely, at least not in exactly the same size, perhaps in the size and with the colour of that Indian woman, what's her name now? Yes, Aishwarya Rai’s own.

As for her legs, dear giver of woman, I’d prefer one with Tina Turner’s legs - strong, straight and without blemish, but they should not be quite as big either. Let them come in a similar package to the ones a sixteen-year-old Whitney Elizabeth Houston had, but maybe not as skinny, close to Beyonce’s, but not really in that size. Mmmmh... ok just let them be somewhere in between Halle Berry’s and Anna Kournikova’s legs (hope you still remember Anna?).

I have told you before that she should be like an Agbani, and I hope you realise that means she should not be an orobo? And you also realize that that does not mean I want a stick figure, abi? Let me summarise that thus: bust: check; hips: double check; breast: check, check, check. Let me remind you that this does not mean I want a Cossy Ojiakor or a Ronke Oshodi Oke, just something between Salma Hayek, JLo, with a tincture of Omowunmi Akinifesi, with the dimples, although in Jenifer Garner’s dimple size and with the wacky appeal of Funmi Iyanda’s own.

Then, giver of wife, let me not bother you too much with details of her intellectual composition, but just know that I would prefer anything in that respect to include the spontaneity of Funmi Iyanda. She must also be able to speak the English language with a hybrid accent from Queen Elizabeth II, Omotayo Omotosho, Bimbo Oloyede and Joke Silva, to start with. It doesn’t matter how she achieves it, she should just manage to do it. Lest I forget, as my standard test, she must also be one who can pronounce water as water instead of worer, wotaah or any such ridiculous modes. This is in addition to pronouncing chair as chair, instead of share, sheer, chei, chear, cheer, etc. And also … ok even I am exhausted now, so I’ll save the rest for now.

Over to request number two, dear mighty One. Please, biko, jowo, dan Allah, abeg, tse, s'il vous plait, when I go to sleep later tonight, I want to wake up tomorrow morning to the knowledge that Chief Dr. Lecturer Mr. Alhaji Mallam Go-slow Umaru, son of Musa Yar’adua, GCON, GCFR, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has finally woken up from what right now, still seems to me like a two-and-half-years-long slumber on duty. Either this, dear God or that he has decided to take a break and has handed in a resignation letter. If you saw the front page of the Guardian newspaper on Thursday, you may be able to understand how urgently he needs to heed to my alternative solution.

Finally, just like Robert Frost, I’d like to take a little holiday, not to Hawaii, not to decadent Las Vegas, not to Obudu Cattle Ranch, not to divine Bahamas, not to sexy Las Palmas and not to Dubai, but to somewhere out of this world, somewhere beyond the clouds above, although not in an aeroplane or space machine. But may no fate willfully misunderstand me and snatch me away forever.

Second finally, God bless Nigeria, starting with me, of course!

Hip! Hip!! Hip!!!