Being Daddy

“Fatherhood with Ibe” was my hot favourite in the rested Hints magazine and it took a while to know the man behind the family conversational column is the same Ibe Kachikwu, Buhari’s first-term Minister of State for Petroleum, who fought the cabal-boy, Makanti Baru, briefly over the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) sleaze, before running away with a clipped tail, seeing that everyone that should condemn Baru’s baranda in the oil sector as NNPC boss was quicker to lick Buhari’s spittle than being seen as remotely calling Mai Gaskia’s supervisory integrity to question as the country’s main oil Sheikh. Two stood out; Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and now-late Tam David-West. I won’t dignify the third with a mention after his recent dissertation on sleaze petition and bad faith. May God forgive us all.

Ibe’s column, founded mainly on everyday interaction with his children, particularly a veiled teenage daughter who must be very big now, made Hints more romantic in an electrifying manner. You get into it and swap positions with the lead character and you have your everyday situation starring you in the face. That was Nigeria of then, when fantasies and romance could be locked in the heart for weeks or even months, without let or a break. You could romanticise, celebrate, serenade and even pop champagne for things considered little, like spending time with family, particularly the children, without abandoning their mother in a corner of the house. If Hints were still available for Kachikwu and his daughter’s gist, instead of those innocent questions about life, living, relationships, friendship and a future of togetherness, what would have possibly dominated their conversations today, would be Boko Haram, politics of kill-and-win, next level, four+four, third term, PDP, APC, foreign loans and blah, blah, blah of politics that have come to overwhelm us. When you add these to the bitter-sweet taste of social media and smart phones, it would dawn on the discerning how far the family is removed from families, not only in Nigeria, but also the world over.

Today, I have decided to side-step those inanities, preoccupying our very existence, like the 2023 game plans engaged in by those who don’t know if they would be around on December 31, 2019, to celebrate family, particularly fatherhood, since all they drum in our ears is Mothers’ Day, Mothers’ Day. Last Sunday, our pastor was encouraging us to live life well, as a family unit, even tipping fathers on how to pour little romance in the mix. He hinted that some Sunday, he would just disappear into thin air with his wife and instead of preaching the word on the altar, he would be at a resort, ‘chopping the life of his head.’ I envy our pastor. I’m not particularly romantic, but I love family, both unit and extended; though I should be better than a certain Christian brother who, when asked of his plan to give his wife a treat, promised to take her out: To Redemption Camp! Another was quoted as saying he would take his wife out on prayer walk! But why must it be men taking women out forever?

For me, every moment spent with my children is pure solid gold, though they can pull you in different directions so much, to the extent that you won’t know who to answer first and how. To them, because you are the father or maybe I should get a little swanky, because you are the dad, you must know everything in their books, including what you lost contact with decades back! The intending SAN expects you to answer all questions; the aspiring aeronautic engineer believes dad must be all-knowing. Haba, there are things even Allen Onyeama won’t know about the aero-subject, though he was the star-boy of the Nigerian aviation until America came calling with its usual spanner of trying to rework good works running smoothly with less of its inputs.

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I digress, but Nigeria should not leave Onyeama to the vagaries of American business politics. Yeah, he isn’t exactly a darling of the industry managers and government at the centre. He also comes across as erratic to his staff, but thousands are feeding off his “madness.” If his madness methodology has offended the American dream, the Nigerian government should not just engage in probe grandstanding as Ibrahim Magu is already fegering (twitching muscles) (don’t bother the dictionaries. It is from Yoruba fe’ge) to do. Sound diplomacy can also help, provided Onyeama is ready to say the whole truth. After all, a former American vice president, Dick Cheney, was charged for infractions here during OBJ’s era, and high-tech diplomacy resolved it.

When fathers ‘fall,’ like Onyema, my first worry is the psychological state of the children, seeing and reading deprecating stuff about their hero. I still can’t forget the haunting faces of Evans’ kids in that viral video, wringing their hands to the Nigerian authorities to spare their ‘obviously guilty’ dad.

I see the glitters in my household anytime dad is deemed to have done either just good or great, which I don’t always forget to remind my people, is by His grace. Our-Father-In-Heaven is one prayer the earthly fathers must keep to heart to teach the guys coming behind about the things of tomorrow. If I had the Ibes’ platform today, our conversation would be mainly about the heavenly, now that the new normal is abnormality and the people and gadgets helping fathers to teach their children outside and even at home practically have more influence over them and more time to teach the nonsense of alternate sexuality, relativism (God being relative, ceteris paribus, though we were not told who would make all things equal), and other Western stuff about banning God from public spaces, as well as the theory of ‘you are the capacity of your brain.’ But where did you get the brain in the first place?

Fatherhood is only beautiful when the Father of fathers is allowed to teach and lead you to teach and lead the ones He has given you. The lead teacher in homes must also be taught, so that children that lap up every word of yours today won’t turn around to tell you tomorrow, ‘teacher, you have taught me nonsense.’