niS sI noitacudE

Okay, Atlas Cove was somewhere nearby, yet I do not even know the names of the Naval Officers that got killed.

Today, I find it hard to rant, I can only moan. I try to write, but the numbness of my fingers as they hit the keyboard will make the man condemned to using the cyclostyle in this age of digital printing smile in cheeky triumph.

It is very unlikely that any of the so-called Boko Haram ('Boko' is Hausa for "western education" and 'Haram' is Arabic for "forbidden") sect would be reading this, afterall, they claim Western Education is demonic and to save your soul from infernal destiny, you should not bother to read nor write. Just be stupid, plain stupid.

Does Mohammed Yusuf (okay, I forgot the Ustaz prefix) of Maiduguri deserve a character from my keyboard? A ‘Western-Educated’ (he denied it....but at least he could quote the Encyclopaedia copiously) man that had lawyers, rode in SUVs, and lived the good life, reducing some disenchanted Talakawa to Almajiris!

Honestly, where were we when Boko Haram was founded in 2004? When they set up a base dubbed "Afghanistan" in the village of Kanamma in Yobe, close to the border with Niger? Now at the time I am yet to have up to a thousand visitors on my blog, these freaking dudes as at the last count had 30,200 hits in 0.17 seconds on google!

What exactly is the problem? Why would a Mosque be reduced to a façade for a grenade manufacturing company to fight back the ‘invasion of Satanic Culture’ that has been on for over two Centuries? Did God go to sleep and now so much needs one Maiduguri pseudo-cleric to help him out? Why is this Ustaz speaking the ‘demonized’ English and fighting with ‘demonized’ grenades when he is yet to reprogram his mind that has been ‘demonized’ by Western Culture?

These were my thoughts, my frustration as I trod the altar of the Talakawa Temple feeling like a Priest that ran out of incense. That was when the walls around me began to spin, whirling me into its vortex. Then all was still, except for the sound of approaching footsteps. Then I saw him, or should I say it. The creature scribbled something on paper and thrust it in my palm, walking away so fast I had no time to contort my lips into forming any articulate word.

The paper read: niS si noitacudE. This time, I was moved to the verge of reeling a barrage of unprintable words; is this some Graeco-Latinic joke or what? The walls around me sensed my frustrations and I heard ‘read it backwards’. Soon as I did, I was transported right in the midst of a mob. Now, be careful what you wish for, because I was soon to find out that this mob is none other than the grenade-in-the-mosque-making-dagger-carrying-members of the I-am-more-popular-than-you-on-google Haram Boko sect!

Instantly I was bound, the now all-too-familiar blindfold intact and after some worrisome two hour ordeal in which all I heard were gunshots, angry noises, chants and rants, I was face-to-face in a dimly lit room with a man who introduced himself as the Ustaz himself.

Honestly, I had expected a man with horns and a forked tongue, with flames literally escaping every available vent in his anatomy each time he spoke; but I was sore disappointed.

‘You are the Alfa Talakawa, right?’ At this point, I could feel Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, standing on my shoulders, whispering ‘be very afraid’ in my ears. If this man thinks he could recruit me, he picked the wrong guy. The last time I hurt a fly, it was because I joked with its name! Okay, today, I pulled the bike of the dude that bumped my car a la Bruce Banner style, but that is my closest-to-violence record (that is on record).

He did not wait for my response; he just laughed, and laughed. ‘You really think I’d want you on my team, you, a worthless kaffir! He spat. ‘I only brought you here to tell my side of the story.’ I sighed, both out of relief and indignation. Ask me any question and that will be the pattern of our interview.

Are you freaking kidding me? I almost blurted out but managed to say instead: ‘Ustaz, What is Western Education?’

Ustaz: You must be either dumb and you managed to get a ghost-writer for all that you have written or just plain cheeky, wallahi! Soon you will tell me you don’t know Colonialism!

Undaunted by the insult, I went ahead to make my point:

Mathematics has more Arabic origins than English. For instance, ‘Algebra’ comes from Arabic word (al-jabr, literally, restoration) and Algorithm was derived from the name of the great mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi.

