THE Maragoli people of Kenya have interesting warnings about life. They say: “Stay away from issues of people who have shared same blanket and exchanged fluids.” These Maragoli are the same people who also warned that “before you go out with a widow, you must first ask her what killed the husband.” This column borrowed the second Maragoli proverb cited here in September last year. It was used to say that the Nigerian electorate doesn’t ask such questions when it is election time. Today, it is the Maragoli tribe again, and it is about the exchange of fluids under the blanket. By cursory interpretation, they are saying we must not veer into matters that happen among people who have shared blankets and exchanged fluids. If we must do that, we must not probe too deeply and we must also not plunge into their matter without adequate circumspection.
Everyone is free to interprete today’s suasion as they wish. As a reader, you are free to make your deductions and use it anyhow. This advice is superficially erotic by its very nature but you can decide your own adjective. This write up is about to do just that. However, it is also fit and proper to tell where the warning is coming from and why. Just like a complete Bible passage read at every Mass by Catholics, this will enable the reader to have a proper wholistic grasp of the matter. Knowing it in full and having a full measure of the dose will not allow us to be consumed in the ephemeral blitz of the blinking glass prism.
So, that Kikuyu proverb was employed in a discussion and the fallouts of a reigning issue. Mukoma Wa Ngugi, the son of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o – that popular Kenyan novelist who wrote, among others, “Weep not, Child”, said publicly that his father physically abused his mother Nyambura Ngugi. Yes, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o allegedly would beat his wife up. So says their son, Mokoma, who seems to have decided not to heed the advice of his father in the title the popular, award-winning novel.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi added: “Some of my earliest memories are me going to visit her at my grandmother’s where she would seek refuge. But with that said, it is the silencing of who she was that gets me.” At the forum where the public allegation was made, a man by the name Wesley Kibande cited the Maragoli proverb in response to Mukoma. This is not about the propriety or otherwise of what was allegedly done by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o; why the woman never spoke up about it, why his son is making it a public matter years after her death or what he wants of his 86-year-old father.
That was Wesley’s reaction to the public debate of the matter, giving it a traditional touch. It is attracting attention especially because of the reputation of the man in the middle of it all. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is reputed to be the most popular author from East Africa whose work, “Why Humans Walk Upright” has been translated into about 100 languages. You have your own reaction and I have mine to what Mukoma has done. Mine includes pointing to the proverb it generated as it leans on trending issues in Nigeria. The act of “sharing a blanket and exchanging fluids” seems to help to look properly at the continuous vicious rape of the Nigerian state by elected representatives and a conspiracy of silence by political leaders of the country.
In a matter that looks like the Yoruba legend of the bat – when you slit one, you find another inside – Nigerians are already tired of reports of economic fraud and humongous sleaze around the various sectors of the economy, every day. The latest in the array king-size crimes against the people is the allegation by a senator representing Bauchi Central, Abdul Ningi. Ningi claimed that the 2024 budget appropriation the Senate passed was N25 trillion while the Appropriation Act signed into law by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is N28.7 trillion. He’s tacitly alleging that the difference in the two figures in the bill and the act was different and that that differential is a crime. This accusation has earned him a three-month suspension from the Senate because his colleagues said he was telling a lie… that he relied on false premises, they said in euphemism.
Even the Senate Leader, Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, said what Ningi did was not just about the budget. He said it was a ‘civilian coup’ and that it was a fight back by the senators that lost the battle for the president of the Senate. He also denied that it was a tribal war or a war against the government of Tinubu. The Senate wants us to discard everything that Ningi said and take it as a ploy to get at the Senate President. This is a pointer the belief that these politicians have shared the same blanket and exchanged fluids. Ningi’s allegations were directed at the executive arm of government but the war about it has been raging at the legislature.
Nigeria has long become unrecognisable today because of unholy alliances as this. The Senate acted very swiftly and wants us to ignore Ningi and his ‘false accusations’. The senators want us to “stay away from issues of people who have shared same blanket and exchanged fluids.” They gloss over the fact that Ningi might have just creeped out from under the basket and decided to take some other form of actions. We should not be oblivious of the fact that Ningi might know what they cooked that set the house on fire. That our country it is now a stranger to the promises it held as a younger country does not bother our political lords who want us to always look away. Many remember the Nigeria of their younger days and exhale in exasperation. It is that bad and disheartening. Atop of it all, the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu cannot be held by its promises because we do not remember more than one: We will remove fuel subsidy.
Is it not enough to inquire what Akpabio’s Senate, Ningi, President Tinubu doing and the others are doing under the blanket? Where are Nigerians going to place the revelation of Senator Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe of Cross River North? Where do you think this would leave Senator Godswill Akpabio in the long run? They are all under the blanket and have exchanged fluids. Each one of us has the freedom to interprete the scenario as they wish. However, it is equally important that we consider the level of collaboration among our top politicians before we conclude on the matter. For instance, the three arms of government are separate because elementary government taught us that there would be checks and balances. In other words, each arm of government would serve as a kind of control when the other is descending into their expected excesses. But in Nigeria, they have erased the lines separating them thereby making the Lagislature and the Judiciary appendages of the executive.
Akpabio’s Senate and Tinubu’s Federal Government are under the blanket. They aren’t making us comfortable. They are in clear cahoots on their own welfare while the welfare of the majority of Nigerians is of no importance. The country itself is in a dangerous haemmorage. Even if it is a tribal war as some have argued, you are sure to always find allies everywhere in the country. They are under the same blanket.
A look at the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation shows that they are all under the same blanket. Finance commissioners in states have been enrolled and are waiting to be brought under too. The intricate web they’re weaving with London as enticement cannot be explained just yet.
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