Dear Uncle Sege (4/7/2000)

Babawilly

4-7-2000

Dear Uncle Sege,

I am very happy to write you this letter. I have watched and listened with keen interest to your call to all Nigerians in the Diaspora to come back home to join in building our great nation. In fact, I have listened sotey I am now ready to pack all my boots and go back to my roots like Lamont Dozier.

First things first. I need a job.

I have one in mind. None other than the post of honourable Minister for Sports. Let's fashie dat one for now though.

Ehen, I heard Baba Chelsea is coming to Nigeria on the 26^th of August 2000. Hallelu-Halleluyah ! May I be so bold as to suggest ways of making his historic visit memorable. You see, that man like sax well well, so the first plan is as soon as he steps off Airforce One I want you to play the American National Anthem with full aplomb on the sax.

Actually, you will be miming for under the stage will be Femi Kuti, Orlando Julius, Isaac Hayes and Bart Simpson's younger sister (Lisa) wired for sound but out of view.

Come to think of it, that your Governor, the sax virtuoso of Cross River; Hon Donald Duke and his deputy Chief John Upka could share the stage with you.

Friends are saying that if we serve Baba Chelsea cool Kunu all our external debts will be a thing of the past as body go just dey sweet am sotey he go bring out cheque book come begin dey sign-sign. It's worth trying o!

One more thing, all Monicas' in the country must be converted to Morenikes' lest our August (August !! Good one Babawilly) visitor thinks we mock him when he hears you shouting "Monica, Monica abeg bring Fanta and Cabin biscuit for Baba Chelsea ojare".

Abeg warn NEPA O! If them take light during Baba Chelsea's speech in the airport blood go flow, period. (Abeg excuse the pun jo).

Anyway back to a job for me for when I land Naija.

I promise you fifty Gold medals at the next Olympics if I get the job.

Before I tell you how I will perform this miracle here are my demands.

1. £100,000 a year for me and £2000 for every Gold medal in Sidney.
2. A six bed roomed mansion (fully air conditioned) with indoor and outdoor swimming pools.
3. Six house boys;
• one to shine shoe
• one to fry my eggs
• one to put the eggs on my plate
• one to say "Bless you Oga" when I sneeze,
• one to iron my shirts
• one to iron my trousers and
• one to fan me between Nepa striking and emergency generator coming on.

Okay, so I need seven. E no finis, e no finis e no finis

We shall discuss the rest when we meet.

This is how I will win fifty Gold medals for my Motherland.

I will mobilize the grass root into participation of all sports. Winning will however need to be attractive and to achieve this, I will replace Gold, Silver and Bronze medals with Rice, Ewa and Gari medals. (Ah-ah, na Gold person wan chop?)

These nourishing prices will be packed in 1 kg bags and hung round the necks of winners in all sporting activities with fancy ribbons. Walahi, the whole Nigeria will be fighting to get into sports.

Next I will zone all events as following:

1. Table Tennis and Discus to OPC (Odua People’s Congress)
2. Wrestling and Shot Put to Bakassi Boyz
3. Swimming and Rowing to Ijaw Militant youth.
4. Basketball, long distance running and high jump to APC (Arewa People’s Congress)

Before I forget there will be compulsory spraying of hard cash on the foreheads of sprinters as they cross the finish line.

As for 4x100 and 4x400 relay, that one will be zoned to the army for who in Nigeria can hand over batons seamlessly to each other like the army. As the song goes "But di correct name for dem na soja come soja go"

Boxing nko? No problem, stars boku for Lower House.

Triple jump nko? In the upper house I hear say guys dey wey fit triple contract value sotey, come get 'long leg' enough to avoid indictment.

As for long jump, e get one street for Ajegunle with wide gutter wey everybody just dey fly across. Anybody for that street na Gold medal potential.

As for the shooting event, we are spoilt for choice. Enuff armed robbers full ground.

One palmy tapper wey fall from tree top don promise me say im go do pole vault once im fractured pelvis heal.

Before Northerners begin talk say I marginalise them, this na dia own.

1. All those Durbar super stars will take part in the Equestrian events
2. All the herds men wey sabi pursue cattle well well will be sent to Kenya for high altitude training with a view to Gold in all middle distance events.

I hope I get the job. And please, no build new stadium in Abuja, bico. Give me the money when I reach make I take do Rice, Ewa and Garri medals for the masses as our people are starving o!

Referees;

• Mandela
• Benbela
• Lulu
• Power Mike
• The Rock
• Uncle Sege
• Pele
• Maradonna
• Pope
• Homer Simpson
• Gani Adams
• Bill Clinton (Baba Chelsea)
• Rivaldo
• Head of FIFA
• Babayaro (Chelsea FC)
• Tony Blair and
• Modupe Oshikoya.