Medicine; which the Nigerian core north has been robbed of, thanks to the complex conspiracy between the Masu Sarauta Governors and Multinational Companies and Pseudotalakawa Health Commissioners/Ministers and hot-headed ignoramus Alfas, has origins that date far back to the Ancient Hammurabi codes of Babylon and that points in the direction of the Arab world!

Now, to the democracy that you so much oppose; were there not primal forms of democracy even in Africa long before ‘Westernization’? In Yorubaland, we had the Oyomesi who regulated governance and no king approached the throne without the vote of the King-Makers. India had its own forms of democracy too, but it was actually the Greek model that the rest of the world built upon with time.

Ustaz: There you go! I was beginning to think you had some intelligence, before you added ‘Greek’ to the whole discussion. The Greeks, the Romans, Britain and eventually America are the ones that imposed Shaitan on the rest of the world! You Kaffir are quick to condemn us of violence, you are so ignorant you forgot about the Crusades and the number of people killed!

You have a point, Ustaz (I addressed him as such because I was within the proximity of his dagger), but tell me, is Islam not growing in America today? Are people converting to Islam because they have a knife on their throats? Even Christianity had more strength when people submitted to persecution and were fed to lions than when it was declared a State Religion. So why do you think it better that Islam be made a State Religion?

Ustaz: Bloody kaffir! You call the Islam of America Islam? You call the one you see in Nigeria Islam? kai! The Islam that people still go to Colonial Schools and take Colonial Medicine, the Islam that is not strong enough to take over the Country!

Ustaz, errr, have you ever heard this quote: ‘Say: O unbelievers! I do not serve that which you serve, nor do you serve Him Whom I serve: Nor am I going to serve that which you serve, Nor are you going to serve Him Whom I serve: You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion.

At this point, I was rewarded with a slap. I saw all the constellations at once and I was tempted to turn the other cheek (I mean the cheek of the other man) but discretion warned against it.

Ustaz: You dare to quote the Quran! If you really want this interview published with your blasphemous lips intact, you had better stick to the realm of our discussion!

Okay, sorry Ustaz, I said gingerly. ‘I like your wristwatch’

Ustaz: Thank you, I got it as a gift from Britain

Okay, I once saw you on BBC, and you spoke good English too.

Ustaz: What exactly is your point?

Ustaz, you are the wise one here, you drive SUVs, and you live in a Western Architectural Masterpiece, am I missing something?

Ustaz: I am in a good mood today and I will answer you. For me, it is almost too late, but I am raising a new generation from the scratch, hoping to redeem my own soul in the process. By the time we are done, Sharia will be entrenched in the Society and by then, I hope you would have been converted; I would hate to be the one to kill you.

Ustaz, who is your financier? Where did you get the money from? Why were you granted bail by the Abuja High Court earlier?

The Ustaz was livid at this point, he charged towards me with a dagger, that was when I opened my eyes and discovered I was sitting on my desk in the office. Ouch! I must have blacked out again, not again!

But really, I would have loved to ask the Ustaz why he was killed in police custody and his alleged financier, Alhaji Buji Foi summarily executed barely 24 hours after…is someone trying to hide something? MAMBM! (Me And My Big Mouth)

SOMETIME IN THE NOT SO DISTANT FUTURE

Gather round, children, take your seats. Please don’t sit too close to the well, apart from the inherent dangers; you know that is the only water supply we have left.

What I am about to share with you sounds more like a myth but they are realities, realities that once existed, but are no more.

Should you survive these turbulent times, you will of course recall you were eye witnesses to the drying up of the last river in this community, the Warri River and you probably have heard of how far the River Niger is from here.

There once was a town called Lagos, it used to be the capital of a Country we once called Nigeria. That was before the mighty Ocean (aaah, I will need to explain to you all what an ocean is, let me just call it very very big river) washed it away. Someone became the leader in that State and people started throwing rubbish everywhere till they blocked the normal path for water to flow. More houses were built close to this water…..now all that is left is the oral tradition of Eko Akete.

