By Yahaya Balogun.
“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”
•Richard Bach.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Abraham Lincoln.
The brimming picture from the Aso Rock’s giant Dot tube stirring the face of a frail Bàbá Bubu speaks more than a thousand words. Read this conversational verbiage from the imaginary mind of Bàbá Bubu:
Imaginary questioner: what is in a man’s mind?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (Baba Bubu, mildly indignant as he watches his Aso Rock dot Tube to see how hard currencies are being sprayed). Kai kai, Nigerian citizens have no reasons to be poor!
Imaginary questioner: why did you say that, Baba Bubu?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (sad and regretful looks on his face)
we are very very rich. As in…. very “fantastically corruptly” rich, and yet very very poor as a nation.
Imaginary questioner: but sir, you are administering the contradictions of a rich but poor country?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (he chuckles)
eh, hem…I wish I am still a dictator in khaki regalia and still very agile with agility instead of my current fragility!
Imaginary questioner: papa, what will you do to a man who is cubanizing (coinage is mine) his people with his hard-earned money and wealth? It’s a choice of living he chooses to live his life, sir. It’s nobody’s business?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (he looks seriously)
I will dictatorially seek the sources of this stupendous wealth with no known sources. The mundane display of wealth encourages canayo O canayo, yahoo-yahoo, kidnapping, and money rituals.
Imaginary questioner: (laughs) what’s canayo O canayo, sir?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (gazes with surprise)
Aren’t you a Nigerian? You don’t watch Nollywood movies? The country I administer seems to be edging out of hard work and sanity into a ritualistic nation where instant gratification is a new norm.
Imaginary questioner: why do you complain when there is a law against sprinkling money or hard currencies like running water on women of an easy and lost virtue?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: what of the one I have enforced? The judiciary and the legislature in the arms of my administration have been an impediment to tame corruption. Some of them were even at the celebration of luxury instead of the celebration of the passage of the deceased mother.
Imaginary questioner: sir, the man is a liquor and wine mogul and businessman. He has legitimately worked and earned the profits from his returns on investment (ROI). And he has a legitimate right to spend his money the ways he deemed fit.
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: yes! I do agree. But look at my geopolitical environment, what you see are vices with insatiable and unquenchable thirst of our youths to get rich quickly. The ‘cubanization’ of our society incentivizes get-rich-quickly and de-incentivizes the lazy youths that are supposed to be the boisterous members of our society. In a country I administer, the current and new language in our (im)moral lexicon is the ‘cubanization’ (my coinage from Obi Cubana) of our collective mental structures. While six Nigerians have been declared wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation–FBI for several millions of dollars frauds of the US citizens, the entire Nigerians got ‘cubanized’ last week. The dundie encomium being poured on the Bizman on zukerville is a reflection of how ephemerality is holding sway in our troubled society.
Imaginary questioner: Bubu, sir, before we get completely ‘cubanized,’ and end this imaginary conversation, I have a germane question to ask you as regards the 2023 general election.
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (Bubu laughs wryly) what is the anticipatory question?
Imaginary questioner: anticipatory question? Bubu you seem to have anticipated my question, sir. You seem to have cloned the cubanized minds of our people?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (Bubu cheerfully agitated) I know those who I will not hand over the power. But I know the potential heirlooms who will potentially be my successors or heirs apparent.
Imaginary questioner: Are you talking about Obi Cubana for President in 2023?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: hahahahahaha…!!! Stop the joking joke joor! The transfer of power from me will not be for sale. It is high time Nigerians began to be responsible and move forward. Meritocracy should be celebrated in exchange for mediocrity. Nigeria is at the critical stage of her life. Our country will not be run by one Covidiot who ruled a superpower nation like an emperor.
Imaginary questioner: sir, why the celebration of the arrests of Kanu, Igboho, and Sowore? The consequence of the agitators is the product of the failure of your leadership to ensure security. The stakeholders of the Nigerian future are not happy with the way you’re squandering opportunities and our fragile unity. You are a father figure to all Nigerians. You need to treat every Nigerian with equal magnanimity. Bandits with evil-herdmen and agitators for good leadership are two different groups. Your government needs to explain to Nigerians why the two Nigerian groups are being treated differently, sir.
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (Bubu frowns) I am no more a dictator as people are made to believe. I am now a Democrat with the respect for the rule of law. I didn’t arrest these people. The instruments of the state arrested them for civil disturbances and seditious acts. I will allow the state law to take its course. I am not a member of the legislature nor the judiciary. I am the executive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Imaginary questioner: what of Ibraheem Yaqoub El-Zakzaky? He is an imprisoned outspoken and prominent Shi’a Muslim leader in Nigeria. Why is he still being incarcerated?
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (Bubu giggles with dryness in his wrinkled face). Nigeria is a nation-state and a secular state for that matter. You cannot incite people with religious idiosyncrasies and extremism of one section of a country against another groups within the nation-state that do not share your religious extremism and ideology. Nigeria is a secular state. Our country will not be allowed to be etched into a chronic pinnacle of extremism these Shi’ite group of Muslims have envisaged, hence we crushed their dangerous religious and political aspirations, and extremism.
Imaginary questioner: the onus is on you, sir, and your administration to provide good governance. People are suffering amid plenty in Nigeria. You should meet the legitimate concerns of people in squalor.
The lives and security of the people you lead are in jeopardy from the untouchable miscreants and bandits, hence the agitation of the “crucified citizens” to save us to see a better life, and prosperous Nigeria.
Frugal Bàbá Bubu: (Bubu muses with an unsettling demeanor as he stands up to exit the vast living room of Aso Rock). Let the law take its course I repeat. My administration is trying its best to burst corrupt practices and its affiliates in the system. My end will justify the means and posterity will judge me and my administration rightly or wrongly.
(Bàbá Bubu stands up and disappears from the spectacle into the Cozza, oh! Sorry, Ozza room).
Imaginary questioner: (the questioner sauntered his question towards Bàbá Bubu. It was too late as Bubu already exited the scene to meet his youthful and beautiful Hajia Aisha in the ozza room.
*Yahaya Balogun wrote this piece from the sunshine state of Arizona, USA.