Unpopular side with Thomas Oti
Email: thomasoti@qed.ng
Your blessing can be a curse. This is a proven fact especially here in Nigeria. For instance, our crude oil has been described as our biggest curse. I have also heard our country described as a very blessed country filled with milk and honey; and that to balance the equation, we got leadership as our curse. They point to a combination of our oil and our bad leadership as the reason Nigeria has been so underdeveloped for so long. The many evils that oil and greedy leaders have wrought on our land have also been described as kolomental. They say that is why we suffer so much in the midst of so much wealth and opulence. The discovery of oil destroyed our core honest means of livelihoods. Honest men and women turned dishonest overnight. Farms were abandoned for the black gold. Fishing was abandoned in the creeks for the black poison on which the lands were lightly planted. Fishing was also abandoned for the easier business of armed brigandage.
Oil changed the complexion of our people. People who were black and beautiful suddenly turned oyinbo pepper on their faces while their knuckles remained different shades of black and yellow. People who were fine yellow had their faces and character sullied by the black dirt oozing forcefully out of their ‘Olobiriness’. And with time, the black, yellow, white, green, brown etc skinned amongst us got sullied over and over again with the black curse oozing from our land. So much so that those who were being hounded to spew out the green in their bellies and guts either developed overnight cancers or became one legged billionaires recuperating in expensive hotel rooms, sorry, ‘hospitalish’ rooms in the America and in the ‘Nondon’!
But despite the very clear and present evidence presented by this rather argumentative bunch, I still beg to disagree. Our curse is not what we have. It is what we don’t have. We don’t have common sense for one. We also don’t have human beings. I am convinced that the animal that one of our animalistic leaders referred to as man was the Nigerian man and woman. Or how is it possible that a well created human from mud and divine spit is capable of wreaking the havoc that the men and women of our country have wreaked on us in recent times? It is not corruption that is our problem. Our problem is indefinable. Or better still, it is unidentifiable. Maybe Obahiagbon will have the English to describe it from one of his easily contrived grammatical contraptions that like the Nigerian nation does not make sense.
Our curse is actually our god. What god creates a people like ours and plunks them in such wealth and opulence and then goes to sleep? Or is he dead? Dead from old age? After all, he would be past old by now! Whatever happened to the god of old who could strike Ananias and Sapphira dead straight up for holding back on their fellow church rats and will stand and collect the tithe of corruption, armed robbery, brigandage and all such shenanigans? I don’t get it. Why won’t he just do what he used to do in those days we were forced to read and fantasise about? What would happen if as Atuki stood in court and the court clerk says “Yo, Atuki, on the count of grand corruption and misappropriation of public funds meant for the prosecution of the war on Boko Haram thus leading to the needless death of innocent soldiers in Sambisa forest to fight armed to the tooth terrorists with only their uniforms, thus defrauding the nation to the tune of at least $2bn, how do you plead?” And as soon as Atuki says “not guilty”, thunder strikes and split him in half and converts the burnt carcass to the missing $2bn. Wouldn’t that be a better representation of the god of old that we all romanticised and feared? If that had happened, Omo Baba Oloye (OBO) would have hurried straight into his inner chambers to unlock his safe and handover the sweat and labour of the Iya Oniru and Iya Alata that trusted him with their life savings because they believed in the system. He would have speedily returned the double he received as ex and sitting executhief. He would have declared Panama before they asked him. Whether it is madam’s own or his own. So would Moses’ successor have gone into the synagogue lest it become his own morgue.
If that old time god were still alive, Nigerians would be straight as a ruler. All Nigerian rulers would have been straight. So would have been all the other mathematical instruments in the math set of this our crying beloved nation.
Oh, who will our god awake?
Switching colonial masters
So we will soon replace one correct colonial master with another one with slit half closing eyes. Na wa o! When will we be freed from these bondage? Must we replace one colonial mentality for another? Or wait o; has this speedy switch got anything to do with the America’s trump card? Are we hedging our bet already? In case the hilarious one does not win, better we start reconsidering our bedfellows? The potential trump’s dislike for Muslims is well broadcast. Would he deny our president visa? Or he won’t allow his tens carry his mat into the white house? This is another experiment o. There must be a problem with experimenting so much with the fate and fortunes of 200million+ citizens. Is this what we get for electing a changed soldier who’s only credentials for the position is that he is better than the one we elected because his story was so romantic (he grew up without shoes) and his name was a prayer we were familiar with? Nigeria, when we go learn?