That black patch you see over there was called Macadam; some just called it tar. It used to be laid on the road for cars to pass. Now, I see the confusion on your faces; that rusty wreck over there is what is left of the last car that moved in this region. I would describe a car as a man-made iron horse that moves when it is filled with petrol. Sorry, I lost you, petrol was made by heating that black seep you see on what used to be our farmland. We used to heat it ourselves in what we called Refineries but sometime in the 1990s, we started buying from over the ‘big river’.

We bought from white men, no, I am not talking of albinos and I need to state this clearly. Recent prophecies indicate there would be a Third Coming of the white man. You may call it the Fourth anyway. The First time being from the time they came to buy African slaves, the Second, when they came to rule the slaves on their own soil (called Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism).

Twenty Years ago, they all left. It was a massive departure. The first time, they came in big boats called Ships, but this time, they left in Airplanes. (You know those ‘big birds’ that made noise when they passed?). Those birds don’t even fly in this region anymore.

Children, I will teach you to write. We will have to use part of the limestone brought in when I walked down to Nkalagu in Enugu last year. it is getting more expensive to sharpen chicken feather and use as pen.

Aaah! We once had Big Big Schools. Your school got bigger as you got older back then. We had one called the University. Trouble began when the man in charge of those schools felt it was better to spend money on his wedding anniversary than solve the problem. This trend continued for years, till the teachers (Lecturers) started leaving the country to teach elsewhere. Soon, there were no Vacancies, yet these people preferred to wash dead bodies in the Whiteman’s land instead of shouting at deaf ears. Most of the other teachers died of hunger.

I have to start ending my story because it is getting dark. Aaah! There was a time the walls brought out light. It was called electricity. At a point in time, the supply was failing, and some rich men started buying ‘generators’ (a metal that made walls bring out light). Then, something new happened. The whiteman made smaller metals that were cheaper, and more people started buying ‘generators’ this was a good business idea to those in charge of electricity, and because they were buying from the Whiteman and selling, they made sure electricity did not work well, till it did not work at all.

That meant more ‘generators’, more petrol, more activity of the Whiteman on our land. All talks with those that ruled Nigeria failed. Then the youths of our town started fighting back. Then some terrible things happened.

November 1999, Soldiers sacked a whole community called Odi. Not even the goats were spared. That is a sad story for another day.

Almost Ten years later, June 2009, it was Gbaramatu’s turn. At this time, a lot of charlatan militants had risen, most of whom were serving the politicians (just call them rulers so you won’t get confused) and were dumped after ‘Service’.

All this time, the attack was on the Niger Delta. So the people of Lagos could not be bothered. A month after the Gbaramatu incident, they attacked Lagos too. Terrible repercussions followed and in the end, almost all the oil installations had been destroyed. Our community was also on the verge of total extinction.

Years after, the Whiteman found an alternative to petrol and they stopped buying from Nigeria. Unfortunately, Nigeria had nothing more to sell. That was when the North decided to part ways. The Southwest decided to do so too. It is funny that in a war called Civil War I, it was the East and the Niger-Delta that fought to part ways. This time, we fought to stay. If the North spent their entire Groundnut and the West all their Coccoa, and they refused to go in the past, why should we let go, now that the Oil is useless?

I wish it were that easy. It was extremely bloody. The Whiteman made huge sales from the guns both sides used to ‘finish’ each other.

That was how we arrived at today. I say this because the Whiteman once claimed there was no civilization in Africa when they came. Some of them will say it again.

I think it is in order for me to let you know that ‘Whiteman’ does not refer to them all. Talakawas exist among The White race too. My ancestor taught me that. The White Masu Sarauta are the ones that sired their own kind amongst us. The Blackman never learns. There would never have been slavery if we never enslaved our kind. Those who made money from selling huge guns would never have had a flourishing business if we did not make a sport out of killing each other.

The White Masu Sarauta was just doing business. But the Black Masu Sarauta played it too far.

All these type of people may not make meaning to you now, children. But I am telling you so I can prepare you for the Third Coming of the Whiteman.

