Return to the Barber’s Shop

 

By Chidi Amuta

Drought of inspiration and content is the occasional affliction of every writer. Every newspaper columnist, creative writer or content provider experiences that moment of drought when you can think of nothing in particular to dwell on. You do not feel like writing or creating anything. It is either that the reality around you has become so overwhelming  that you feel a powerlessness in words or ideas. It might be that the reality of the society unfolding before your eyes is so commonplace that you risk repeating yourself on issues of common concern. At such moments, the creative energy of those who have gone before evaporates into the futility of words when only transformative action will do. Why waste our time with words? Maybe, the recourse to words is the fallback of the weak, those who have surrendered to the crushing weight of a reality they cannot change.  Talkatives are perhaps the most despicable of cowards.

In times of emptiness and creative drought, the reality of experience evaporates into a nagging anger with the self. Yet there are many out there who derive daily energy and awakening from the few words that we string together once a week. Our power derives from that sporadic inspiration which we lend to the many who have come to see us as spokespersons of history in motion.  Over time, people crown us in inflated titles: ‘renowned writer’, ‘leading columnist’. And we begin to see ourselves as bearers of power and partakers in a realm of power. In reality, we do little for anyone other than our ego. We may even be deceiving ourselves with the illusion that anyone out there is listening to us. In reality, we may be a squad of nattering nuisance. Ayi Kwei Armah calls us “communicators doomed to silence”.

Nigeria can kill creativity. It can drain life out of creative energy. Our land can drain the spirit of even the most fecund imagination. Nigeria can also be fertilizer for arid minds. Its negativity can feed you content. The same things keep happening over and over. People assume high office with Oluwole certificates. Empty people assume positions of incredible power and authority and dress themselves in fancy titles and accolades. A less than mediocre person who insists on being called “Your Excellency”! They actually get sworn in by a judge with either a Bible or a Koran. They invite guests including officiating clergy to eulogize them and say flowery prayers about their ascendancy to Mount Zion. ‘And the ubiquitous traditional rulers are in attendance always. They invoke the spirit of illustrious ancestors to bear witness to a drama of emptiness, fraud and falsehood. No one knows exactly how much their royal eminences are paid as consultancy fees. But believe me, they are paid transport fare, return business class air  ticket, two nights accommodation in a five star hotel, rented limousine for ground transportation. No one knows what else accompanies the generosity of such ancestral hospitality. Those who act on behalf of ancestors must speak in whispers.

This is not exactly about traditional rulers and ambassadors of our ancestors. It is about a nation consumed by the fetish of power and superstition. It is also  about a writer lost in the maze of finding meaning in a wilderness when the days are empty when the muse takes flight and you feel like phoning the Editor to fill the page with something else. I call them hungry days.

On such days, I have devised two means of filling my column and finding readers who, like me, are thinking of nothing in particular. It is either I reflect on the state of the nation in my periodic “How Country?” pieces or I head for the Barber’s shop at the street junction in Ikeja. In the Barber’s shop, you never run out of content. Forget the anachronism of a seventy-something-year-old man without much hair left heading into the Barber’s shop all the time. He is either out to mock himself or the Barber! Either way, the Barber gets paid for his “services”. The Barber’s shop down the road is strategically located at the junction that leads nowhere and everywhere. You get your direction to wherever you want from the shop. It leads to the market, the garage, the airport, the jail house, the police station, the army cantonment from where they used to truck innocent men to the Bar Beach to be executed for doing exactly what they cannot remember.

Most importantly, the Barber’s shop is everything. It is a parliament  of the unelected, a library of illiterate walking encyclopedia, a Wikipedia with 24-hour on-duty staffers, human mines of extant information. Most times, a good half of the occupants do not need a barber. I understand they pay for their “seats” to spend the day as information warehouses. Some of these men have travelled all over the world in pursuit of careers as diverse as you know what: stewards on ships from Burma to Gold Coast, soldiers in the West African Frontier force, ex cooks for colonial officers, valets for politicians, laundry men for the underpants of politicians’ whores. There were men here who  had worked on boats that travelled regularly from Liverpool to Bombay. There were soldiers and sea farers, policemen retired because they had become useless at the checkpoint because the tolls they collected were no longer enough to make returns to their bosses. Just people. One man used to be armed with a week-old newspaper under his armpit from which he reeled off stories that mixed fiction with rumour and speculation.

At the Barber’s shop, you listen with your ears to the ground. The current stories are mixed with anecdotes from long ago. One minister has just been asked to resign his lucrative post for presenting the President with university degree certificates that he bought at Oluwole in Lagos and paid with counterfeit dollars! Someone interjected that the matter of bad certificates is not strange in these parts and times. Someone once showed up here to ask if the Big Man himself has shown us his certificates. No one even knows the schools he attended. All the schools he is said to have attended have all denied him. He even flew in a ‘former class mate whom he introduced with fanfare. One crack head proved with figures that the classmate was a fraud. No one knows how the man left town and never showed up again.