S.M.H

SMH

Send Money Home

My salary na Halley’s Comet

Send money home

Dad’s pension, well, ‘no comment’

Shaking My Head

Diasporia remits twenty one billion

Shaking my head

Politicians snack on trillions

Send Money Home

For loneliness takes us hostage

Send money home

Our penury is the message

Shaking My Head

At resources underground

Shaking my head

as the naira fights the Pound?

Send Money Home

Your cousin lies unconscious

Send money home

Brief illness is ferocious

Shaking My Head

No Health no Food No water

Shaking my head

No one a brother’s keeper

Send Money Home

So so bills we have for company

Send money home

We broke like slaves in Badagry

Shaking My Head

The babies keep on dying

Shaking my head

Mosquitoes keep on biting

Send Money Home

Foreign aid first goes to Government

Send money home

Their appetites have no treatment

Shaking My Head

We have hair and we have oil

Shaking my brain

We import hair and import oil

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

Babawilly

16/8/16

Apology to Usain Bolt

Apology to Usain Bolt

13 January 2014 at 01:09

PublicFriendsFriends except acquaintancesOnly MeCustomSt. Finbarr's College, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos, NigeriaTEDxEustonSee all lists...Birmingham, United Kingdom AreaUniversity of BeninUniversity of Benin, Benin CitySt. Finbarrs CollegeNHSFamilyAcquaintancesGo Back

Dear Usain Bolt,

                                                                    Letter of apology

Happy New Year!

I know that the arrival of my letter may induce some degree of puzzlement or even hilarity but these things are what they are. Fate and circumstance have joined forces to bring me to this point. It was not too difficult to find your agent’s address thanks to google, and here I am or perhaps I should say, here is my letter.

Now, I will go straight to the point. A few hours ago, I had a dream. And no, it was not deeply rooted in the American dream. It was just one of those dreams, but this one was different. You see, I dreamt that I defeated you in the 100 meters Olympic final race in Brazil 2016. I then woke up, went in front of the bathroom mirror and slapped my face as punishment for the audacity to conceive such an improbable victory.

‘What nonsense!’ Even in dreams should one not know one’s limitations?’ I thought. On getting back to bed I found that my movements had woken the lady of the house.

‘Why are you up?’ she asked.

‘Oh, nothing’ I answered.

‘You were kicking in your sleep’ she said

I became suspicious. Perhaps I had also spoken in my sleep I thought. I was now keen to go back to sleep, and to avoid a potentially long line of questioning, I opted for telling the truth.

‘I dreamt I defeated Usain Bolt at the Olympic finals’ I said.

She began to laugh.

‘In the 100 meters’ I quickly added. She laughed harder.

‘I was not expecting Ice Hockey. It had to be athletics’ she said between fits of laughter.

‘I suppose you were running for Nigeria’ she said.

‘No, it was actually Pakistan’ I replied.

You may not believe this but she laughed so much that she fell out of bed. I became concerned. You know how it is, falling out of bed at 2am. What will I tell my friends, family and in-laws if she gets injured falling out of bed? Soon the laughter adopted a wheezy quality and I switched on the lights.

‘Darling, let’s forget I mentioned anything. Let us just go back to bed’ I said as I stood over her slim frame that convulsed in laughter on the floor’.

‘Why yu no run for Naija nau?'

‘Woman, I no sabi make we sleep. It is only a dream’ I replied.

‘So what did you do when you won?’

‘I ran to the crowd, leaned to the side and pulled an imaginary arrow, standing with my legs wide apart. The crowd went wide’

‘Nigerian or Pakistani crowd?’ she asked and kept on laughing.

‘I am not sure. They had green passports for faces. I then ran around waving a flag bare footed’

‘You had no shoes?’ she asked

‘I had no shoes’ I replied.

We didn’t get to sleep till one hour later.

The next day she suggested that I write to you to apologize for the insult. Yes, she deemed the dream an insult to you and the good people of Jamaica, since I was nothing but a snail dressed up in a pair of Nike trainers. I refused initially but however had to concede (for peace sake).

So here is my letter. Please accept this apology.

Moving on, a lot of things have happened since that dream. I told it to my friends and most found it funny. Some however thought that the whole race could be a metaphor for some great feat I was due to perform. Others told me to start training hard. They said I could beat you. Perhaps they have not listened attentively to your surname and the images it triggers. I would need a lot of steroids; both anabolic and barbaric, mixed with Banga soup to get my body into such a peak condition that would make me able to defeat you.

Another philosophical friend of mine said that the dream was possible to realize. If I did not achieve it then my children would. Food for thought there. (Or maybe when you are 90 years old my grand children might out run you).

Did I mention that in my dream, not only did I beat you but I run a new world record of 9.3 seconds?

You needed to have been there to see the crowd go wild my man. Sorry, you were there. In my dreams.  