It is getting very dark now. My dim eyes can no longer see the palm of my hands. Goodnight.

The town-crier begins to ring a bell. It sounded both funny and strange. I looked up and the sky looked so white. The funny bell rings again…it was my alarm! Ouch! I am almost late for work!

Ps: Most of the words in boldfaced italics had become obsolete at the timing of this incident

FAILED AMBITIONS OF A WANNABE SOLDIER

Okay, I am not joking, at a point in my life, I wanted to be a soldier.

Looking back, I can not exactly pin-point if it is the regimented life that appealed to me, or the fact that their kids paid less school fees (I went to a Military Sponsored Secondary (High) School)…but rest assured, it had neither to do with The License to Kill, nor actually serving my Country (back then…lol).

Ironically, as a kid, I fed poorly because I felt it was an ‘African thing’ to eat too much, snubbed a good number of the morsel-based meals that are characteristically African (before you hang my lack of Afrocentricity, just remember most of our Parents were the Colonial era kids who grew up thinking that everything British is superior), and ended up with the Gangly-Slim frame that would haunt me for life. In any case, slim is cool nowadays, and I still flaunt my ‘lack-of-pot-belly’.

Okay, I did not dare the Nigerian Military School, Zaria, nor Airforce Military School (they were too ‘gangsta’), I just settled for Command Secondary School, Jos.

It was also my way of getting back at King’s College, Lagos, where I was told that due to insufficient facilities, I would have to be a day student (I wanted to Board, man!). I was given the option of transfer, but I got the Federal Government College, Okigwe in the deal. So I was done with Federal Government Colleges, period! King’s College meant a lot to us back then, so I would have you all understand why I saw the other offer as an ‘insult’; I was only Ten Years old.

A little bit of explanation for Non-Nigerian readers (audience, I mean; after all, I am ranting). The Nigeria of the 1980s to early 90s witnessed the ‘Golden Age’ of Military Dictatorship and the only way to get ‘good education’ complete with facilities was to read yourself silly so you can pass the entrance examination to ‘Unity Schools’ which were the Federal Government Colleges (High School to Americans)/King’s and Queen’s College, Command Secondary/Day Secondary Schools (CSS, and CDSS), Nigerian Military School, Zaria, and Nigerian Navy, and Air-Force Military Schools.

As students of Command Secondary School Jos, our experiences were intensely harrowing. Once you were in the school, there was no going out without an Exeat which took forever to get, and could still be turned down the way those dudes at immigration stamp their rejection on Nigerian passports with frenzy.

I still wanted to be a Soldier, skinny or not.

The senior students stripped most of us nude at one point and asked us to roll on the ground while they poured water on us and ‘messed our hides with whips’ while we chanted ‘I am a Toad, I have a long tail, cut it for me’ , we were beaten with semi-machetes; I STILL WANTED TO BE A SOLDIER!

Then came the Christmas Eve of 1989; Civil War broke out in Liberia. Since the horrifying tales of the Nigerian Civil War, never before was war this close to us. I began to have my doubts. The final nail in the coffin, rather, the final screw on the casket, was the day the Commandant arranged a viewing of the Documentary: THE MAKING OF AN OFFICER. It sounded like fun, till I heard: ‘In the final year, the cadets will be tested with LIVE ammunition (emphasis mine) ’ and they showed cadets ducking explosions! My toe-nails began to respond to the Harmattan wind, and I ended with cold feet.

But there were those that didn’t. There were those who went through the ordeal of the Nigerian Defence Academy and made it out as Second Lieutenants. There were those who were not that educated and had to start from the rank of Private.

In any case, back to the Liberian saga. The English speaking members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decided to intervene in the Liberian Civil War and a Monitoring Group of Soldiers were sent as troops (ECOMOG). Some have alleged it was all in a bid to save Samuel Kanyon Doe’s sorry butt, (considering the fact that as at 1989, Military Dictatorship was the norm and it was an esprit-de-corps thingie) in any case, the Troops went anyway.

