‘I am going to Abuja to look for a man’, she said. Her mother looked at her long and hard, sighed and said ‘You know, you could just have told me you are so unhappy you want to go looking for the devil because in Abuja, there are only three men, the leech who lives off the plucking of politicians, the gay and the politician. You, my daughter, are better than any of them. The village drunk will be better for you’. Ada stood in shock.
You should visit Abuja, the city of bright lights, wide roads and pretenders. She is a beautiful city, spanking new on the outside, rotten in every part on the inside. She is unlike any city in the world. Abuja winks at you from a distance, ‘come, come’ she says but promises nothing. If you yield to her lure, she quickly entraps you, sucking greedily on your soul, seeking to correct her own perverted creation for in her making and essence, she has no soul.
Abuja denies any relation with Sodom and Gomorrah but secretly, under cover of grand empty offices and houses, in dark rooms within brightly lit illicit venues, she gives her energies to surpassing the same Sodom. In the day, she wakes slowly, lounges lazily after the orgies of the night, strolls into commonwealth offices in starched wools, guinea brocade and silk, that is the identity of the family and borrowed shoes gleaming with loaned wax, to take again, its entitlement for the day, enough to feed a young woman’s village.
Abuja is the capital city where the head of the presidents sits, for they are many inside the city, and all his courtsmen vomit the daily sermon of equality of all men, only that some are more equal than others. It is their responsibility, a self-given duty. To the untrained ear, that is an unjust refrain but those who know the terrain understand that it is an invitation to join the orgy after pretense at work so they too can be more equal than others.
Abuja is Nigeria’s Animal Farm and no amount of epithets will puncture her conscience for she has no soul.
Abuja is where young girls go to lose their innocence and strapping young men learn short cuts to puerile financial victory. Even sinful Washington will give an arm to learn from the Abujans. A day in the city teaches more than your wise father and experienced mother have capacity to tutor and no teacher ever prepares you for the realities of the City of Sin.
Abuja is the Seat of The Nigerian Demon carefully wrapped in gay garbs and full of shiny lies.
It is where the fate of squalorous Niger Delta is decided and the future of the backward North is determined. It is the place of power that makes it impossible for the Igbo Clan to aspire to national leadership and the hands that slow down the South West has a high seat.
Abuja is the House of Power in the Nigerian Game Of Thrones.
The stone-hearted men and the women, chiseled from slabs of rock and smoothed over with generous gobs of coloured powder live there, each daily armed with devious wit and an unerring sense of smell to sniff out where today’s money is and who will hold the purse strings tomorrow.
Irrespective of how satanically they tear into each other in the pages of newspapers and social media, they are friends in deceit and tightly united in the project to share an unearned commonwealth.
Abuja is our capital city but it delivers no true capital. Abuja has no soul and that is a sorry conclusion for the gathering point of all our aspirations.
Abuja the Beautiful…Abuja the Seat of Unkindness.
Bimbo Manuel…Morning Muses.