THE HEART OF POVERTY

Gabriel Griffin is the founder/ organizer of Poetry on the Lake, an annual festival of poetry and culture on Lake Orta in Northern Italy. He edits a companion anthology to the annual festival and has two collections of verses to his name: Compagno and the Mouthbrooders and Transumanza. I chanced on Griffin while ‘flipping’ through the Poetry Kit newsletter, a monthly webzine to which I am happily subscribed.

He clutched at me in greeting and held tight with a slew of running commentaries that caught me choking. They formed a set, had the stunning title of Caught in the Net and held up a cluster of dark themes for measured investigation. I found a fisher of truths under whose impassioned gaze the human condition seemed comprehensible like a scurrying crab. In the Net are eleven poems, but just the three reviewed here hold my interest for obvious reasons.

Lament for an illegal immigrant, the first of a patchwork of compositions is a heart stopping ode to a shocking find.          

No moon, but fishermen

are used to that and the sea’s chanting,

the descant of the nets.

…

Something didn’t sing, humped

in the net, thudding onto the deck.

Its ears heard no notes, its eyes

were blind to the men standing round,

its throat choked with words

that no-one would hear.

Caught in the pathos of that still moment, the fishermen are disoriented; “they let the sly octopus” escape and “forgot to stop the arch and leap of bream”. A requiem echoed in the dumb wail of the sea and the screech of gulls, but there was work to be done…

The men unfroze, thumped

what didn’t sing, what was lost for words,

over the hissing deck. Tipped that which

had no hope, had never had a hope,

back to the sea. No

word, no hymn, no prayer.

This graphic minute unfurls for me reels of history from the Atlantic slave trade to the realities invoked by Griffin’s poetic eye. No stopping his lament, even as time marched on unstopping, unstoppable.

But the rags of its clothes cried. The sea

beat its fists on the boat. And the wind got up

and howled till dawn.

It has been suggested by persons who should know, that poetry does not change anything. It is subtly implied thereby, that there are those who think it should, or can. What can not be denied is that poetry does infect and can affect.  Having read also, that poetry is the journalism of the spirit, I am content to let dormant emotions lie. But Griffin’s intense portrayal of the African situation is a subtle call to action that is all the more gripping for its affected distance and mutely suggestive imageries.

In Out of Africa, he operates a twin tour- to and from the continent.

We fly into Africa on an all-in,

They boat out of Africa all in.

We’ve taken a taxi to the airport.

They’ve jolted a week in a scorching truck.

Through “pressurised cabins” and truck compartments 50° C; “the latest jet” and “a leaking boat”; stewardess serving “drinks of choice” and water bottles that “run dry halfway”; air passengers “coach-borne to 5 star hotels” and seafarers “chucked into the sea still far out”, we arrive at the last telling contrast.

We see rain forest, silverbacks, mountains.

Their shore is a lava cliff, wave swept.

Not many see it.

This end phrase is the sum of the story though, as we know, airplanes crash and death is the trusted arbiter of class quarrels. But in it we behold that chilling presence in the fishing net.

 Vu’ Cumpra’? (a popular Italian term used to denote illegal African street pedlars, and a corruption of the phrase Vuoi comprare? Want to buy?) brings the rear of what I call a trilogy of dirges on the African predicament

 The racist pose may well be the poet’s alter-ego making a cynical jest of his self assurance:

You’re stopped.  Roast chestnut scent

slinks off, gives way to breath

of pepper, acrid herbs that bite.

Swish, swish, Griffin’s brush strokes produce a quick sketch of rancid poverty, (as only Europe can boast of) and the artful response of a suave resident to the attentions of a determined hustler.  

 But an undertone of condescension robs the encounter of its noble face. The native sees beyond the immigrant to his country,

watches in rows.  Like medals on those guys

who run his rundown land,

An offered drink takes him to the bedroom of the beggar’s soul. His curiosity has that mocking edge. “I curve both hands to chest, / cup phantom boobs.”

A grin. The Metro rumbles underground.

Repeats my mime, makes tits oversize.

…We laugh.

The answer to another impish query turns him into seer:  

His kids with locust legs, I bet, and white

lamb’s eyes. Kids who pull herbs, suck bones

and nibble bits of mushroom moons

Nonetheless, a transaction is made;

 I buy the torch. Sirens howl, brakes yelp.

It’s a valid conjecture if that torch will light the way through the jungle of such ingrained prejudice to the heart of poverty- his and the pedlar’s.  The latter disappears, perhaps to escape the police, even as Griffin produces yet another dismal stroke-

From slaughtered lands the sounds of flies.

It’s just as easy, to admire Griffin for his deft, acerbic touch and to despise him for its cold, sweeping cut. But these poems hold a candle to the dilemma of the African predicament in an emerging global village.