Unfortunately, Samuel Doe died at the hands of Prince Johnson's Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia on 9 September 1990 and since that was not part of the plan, the drama had to continue. Stories were told of organized looting to the extent that the ECOMOG got renamed: "Every Car or Movable Object Gone". There was an incident of the total removal of the Buchanan iron ore processing machinery for onward sale while the Buchanan compound was under ECOMOG control.

The soldiers went to ‘serve the Country’; were they appreciated?

What would have made rebel troops hate Nigeria so much that innocent journalists like Kris Imodibie (The Guardian) and Tayo Awotunsin (The Champion) got killed the way they did? At the end of the day, it was Nigeria that granted asylum to Yormie Johnson before the coast came clear for him to return to his Country and become a Senator, it was Nigeria that did the amnesty-cum-exile-assylum turned betrayal-deal with Charles Taylor! What did our Soldiers die for???

The macabre show had to continue. In 1997, troops were sent to Sierra Leone, to stop the RUF rebellion, and in 1999, to Guinea-Bissau.

Liberia was yet to have its fill of the blood of Nigerian soldiers. Asides from the intense participation till Madam Johnson Sirleaf became President which took a heavy toll on Nigeria, an 850-member 14th Nigerian Battalion drawn from several military formations in the country were sent to participate in the UN mission from September 2007 to April 2008.

For whatever reasons, God knows what had been going down that we may never know based on Military Omerta, 27 soldiers decided to break the code by protesting the non-payment of their allowance; the Proles dared to speak! (Antz; anyone?)

The Masu Sarauta (aristocrats) have a weapon: the Pseudo-Talakawa (refer to TRANCE COP in my June Blog)! I find it particularly annoying that the weapon is in the hands of the Pseudo-Talakawa but the Power remains the exclusive preserve of the Masu Sarauta!

That is why an old man was running the politics of Oyo State in Nigeria and all his hired thugs obeyed his orders like Zombies when it takes only one of them to ruffle the man!

That is why a slob (excuse my manners) of an Inspector General, whose tummy would seriously impede his combat skills would steal a record 103 Million dollars Police fund and be walking free after some brief VIP detention whereas he gave orders for his men to massacre petty thieves! Bernard Madoff must be wishing he were Nigerian!

The sad part of it all is that these 27 soldiers (female inclusive) were arraigned for mutiny and sentenced to Life Imprisonment! Now you all would probably give me that cliché: “A soldier obeys the last order” etc etc and I would just ask: Why on earth is Al Mustapha under trial if all he did was obeying the late General Sanni Abacha? What about the female soldier that got detained for two months and eventually dismissed for not being a sex-slave to her commander during the Sudan ‘Peace-Keeping Mission’? And the mother of all questions: Who is the freaking freak in custody of the freaking funds?

Alas! No one is going to be bothered. The Omerta has been served on us all during the spell of mass hypnosis that is currently gripping the nation. After all, we are not related to those dudes, and we didn’t ask them to enroll in the army.

One day, it will be a crime for the Talakawa to do the dookie (use the Restroom), and someone is going to be hung for protesting….that person would be better off, because he would be delivered from the toxins that has accumulated in his system, while the rest of the Talakawa would have damaged kidneys, one after the other, after all, they had no guts in the first place.

*Sees two soldiers decorating him with an Eagle, a Star and Crossed-Swords, shudders and mutters aloud: GOD FORBID!!!*

TRANCE COP

Believe me, I didn’t misspell this either.

So you let them fool you, Prole? Well that is one of the major attributes of the Talakawa. You believe everything! There used to be this bad joke that if you want to hide anything from the Blackman, write it in a book! And you probably have quoted that in a desperate bid to encourage your ‘fellow blacks’ to read…YOU HAVE BEEN HAD!!!

Wake up and smell the coffee if you are black and you’re reading this because you just proved that –ism wrong! Check out the average African Summa cum Laude graduate of Economics and you will see obvious re-programming and miseducation! You’d hear someone claiming the economy has improved quoting some ‘indices’ which has no bearing on market realities!

And so, I rephrase: If you want to dupe a Blackman, write it in a book! He believes anything he sees in the Newspaper, he even believes what he sees on TV and just apes everything he sees portrayed as ‘Western’.

