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