SINS OF OUR FATHERS

The world should have taken notice when Barack Obama penned a fabulous autobiographical account of a journey in search of a father he knew little about. In Kenya, he discovered his Old Man through the varied recollections of siblings, aunties and uncles. These tales exposed to him an African variant of the great American dream, that oft-cited spur for grandiose achievement by citizens of the US.

It seems likely that young Obama placed one vision alongside the other and asked himself the engaging question: What happens to a dream deferred?

The title of his book called to mind, therefore, an inheritance yet unclaimed. Though his Kenyan odyssey revealed to him a raisin roasting in the sun, the soreness of his father’s failings was the spring board for Barack Obama’s engagement with America, Little wonder he took to public service: to give- unlike his free spending father- not money that he did not have, but empathy for the down trodden and organisational skills for the alleviation of their common poverty. And so he triumphed, and brought a modern African tang to a stale American ethic.

What a challenge his story poses then for the youths of our continent as MacMillan’s “wind of change” coasts to a fateful tryst with the history books. Since the year 2010 came into reckoning, the din of festive cheers has been sweeping through Africa like one huge carnival dance. Still, one hears through the revelry and all, not boastful shouts of victory alone but sighs of wistful loss and grunts of despair. Soft applause reaching the ears salutes not the agile progress of Africa but the wiry faith of its suffering peoples.

This explains the spate of blatant cynicism that welcomed the golden jubilee celebrations of independence here in Nigeria. From Tunis to Lusaka, Nouakchott to Mogadishu, this attitude was replicated all over as the children of Africa scoffed at the paltry gains of national independence. The harvest was lean but the elements were not entirely to blame. Rather, the farm managers had sown their thieving hands and left the barns bereft of crops.

While the sour mood lasted, it was somewhat interesting to see private individuals celebrate their birthdays and other anniversaries with great jubilation and perverse sense of accomplishment. Balanced against their vociferous opposition to the federal government’s independence jamboree, the evident relish with which a particular media house reported the 50^th birthday bash of the wife of their proprietor, a former governor of Lagos, could only be described as farcical. With a typical penchant for enthroning ostentation over propriety, nobody bothered to ask the obvious questions about the probity of this extreme show of affluence. But that is really by the way. 

“Wind of change” aptly described the tide of nationalist agitation that swept through Africa by the end of the Second World War.  The triumph of the Allied Powers had proved conclusively that no race could lord it over another without question anymore. Decolonisation seemed the right price therefore for the contribution of the colonies to Allied victory. Yet, the new helmsmen to steer the ships of nationhood did not quite grasp the nuances of their task. They had flag independence like many a chartered vessel plying the high seas and nothing more besides. The destination of the ship and its motley cargo was much beyond their control.

Under their watch then, the continent regressed to a new era of rabid ethnic rivalries which colonialism had helped put at bay, though the colonists were not averse to exploiting these cleavages to advantage. Consequently, Africa suffered a second storm of oppression by internal colonists and home grown slave masters from which it is yet to be fully liberated. The post independence history of Africa bears out this fact. Nearly every nation south of the Sahara has tasted of the bitter gall of civil strife and quite a number are still enmeshed in war.

All over Africa, the great dream of independence was fostered on ambition alone: to take the place of the colonial overlord and become the new masters of the land- or “white man in black skin” as Augustus Adebayo puts it in a soul searching autobiography of the same title. Obama fights shy of reaching a similar conclusion, but the dreams of his father suffer a similar tragedy. The Old Man sought redemption in a painful refusal to sell his soul to the demons of compromise. But his defeat was the more damning when he succumbed to shallow pessimism.  

Thus, the sins of the independence struggle have left Africa nations gasping hard on the marathon trail of growth and development. The transgressions of our fathers constitute the dubious legacy of the present generation of African leaders. The challenges are enormous; to vacate the errors of the past and march to a new era of people oriented policies, transparency and accountability in government.

The old mind set remains and will not disappear soon as evidenced by squabbles in our country over the rotation of the presidency among the different zones of the country. The worship of false values, the mindless exhibition of ill-gotten wealth, the frivolous flaunting of social and political connections for its own sake, these persist as indicators of a continuing lack of focus and disconnect by the elite. But the question will not go away and will be ever relevant, perhaps till the end of time.

Shall we abandon the dreams of nationhood because of the sins of our fathers? 

THE COLOUR OF VALOUR

I have just finished reading the book, Gerrard: My Autobiography. Through it, I have come to appreciate the shade of subtle difference that may be found between the reds of Liverpool and Manchester United; the deeper tinge of the shirts from Old Trafford and the brighter sparkle of the Anfield jersey.

