CHAPTER ONE
How so soon and easily we forget in this country, how swiftly we zip along from controversy to disaster. Have you forgotten that someone, like a bolt out of the blues ‘informed’ us that, ‘Buhari is not BUHARI, he is one felon with the curious first name, JUBRIL’? We did not have any response beyond the whimpering denials of the incompetents responsible for exactly responding. Could we not have just CAPTURED the guy in the open, at the Juma’at service, in everyone’s presence with global television looking on and shoot him out of hand for such grave offenses as slyly looking at Buhari’s Aisha, maybe even in ‘ze arza room’ and possibly ordering Professor Yemi Osinbajo to ‘see me in my office’?! Can you just imagine? Shoot the guy out of hand or just please shush as the government has shushed! Thank God all that is behind us now as the fellow and his cohorts search wildly for other asininities after sniffing their overdoses of strange substances. But that is the old news.
CHAPTER TWO
The old news too is that the Eko Bridge Complex stretching from Fadeyi on Ikorodu Road all the way through Ojuelegba, National Stadium, Alaka on to Ijora Olopa and Apapa has been on lock down by trucks from every part of the world in close to the last eighteen months. Buhari came to town and they all disappeared but reappeared less than twenty-four hours after the man returned to his base in serene Abuja. So the question is, where did the trailers go? Stacked one on top of the other out of sight while the President was in town? Presidential eyes cannot behold such eyesore! The dangerously pockmarked roads were also quickly scraped and resurfaced. We liked it. The Eko Bridge Complex like the Third Mainland Bridge belong to the Federal Government so why did we who live in Lagos and have had to helplessly tolerate the frustration of the mindless traffic they caused have to wait for the President to visit before we could have a twenty-four hour respite? In this age of anti-corruption war, those who support Baba Buhari would expect that someone would have heard like I did on radio that some members of the Task Force in charge of solving the trailer problem were taking bribes from the trailers to park on the bridge and to move to the ports once they have ‘dropped somtin’. We can only trust that the slow-grinding wheels of the law will catch up with them and bring them to book. I will personally enjoy reading about their trial. Meanwhile, Dangote, who owns or has close to half of the trucks on the bridge on contract is helping to work on the roads in Apapa to bring final relief to Lagos! Glory to God! Old news.
CHAPTER THREE
Trumpesque diversions and finger-pointing that ignore the leprosy to treat the ringworm. Consider. We now know that there are about one cow to five persons on earth! Hmm. Now, someone is putting a big part of the blame for global warming smack at their doorstep! Scientific fact and I read it, trust me. They say those guys can fart! Farts, big time, the type that leaves you smiling smugly with relief. Ordinarily, cow fart would not bother anyone but scientists claim that their farts contain gases that add to the global warming challenge! So, to redeem us from harmful cow fart, another someone is helping us grow meat that does not fart, in the lab and cows shall be no more to foul up our environment! Meanwhile, I am anxiously pondering how my children will describe cows to their own children – not that they saw a lot more than the occasional cow themselves. But no matter, we have more important things to worry about down here in the butt of the world. We are still busy here trying to sort the jumbled knots of power generation and whoever is responsible for frustrating the frigging thing needs to take note of the exit of the cow. $16b. $37b. Cows and snakes. Can we just let the damn details be and just light up this blooming country? Really! But then, that is also old news.
CHAPTER FOUR
Buhari is limp and lifeless. Another African president is ‘Crocodile’. Assad has to go. Little Rocket Man. Unfair China. Irresponsible Europe, not good enough for elevated American values. So, who campaigns for fairness and equality and then elects such a reminder of all the most despised leaders in history into office as President in 2016? The embarrassment of their goof, the Great American Trump Goof, is a big enough payback for that hypocrisy. I am gleeful that The Absurdity of a Donald J. Trump Sitting in the Great Oval Office is on a par with the embarrassment of an imaginary Jubril sitting in our own Aso Villa, possibly sleeping next door to the First Lady. Tufia! Fortunately, we all seem agreed that Jubril is a joke, a sour one but a joke still. Trump is a reality though. There have been such horrific mass homicides and deaths, young people, children, cut down in their innocence, global tensions and financial uncertainties in this Trump Presidency that even distant onlookers like us in the heart of ‘dark’ Africa are horrified. His constant policies shifts and walk-backs, a reckless brinkmanship endangers the entire world and the man is concerned only about himself. Yet, a large chunk of America is able to find explanations of national interest for his blundering, flailing fight to save his own skin. Now the major anxiety is that they may have elected a Russian spy into the White House! Teeheehee! Make e just allow Robert Mueller complete im work, sha. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria are not smart enough to decide in their own national interest. Mscheeew. No wonder South Americans are deciding in their own interest and beating down the walls of Trump at the southern borders. Let the man cry all he wants and shut down government as many tikmes as his warped whims take him but let no one give him a dime for that infernal wall! Mexico also ain’t paying a buck for that sh**hole wall! He’s lucky there’s a whole ocean between Lagos and New York, e for see caravan! Mscheeeew! Just let him explain whatever deal he has with Vladimir Putin. Nonsense!
