A Festival Of Goats
By Reuben Abati, | The African Examiner, Posted in Mar 14, 2010 "Fidelia Njeze must go"
"Who is that?"
"You see, you don't know her. That is part of my point. For your
information, she is the Minister of Aviation."
"Am I supposed to know her? I stopped caring about who occupies
what position a long time ago. They are all the same."
"Precisely my point. How do we run a successful country if Nigerians
no longer care who it is that is in public office on their behalf?"
"So what has this Fidelia woman done to you, that you want her out
of office? Are you consulting for one of the aviation sector unions,
because I smell a rat? How can you just wake up and start
campaigning against another man's wife?"
"I am talking about how goats took over the runway of the Bauchi
airstrip under her watch?"
"Come off it. It is not the duty of a Minister to chase goats off the
runway. To the best of my knowledge, there is no nomadic content
to her job description. And this is not a Fidelia Njeze problem. She is
Minister of Aviation, yes, but she didn't send the goats to the
runway, and in any case, this is not the first time that this has
happened. In 2006, an Air France aircraft ran into a herd of cows on
the runway of the Port Harcourt airport. You didn't call for the head
of the Minister of Aviation then. A few years earlier, another aircraft
nearly ran into human beings on the runway. I also recall that
someone once drove a car through a security gate onto the runway
and crashed into an aircraft. This is Nigeria. This is Nigeria. Anything
can happen. And things happen."
"Meaning what? Does that mean when people do not do their jobs,
we should not criticize them because inefficiency and
underperformance have become national modes?"
"If you ask me, I will like to know what happened to the goat meat.
The goats died instantly. Fresh meat! Correct meat. Who took the
goats away? What did they do to the goats? You will recall that when
a similar incident occurred in Port Harcourt, there was a big
scramble for free beef, even the security officials abandoned their
duty posts and struggled to carve some meat for their wives' soup
pots. Who took the Bauchi goats away? Did Fola Adeola, the man
who would have been killed because of goats enjoy the privilege of
taking the unfortunate goats home for pepper soup, asun, and
nkwobi to celebrate his survival? Did he enjoy the free meat? A high-
powered investigation into the immediate and remote causes of the
goat incident must unravel this!"
"You are a very stupid man, I am sorry to say. You think everything
is a joke? You think if the incident had been worse than that; there
would not have been serious trouble in the country? Knock on
wood, if the goats had capsized the aircraft and there had been
fatalities, you don't imagine that the Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN) would have accused the PDP of sending the goats to
eliminate ACN chieftains? Someone would have insisted that the
goats were bleating: pee dee pee, pee deee peee, as they trotted
onto the runway? And won't the Yoruba have insisted that there was
a deliberate plan to eliminate a prominent Yoruba son?"
"You like to imagine things. Anything is possible in a Nigerian airport.
Have you not seen people planting and harvesting vegetables right
next to runways. And what is the big deal about ACN anyway or your
brother Fola Adeola? People die every day because of this election."
"Precisely my point. People should not die because of elections, and
definitely not at airports. If we have a Minister of Aviation, her priority
should be to address those issues. Go round the country's airports.
They are terrible. Take the Murtala Muhammed International Airport
in Lagos, that place is an eyesore. I was seeing a friend off
yesterday, you know we couldn't find a place to sit down and wait for
her flight to be announced. I went to the toilets, I couldn't spend a
second; I rushed out. The odour alone could send you to the
hospital for contracting an air-borne disease. And oh my God, the
place is so hot. No air-conditioning. Other airports are worse. And I
ask myself: what has Fidelia Njeze done?"
"No. I think you just don't like the woman. This is an anti-Igbo
agenda. You people like to criticize Igbos. Just because an aircraft
chartered by a Yoruba party deputy presidential candidate ran into
goats in Bauchi, you want an Igbo woman punished, did Jonathan
appoint her to go and mind goats and cows?"
"This is the problem with public debate in Nigeria. The so-called
educated class stopped thinking a long time ago. I am raising
serious questions about the aviation industry and one woman's
incompetence, but here you are, ethnicizing it. Is it only the Yoruba
that use airports? Don't Igbos also use Nigerian airports? If it
pleases you, Kema Chikwe in retrospect looks like a very good
Minister of Aviation. In her time, the air conditioning at the country's
main airports worked. When one Omotoba got there, things stopped
working. So, why can't your sister at least fix the air conditioners, fix
the luggage carousels, arrange seating areas, do perimeter fencing
of all the airports in the country, get FAAN and NCAAA to work, and
move the aviation sector away from an entrenched rent-collection
culture; I mean, can we have some common sense in the industry
before people get killed for nothing?"
"Leave her alone. People always get killed for nothing in Nigeria. It is
the system, not the Minister. You are criticizing Fidelia Njeze, you
won't criticize your own brother, who went to beg Obasanjo."
"Who?"
"The ogidi child"
"You mean OGD?"
"Yes".
"You this kobokobo. He is not ogidi child. He is ogidi omo.
"You dey craze. Is Yoruba my language? Ogidi child, and ogidi omo.
What is the difference? Okeke and Okereke. Okoro and Okoroafor.
You think I don't have sense? I see you don't like to criticize your
own people."
"Okay what has OGD done?"
"What has he not done? He went to beg Obasanjo. He prostrated. I
read in the papers that he has asked his boys went to PPN to return
immediately to PDP, and that he is now supporting the Obasanjo
faction. What is that?"
"What is what?"
"He prostrated."
"What is your problem with that? Obasanjo is old enough to be his
father. In Yorubaland, we prostrate to our fathers, we don't wake
them up with a kick as some other Nigerians do."