But team colours go beyond what is visible to the measure of teams, their fighting spirit and a sense of the things that define their style, or the lack of it. 

This is the regular message of football. The sermon is delivered on the pitch and off it, in the stands and boardrooms, the sports good shops and on the sporting pages that chronicle the enduring drama of the game for teeming fans around the world. Beautiful runs of play, thunderous cheers in the stands, increasing sales of club gear and souvenirs, the intermittent buzz of agents’ phones and spicy reportage of the thrilling game- all are woven into a seamless quilt.

 The players, the fans, the scouts, the managers, the marketers, the football association and the media are bound together by the wondrous fabric of their collective passion. Needless to say, this enthralling chain is as strong as its weakest link.

Consequently, if the players fail to deliver on the expected level of skills, the fans would find their thrill elsewhere and the clubs would rue their investments. If the rot infects the administration of the game, the entire league becomes trapped in a vicious circle of underperformance.  That is the sorry state of our local football league, but the sorrier tale is that our local football reporters are a part of the problem.

Let’s visit the English Premier League, where several of our football greats have showcased their talents to the warm admiration of all. Dan Omokachie, Celestine Babayaro, Nwankwo Kanu, Austin Jay Jay Okocha, Yakubu Aiyegbeni, John Utaka, Joseph Yobo, John Mikel Obi, Obafemi Martins, Victor Anichebe, Daniel Shittu, Seyin Olofinjana, Dickson Etuhu and of course Osaze Odemwingie and Obinna Nsofor both of whom crossed over from Russia and Italy respectively in the new season. Indeed, we could go way back in time to the likes of John Chiedozie, Rueben Agboola and John Fashanu, if we want enough names for a team and bench.

 Reading through the Gerrard book, therefore, one could not but wonder what these Nigerian players are lacking, that make them ineligible for story books of their own. One could count five names in the above list who have achieved more for Nigerian football than Gerrard has done for the English FA. Yet, we do not have their stories in lasting form for the enjoyment and education of fans and the growth of Nigerian football. Why is this so?

My diagnosis: a pervasive myopia that makes it impossible for our local sports writers to think beyond the next meal.

Take a look at these other persons: Paul Bassey, Onochie Anibeze, Ade Ojeikere, and Abdul Mumini. Between them we are looking at over a hundred years of sports reporting and analysis. Incredibly, none of them has a pamphlet to his name in the genre of a worthy record of the life of any sporting personality of his time. Yet they know many of these sporting heroes by their first names, have their phone numbers and can regale you with intimate stories about their lives on and off the field and track.  What has this to do with the growth of football, you might ask.

One only needs to flip through “Gerrard: My Autobiography” to see it all. Take away the rampant expletives; Steven does not spare himself or his readers the gritty stench of player-speak. He lets us into the dreamy world of a teenager struggling through the junior Liverpool ranks to make a desired impression on his managers and get into the first team.  From there to his captaincy of Liverpool FC, he affords us a prime view into the psychology of winning and the enormous preparation and managerial skills that produce a winning mentality. The book informs, educates and entertains.

By the time Gerrard and Liverpool FC come from a three goal deficit to lift the Champions League Cup off the groping hands of Paulo Maldini and AC Milan, the reader is well and truly won over, singing along with the fans the Liverpool chant, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” You come away from the book feeling that valour is a Liverpool jersey be it red, green and yellow.

Steve Gerrard never claims to have written his engaging life story, but gives the credit to two reporters, who interviewed him at length for his account and reported it dutifully in a thrilling first person narrative. A similar feat is not beyond the gifted sports writers mentioned above or other fellows like them in other media houses. Sad that Austin Okocha left the game without a written document of his era from his own view point, while the likes of Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand have books that celebrate their achievements for club and country.

The market is there surely. A decent paperback on “Jay Jay” in his prime would have sold no less than 50,000 copies? Instead, our sports journalists are focused on selling jaundiced opinions of footballers and administrators. Our football is the worse for their mental laziness. Nwankwo Kanu is on his last legs currently.

Who can give to Nigeria the full story of the Papillo phenomenon, with its fuller import for the growth of our football? Come on guys, WAKE UP!! 

NO ORDINARY SPIRIT

She wafts through the speakers of my old laptop, a welcome temptress, to lure me from the sexless screen and its halting word-flow to a fanciful island of illicit delights.  She is a friendly spirit, a Tinkerbelle to playful souls. My ears tingle with that hoarse, feathery softness and my thoughts trip on those engaging lyrics. She is… Sade Adu.

