I
appreciate the ingenuity of the Lagos State governor as a sign of what
Nigeria’s leadership can do. That seems to me to be the road that
Nigerian leadership should now tread. I wish us a good road in this New
Year of the Rice
I will start today’s entry by greeting
all the readers of this column who have kept faith with us ‘Happy New
Year!’ These are the ones who tell us they either read the column first
to fill their bellies with enough laughter to last through the bad news
given out by the rest of the paper, or they read the column last in
order to get the bad news first before the laugh lines. You know that
famous opener, ‘first the bad news, then the good news…’? Well, choose
your order. They
also give me written queries I am obliged to answer
directly or indirectly should I be so thoughtless as not to appear on
some given Sunday. Man, working with you all has been tough but
rewarding. Thank you.
I will also greet those who have read
this column only in passing, like an optional side dish, ‘Great year to
you!’ These are the ones who tell me they read me when they have
finished reading all else in the paper and then have been surprised by
how delightfully I have handled a subject matter. I don’t get any
queries from those. I do get some words of encouragement from them
sometimes though. To these, I also say, thank you.
To those who totally ignore me and have
the effrontery to tell me so, I have only one greeting for you, ‘Good
year to you, sir!’ Some of you in this group have been good enough to
tell me your objection has been motivated by my rigmaroles or the
artist’s impression I have put in the place of my picture. What can I
say? Trust me, my impression is better than the real me and the
rigmaroles keep me sane. So, I doff my hat to you for ignoring my
rib-cracking jibes, liners, witticisms … You are strong but I bear no
grudge. I will simply ignore you too.
You remember Tai Solarin’s famous wish,
‘May your road be rough’? Well, I want to modify it for us; for I don’t
think that we as a nation have grown up enough to deserve that wish. For
instance, it takes for granted that the recipient even has a road to
tread in the first place. We as a nation need something more practical.
My wish for this country therefore would be something like this, ‘May we
find our road…’
Once upon a time, Nigeria had a road it
was treading but it has since lost it. That road included programmes of
educating all her citizenry, having tall economic buildings, roads and
bridges. Now, we are so lost children take school under trees,
religionists have taken over our economic highways and we are still
using bridges built by the army during the civil war… Yet a retired
permanent secretary, I read just this morning, was made to give up
‘FORTY (40) SUVS AND OTHER CARS’ that he had helped himself to from the
government’s purse. Now you know why the children are sitting on the
roots of trees…
So, we have come to a time, dear reader,
when we must welcome the new year in by saying goodbye to the old one.
This invariably means letting go of some memories like bad
communications networks and opening the horizons of our minds to all
possibilities such as plenty of rice floating in via the lagoon, even if
it is called Lake Rice. I tell you, I am right now optimistic that life
is possible because we have now entered the Year of the Rice. You don’t
know what that is? Then, let me take you back a little into the Chinese
Zodiac.
I mean no disrespect, but I simply love
the categorisations under the Chinese Zodiac. It has symbols that
describe the signs of the year and season in which one is born. It also
defines one’s character. For instance, under that system, I fall under
the Year of the Rooster and am ruled by fire. That makes me ‘observant,
with a keen sixth sense’, among a list of things.
However, the sign says I have no hidden
depths to my character; in other words, I am not profound, not
complicated and, oh, so shallow! Please ask me in ten years’ time if
this statement is true or not when I might have discovered Elements 119
or 120 in Chemistry; then we’ll know who is shallow! Even though that
character summation really hurts now, it explains why I am always so
ready to forgive my readers for complaining about my artist’s
impression.
Nigeria’s character also had it
bad. Just look at last year. Imagine, it had to raid many houses
belonging to its top judges, even taking some of them to court for
corruption! Then, the country had to be running after the runaway dollar
like its bride. It got so bad we went to bed with one set of values and
woke up in the morning with another set. Yeah, it has somehow affected
every other value because now everything has risen in prices, even Gari and Elubo
and err, rice. Worse yet, the electricity companies responsible for
generating and distributing electricity for my consumption are sleeping
on the job! I tell you, it has been a bad year for the country. I think
the donkey had that year.
There was one cheering news. We were
told that Lagos state had somehow located the source of rice in the
country and had done some abracadabra that enabled the governor bring
down the price of the commodity. That was how I got told that rice had
now begun to fetch the handsome price of about thirteen (13+) thousand
as against the rather ugly price of twenty-four (24+) previously touted.
When I heard that, I did some whoops and saluted the governor of the
state for doing some quick and silent thinking. I immediately called
this new year the Year of the Rice.
I’ll tell you why I am celebrating this
feat. Very few of Nigeria’s leaders, past and present, actually do any
thinking. Most of them have minced no words about their mission in
leadership – to recoup their election losses and ‘chop’. However, here
we have a governor in Lagos who knows that rice is the people’s problem
and went about thinking of how to solve it through long-term means.
As the new year approached, I threw out
my rags with the old year. I had hoped that by 2017, we would have
thrown out corruption. But even in this 2017, people are still managing
to swallow billions with their tiny throats. Is it not wonderful? Also,
I’d hoped we would have thrown out epileptic power supply and come into
the Year of the Light in 2017. Unfortunately, darkness is still with
us, and, according to reports, many are still dying from inhaling
generator fumes while sleeping. As I am writing this, there is no
electricity and this killed many people this last week. Chances are that
as you are reading it, there will also be no electricity.
We have a new year; we also have the
chance to take a new road. As a people, we have been celebrating
corruption and ineptitude. Just look at the way Ibori was celebrated.
Just look at the sickening way some serving senators wait on other
senators for the sake of ‘rice’.
I appreciate the ingenuity of the Lagos
State governor as a sign of what Nigeria’s leadership can do. That seems
to me to be the road that Nigerian leadership should now tread. I wish
us a good road in this New Year of the Rice.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
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