Abuja Kings for Breakfast

IF it is true that cemeteries now compete with our Central Bank as dollar vaults, then I give it to the depositors that they are smart. That is one place where the next-door neighbour won’t blow any whistle. It is a place where every occupant is as soundless as his neighbours. It is also a place of fear. Inmates there are allergic to whistling and won’t mind going to war with uncouth dollar diggers. Cemeteries tell the tragic story of the greedy carpenter who went back to steal the coffin from a corpse that had paid the right price. A cemetery is the last bastion of resistance for money fleeing the groping eyes of nosy power. Anything that sleeps in a cemetery should enjoy immunity from official troublers. Whatever goes in there does not leave involuntarily…Otherwise, it dissolves there — dust to dust.

Dollars in cemetery is a metaphor for lunacy. It warns of how unusual these times are. It tells us to expect anything anywhere. Or to not expect anything anywhere because the land is of death and dying. I wish it was the truth that the lost wealth is snoring in the cemetery next door.  But what is in the covered voids are bones of goodness and evil. The dollars, where are they? Nothing is true and alive again once interred in graveyards. In war as in politics, truth has no seat on the front row. You saw photographs of cemeteries becoming mines of dollars. You cried and cursed, especially since you felt the abjectness of your condition. In indignation you reposted and rebroadcast the images. Then from the audience came a counter proof that the images were not from your cemetery. The dollars were of the vaults of some drug lords in Ecuador. You stopped and asked why this frenzy? You then see the noise as part of a sneaky war of lies for goods, power and space.

I told some friends last week that I won’t join anyone to stone anyone without asking why and knowing why. Politics is a very dirty business. You would say all businesses are dirty but politics spices its own dirt with deadly toxin. It is dangerous, too deadly—and the one who gives in to it must be ready for all it has to offer. It gives fame and power; it pours out princely money and kingly honour. If you are a man and you want women, it throws them on your laps at the snap of a finger. But each of these perks of politics comes with undeclared prices. If you do not know when or how to apply the brakes, the car crashes. You harvest scandals and other mortal injuries. You harvest bad belle and undue jealousy from persons who can’t stand your success. Politics is about rivalry and competition for power and influence—and the war can be pretty ugly. That, sadly, is the main menu of governance at all levels in Nigeria today. And Abuja is the biggest culprit. Politics for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner. But should that rancid fruit be all the people receive as dividend from their investments in this democracy?

Abuja has greed for dollars and talent for stories, fake and real. The meta-tales that punctuate our narratives are sordid and sickening.  We hear stories of palace crises and fights. In plot, form and characterization, the drama of power reeks of bedlam and mutual unwellness. I wish all feuding palace guards know they owe their positions to the mercy of the king, even if old and feeble. I wish they know the people are hungry, angry and charged. I wish the hired pilots know in good time when to bury hatchets of rivalry and fly the plane towards the direction of purpose.

Kings for Breakfast is the title of a Hindu legend retold by Aaron Shepard. It is the story of kingly rivalry; an unbelievable competition in generosity. It is also the story of self sacrifice for the good of the helpless. The story is about two kings renowned for uncommon goodness and generosity. But there is no perfect match anywhere; wherever you have two good persons, one must still be better than the other. So it was with these kind kings. One must be kinder than the other—but who? The storyteller said the first king gave to the poor a hundred pounds of gold every day with a vow not to eat until he had done so. But where he got so much gold nobody knew. The second king was so big-hearted he would give anybody anything they asked for—his time, his bed, his jewellery, his horse, his anything, his everything. The fame of these unusual kings spread far and wide. And each was at peace with himself until he got to know about the other sharing the glory of selflessness with him. The ensuing rivalry led one to discover the forest spirit behind the daily harvest of gold by the other. The gnome was taking this king’s body parts as daily breakfast in exchange for gold. The second king craftily spiced himself for the spirit of gold. He displaced the other so he could beat him in doing good, also doling out gold daily. There was war. But at a point in their bitterness, they reconciled. They moved on with their lives of service and joined forces to make life better for all. Their story ended sweet because they didn’t lose sight of the ball. They knew when to be reasonable and bury the hatchet. They stopped being breakfast for an ever hungry hermit.

Teams of rivals never win trophies. I wish persons who picked power free of charge (like stray snails) know we voted for good governance, not for bickering over advantages. A poet advised that humans should bury the hatchet so it never gets used again; that they should reflect and smile and stop cursing; that being part of power tells men of today that the world is large enough for all. That we can only live our own share of life and leave the rest for the rest; That dwellers of same house need not be each other’s enemy. That already, there are enough enemies outside for every lucky head inside. I wish the story of inter-personal, inter-agency rivalry rumbling in Abuja will end as happily as the Hindu story. But such happy ending is always exclusive to the world of myth and fiction. What we have in the real world is real war. Wars are no picnics. It is a game of death—you shoot me, I shoot you. The person who wins is the first to shoot accurately. To survive the war of life you must know that fortune aligns with the first to squeeze the trigger—well and on target. Where both are snipers, they end up as breakfast on the cemetery table of alien lords.