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In Tinubu’s Nigeria, suffering is stew

DECADES ago, Bola Are, one of Nigeria’s biggest Gospel music stars, sang that line that has now become frankly insolent: “Iya ki is’omi obe.” (Suffering is no stew). The spirit of her age, Are was not just offering prayer; she was also dissecting the economic realities of military rule in those days when, per Gani Fawehinmi, policies shifted from breakfast to lunch and from lunch to dinner. Contrary to Are’s prayer, suffering has now made a covenant with Nigerians like dried yam. Suffering is now stew and Nigerians are grabbing full plates and wolfing down the broth with ferocity. Clothing came too late: Omoye is already in the market, stark naked. When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no sear for him, Chinua Achebe wrote as Nigeria took the daring step into self-rule, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The Yoruba have a way of resigning to fate: they say that if we pray to avert disgrace but it comes nonetheless, the next step is to pray to avert death. For death walks with the child and the child is not aware. Judicial bandits have joined executive robbers and lawless lawmakers to make the masses miserable with every government since the onset of civil rule in 1999, the reason I have characterized this democracy as despair.

If you needed any dramatization of the apostate state of this State, Thursday’s protest by fish sellers in Ibadan should tell you a lot. The venue was Ojoo market and the subject was the unbearable cost of fish. The protesters came out in willing numbers, chanting, “We are tired of this suffering.” Said a market woman: “The carton of alaran fish before was 30,000 and we were okay with it but now the price is N80,000. A carton of sawa was N8,000, we endured when it became N20,000, but now it is N35,000. Panla is now N26,000, Kote is N40,000, and it wasn’t like this last week. It is too expensive.” The women spoke of absence of marital company, but their mind was on money: “We don’t have husbands, we are the only ones taking up our responsibilities.”

Actually, the nation is going to the dogs: a sachet of spaghetti, now half of the former contents, is N700. One miserable piece of Titus fish costs N1,500, the same sum my father paid when he bought his Opel Rekord in the 60s and breezed in and out of Ibadan. And oh, memory again! I distinctly remember my mum going to the market with the sum now used to buy sachet water and returning home with fat sacks of foodstuff. Nigeria’s plantain is rotting but they say it is ripening; the adulterous maid is given an alibi in fashion. Families are fighting civil wars over pittance: in Port Harcourt this week, one Godslove Olakada soaked her husband, Olakada Ejire, in hot water following a domestic dispute in Agbonchia community. Somehow, the N15,000 given to her and her two daughters by the community had not got to her, and she had received intelligence regarding her husband’s pocketing of the money. Having done the dark deed, Godslove grabbed her husband’s ATM card and tried to flee but was apprehended by eagle-eyed youths. Mrs Olakada’s life, her marriage and her family are up in flames because of the rage of poverty and the poverty of rage.

Suffering struts the land and many have become whores and pickpockets. Suffering is stew and you can eat it with eba, amala, tuwo and yam. You eat it and lick the plate with the thoroughness of a wretch and the greed of a miser. And to think that we did not even know suffering in the days we spoke of suffering, the days of: “Nigeria jagajaga, poor man dey suffer suffer”! An event that should have faded with the burden of memory now surfaces. In need of N10, I conducted a geographic survey of the Obafemi Awolowo University, from the Motion Ground to Engineering, and from bus stop to the school gate, looking for the surplus note I hoped someone had lost to complete my t-fare. Home was in Oluwabamise Street, Ondo, and it took almost 45 minutes of futile labour to finally realize that OAU students/staff were not in the habit of losing a dime. The fare was N80 but I had only N70.

As I eventually found out, the long walk to weariness was entirely unnecessary: an auto technician (mechanic) just by the other side of the gate that I explained my ordeal to (in what turned out to be the only occasion I had to resolve such a dialectical contradiction) brought out N20 in no time, and I wondered why and how on earth I had hit on the decision to look for a lost N10 in the first place! It also occurred to me that if I had made a conference with my legs away from the university gate and past Mayfair, I could have got a N70 bus.

People wrote a letter to suffering and now they claim it has no mercy. A professor lamented: “My salary as a Senior Lecturer in 2010 was N288,000, equivalent to about $1745 at $1=N165.” Beware, soul brother: mathematics sometimes leads to a mental home, and thereafter to the mortuary. These days, some people are so hungry that they are in a daze, negotiating their way into a seizure. Softly, softly. Eat the stew with patience.

Re: Biblically, there will be no peace in Gaza

Yes, there will no be peace in Gaza. Why? Because the world power chose to ignore the truth. The land owners are being maltreated by the aggressors with impunity. How could there be peace without justice? The super power is not fair to the oppressed people of Palestine. Two wrong cannot make a right either. The biblical prophecy can be wisely reviewed for peace to reign in the region. This is 21st century!

Yacoob Abiodun (0810 350 1024)

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