If I tell you how I feel…sweetest taboo… That’s why I’m in love with you…Everyday is Christmas…and every night is New Year’s eve…When you keep on loving me…bringing out the best in me…

I did find in her a worthy companion for a tiring search. I had gone down memory lane for fifty golden moments, if you like candles, to decorate our golden cake of national independence. The idea had come from all that bitching about our fiftieth independence anniversary. A very vocal, very cynical section of the media did not think we had anything to show for fifty years of nationhood.

Flipping through many hazy yesteryears however, one was able to record occasions of sheer joy when one had felt very proud to be numbered among the strange specie of folk who describe themselves as Nigerians.

New Year Eve at Lekki Beach: the soft throb of a slow Latin tempo funk beat merging with the ocean breeze sets loose in a cheerful bunch of revelers a gentle hip swinging dance style that came with the chart topping composition. SAP, the development tonic that failed to rejuvenate the national economy was beginning to take its toll on the psyche of the ailing middle class. The wisest of that engendered set were starting to make long term plans for a swift change of location across the wide seas. Sadder days were yet ahead and so, we could afford to rock to Smooth Operator and celebrate at once the sweetness of easy cash flowing on the heels of Babangida’s two-tier forex system.  

Yet, the greater joy was in acknowledging our own; a home girl made good, who had earned us our first ever Grammy for Best New Artiste. Deny it who can, did we not flaunt the fact that she belonged to us- never mind, the trifle about never having grown up here? That is what nationalism does to you; makes you want to reach out and grab everything that burnishes your identity and self respect as a citizen.  Why? Because, they bring out the best in you!

Again in 1994, Helen Folasade Adu won the Grammy for Best R& B Performance, literally sending us to Paradise once more in 2004 with Best Pop Vocal Album for Lovers Rock. It was a while too before Seal, another Nigerian, draped our spirits with the bubbly of another Grammy, though Femi Kuti’s nomination is worth observing for the gravitas it bestowed on afro beat outside our borders. 

But this piece is seriously about Sade Adu and the incomparable style that characterizes her discography. Researching a compilation for the Star musical promotions two years ago, I came upon references that put her in the ranks of Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, Erica Badu and the like. The comparison sprang from smooth jazz; the fusion thing between traditional jazz and varied pop idioms across Europe, the US and Latin America.

Well, I don’t mean to take anything from these other great artistes, but our dear Sade is verily in a class of her own. She makes love to the eardrums like cool breeze on warm skin in the lazy, sleepy hours…fresh, natural, unsullied by hi-tech…

I am amazed to learn that her curious hold on the music scene is the rare attribute of a very enigmatic spirit. This comes from a recent Ebony magazine which sought to review her latest album, Soldier of Love. In a world where show business is seen as showy business and many a musical career would shrivel from lack of publicity, this British Nigerian, as the magazine describes her, shuns the glamour world of photo ops and self promoting sound bites. In fact, she is very nearly a recluse whose reticence has kept the rumour mills working overtime in that part of the world.

I could not help feeling that she was helping to present to the world a new face of the very dim Ebony magazine. ‘Eureka’, I almost heard them screaming from the high towers of the Atlanta publishing house: ‘There are other achievers outside the African American branch of the universal African family!’ Okay, they profiled Mandela and Tutu so long ago, if I remember correctly, but the Ebony perspective has always appeared myopic to me. The editors may have woken up to the reality that the African world is theirs to conquer, and lies much beyond the ghettos and suburbs of the US of A. It’s a post Obama thing maybe. ‘Better late than never,’ I say.

The article was filled with tender recognition of Sade Adu’s liberating self assurance and confident rejection of the crass commercial ethos of the international music industry. Fans commended her Soldier of Love video for its lack of nudity. She reportedly said: “I think it is good to remain true to the spirit of the song. (To be half naked) would be a distraction.”

Spirit of the song! Spoken like a true country woman. No ordinary spirit that and clearly, Sade Adu has it in abundance. Wishing here that our home bred musical wannabes, who dub every thing good and bad that is Western, can follow her example. Wishing also that one day soon, Sade Adu will come do a show here, in Nigeria, for her teeming homeland fans.

Somebody tell her that!

COMMENTARY IS CHEAP

 Has it ever occurred to you that “columnist” rhymes with “communist” and, if you care to think about it, “calumnies” too? I realized this very recently while surveying the multitude of scribblers who make a habit (and a sneaky living, I suspect) of foisting their views on all and sundry. The galling fact also is that they do it without the least excuse!

I mean, you plunk your hard earned naira for a newspaper expecting, of course, to be informed about the latest goings on in the global square, and what do you get? Too little of the main fare, and a load of drivel masquerading as articulate reasoning by people who imagine that license is the same as fine sense.

