On Sunday, 05 October 2014, he wrote the following story titled, “ HYPERLINK “http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/sunday/index.php/because-i-care/18320-gratitude-in-dependence” Gratitude in dependence”. Listen to the following excerpts:
It is another celebration of Nigeria’s independence. Speeches have been made about how great we are as an independent country.
However, as president come 2015, I know when to be thankful to all the people who make sure that Nigeria is still standing; the people without whom we would be in real trouble. I am disappointed that President Jonathan didn’t think to do this, but here goes: Thank you English football and the UEFA Champions League. For providing a distraction for young Nigerians who would otherwise have had the time to worry about a failed country. You don’t know it yet, but English football and the Champions League has (sic) contributed to our stability as a nation, so that instead of quarrel about development, we can spend time fighting over Arsenal and Manchester United. And for this we say, God bless you. Thank you Holland. For easing the nerves of Nigerians with our most popular brand of beer…. Thank you for helping us effectively wash our sorrows. Thank you South Africa. For all the companies that make our lives bearable. For DSTV, without which we would be stuck with government propaganda and adverts. For Shoprite. For keeping some of our terrorists in your hygienic, safe jails. Our jails would be far too unhygienic for them. Thank you Dubai. For keeping the wives and mistresses of our corrupt leaders busy with interesting, expensive hobbies. For providing a safe haven when our corrupt politicians are too scared to go into America or Britain. Thank you Switzerland. For safely storing all the money stolen from our country…
Thank you Germany. For Julius Berger. Without whom in the event of an emergency, we would be in serious trouble. Thank you for all our major roads and bridges. Thank you Ghana, Cyprus, Ukraine, Malaysia… for providing not-too-rich Nigerians an opportunity to give their children a decent education. Thank you America, for sometimes stepping in and telling our president what to do. For that accent that our radio presenters across the country try so desperately to copy. Radio would be dead without you. We love you. Thank you Brazil. For all your unselfish women who give up their awesome hair that our women may look beautiful. And China for making sure the women who can’t afford human Brazilian hair can at least buy artificial hair. Thank you Benin Republic. For all the cooks who keep the expatriates in Nigeria nourished while they provide us technical expertise and foreign aid. Thank you UK. For DFID without which most of our hospitals would crash. For the projects which provide decent employment for our consultants and PhD’s and other development hustlers. For helping us track some corrupt politicians so that we could find them and pardon them. Because if you had not caught them, how else would we have forgiven them. Thank you foreign journalists. For asking the questions our journalists are too underpaid to ask. For being the only ones our president will speak to. For telling us the things we would never have found…
Thank you Malala. For informing our president about the plight of the missing school girls and extracting a commitment from him. We appreciate you. Thank you Washington Post. For those editorials that spurred our President to action. May you continue to sell. Thank you, Western countries in general. For granting asylum to those who cannot be gay in Nigeria, both real and fake. We appreciate your patience in dealing with the flood of applications. Thank you China. For the shinier, cheaper versions of all the things most of our people cannot afford. Ps. It would be nice if your people mixed with our people sometimes. We are Ebola free. Thank you Israel for all the guns. For helping our leaders spy on us. For protecting our leaders from us. What would we do without you? Thank you Harvard. For providing a space for ex government officials to soothe their consciences and (re)write the history of their time in government. We love those books. Thank you Germany, England and India. For preserving the quality of life of our politicians and making sure they are healthy and able to rule us well. For also treating their families and providing a decent place for our wealthy to die..
There it is, the hilarious but sobering picture of our condition of alienation and dependency. We live in borrowed clothes, and revel in such mimicry, frittering away our resources like mindless puppets.
As writers, it is our business to chronicle these events of our individual and collective life, and in doing so, our writing signals on that chronicle in such a way that it turns to prophecy, to a warning in advance of coming catastrophe or crisis.
Thus for instance, all those who are complaining now of the militarization and corruption that have become the bane of our politics, must be those who never watched nor read Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, which was first performed in Ife in 1977.
If they did, they would remember that moment, now so tellingly prescient, when the protagonist, Retired Major Lejoka Brown, now Chairman of the National Liberation Party, lays out his campaign plans to the members of the party’s executive committee:
LEJOKA-BROWN. Gentlemen, our election campaign plans must follow a pattern of military strategy known as surprise and attack. Now, what is: surprise and attack? Surprise and attack, Gentlemen, is “to catch the enemy off-guard, and wipe out his power before he can mobilize enough forces to launch a counter-attack.” Are you there… we shall concentrate our early campaigns on the outskirts…in the villages…in the tiny fishing suburbs…and so on…. Now then. About one month before election day, we launch a sudden two-pronged drive from the small towns and villages right into the big towns and cities. Our political enemies are…SURPRISED. [Clears his throat.] Then the attack… [More ardently.] From city to city, we run over the whole State with a heavy artillery of campaign speeches. And, brothers, by the time our enemies rally together to put up a resistance…[Throws his arms up.] …all over. We carry Ibadan…Abeokuta falls under our feet…we uproot Ilesha…Oyo trembles into our open arms…we welcome Ogbomosho..Ilorin opens the door, and we’re in the north, Gentlemen. Once there, an arm of our propaganda brigade crosses over to Jos, Jos to Oturkpo, heading south…Enugu puts up a tough fight, we hop over Enugu…march through Port Harcourt…sweep Calabar…we begin campaigning in Onitsha…cross over the bridge, dance through Asaba, shake up Benin, hop over to Warri and fullstop….”
When the other party members object to this tactics, he berates them angrily:
“What do you people know about politics–I mean hard-bone politics? Small, small boys all of you… You think politics in book is politics in real life? You lie, Book-heads! Politics means action, and action means war!…”
The play, let me again remind you, was performed in 1977, some 30 clear years before the coming of the famous “Do-Or-Die” formula of the Obasanjo era.
The Brother Jeros who have since blossomed into these rambunctious prosperity gospellers of our times; the Lejoka-Browns and Chief Nangas who are in commanding positions in our political parties; the Jagua Nanas and Segilolas who strut the streets of Lagos and Abuja and decorate the glamour pages of our new media; the Eshuoros and Arogidigbas who people our cities and our parliaments; and numerous other tropes from the pages of our books, all have incarnated into live figures now presiding over our contemporary times.
Leave a Reply