 Another minister was sacked for not even having the decency to dignify the government with any credentials. When the time comes, we shall all line up for a certificate pageant! After all, one big man swore to an affidavit that his old NEPA bill was a school certificate issued by a Sunday school even though the big man himself was a devout Muslim. What fake certificates will do in Nigeria is wearing a fez cap!

Once upon a time, one fine woman became a minister in this land. No certificate. No referrals. No work experience. She was escorted into the Senate chambers for hearings. “What is the first line of the National Anthem?”: ‘Arise O Computerite; Nigeria we hail thee…” They asked her to take a bow and be seated! She was “Minister for End of Poverty.” Three months later,  news broke that the poverty she alleviated was only hers! She paid all the money meant for the poor into her friend’s private account. They asked her to go quietly after a courtesy call at the EFCC !

We live in exciting times. It is the age of anonymity. In this age, ignorance is bliss and peace of mind. If you seek knowledge, go to court!

When I arrived the Barber’s shop, there was excitement. Some new gist must follow. In times of excitement, the Barber’s shop graduated into an emergency beer parlour. Booze for all !!! was my way of announcing my return after a long absence.

When I arrived the Barber’s shop, there was excitement. Recitations of my past heroic exploits in the realm of journalism and contacts with the high and mighty in government and power filled the air. I had always gone and returned to the folks at the Barber’s shop. They are my people. Among us over the years had grown a fellow feeling, a bond of mutual trust and confidence. In good and bad times, we stand together on the same side of the road of life’s turbulence. Each time duty takes me away, I say to them my farewells like family. We hold hands as they pray their farewells ad later drift into popularity street songs:

 Every good thing that goes away

Must return to source

Go and return a part of us

The river never goes away

It returns to its source

The source

Our source and convergence …

My frequent departures and returns are greeted with excitement and anticipation. When duty calls, the pull of informal solidarity must yield to the stronger pull of professional survival or family emergencies. You end up in the Barber’s shop when time allows for the informality of Group think and creative reflection. The anticipation of your return is always there:  some new gist must flow. In times of excitement, the Barber’s shop graduates into an emergency beer parlour, a place of free Booze for all!!!

That was always one of my ways of announcing my return after a long absence. I watch them with pleasure as they drain the last drops of the rare cold beer. One of them we fondly call “Alhaji” delights in pointing out to the others that my generosity in providing the rare cans of beer should not make them forget to ask me why I provide the booze but artfully never drink any alcohol!  Everyone believes Alhaji is like me, never drinking alcohol out of choice. In this place, no one cares what faith you are.

Then one day, I sauntered into the bathroom to pee. And there was Alhaji struggling to sneak back his small storage can of whiskey into the pocket of his voluminous robe. He smiled at me knowingly. In the silent exchange of smiles of conspiracy between us, volumes of things not sayable had been said between us. What manner of kindness makes a man feed others what he will not eat? We are Nigerians. What you eat does not make me fat!

My return journey to the Barber’s shop always begins with an early morning call to the Ikeja Underbridge. There is one of the headquarters of our unregistered “Free Readers Association”. It is the gathering point of all news vendors in the area. We all as prospective newspaper buyers are allowed the rare privilege of ‘free reading’ to sample the day’s news. This place is unique. It is a parliament without the without the splendor of pompous architecture. It has method, not the foolishness of officialdom. It contains the most avid patriots. They are knowledgeable without much schooling. They are politicians without party card. Professors with neither Chair nor specialized accreditation. We are journalists with global expanse of knowledge. Secret agents of unregistered agencies and free rangers specializing in interminable areas. We know the solutions to all the nation’s problems except that the voters are so foolish they keep voting for the wrong people called politicians. Or they vote and go home, allowing INEC to announce fake results.

They are ready to start another argument any time. Are politicians born, trained or bred? How do great leaders emerge? Why do some nations have the best leaders and the rest of us are left in the hell hole of Armageddon and the fire pits of burning Babylon?

In the last six months, I noticed that our numbers have increased as the cover prices of newspapers have increased. Hardly any of us on an honest income can afford to buy newspapers daily for a whole month. But something else that is ‘good’  has happened. Most of us are now clutching cheap cell phones. The news comes into our phones, stares us in the face and taunts us all day long. Rumour has it that the old cunning President General from Owu thought it was better to license cell phones, arm every Tom and Dick with a phone. They will recharge the phones, buy accessories, pay subscriptions, set up phone accessory kiosks, transfer money via the phones etc. It will all come to a lot of money swimming around the economy, some of which could have been stolen by officialdom and politicians without the owner noticing. It is more decent tasking a million thieves than allowing a few access into the till of public money. Enter the era of digital robbery! Thieves need to work a bit harder!

