DECADES ago, the Yoruba thespian, Tajudeen Oyewole, a.ka Abija, ruled the airwaves, a foil to the inimitable Fadeyi Oloro (real name Ojo Arowosafe), the gangster medicine man. Fadeyi was a man of action, much like Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but Abija was a man of contemplation, like Okeke in the same novel. Let me borrow a quick type from soccer: Cristiano Ronaldo, a burst of thunder, versus Lionel Messi, a measured but supremely effective hurricane. Both are necessary for social engagement but today, it is to Abija that we turn for our starting metaphor. He it was who, decades ago, propagated the following incantation: “Ijo kijo ni ijo asinwin, idikudi ni were di tie.” Gloss: so haphazardly does a lunatic dance, and a mad person packs his/her luggage in a bizarre fashion. How true! Don’t we see lunatics roaming the streets with mountains of filth on their heads all the time in this society, even inhabiting Government Houses when they should ordinarily be confined to hospitals?
Lately, but apparently not fortuitously, public sensibilities have been assailed by the antics of Nigeria’s Kim Kadarshians. Today, people speak of the Kadarshian billions but it was a sex tape that captured the national imagination and facilitated her endless stream of currency. Pop singer Tiwa Savage, doing a Kim. K—cementing wealth and fame through pornography—has lately captured the national consciousness with her naked filth. Plantain rots, as our elders say, but the unwary say it is just ripening, and youthful exuberance is the excuse when a maiden commits adultery. And so you have the crocodile tears and the feminist illogic underlined by the rustle of currency notes that comes with topping the search engines. Pornography is a multibillion dollar industry, and most of the so-called celebrities parading car after car even during economic lockdowns are nothing but graded sewage.
Now, there is an intricate nexus between Tiwa Savage and the Muhammadu Buhari government: an obsession with excuses in the face of gross (mis)conduct. My suspicion was aroused long ago when I heard the following line on TV: “I’ll be your African barbie, Eminado, Eminado!” To me as a Yoruba person, Eminado sounded like a risqué confession, and my qualms were dissolved when I browsed the net and saw naked parade of flesh its exponent. For months, millions in rapture danced, chanting Eminado, Eminado and Abija came to mind: ijokijo ni ijo asinwin. Abija came to mind and Abuja followed. Then came the “stew” video that soon got burnt, before the present porn.
In case you have not yet grasped the point: Tiwa Savage blames the leaker of her tape (not herself the maker of the tape) for her present predicament (that is not really a predicament), and the Buhari government blames the country’s situation on its predecessors, not its serial streams of policy and conduct oddities. They are both blamesters. Buhari and his people are having the best times of their lives: the president wears solid Gucci shoes and rides majestically in the latest cars, and Tiwa Savage’s bank balance fattens as she tops search engines and rakes in more fans. Those who pity savages and philistines, accepting their infantile and jejune excuses, have been imprisoned by eedi, the spirit of misconduct. By the way, if a government is so warped, how can its Code of Conduct decisioners be otherwise? Remember Malam Danladi’s Biafran Boys? In a press statement naturally and inevitably riddled with errors, the CCT chairman blamed the enemy for his disgraceful conduct. My people say that a fish rots from the head. I can see Aso Villa scoundrels dancing away their future: “Eminado, Eminado!”
Let the queen perform for her clowns. Or the clowns perform for their queen: it is still a feast of folly. One is actual porn, the other is what the US TV star, Tucker Carlson, calls humiliation porn. Let the creepy lawyers hounding peaceful agitators while decorating terrorists who bring down military jets with medals beware: creepy porn lawyers are in jail in the US. Enter the Bard of Isara: proverbs to bones and silence. (see A Dance of the Forests).
There’s hardly any limit to this government’s crudity: it is currently being suggested that the economy will be revamped once brassieres—yes, bras— and other effects belonging to Madam Diezani Alison-Madueke, former petroleum minister, are auctioned off. The country’s future is being tied to the brassieres of a cancer patient. What a criminal diversion! Pray, who cursed this land with these cancerous leaders? I notice the sexual undertones, but let us leave that for a moment. Since Diezani left office with her alleged stolen billions, had government revenue stopped? So what happened to all the money made ever since? Will Diezani’s “loot” reverse the multiple exchange rates, the bad monetary and fiscal policies and the security quagmire into which the country has been plunged? This government blamed ex-President Jonathan and PDP for years, then blamed erstwhile National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, then blamed middlemen and whatnot.
Pray, when will this government start accepting responsibility for its actions—for plunging the country into economic misery and making life a nightmare? For years, we were told that terrorism thrived in the country because Dasuki wasted money meant to procure weapons to fight terror on Jonathan’s 2015 re-election bid. So why is the war on terror not being won now that holy men are in power? Months before the 2015 election, Borno and Yobe reporters filed in story after story detailing how the military retook town after town from Boko Haram, thus facilitating elections in the North-East. With what did the military prosecute that war? If, on the other hand, we say that they did not, then how did elections take place in the zone, without Boko Haram making human barbecues of voters? Those now linking our economic fortunes to a woman’s brassieres have nothing useful to do with their lives. They’re engaged in humiliation porn. It is a case of sigidi (mud-made god) crying for a bath in the stream: humiliation lurks.
Re: Why separatists should not be trusted with power
Foolish write-up from a foolish man (08151711147)
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