Okay, I have to draw the line at this point. My beef is not with genuine writers handing out special insight on particular subjects, say, health and life style, sports, literature and the like.   I am angry instead with the large crowd of opinion peddlers, ever ready as they are, to pollute the public space and peace with jaundiced, half-boiled analyses. They must have something to say, it seems, on the latest fiasco or fantasy in the polity. The entire nation too must know about their views. Nonetheless, the huge majority of them add nothing worthwhile to the debates, but empty posturing couched in stylish prose. These are the certified opinion-ists who proudly lay claim to the dubious title of public affairs analysts or commentators.  Only in Nigeria has that become a career description!

Yet, their peculiar job title explains the trade by what it does not say; that “public affairs” is No Man’s Land, mercenary territory of a kind, where the weapons of choice are a weighty dictionary and a prolific pen.

Going through the vast array of daily commentaries that are sold to the public on the touted erudition of some established editorial board types and their news and features desk imitators, I have come to appreciate the inelegant conclusion of the American writer, John Cheever. He it was, who famously observed that opinions are like that part of your body that is noteworthy for its very odorous functions. Everyone has them, of course, but to what avail, when they all smell?

Stand Cheever on his cheeky head, and you might reach some startling conclusions of your own. Society needs opinion peddlers of every description, in quite the same way the human body needs that malodorous organ: to relieve it of noxious wastes for the good health and well-being of the entire system. So, their “jaundiced analyses” are the societal equivalents of excretal matter resulting from the natural exertions of the body politic.

Society would be the worse for it, if we did not have the professional commentators amongst us to vent their petty passions, fears and frustrations with random assaults on logic and common sense. Theirs too is part of the general jaw-jaw that is acclaimed to be better than war-war.

One does observe however, that there is an aspect of the Bolshevik in every writer who has a private pulpit- a column- for regular sermons to the masses. I am not alluding to the radical import or otherwise of the discourses. The communist factor exists obliquely in the hunger to share, albeit not food and shelter but that sense of what is wrong that needs to be put right for the good of all. This is the spirit, I suspect, in which born-again Christians regale each other with their understanding and interpretation of Scripture.

But, too often, something else is lurking behind the stage curtains; a demon from the dark soul of humanity. It manifests in the lust to dominate, to rule or colonize and the territory has not been staked out anywhere that is pricier than the public mind. This is the battle ground for the analysts, commentators, editorial writers and spin doctors on every side of the social and political divides. Remember the six men of Hindustani, who went to see an elephant though all of them were blind? Their descendants abound everywhere.

What they have done in the free arena of the Nigerian media is reduce public discourse to a rowdy contest of shouting orators. You can hardly hear the oration for the commotion, be it the albatross of the PDP zoning principle, the lingering marginalization of various groups in the country, or whatever. Besides, their conclusions reek constantly of entrenched social and political myopia.

Still, the challenge of regularly producing a viewpoint on the current kite in the socio-political sky or whatever hits your fancy can be soul-tasking. It’s no easier for the committed columnist or hack writer. Writers’ block comes in handy as a veritable obstacle to peak performance. For this reason, a number of famous bylines deserve commendation for maintaining appreciable standards of engaging communication through the years. It would not do to mention names, so that pretenders can continue, á la Cheever, to provide the needed conduit for the release of accumulated social and political gases.

And the question may rightly be asked, why are you doing this then, Mr. Pita Okute? Because, commentary is cheap and I caught the itch again to ventilate, yes, in the accepted fashion of my professional tribe. I may just be one of those, you know, the Cheever chums, but I shall do my best, I promise, to steer clear of elephants. Rather, you and I will try hard to follow our good un-hankered nostrils and tell the flowers from the sewers.

MIXED BUNDLES

Little Girl: Where are we going, daddy?

Daddy: To visit a friend. His wife had triplets last week.

Little Girl: (scoffs) Hmm! Mummy bought six plates yesterday!

It had been a difficult labour and Irowoli arrived via caesarean section at Bwari General Hospital on August the 14^th. This was a first for Tony, who has long desired to father a child. As such, we were delirious with joy when he called to say that Yinka had put to bed.

Why do we always say that; ‘put to bed,’ I mean? Rather obvious, I think, that a woman should do just that. The constant allusion to this natural expectation suggests that well, she could act otherwise: put to gutter, the pit latrine or some other forsaken spot that we hear of, and read about so often. Olo’un maje!

Hence, my unstinting admiration for Tuface Idibia, who, tasked by a reporter on his many ‘love children’ says, matter-of-fact like, “dem plenty-o. I’m still counting se’f.”

A week later, I was strolling to Tony’s when I heard my name and turned swiftly in the direction of a melodious feminine voice: “Mr. Pita, na your eye be dis; which day you come?”

