As society plunges further into the depths of despair, slay queens/mamas are living life to the full. Bejeweled and painted like a doll, slay queens are the kind of women a lecturer of mine, Prof Segun Adekoya, once described in this manner in a literature class: “A woman who lacks grace paints this and that, and looks like a masquerade.” Even when they are advanced in years, slay queens don’t let up. They remain society women, For-the –mama-ke, Big Mama, Madam Cash, Mama-o-ni-gba, the kind of women who protested when Fuji king Wasiu Ayinde called on old women to sempe (mellow down) and yield the stage to younger women. They blatantly refused, saying they would yield space to no maiden but would enjoy life to the fullest. They then appointed Fuji singer Abbas Akande as their spokesman. Akande promptly announced to whoever would listen that the slay mamas would not budge: “Awon mama ti fariga, won l’awon o sempe.”
A good woman helps her husband save money; a slay queen helps him spend it. The idea, as rapper Olamide sang, is quite plain: “You have money, let’s help you spend it.” (Owo wa lowo yin, e je ka ba yin na.). Writing on the typical toxic female (bad girl), relationship coach Veronika Amaya says she uses emotions to get her way, is hyper-critical, and has control issues. That is exactly right. Consider the slay queens who have taken over our private schools, instilling owambe in the psyche of young, impressionable school children by organizing school parties every term and putting parents in turmoil. Recently, a primary school went viral for expelling a student after the parent refused to pay a ₦15,000 party fee. No surprise here: slay queens have taken over our private schools, plunging pupils into partydom, and “billing” parents at will. I hear that some schools even ask parents to pay N50,000 for a party, and that students turn up at the party clad in aso ebi! Secondary school students are hiring musicians to celebrate writing their WAEC exams. I forgot to hold any party when I earned a doctorate in 2017.
And so Maryam Abacha, a woman who rejected the counsel of time, flung herself in the faces of Nigerians this week, spinning a tale that would cause even the dirty old Lucifer to grin with envy. This woman, who with her family lived in riotous, noisome opulence while the masses of Nigerians scrounged and starved in the late 90s and whose husband is now widely acknowledged as one of the worst kleptomaniacs to have ever lived, went to a TV station to dress the devil in alien robes of righteousness. According to her, claims that General Sani Abacha looted Nigeria’s treasury as military Head of State from 1993 to 1998 are fabricated. Abacha “kept the money for Nigeria” . Yeepa! Abacha was not just a thief, he was theft itself, a first class jaguda and murderer. Over the years, the Federal Government has recovered billions of dollars that that blood-thirsty, demented dictator stashed in foreign accounts in Switzerland, the United States, the UK and other places. An estimated $4 billion in cash and $2 billion in assets were recovered from the Abacha loot between 1999 and 2023. In one instance, US Ambassador to Nigeria Mary Leonard said Abacha and his allies stole around $334.7 million in cash, which the US later returned to Nigeria. The average annual inflation rate in Nigeria between 1998 and 2023 was 14.07%. Do the math. Unless otherwise indicated, the wife of a born thief is a thief.
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If you think Maryam Abacha’s cant is insulting, you have something more sinister to think about. In Kenya, Nakuru Governor Susan Kihika recently travelled to the United States to give birth, in order to prevent doctors and nurses in Kenya from seeing her body!! Hear the clown addressing a jubilant crowd in her native Gikuyu: “Just because I am the governor, does it mean I can’t have babies? Also, you know I am the governor. All doctors and nurses are under me. Did you really want me to lay on a table with the same doctors helping me deliver? Then, when we go for meetings, will the same doctors be looking at me in the same way?” Kihika then promised to build a maternity facility to enable more women to “enjoy services like the ones I did.”
I suppose that before Susan Kihika dies, hopefully in her old age, she would have left strict instructions forbidding any Kenyan from viewing her body. You see, as a slay queen, and just like the former First Lady, Kihika has no trouble wasting public funds on her private lusts. Like their counterparts across the continent, Kenyans battle extremely severe existential challenges, but here is a Governor, a Kikuyu like the revolutionary writer Ngugi wa Thiong’O, junketing to Donald Trump’s America to give birth out of sheer narcissistic arrogance. I am a father of two sets of twins, the latter of which were born through CS. At no time did it occur to me to berate the nurses and doctors doing their best under God. To listen to this depraved, soulless and intensely corrupt Governor, you would think that birth attendants customarily find birthing mothers sexy! I don’t know who cursed Black Africa with these pestilential leaders.
Just look at the complex exhibited by Governor Kihika: no Kenyan healthcare practitioner is qualified to view her nakedness but the doctors in the US are. By looking down on her own people (superiority complex) and venerating their American counterparts (inferiority complex), Her Excellency shows you the utter darkness of the slay mama’s mind. To the infernal rogue, it is okay to spend Nakuru taxpayers’ money on private pursuits but no Nakuru doctor/nurse can see her body, as if birth attendance is about viewing a mother’s body rather than saving her life! I hope that Her Holiness the Rev Susan Kihika has no secret tapes. Just how can Nakuru develop with a Governor who sees state doctors and nurses as vassals?
I remember the case of a funny woman who, at a traditional birth attendant’s place in Aga, Ikorodu, told whoever cared to listen that she would not remove her underwear. When the case was brought to the attention of the old man who owned the facility, he simply told the attendants to leave her alone, saying that she would act differently when the baby “gripped” her. And that was what happened.
Often, slay queens are beautiful but senseless. It is best to avoid them, whether on a romantic or political level. As King Solomon warned: “Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.”
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