So much for intro, now let’s move on. (Recall I said in the last post that you should never expect a rant to be coordinated).

Check out the line-up: Transcorp (Trance COP) was incorporated by some of Nigeria's foremost business tycoons namely: Alhaji Aliko Dangote of Dangote Group, Chief Femi Otedola of African Petroleum (AP), Dr.Ndi Okereke-Onyuike, Director General of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, Jim Ovia, Managing Director, Zenith Bank, Tony Elumelu of UBA, Fola Adeola of Guaranty Trust Bank, Jacob Ajekigbe of First Bank and former CEO of Nigerian Breweries Ltd, Festus Odimegwu amongst others and of course, the (then) Federal government.

Then they threw an Initial Public Offering and in a voice reminiscent of Achilles when he was urging his soldiers to the certainty of their death, they all said “It is yours, Take It” (okay, Bradd Pitt (Achilles) added ‘Immortality’ before his.

Sadly, a good number of Talakawa including the ‘Paratalakawa’ rushed in. The result? Just at the time the Share Value hit 54 Kobo all the way down from N 7:50 Kobo, they close in on you all, suspending trade on the Stock Exchange to “prevent panic sales which may further compound Transcorp’s distress” As usual, the Conglomerate gets protected from the Commoner, Transcorp is shielded from the Talakawa, the Powers-that-be get shielded from the Proletariat!

The first thing that will shred your heart is to learn that the N22 billion realized from the IPO was squandered; plain and simple! The Proles pull their resources to finance someone/select-few’s Klepto-orgies and dump their bastard (for want of better euphemism) at your doorstep, and that is exactly how the game is played.

How come a lot of people fell for this hogwash? How on earth could such a ‘strong’ corporation owe some staff up to Twelve months in arrears?

True to type, the Talakawa must be entertained, therefore a Gladiator must kiss the sands of the Coliseum, and who else could that be, other than Mr. Tom Iseghohi, the Group Managing Director of TRANCE COP . Someone tell Tom that not every Tom, Dick and Harry can afford this Trance! I read the family is threatening to reveal many more dark secrets down to Aso Rock (Presidential Villa) should the ‘victimization’ of their breadwinner ‘for what he knows nothing about’ persist and I laugh (very rare these days) Okay, for the sake of argument, Tom DID NOT PARTAKE IN THE FRAUD. Please! But he knows enough for the family to know some ‘dark secrets’, he must either be too dumb for his own good or just plain negligent and stupid.

That is the dilemma of the Pseudotalakawa.

Now, let me not risk losing you. I earlier mentioned the Paratalakawa they are the middle-class between the Al-majiri (Destitute) and the actual Talakawa , the mechanic, the barber, the motorbike riders who hang on every word the actual Talakawa passes down from the lies he read from the media run by the Masu Sarauta (Aristocrats). Most of them only aspire for the ‘good life’ the Talakawa is ‘enjoying’, and that is why they, also, were hapless victims of the Trance Cop.

The Pseudotalakawa is the Middle Man between the Talakawa and the Masu Sarauta. He is the courier of every fraud, the self-styled scapegoat, the fall man and fodder for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He is the one likely to rot in jail on behalf of his Masu Sarauta. He is the brilliant technocrat who is the King of the Stupid, the Court Jester, the butt (not the Eminem-Sacha Baron Cohen type) of every financial joke.

Back to you and I, the audience that paid to watch the show, not knowing the joke is on us; did we buy ‘Shares’? Yes a good number of us did, simply because we liked what the papers were showing, only to learn some particular share values were ‘doctored’.

Perhaps my role as the Priest of the Proles came with the gift of prophecy; politically charged investments are extremely risky. And I was not willing to palpitate my heart with such risks, hence my resolve from Day-1 NEVER to fall into a TRANCE COP. My brilliant economist friend was so convinced Transcorp was the best thing after HIV (excuse my manners) for the mere fact that he heard the beautiful oratory of one Pseudotalakawa whose mouth is far bigger than his dreams, and He believed. Only it was not ‘counted as righteousness’. It was counted as Mr-Mugu-Dobosi-Yessir! (That’s a street terminology for The Gullible).

