Fighting elders, plastic rice and plastic heads

“What is our intelligence, our school going and our reading of books without getting money?” A certain Ibadan pioneer in literacy wrote in his diary around 1914. Every generation has its priority. For some, it is to have a mass of children in every household. For others who lived in times of war, money could not have been their prayer point. They wanted peace. But this Ibadan man lived in years after the wars. He lived at a time money, and not gallantry in war, made men. And so, money was his concern and his priority throughout his diary-keeping years from 1914 till he died in 1963. Now, look around you, what can you say is the priority of this your generation? Money, yes. That could only explain the rush for MMM by even persons you hardly believed would go for it. After money, what again? I know what is not a priority. It is truth. Can you see that nobody is sure of where truth stands in anything again? Elders who watched their own fathers settle quarrels for children are today brawling spectacles in the market square. They write books and letters and strip for women to see the nakedness of their masquerades. And between them, you ask where is the truth?

As elders fight over the colour of truth, the younger ones beat their own drums of living in lies. Whatever falls the enemy is not untrue. The truth is in the mouth of the first to fire. And so, there is a rush by everybody now to be seen first. I do not know why we all think being seen or heard first is a virtue. But that is the reality of this era of anything goes. Breaking news is breaking all known cords of common sense. Report now comes before investigation, conviction before trial. It is the new normal and the society feigns ignorance of its ruination. Someone said it is democracy in action. How democracy comes to have suffered this much, I do not know. But we are there. Truth no longer matters. What matters is the millions who get thrilled by the scandal of the message and its consequences. A nation that worships lies is a lie in itself. From politics to policy, you can no longer bet your anything on the truth of anything. Like the Ibadan diary keeper of 1914, money and influence peddling and power drive all personal and official moves and motives. And while these ignite a turmoil, the market of unsold traders seize the town in celebration of falls and failures. There is no feeling again for truth. The market is down and out and gets hysterical at every likelihood of Armageddon. Greek philosopher, Aristotle, warned of “extreme democracy” which undermines the very idea of democracy as the Greeks conceived it.  We are at the threshold of that extreme when everyone is desperate and everyone rushes to use the media of democracy to undermine the essence of others.

A defining feature of this era is its network embeddedness. For this generation, truth is what the social media says. That social media is actually a metaphor for today’s brakeless thought train. You watched a viral video online of a plastic rice mill somewhere in ‘China.’ Everything counterfeit is put at the factory step of that enduring country. You believed there was nothing the Chinese could not forge and unleash on the helpless buyer. You believed the plastic rice video and decided to test-burn or mock-soak every grain you bought. It never crossed your mind that plastic is made of materials which cannot become ‘rice’ enough to be eaten as rice. Then the Customs announced they had discovered 102 bags of plastic rice in a warehouse in Lagos. Good gracious! You exclaimed. So, it is true? You were so shocked and scared. You silently told yourself no more rice until the country was rid of plastic poison. WhatsApp groups are an interesting marketplace of expensive stories and cheap talks. They serve more purposes than the intention of the founders. You were chatting your boredom away and suddenly a reticent group member quietly said he had the full story behind the plastic rice seized by the Customs in Lagos. The rice thing appeared as popular as the MMM conundrum. Even the most unlikely stopped all banters and gave the floor to the storyteller. The story he told is the story of what Nigeria has become — a country of cheap lies and a dumb audience. Hear him: “My bank decided to give out Christmas gifts to critical stakeholders who were part of our success in the closing year. And so, we thought giving out rice would be our modest contribution to the making of merry Christmas in the homes of the identified persons. We bought 25 kg bags of rice from several sellers in Lagos. We didn’t import rice as claimed by the customs. We gave 221 bags to our PR consultants to distribute to our friends.  The consultants who said they had distributed 119 bags out of the lot as instructed called us three days later to say the customs were in their office and had carted away the remaining 102 bags of rice. Why? They said they were plastic rice? Plastic? It was the same we got as members of staff. Everyone, including our drivers, got a bag and there was not a single grain or pellet of plastic in the ones we got and ate. What is happening? We set to work. It appeared that one of the beneficiaries was behind the whole matter. The aggrieved called the Customs to report a cache of plastic rice the way a Civilian JTF would report a Boko Haram armoury. The Customs moved in, took the bags and proceeded to address the press without cross-checking anything. Someone wanted to be seen working. Someone must get a trophy for this breaking news. Then the health minister thawed the ice declaring it was all a hoax.”

That was a summary of the rice giver’s message. I have no reason to doubt “this” truth because the messenger was not a bystander in the matter. But why the drama? Should a whole country be suspended with a hoax and nothing gives? Nothing happened and nothing will because we are in a democracy. Democracy kills recklessly and gets away with murder. The best you can get was the further official explanation that the rice was truly not plastic but contained “micro-organisms beyond tolerable limits.” Psychological scammers. There was no plastic rice anywhere. There was no warehouse too.  One day, someone may tell us that some jilted suppliers of yesterday merely dealt a blow to suppliers of the moment. It is business.

We are a plastic country. We are the only nation on earth where plastic ideas are parboiled, served and eaten hot. A unique people that sincerely believed that some spirits from China could bag grains of plastic for Nigeria and get the stuff charmed to become cooked (as in cooked)! Should we have believed the story in the first place? Plastic is a metaphor for hollowness. Have years of national misfortune robbed the land of sense? Hollow heads gutted by misfortune are called plastic heads (ori ike is what the Yoruba call it). You remember the caustic saying about someone’s head being exchanged for plastic? Certain unusual traders used to roam towns and villages looking for something to exchange for something. You remember the loud ones calling on households to bring out their damaged plastics for some other objects of value? Sometimes you dropped the spoilt plastic bowls and get yards of guinea brocade and Ankara stuffs. Sometimes it was something else of even greater value. Some other times, the fortune is reversed; you are asked to give your worn out dresses for some new bowls of plastic. How about principalities swapping the good head of a being for some worthless sponge? The one who has lost it is the one who drinks the stuff meant for the bathroom. Maybe it is really not as bad as I am dramatizing it. Someone said the guys who “found” plastic rice were those who ate or still eat biro pen lids. Any adult who did or does that is not likely to freeze at the thought of being served a hot plate of plastic rice.

The inventors of this story and the Customs officers who announced their find occupy another platform on our multiple floors of mendacity. Like those elders boxing in the market square over the ambiguity of truth, these ones made the plastic claim and vowed it was the truth. We clapped for them. They withdrew the “truth” days later and gave us another “truth” that what was in the bags were microorganisms in their millions. Again, we heard and danced to their words of diligence. Everybody’s intelligence is plastic, they thought. And were they not right? They danced back and forth and we all, with gaping mouths, watched and clapped and nothing happened. If the Ibadan diary keeper were to edit his 1914 entry quoted above today, he probably would add the word “sense” to his sole wish for “money.”