I won’t stop laughing at those Nigerians who think that just because they were born inside Lugard’s contraption to Nigerian parents, they matter. It is pure ignorance of elementary chemistry to believe that matter is anything that has weight and occupy space. Check these Nigerians out and you realise that papers in the EFCC recycle bin occupy a better place and carry more weight than them. But apparently, they do not know. They were too busy wondering where their next meal would be coming from while the rest of the class was memorising relevant sections of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Orwell for the information of millennials is not a Nigerian, but the message he passed with Animal Farm could have saved more lives than our pastorpreneurs hawking their fake marvels on Africa Magic. These people stopped reading Orwell when the character declared that all animals were equal. The rest of us graduated with knowledge of the amendment to the rule – that some are more equal than others.
Gaskiya, our oppressors have been using morsels of bread to scoop our stew ever before the introduction of sliced bread by stingy bakers. Kudos to that TikTok lady who busted the myth that the customer is not always right as we all believed but that the customer is always right in matters of taste. It is a fact known to shopkeepers in Kano’s Kantin Kwari each time they try to convince a Yoruba woman to buy shadda over lace material. It’s a matter of taste!
Some of you have lately discovered that when it comes to nabbing a scapegoat, even the long arms of EFCC could be tied in spite of any explanation by Dele Oyewale to the contrary. For years now, Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye, alias Bobrisky has been dancing on the edge of the precipice of socially acceptable norm of genderisation without consequence. Even when the lawmakers made a law against cross-dressing or any form of gender ‘deviance’, Bobrisky continued to equate notoriety with popularity. If he was born in Yagbaland, he’d have remembered my father’s famous saying, that a man whose last year legs is being sought ought not to spread his 2024 limbs with reckless abandon.
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Anyhow, someone with the right connection to Yellow House collected video evidence of him/her spraying the naira with social abandon at a social function. We all know that of all the ills that trouble Nigeria, our lawmakers found affront in the attitude of wannabes pretending that they too matter and that all animals are equal.
I mean, we all know that abusing the naira; that commodity that most of us swear affidavits to keep earning even when we should have retired, is not something we are permitted to do. Spraying the naira caused it to lose its value. The hoi-polloi is not that Borno lawbreaker, sorry, legislator who went back to his constituency to demonstrate his new status by throwing raw cash down from his first-floor balcony. Now, that’s not an abuse of the naira, it’s more like floating the currency. If anyone doubts me, they should ask the Minna hothead who also ‘floated’ the naira by tossing it from the top of a vehicle in full motion like Lawrence Anini of better-forgotten memory. The privileged are licensed to denigrate the naira without consequences; the currency loses its value once ordinary people take the cue.
Lucky Obi Cubana, the mega-millionaire club proprietor whose dealings with the naira brought him into the limelight. Ask Oyewale and he will quote scriptures for you to wit – the time of ignorance, the law has overlooked. Tell me what would become of owambe parties without a Naira rain? The answer is simple – it’ll be as colourless as my naming ceremony. Speaking from his grave, my father just confirmed that in ancient Yagbaland, children were not named with fanfare until Yagba people retraced their routes and discovered they were cousins of the Ngbati people of the South West.
So, let’s all pretend that when the Lagos socialite Ọba, made garlands of Emefiele’s hard-to-get new currency and delicately hung it on the neck of Fuji crooner, Wasiu Ayinde Marshall, he was only decorating the national musician, not abusing, taunting or traumatising the naira. God forbid that the eyes of the EFCC behold a crown head breaking the law. The saying in Yorùbá remains – Ọba ba lórí ohun gbogbo – literally meaning that a King’s action is unquestionable. Kabiyesi o.
Mr Oyewale of the EFCC knows when people are trying to break a coconut on his head when he reminded those Nigerians exhuming the video clip of their new president, the indomitable Ọmọ Olódó idẹ himself; Asiwaju of Afrika and the Jagaban of ECOWAS, spraying the same musician at one of his campaign rallies. Now, if as it were, an incoming president cannot break the law with impunity, then this country is not worth the legal title by which Lugard permitted his girlfriend to amalgamate two unidentical protectorates. Why? Even people who gave birth to unidentical twins have raised them.
Which brings us to the most important issue of our time, the validity of the legality of Nigeria’s marriage certificate as a nation. Powerful opportunists have been arguing that the marriage document that bound Nigeria has gone past its best-before date. They’re saying that it has become ultra vires and subsequently null and void and of no effect. This narration is helping anyone with the ambition to seek a declaration for his own republic, albeit without removing their suckers from the nourishing national baby food – its crude oil.
Mohammed Yusuf broke ranks to establish his dream caliphate until he was murdered in broad daylight without trial. Abubakar Shekau succeeded him until he met a gruesome death and left ISIS/ISIL adherents. After Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu lost out in his dream of creating Biafra, Ralph Uwazurike made his own efforts and failed before Nnamdi Kanu hijacked the dream. Now in detention, depending on who you ask, Simon Ekpa is acting on Kanu’s hallucination. Herdsmen don’t want much; just the right to feed everything green to their sacred cows. They’ll waste blood to achieve that aim.
For a while now, some people calling themselves the Yoruba Nation have been fighting for their own autonomy. Buoyed by the fact that in our system, brigandage pays more dividends than patriotism, they almost actualised their dreams last Saturday when they drove into the state secretariat in Ibadan to hoist their own flag with charms, Dane guns, knives and cutlasses. That was before the combination of Kayode Egbetokun and Lágbájá’s boys, with help from vigilantes nipped it in the bud. Imagine guerrilla warfare in the centre of the largest city in Nigeria?
A common thread about agitators is that most of them live abroad. This is why, from my relative safety in Ottawa, I may be considering the risky business of the declaration of Wakaman nation. But first, I need support to enhance the status of the two community-built schools in Okeagi. They need desks, books, blackboards, computers, and help to recruit and retain qualified teachers. If I have that, I could declare myself president of Wakaman nation. Now, is that too much to dream?