I had always believed a Broker’s duty is to keep you Broke, so, never let him/her do the thinking for you; it will be your loss!

By the way, I just sold off a particular stock that reeks of politics…At a loss? DO YOU REALLY THINK I AM STUPID?

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?

Yeah, I am quoting Maximus in the Gladiator movie… Matter of fact, I don’t even really know who I am actually quoting anymore because I hear the exact lines form the Nigerian situation and considering our population, and the fact that we are sooo confused presently about who runs the system, I just don’t know who to apply to for copyright permission on the opening liner.

The immediate past President of Nigeria pioneered the entertainment trend, and it has been on since then. Whereas we groaned under the Abacha dictatorship and maintained an uneasy calm during Abdulsalaami’s, Obasanjo ensured we never lacked entertainment. As a matter of fact, comedy became big business during his tenure.

You don’t get the picture do you? Sadly, if you had High Definition Mega-pixel cameras on, you are not likely to, and that is no fault of yours.

I am not talking per se of the Bill Cosby, Martin Lawrence or The Wayans’ kind of comedy, I am talking of the some-mothers-do-have-’em-Frank Spencer-make-you-wanna-bust-a-blood-vessel type!

We had the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa Human Rights Violation Panel, patterned after the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Truth and Reconciliation model in South Africa (never mind, we have always been good at importing even what we have) and I recall staying up all night to witness the comedy of errors throwing light on what went down during the Abacha regime.

As with all shows, we had both the Trailers and the Spoilers, we heard how the late journalist Bagauda Kaltho (did I say how? It’s so fuzzy nowadays) was killed. Sorry, that’s not what we heard or saw, we only got to know that Nigerian Technology has finally produced a bomb that strips a man nude and kill him without smoking out any other part of his body! Can you beat that?

Fast forward to 2007, this time, the then President himself decided to star in the movie, as the Proantagonist (I did not misspell this, it is my invented word. If you can have Motel from Motor-Hotel, then you should get this) and the Vice President was the Victivillain (Victim + Villain, do the math). From slanders and counter-slanders to ‘I’m neither denying nor admitting corruption, I am only saying you surpass me on every side’

They ensured we never lacked for entertainment; the bloodcurdling-I-am-yelling-and-yanking-my-head-off-my-heart-palpitates-as-I-taste-bile type. Then they hired a director called Maurice Iwu, Chairman of the electoral commission and they birthed another comic era.

Seeing Obasanjo’s frail successor, with his piercing eyes and sober look, I was ready to pack the puppets and say ‘Hey, our play is played out, no more entertainment’. But I was wrong, more wrong than my prophecy that I would wake up today with my right hand appearing on my left.

We now have R-rated 18 VNL (Violence, Nudity and Language) version of entertainment, complete with advanced CGI.

Violence, Yeah, from the election re-run in Ekiti State to the Niger Delta vs JTF (refer to previous blog) prototype. Nudity, is that too hard to figure? From the 628 Million Naira-turn-my-apartment-to-Spa/Salon scandal of Patricia Etteh, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Ndudi Elumelu Head-of-investigations-turned-prime-suspect probe into the power sector. What could be worse than that?

I know the global financial meltdown has so far revealed how universal corruption is, from the Parliamentary expenses scandal (both the MP’s LP and Tory’s story) in the UK to the I-can-sell-Obama’s-former-seat-Rod-Blagojevich in the United states to the different versions you get to hear from Asia, but I find it hard to figure why our own entertainment fails to provoke any reaction from the populace, other than few and far between rantings of the Talakawa that have nothing else to do with their time than complain.

With 2/24 hour power supply, and a Generator that plays music my neighbours don’t want to hear once it’s past midnight, and the entertaining story that the person that claimed my former President and some other Cabal squandered what was meant to increase generated Power, has been arrested and indicted. That was shortly after the findings of the panel he headed on the same subject matter was thrown out! I, typical of a Prole, am compelled to love the job I sooo hate, simply for the fact that there is constant Power Supply at work, and I could be less bothered by how much it costs the Company to service the standby Generator..afterall, the Talakawa never get more than Pixels…how are they expected to get the picture?