Blushing deeply, I gave the truthful response, which elicited an accusatory squeal of surprise. “Madam, na work,” I parried. “I go still come before I go back. Dem done tell me de good news. Congratulations!”

Her answering smile was bright enough to light a hundred candles. I had known this sweet tempered woman during an earlier sojourn in the neighbourhood. “You remember Amazing, don’t you?” Tony had asked as we strolled past the family’s two bedroom bungalow on the first day of my return.

“Yeah.” A reel unwound in my head of a little girl not quite six years old at the time. Is that a baby on her back?”

“Hmm hmmn. Her mother gave birth again recently after five children. But guess what?” She delivered a set of triplets.”

My jaw sprung open like a cheap padlock and I paused in mid-stride. But that’s the good news for which Mama Amzing seemed genuinely delighted about. Do I blame her? No way! I am just as pleased that she is very pleased.

We had a pleasant time at Tony’s that evening, the high point of which was a praise and worship session to ask God for a shower of blessings on ‘Roli. “Every child ought to be celebrated, because every child is a success story,” the preacher said. Continuing, he painted the startling scenario of a million spermatozoa racing like crazy for one single prize. I had never thought of the child making drill in this context. Dreamily, I caught the tension and thrill of the chase at once and heard the orgasmic explosion of the stadium as one daring guy or lady, the Hussain Bolt or Blessing Kogbare of the lot, comes first!  Praaaiiise-the-Looord! Alleluya!!

And when two or more sprinters breast the tape at the same time… should not the celebrations increase in proportion; our prayers double, triple or quadruple as the case may be, for the brightest possible future these sporting heroes can have? I could therefore empathize with the happy mother of triplets and her five earlier winners. The dry, raw witticism of Aldous Huxley came also to mind, and though he referred only to a Noah in “Fifth Philosopher’s Song,” I thought of Hitler, Idi Amin, Bin Laden, Mother Theresa and several other saints and villains the world has known. Everyone of them was a success at birth, not so?

If that preacher is right, then the primeval cry of the newborn is perhaps a shout of triumph. It does mean therefore, that we all come in to the world as champions. The cataclysm through which poor Noah dare hope to survive, I found to be quite symbolic, not only of prenatal trials and challenges but, the gamut of experiences that sum up our stay here on earth.

Indeed, the great marathon of life in Nigeria suggests that we are all winners. Yet, for some, the debacle unfolds too soon. After beating Huxley’s million million spermatozoa some newborn confronts harsh obstacles put down by harsher fate: Hospitals without incubators, callous doctors and nurses and public officials without the least qualms of conscience, whose wives and daughters put to bed routinely in foreign countries where the health care system is healthy and running!

That is the fate which Mama Amazing and her three champions have scaled. That is why her smile lit up the evening. That is the debacle which brought Mrs. Fatima Ibrahim, to a shrieking wreck at the Maitama General Hospital, where she had given birth to twins on 21 August, 2010. Who would have thought that a public hospital in Maitama, Abuja, residential area of the movers and shakers of Nigerian society, did not have incubators? Her premature babies died for lack of adequate care.

Mrs. Ibrahim, school teacher and mother of four is not alone. Mrs. Tautsoma Jubril delivered a set of premature triplets at the Maryam Sani Abacha Hospital, Damaturu on August 23, 2010. The hospital, named after a former First Lady of Nigeria, did not have incubators too for the premature infants. By the 27^th, two of the babies had died…

Yet, women continue to put to bed, sometimes with multiple successes. Mrs. Queen Itama, mother of two girls, angled for a boy and got quads for her effort; three girls and one boy. A few days later, Mrs. Bunmi Oladele another mother of two delivered another set of quads at the same hospital in Lagos to make the double event a headliner in several national papers. Newsworthy also, were the urgent calls by both families for humanitarian assistance.

The neighbours also rallied around Mama Amazing and her family to help them through the palpable weight of her triple burden of joy.

Someone observed during the evening that the poor are usually more adept at making babies than the rich. Huxley has a salient view on the matter: “The bed, as the Italian proverb succinctly puts it, is the poor man’s opera.”

It’s the cheapest entertainment ever, from which they derive such mixed bundles of joy and sorrow.

P/S: The last of the Damaturu triplets also died in the last week of September. May their tendril souls rest in perfect peace

BETWEEN SWEET AND EVIL

  

I was talking about Zuma Rock last week and to that imperturbable rock face, I must return.

The legend is well known, I suppose, about the evil king and queen of ancient Gbagyi Kingdom, before Fulani jihadists overran the land and co-opted Gbagyiland into the “Banza Bakwai”- the seven ‘bastard’ states of the old Hausa-Fulani Empire or Caliphate.