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Nigeria is fantastically corrupt…’ or something in that vein but it was a statement credited to the immediate past British Prime Minister, David Cameron. Buhari is in government and I imagine it was embarrassing for him to swallow his own words as he found that it is not every Nigerian that is incapable of honor, ruthlessly greedy and shamelessly corrupt. The countries of ‘incorruptible’ West have since then, even if shamefacedly, joined the crusade to rid Africa, if not the world of corruption, money that they had sat on, self-righteously, started to be repatriated. It is one of the major achievements of the Buhari government, shoving it back in the West’s face. They had every chance to have made good profit from that alone, being able by sheer character, to remove the thin veil of hypocrisy that covered the business influenced politics of the West, but alas, no one was on seat in the Information Ministry and the National Orientation Agency was clueless, more concerned with the inconsequential. Those who understand political propaganda and possessed of the savvy of its use, have taken it and turned it into a joke, a minus for the Buhari government. Considering the amount of work put into the anti-corruption project and the clear proof of its fruits, many times in hard cash that even the government’s ‘enemy’ states have undeniably benefited from, the world should pause when we speak, our people should be able to hold their heads high these days when we encounter the critical world and our rating on the corrupt countries roster should have been drastically reviewed, especially in the way they induce foreign investor confidence and ultimately better life for the Nigerian locals. Unless those ‘foreign investors’ nursed any nostalgia of the Nigeria where you could bring in Brighton beach sand and get paid in crude, this is a saner Nigeria. Hopefully, that Nigeria is dead, whichever way any Nigerian chooses to vote in this critical season of national life. It will be great for my children’s children to attend high quality government owned schools again, just like I did, properly funded and staffed with money that some wraith is not stealing to sooth his demented fear of poverty or perverted intent to dominate. Someone has to be able to make someone see that even if all else this Buhari guy has done is a big fat nothing, he has at least given the Oyinbo man a morality bloody nose. That is so satisfying. Again, just a muse. Stale news?
CHAPTER SIX
When monkey too get sense, e dey do imsef join. Na true. I dey here dey wait wetin go happen after Donald Trump comot for gofment and anoda person wey no be like am come enter. I dey tink am, wetin go happen between Russia and US and Western Europe and Middle East because Trump don go everywhere, talk anyhow, abuse people, all de tins America dey do for dem before, e bone say im no dey do again. Russia siddon one side dey look am with corner eye. I bow for dat guy sha! No be de same Vladmir Putin? Hmm, I cut for de guy. E tey de guy dey plan dis tin dey come. After im comot for KGB, im go join gofment. Only people wey sabi know say, hmm, dis guy…Before anybody know wetin dey happen, de guy don dey follow de baba dem for Moscow dey blend. Na im dem call am say make e kuku just come take over. You know say those people wey dey for KGB no send, so till today, nobody know whether na say im hold dem for bad place or na say dem just like am. Anyway, de guy hard. Im plan be like na to start de old Russian Empire again. Now, Trump don fall everybody hand, tell dem say im no dey do contract wey go make America and Russia not to dey make dangerous weapon wey fit kill everybody again. As we dey talk so, Russia don announce say dem don create de kind missile wey notin fit stop am and America sef don announce say dem dey create anoda one wey be baba! Abeg, we we no follow dem fight, o! Na jazz we we dey take fight for here, o! Abeg, o!
CHAPTER SEVEN
This is worrisome. I read on one of the local online newspapers that one of the gubernatorial candidates in the forthcoming elections in Lagos State, PDP’s Mr. Jimi Agbaje, a perennial contestant, has again made a totally dangerous claim. The site, ‘NEWS-AF.DAILYADVENT.COM’, reported that the Jimi Agbaje Campaign Organization, JACO, is claiming that INEC is allegedly colluding with APC to disenfranchise non-indigenes resident in Lagos. The site reported that JACO claims INEC staff, acting a script, was undertaking discriminatory distribution of PVCs by withholding the cards of non-indigenes not sympathetic to the ruling APC. Though INEC was reported to have denied the accusation, the JACO insisted that INEC should wade into the matter, calling it immoral, illegal and xenophobic. And that is the word I have a problem with – XENOPHOBIC.
I am getting on in years but my memory retains enough functions to remember that it was over this same Jimi Agbaje in the last elections in 2015 that the Oba of Lagos made the widely reported statement credited to him about shoving everyone of Igbo extraction into the Lagos lagoon if they did not vote for a particular person. I wish to observe that the Oba could not have made the reported statement in abstraction. I do not think he woke up one great morning, high on his authority as traditional ruler of main Lagos and spewed the words. We must query Jimi what he contributed to it. We must examine the issues that led to it and the circumstances of the statement. Now, Jimi Agbaje, who presents the mien of a fine gentleman, has again stood by while the Director of his JACO, one Frank Oboagwina, raises the spectre of xenophobia, discrimination, particularly referencing people who are not Yoruba or Hausa as targets for such discriminatory, possibly unsubstantiated action by INEC. The implications are scary and one must ask Jimi if he feels it is responsible enough, if he is convinced that it is a fair enough weapon to use in his bid to win at all cost. He should tell Lagosians how he will deal with the possible backlash of the divisive utterances of his Frank Obogwina, who may not know the sensibilities of this tribe enough, may not have enough stake in this state to stay if trouble breaks out as a result of his words, no matter how he justifies it. In my ignorance, I had assumed that people seeking office would be considerate of a tomorrow that may consume them but I do not think this applies to our Jimi Agbaje. Lagos is the biggest melting pot of Nigeria with many from other ethnic nationalities taking permanent residence here and justifiably feeling a sense of belonging enough to correctly assume that they have a stake in this state and should be a part of deciding who governs them. Jimi Agbaje, even if he is not directly responsible for that press release, is held liable for the irresponsible, crass and volatile choice of words. They lack class, thought, maturity and the speak volumes of the divisive mindset of he and his team in their bid to win at all costs. It is unbecoming of a true and cosmopolitan Lagosian. I am hopeful that he will retract the offensive words and reassure everyone that it was not his intent to strain our relationships with our neighbors, no matter where they came from. Elections will come and go, Lagos will remain. This Lagos will remain, even after Jimi cannot contest anymore.