To compound it all, the Senate seeks to pass a Bill to a Law making it compulsory for every State to produce at least an Agricultural Product…that almost made me puke some bile! Is it Lagos State that is left of no arable land courtesy of emigration from other States to the extent that the Lagoon is being morphed by some stock-piling into Land that will produce? Or the Niger Delta, whose land has been raped and desecrated in the name of Oil Exploration? Perhaps the Core North that is being encroached by deserts as a result of overgrazing by Cattle will be just okay. Please, The Gramophone is worn, can someone switch the song?

Remember rantings are not expected to be coordinated, so you just have to put up with this cacophony.

RUN...AND DON'T LOOK BACK!

Wherever you are, if you are a Nigerian, get your bags, and run!!! What on earth am I thinking? You don’t need your bags; forget about your shoes, just run!!!

Civil War 2 is on (ducks as some shrapnel gives way somewhere close by), my bad, one of the countless genocide episodes that threatens to pale out whatever went down in Biafra back then, has been triggered.

Zaki Biam, Odi, Jesse, Bauchi, Jos have all had their fair share of ethno-religio-civilio-genocide (okay, go add that to Webster’s) and now, it is the Niger Delta’s turn, courtesy of the JTF (Joint Task Force, made up of sections of the Nigerian Army, Navy and Air-Force, with the purpose of combating armed 'rebel' groups in the Niger Delta).

Okay, I understand we have population issues, but is this the way to go about it? Reduce the minorities till only few of them are left in ‘game reserves’? We were quick to condemn Israel, America for civilian causalities yet we gloss over the children killed in these blood-letting sprees….

Aerial bombardment and firing from Ships in Nigeria? This is where we take the credit. While Hollywood displays war skills that even the mighty armies of the United States doubt they possess, it is the other way round this side; our Movies may never be able to beat the realities presented. Life down this side is the actual reality show with a script. Unlike our movies that seem to lack the very script we talk of.

Operation Restore Hope indeed! I see no hope, all I see is Soldiers’ Shrapnel, Guns and Grenades, bombs and billows of smoke…it indeed is a very gloomy picture.

What became of the refugees that fled to the Ogbe-Ijoh General Hospital? They had to flee further simply because the Gestapo came calling again.

Let me pause at this point to emphatically state that I do not endorse violence, but if we are to stay true to the maxim ‘He that seeks Equity must come to Equity with pure hands’, there is an entirely discomfiting skew in the position. I ask, has the Capital punishment reduced the spate of Armed Robbery in any part of the world?

When Cocoa and groundnut were the major source of export for Nigeria, the derivation formula was adopted, but a shameful volte-face came up when Oil was discovered in the South-South, so is it rocket science to figure why there is persistent unrest in that region?

Why are the militants abducting expatriates? Again, it’s not hard to figure, what would you do if you are an American and I stand in front of your embassy to burn the Uncle Sam flag? It’s only a piece of cloth! No, it is not. If I must get your notebook from you, I do not need a gun, but if I need your money, I just might need one, but money is just some paper! The Multinational Companies secured a track record of waste, pollution and gross corruption and when the Environmental Rights Crusader, Ken Saro Wiwa was hanged in 1995, at least seven to eight digits from every discerning finger pointed the way of corporate-sponsored-government-induced execution and so, it is almost automatic for anyone from that region to see the average expatriate as the ‘Flag’ of the Country that symbolizes the cruel injustice he’s had to put up with, again, is that too hard to figure?

The spokesperson for the JTF has told us all that ‘civilian casualties’ are inevitable in a War, in other words, he has told us what it is, It is a War, JTF (Federal) versus Niger Delta. Period!


Addendum: Just thought good to distribute this free once more, I told the Nigerian Story over The Game's My Life beat off the L.A.X album....here is the link:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/56846501d7c065ff/