At a stage, the people got really pissed with the evil king and queen and banished them to Zuma Forest on the outskirts of the kingdom. Now, here’s a lesson for those of us who imagine that popular uprisings were invented by the French and perfected by the Russians for export to the rest of the world. The image of that evil couple; is the engraving you see as you drive past Zuma Rock.

The surreal dimension of that ‘abstract’ impression is better appreciated from several distant points away from the base of the rock. The traffic recedes to a noiseless backdrop and the vivid etchings of two facial expressions; the weeping queen and- depending on your point of view- the pouting or sneering king, evoke wistful thoughts of the supernatural. This strange effect of simple nature on simpler minds is quite strong even from the far-off Madalla countryside, where Zuma Rock enjoys the veneration of Gbagyi shamans and animists.

The clearest sight of this engaging phenomenon is available right across Zuma Rock, from Munzali Dantata’s Tourist Village. The setting sun bathes the rock face in its glow and lights up every dent and scratch on the huge stone. The chipped rectangle to the right of the king and queen stands out in stark relief as befits the subject of living tales about annual gatherings of the elect and conclaves behind a mystic door!

Still, for all its bewildering attraction, Zuma Rock and its immediate environment bask in the perennial blush of  stunted growth; a pervading ambience of arrested development that is difficult to fathom.      

        The long abandoned Rock Castle Hotel is slowly turning to rubble in the thicket of savannah thorn plants near Zuma Rock. Billed to be a five star hang out, with all the frills of a deluxe lodge, it could have been the first luxury hotel in Abuja. Today, it presents for everyone to see, an eloquent illustration of a worthy investment gone to seed. Talk abounds of a peculiar mineral, uranium perhaps, and strange happenings in the vicinity of the rock which put a halt to the hotel.

Behind the decaying project site, a brick and mortar hosing estate for junior staff of the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development has slowly regressed from a cute though remote address to a desolate outpost. The red-white brickwork has lost its novel charm and looks steadily like a splendid mistake.

Across the busy highway, the green, red and blue roofs of another housing plan make a bright, inspiring statement with compact matchbox plots laid out in the sprawling Madalla valley. At a time, the popular view was that the estate was too close to the highway. Many voiced the fear of speeding, heavy duty vehicles careening off the tarred road and crashing into the buildings. Their concern was not entirely without foundation as crazier mishaps have occurred with some regularity near the popular Madalla market. Since no such tragedy has visited the yet uncompleted housing estate, we can assume that the constant pleas of “Allah ki ya yi” which always trail this terrifying conjecture have been effective in thwarting it.

However, the urgent prayers of the people for modern, affordable housing have not met the desired response of the current administration in Niger State. Governor Babangida Aliyu, aka the Chief Servant, has abandoned the project initiated by his predecessor. The place is now home to vagrants.

The slow, sickly growth of the Tourist Village twenty years plus after it was begun attests more to the doggedness of its proprietor, a former president of the Association of Nigerian Travel Agents, than the inspiring potentials of the Zuma Rock area. The flags of a dozen countries wave from its stylish fence to announce an unflagging drive for the noble ideals of eco-tourism, but the atmosphere behind the rustic gate reeks of that eerie suspension, which distinguishes the building projects around Zuma Rock.  

Soon after he came into office in 1999, President Obasanjo visited the area to kick start a medium income housing project. His schedule was rather tight, it seems, and the president arrived at the venue after dusk. The traffic swelled on both sides from the rock face to Gauraka and Zuba as the president and his host, Governor Kure, went by torchlight and lamp to lay the foundation stone. For whatever it was worth, their efforts at time management with all the semblance of a fetish ritual, merely added to the grand mystic of Zuba Rock. You want to know about that housing project, don’t you? Not a single house has been fully built on that site ten years on.

Now, that is why I believe it is a mistake to put Zuma Rock on our hundred naira note. In my view, the association with Zuma is not such a good thing for the national currency. You see, many a native speaker thinks that the word is zúmà, Hausa, for “honey”. No, it refers to zúmá, Gbagyi for “evil”. So, Zuma Rock is not really “Honey Rock” but…

I started this message last week by saying that something about the environment there propels comparisons with the national situation. You get my drift, now? 

    

VIEW FROM ZUMA ROCK

There’s something about this famous spot on the Kaduna – Abuja highway which commends it for serious comparison to the state of affairs in Nigeria. No, it’s not the swirling early morning mist that shrouds its dome like a turban. Speeding by, one catches a whiff of the contrariness that so defines our national journey in the billboard photographs of the state governor, the “Chief Servant” as he calls himself, of the Power State. That is the pet name of Niger State, you know: The Power State. “One good term deserves another”, one of those outsized posters says and you can’t help wondering if that is why his gap-toothed namesake is angling for a return to Aso Villa.