I was running around the stadium with the Pakistani flag held aloft by my hands proudly held high.

Anyway, I would end here. I need to write another letter of apology. You see, when I slept the second time last night, I meet Mike Tyson in the ring at his prime. I knocked him out in Round One.  

My regards to the family. 

Babawilly

11-1-2014

Glad to be Nigerian

The proponents of gratitude as a way of life are sometimes asked the question, ‘what is there to be grateful about?’

This question reminds me of a tale I heard about the customer in an exclusive designer shop

who asked the shop assistant ‘how much is it?’ when faced with a beautifully crafted bracelet.

The rude answer he got back was, ‘if you need to ask Sir, you just cannot afford it’.

Perhaps some questions prove to the hearers that the one asking is beyond hope. Yet we live in hope.

In the abundance of blessings to be glad about some insist on not seeing anything to smile about and it is all down to focus. Concentrating the mind of the negatives kills off our ability to so much as see a glimpse of anything praise worthy. Like the serpent of Moses gulped up all the serpents of the Egyptian sorcerers, so can a negative thought swallow up every positive thought in our minds.

A few years ago I bought a CD by Nigerian Gospel singer Lara George which contained a song, I Am Glad. This was a song I couldn’t understand till recently. The chorus went like this-

Chorus
I am glad
Glad to walk the earth
I am glad
That I was born in Nigeria
I am glad
Glad to be alive
Glad that I was born (oooo yeah)
I am glad
Oooo I am happy
I am glad
To be a part of destiny
I am glad
Glad to have the earth
Glad that I was born.

The glad to be born in Nigeria bit was a struggle because my country men and the local and international media had done a ‘good job’ and given me a subconscious believe system that being born Nigerian was a handicap. Some might say that this sort of thinking is harmless and not worth writing or thinking about however gratitude is good, and the first step in being thankful if being happy to be alive.

To be alive, one needs to be born and to be born one needs parents and always they come with a nationality for you to inherit. When one considers self, one’s race and nationality come in. The joy in being alive would be strangled out of anyone who is not happy in their own skin or DNA. One not at home in a geographical location of birth and hoping for a life elsewhere brings conflict. Once one cannot be grateful for the life we have, which is the most important thing a human being has, then it becomes impossible to be grateful for other things.

This song by Lara George challenged my beliefs about Nigeria. I wondered how one could be glad to come from a country with problems which are well documented. Many have made a career from documenting these problems and it sometimes gets to the point where the country’s reputation precedes it.

Once the nation is mentioned people expect a negative piece of news to follow. E mails and telephone calls from the country are viewed with deep suspicion. No one wants to be associated with a negative image but what do you do? Change your DNA? Change your parents or change your motherland? Whatever the new passport looks like, your DNA stays the same and it is more important to love your DNA first before anything else. If an organ fails in a foreign land you would always seek a donor from ‘home’.

 Gratitude is important. Listing the blessings, we have and being grateful for them increases their value in our eyes. Breathing clear air during the morning run, drinking water, sweating normally, eating, working, joking, selfie obsessions, reading my bible and understanding what I read, these are a few of my favourite things (Na Julie Andrews dey teach mi).

It has been a long time coming but I can now say I am glad to be a Nigerian. The negative news headlines cannot dampen my faith or hope. I was born to hard working parents who provided for me. I received a state sponsored medical education and I graduated with no debts. The government had its problems but I gained something and I am grateful for that.

I write comedy from a Nigerian perspective and I am proud about that. I wrote the first on line Nigerian Pidgin English dictionary – Babawilly Pidgin English Dictionary of Nigerian Words and Phrases which has helped many in their research of Nigerian lingo and a few linguists have referred the work. Now I have not made money from this but this is still a huge blessing for me. I possess the gift of self -expression. My pidgin version of the Psalm 23 has proved popular with my country men and this is a blessing. A Nigerian blessing.

The things we have the ability to do need to be listed and appreciated. That aids our focus and appreciation always leads to magnification. We spend long hours on these valuable talents, sometimes without remuneration but over time it all works out.

I was chatting with my son recently and making a point about the power of gratitude and using what you have to get what you want with Whizkid, a Nigerian pop artiste as an example. This performer has quite a few hits but it wasn’t until the song Ojuelegba that he came to the attention of Drake. A pure Naija song of nostalgia and gratitude that contains the lines

I am feeling good tonight

This thing gat me thanking God for life

I can’t explain it

Now who would have thought that international fame could come from singing about Ojuelegba. The road I travelled on for five years as I went from my family abode in Suru-Lere to St Finbarr’s College. Akoka. Lagos.

Whizkid embraced his Nigerianess and memories and expressed it in music. The same can happen to anyone else in whatever field of work they find themselves. There is always something of value in our past experiences and we need to harness these nuggets to help us contend with present day battles.

Like they say no knowledge or experience is ever lost.