Initially, I was troubled by the fear of the coming of digital online news and journalism. Don’t even talk of digital marketing, merchandising and advertising. The mixture of fake news, false advertising and plain crookedness is the herald of Armageddon! Nigeria without  digitalization is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Arm the Nigerian with digital tools and you have the making of hell: cybercrimes, 419, disinformation, weaponized lies dancing as the ‘gospel truth’.  God save your people, if there are still some of us left by the time of the Second Coming!

Online instantaneous journalism was going to kill editors as a power bloc. It was going to remove the exclusivity of the media as the fourth estate of the realm and return power where it rightly belongs- to the three estates of the realm, the abode of those who contested and won elections. The coming of Everyman as an editor, commentator, Op-Ed writer and advocate- are some of the liabilities of the digital news era. It marks the coming of the Idiot as Editor, an illiterate who feels entitled to a say in the things that concern everyone else. The new media kills off the circulation agent, the newspaper bulk transporter, the crooks that run the circulation rackets of newspaper houses and even the street vendor. No need to carry piles of wet newspapers in the rain, chasing after motorists that are all wound up in cars with tinted glass windows, sometimes hiding decorated criminals. Let the news go straight to the readers or let the readers tap the touch screen and lo and behold, news is breaking in America. A bad marksman did not aim correctly and merely grazed Mr. Trump’s right ear at that rally. World history was almost fatally altered by that shift of the hand.  God saved the idiot king so that America can taste dictatorship and decide on the way forward.

But in spite of this ‘direct entry’ newsfeed by the wonders of technology, our Free Readers Association is alive and well, growing in numbers. The news updates may be spoon-fed into your phone. No technology can create the sense of shared relief, grief or betrayal that initially brought us together as one ‘free-reading community, a people, bound in shared betrayal and unending disappointments. No technology can replace the fellow feeling among us at the Bus Stop under bridge. We are unemployed; we are owing the Landlord many months rent in arrears, we can no longer travel to the village to collect free food from the farms because the bandits have taken over the highways and narrow farm paths and our very brothers who used to wait for handouts from us have found it more enterprising and lucrative to kidnap us for ransom instead of waiting for miserable handouts.

This morning under the Bridge, people are admiring each other’s cell phones. Some are American, Swiss, Japanese. Most are Chinese! Most good things these days are made in China! Then someone brought out some lovely but garish looking ones. Guess where they are made? Vietnam! Someone screamed. An old lady among us sighed as she admired the Vietnamese phone. “These days, every country  makes things to sell to others except us!” “ But we make something also! We make Innoson cars and trucks! Yes and Dangote makes petrol to sell at N1000 a litre to people who buy a liter of blood at the General Hospital for N500.  We also make trouble. We manufacture Yahoo Yahoo Boys! We make crooks and thieves and put them in charge of government coffers! We place goats in charge of barns of yams. The South Africans are coming with their own cell phones, somebody added from the crowd. I hear their own is intuitive phone-IP-. If I think of you, it dials your number. If you refuse to answer, it knows why. I  am owing you N10,000  which is long overdue.  If you lie about your location, its own version of Siri will whisper your actual whereabouts to me without calling you a liar! Humanity will destroy itself with technology one of these days!

I quickly scan the front pages, back pages and editorial cartoon pages of major national dailies. Free Readers hace rues. Don’t study the papers. Just scan quickly without showing interest. Someone in the crowd informs us that the then new President – Alhaji General  Ibrahim Bukari- only reads the cartoon pages after which he laughs to himself, to those around or laughs at himself while waiting for the verdict of the courts on why his school certificates are still missing many years after he started serving in various governments as a wise man of the land.

Among we ordinary folk, the things that ignite excitement and celebration are not lofty. They are little things that touch the heart. The brief absence of a fellow traveler on the road of ordinary life. The recovery of a friend from unforeseen illness. The return of  a loved one from a distant journey.

From the morning parliament of Free Readers, I try to see if much has changed in the neighbourhood. A great deal but more remains the same.  Not much to gladden the heart. Government agents have visited the area with bulldozers. They showed up suddenly after many months of notice to demolish shops, buildings, shanties  etc.  Weeks afterwards, a gale of speculations follow the demolitions. It was Town Planning. It was targeted at one ethnic group who thrive on shop-based retail trade. They keep voting the wrong party, not showing enough gratitude to their ‘hosts’, the owners of the land upon which they trade and make fortunes. Ingratitude is a heinous sin forgotten by God during the final editing of the Ten Commandments.

By the time I looked through the window, there was a trickle of regular customers coming in. It was time to take my leave from the Shop, having announced my return to the Shop. I reluctantly took my leave, leaving behind me the solidarity and unconditional love of the indomitable people of the shop. I was glad to leave the Shop and return to my real world duty where I just learnt that the President had taken off to Rome; he had also granted pardon to a gamut of criminals and sundry miscreants, including ambitious soldiers contemned and executed by duly constituted military tribunals many decades ago. More excitingly, nearly every state governor in the opposition PDP had recently decamped to the ruling APC wagon.

*This article (1 and 2 combined here) by Dr Chidi Amuta  was first published by Thisday