Another super sheet, to use the outdoor term, has the lesser known Master of the House, Babangida in other words, gazing benignly down the Low Cost Housing Estate, begun by his predecessor; all 300 or so plots with roofs on, left to rot since 2007. Chief servant? No, the abandoned housing estate calls for a more fitting title.


Further ahead is the popular Madalla Market, scene of widely reported accidents involving upturned petrol tankers, hapless roadside merchants and harried commuters. The last of these happened in the first week of August 2010. No fewer than ten people were set ablaze, I was told, including a suya seller and a woman and child trapped in their family car. Crawling past the burnt-out shells of tanker, cars and wares, the mind is forced to contemplate the arid future of people who refuse to learn from history.

A throng of outdoor signs compete for what little attention the eyes and brain can muster. Among the screaming corporate slogans and commercial hooks is a signpost from the 2007 Buhari campaign. Covered in grime, it makes a bold grab for the fleeting awareness of passers by, with the resonating yell of his stubborn ambition. If indeed old soldiers never die, then old politicians die even harder. Atop the busy, dusty, noisy Madalla roadside, Buhari’s 2007 outdoor campaign board confirms it squarely.

The journey flips a page when we turn into the main Abuja highway through the Zuba overhead bridge. Abuja beckons frantically from beyond the expanse of road works in progress and slowly piling traffic. It needs no telling that the road is spreading itself from four to ten lanes to take in the broad convoy of dreams and desires that converge in the Federal Capital daily on the hour, the minute, and the second. Zuba is only about thirty kilometers away, but on this Monday morning, it takes all of three long hours to reach my destination in the Central Business District. A top bureaucrat, to whom I complain, sneers at my impractical sense of what she called, “Abuja Time.”

I wonder if this explains the sluggish pace of decision making in the nation’s capital. It’s no faster, I know, in my “clean and green” Imo state capital. But Abuja presents a pervading façade of modernist ethos far removed from the grit and gristle of the provinces as anywhere outside old Lagos used to be known. It’s there in the clean swept streets and hi-tech buildings, the shopping malls and ever-sprouting, sleek housing developments. And yes, a certain Abuja mentality, that’s so different, so strange, yet so Nigerian and so home grown at the same time.

The distinction must be made quickly enough that we are talking here of Abuja Municipal Area Council, or AMAC in short, the heart of the FCT- where the streets are paved, the walkways swept and residences adequately spread out for breathing space. The other Area Councils- Kubwa, Kuje, Kwali and Karu- may strive all they can for that distant second place behind sparkling AMAC. But everyone acknowledges a definite effort on the part of these satellite towns to live above the common standards of urban Nigeria.

All over the federal capital the credit for this refreshing spirit is ascribed to one fellow: Nasir El-Rufai. Often, a label is attached to his name by the press, to distinguish him from other pretenders or give notice to the herculean dimensions of his achievement, it’s hard to say: Diminutive. Be that as it may, the man Nasir has won a victory for residents and visitors alike. It is rather instructive, I find, that the common people against whom his bulldozers wrought the most havoc are complimenting him on his vision and courage.

I met a man in my friend Reginald Ibe’s Maitama office, who narrated to me what a taxi driver had told him: “If you see where I dey live before, enhen!. I thank God say El-Rufai drive me comot there!”

Those words called to mind the old Fela song wherein he berates his listeners thus: “We must to dey craze for head to dey live inside dustbin.” Development planning is certainly not a jamboree or night out at the Shrine. It takes real guts to pull it through most times, because all kinds of interests are affected by even the smallest project. Along the line, we may end up doing the easy thing so that we do not step on some really powerful toes. And before anyone can say, “develop…” the entire plan has been watered down and distorted beyond recognition, execution or redemption.

Sure, it’s patently crazy to sleep in a dust bin, but how for do, abi? Till, a puny, yea diminutive fella with focal lenses comes along, who says, “Ah-ah, this is not right. Bayi kama ta ba!” Sure also, we hate his guts for a long while, till the breath of fresh, clean air gets to us and we are forced to acknowledge that well, de guy try sha…

For all the sleaze and slime that has clearly gone underneath its expansive, well laid foundations, the dream of a brand new federal capital and its continuing revelation, speak very loudly of a dormant Nigerian spirit. The clean swept streets and walkways of Abuja Municipal say quite clearly that we can plug the massive haemorrhaging of our national wealth and do other great things besides, if we put our heads and hearts to it.

Sadly, this very huge potential is yet to be fully stirred into service for the nation and the continent.

'By 4 Now...
Pita