"So is Ogidi going to prostrate to all the people he has quarreled
with? Is he going to withdraw the cases in court against the PDP and
INEC?"
"My friend, you don't understand politics. Things are not always what
they seem. As a politician, you must learn to stoop to conquer. And
when you lose, you can change strategy. And then re-strategize,
and don't tell me please that goats on the Bauchi runway and lack of
air-conditioning and seating space in our airports is a strategy. I don'
t want to hear that.
"Strategy? Tell me. But since you know it all, I'll like to hear
something about principles."
"Go and sit down. Okay, Ogidi went to beg Obasanjo and Jonathan
was able to visit Ogun state and have a successful outing. The
civilized and united people of Ogun state did not stone him. His
helicopter landed, his vehicles arrived, no goats stood in their way,
no area boys harassed anybody. Nobody threw bombs. It is the
triumph of the OGD strategy at work. Nigerians don't understand
politics. And you don't. You obviously don't know jack about politics.
You see, politics is very complex, it is not a straight route…"
"And sometimes, it can be a tsunami"
"Don't joke about that please. What is happening in Japan is not a
joke. As a human being, I feel deeply pained."
"It can't happen here."
"Don't say that. We are all part of a common humanity, and the
world is dealing with the challenge of climate change. It is an issue
on which Nigeria should be pro-active."
"Nigeria is covered by the Blood of Jesus. No weapon fashioned by
any demon or principality or agent of the Devil shall prosper against
us."
"Are you okay? I am talking science, you are quoting something
else".
"Blood of Jesus. I rebuke every spirit of Tsunami, I bind the spirit of
climate change and cast it into hell-fire."
"All of this, just because I said Nigeria should try and learn from what
is happening in Japan? To move Nigeria forward, we obviously have
to worry about the goats in human skin who are no different from the
goats on the runway."
"Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing?"
"Helloo ooo oh."
"What?"
"Can you come back to reality zone? I think the biggest tragedy that
has befallen this country is how some of its so-called elite have
ended up on the religious runway. You can't have a proper
discussion without the entire thing being reduced to either ethnicity
or religion. The latter is almost worse than the former. Just look at
you. With all your brilliance, when you start this your thing about
being an Igbo nationalist and being a Christian, I simply lose you.
And yet you are a fine human being and a good person."
"You are insulting me because I said your brother prostrated to
OBJ? Go and remind him that Atiku also begged the Ebora oh."
"There is a difference between a son and a rival."
"Obasanjo dey laugh o. Me sef, I dey laugh oh."
"Laughter can make somebody lose his teeth oh."
"Talking seriously now, looks like Gaddafi is winning the battle in
Libya."
"In the long run, he will lose the war."
"How?"
"He has been demystified. For him, the countdown to exit has
begun. It is a question of when?"
"And Laurent Gbagbo in Cote d'Ivoire?"
"Same of the same."
"Very much like Nigerian politics"
"Tell me."
"In Niger state, the police stopped a rally of the Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC). The Police don't want change. In
Ebonyi state, the Governor Martin Elechi reportedly stopped the
ANPP from launching its presidential campaign in Abakaliki; in
Benue, the PDP state government forced the ACN to shift its
planned rally from Makurdi to Gboko."
"Our politicians have gone mad again. Imagine throwing stones at
the President's convoy, an act bothering gingerly in my view on the
fringes of sedition and treasonable felony."
"Hey, sedition is dead law."
"But the Presidency is a living institution. When next anybody stones
the President's convoy, I give the security agencies the permission
to fire on sight."
"True, true, craze dey worry you. Ogbnge craze."
"Me, I dey kampe. All the craze people are in government and in
politics."
"And their friends are in journalism."
"You say?"
"At your own risk."
"No. No. The presidency according to one story is worried that there
is a plan by the opposition to use the media to discredit the 2011
polls. People believe you journalists are part of the problem."
"Who is a journalist?"
"People like you."
"These days we are all journalists, you know?. You don't need more
than a cell phone, ipad, or a computer. With a cell phone, you can
take photographs, you can send bulk mail, you can create news;
with a computer or ipad, you can create fiction and impose it on the
world wide world, and get accolades for being cynical. So?"
"And so?"
"Knowing the truth is becoming more and more difficult"
"How do we build a country without certain truths"
"Well, you can answer that. That's an assignment for your Blood of
Jesus".
"The Blood of Jesus is about…"
"Please, I have to take my drugs, Looks like my malaria fever is
about to relapse. Please. Please."
"I cover you with the Blood of Jesus. Blood of Jesus… sha baba
ababba ra, ebora massahha ah …Father, I beseech you.. for you
are the Lord of Lords, rock of refuge"
From: The Publisher, African Examiner <editor@africanexaminer.com>
Subject: Why I was booed at Jonathan's rally in Abeokuta -Gov. Daniel
To: adey45@yahoo.com
Date: Sunday, March 13, 2011, 10:46 PM
| The African Examiner online (Mon. Mar 14, 2011 Newsletter) (breaking news, sports, entertainment, politics around Nigeria and all Africa) | | Why I was booed at Jonathan's rally in Abeokuta -Gov. Daniel | | | Read more @ http://africanexaminer.com/daniel0314 NDP Chairman Blasts Jega
...says Nigerian media over rate him Read more @ http://africanexaminer.com/ndp0314 Free Education Tops Omo-Agege's Five point Agenda For Delta Read more @ http://africanexaminer.com/omoagege0314 "Owerri people need Dr. Kema Chikwe in the Senate" Read more @ http://africanexaminer.com/drchikwe0314 A Festival Of Goats (By Rueben Abati) Read more @ http://africanexaminer.com/abati059
|
No comments:
Post a Comment