Finished Product Disease

Finished Product Disease

September 13, 2016

Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly

Finished Product Disease (FPD) is a mental illness you would not find classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association because I made the illness up.

I define it as a mental disorder in which a person desires a favourable outcome or product but has no interest in the processes that cause raw materials to become finished articles. The incidence of this malady is one hundred per cent in humans but zero in Vulcans (Star Trek make believe people) who are logical in all their thought processes.

FPD is what makes a man view Arnold Schwarzenegger in the documentary film Pumping Iron and rather than drive to his local gym opts for a trip to the plastic surgeon for biceps and calf implants. In a world where everyman is a consumer, many think that everything is a product for sale.

I recall a guy who returned from a party and immediately started berating his lady for not looking as slim and well-groomed as the other ladies who had been in attendance. When the shouting match was over she told him the ladies in question had been recipients of gastric by-pass and liposuction operations which cost quite a bit. On hearing the cost of a low weight in advancing years he apologised and vowed to “love the adiposity that wobbles rhythmically”.

Soup wey sweet na money kill am, so it is imperative for guys to know the prize of any glittering thing that catches the eye.

Babies and young children are excused from scrutiny as we expect them to cry for anything they see which looks pleasing to them. An adult however is expected to know the value of nice things and ask himself if he is willing to go through what it takes to make nice things available for his or her pleasure. A wise person who is not aware of the cost will ask discreet questions of those who know and think hard about the answers obtained.

I remember eating dinner on a particular night and it suddenly occurred to me that the yams that will peel themselves and fly into the pot had not been invented. The work of planning and making dinner sometimes starts three hours before one sits at the table.

Not being home during a meal’s preparation can slowly induce Finished Product Disease especially if the maker of the meal is tidy and cleans up all evidence of hard work. It almost appears as if the yam pottage made itself.

There is no risk of FPD with an untidy chef though. Yam peelings on the floor, Maggi cube wrappers and onion peelings decorating the work top tell you someone has been cooking. The unwashed pots and dirty cooker are also vaccines against FPD where food preparation is concerned. Only a brave man will ask, ‘why is everywhere so filthy?’, for what usually follows is a long angry diatribe that involves how women suffer, slavery, insensitive men, attempted homicide through domestic chores, the lack of a home help, etc, etc. With such people, even a glass of water from them must be taken with great gratitude; for peace sake.

The accomplished in any field will perform to a very high standard and at the same time make it look absolutely effortless; for years of practice chisels talent into great spectacles. This ease of execution is what makes people look at a Michael Jackson video and turn up the next week to audition for a talent contest on national TV. They soon find out that a Star and Pen torch produce light but with diferring brilliance.

Look before you leap

Pertinent questions must be asked when we encounter greatness of any kind.

“I too can do it” might be a true statement for you but it might take you five years or even another lifetime to achieve the ambitious emulation.

The deluded always think everything good they see is for them and the world is full of these people. That is why politicians vying for office promise ‘un-deliverables’ and people don’t bother to ask what will be the process or method to actualise all the ambitious promises. They clap and hope for a miracle rather than think. These same people soon start cursing the politician when the inevitable happens. What they forget is that the politician studied them and arrived at the conclusion that FPD was endemic in the electorate and all he had to do was reel out a list of ‘finished products’ that will appear automatically once he is sworn into office.

Sweet nothings tickle both the personal and national ears, inducing euphoric great expectations and give a false and heady hope. But like big tasty chewing gum, the sweetness soon fades and all you are left with are bubble gum bubbles full of hot air.

The biggest cohort of FPD sufferers can however be found among thieves. If they like it, they just take it by any means necessary. Countries invade weaker nations in land grabbing exercises, men steal money and valuables from others at gun point; the list is endless. These thieves see no reason in working hard and waiting for a wage. They care not for process and must satisfy their appetites on demand. I guess that is why the Police was invented.

I am not too sure if FPD is involved in husband-snatching. I guess further research is required.

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 praiseworthy. 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:

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 countrymen and the local and international media had done a ‘good job’ and given me a subconscious belief 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 is being happy to be alive.

To be alive, one need 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. Emails 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 me).

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 hardworking 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 online 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 countrymen 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 Wizkid, 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 Surulere to St Finbarr’s College, Akoka, Lagos.

Wizkid 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.

Babawilly

First published 12/08/2016

Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly

THE BILL

 The Bill

 

The Bill , then

The default

The prophetic warnings ignored serially

The water will be cut off

 

 

The Bill, was due

They defaulted

The letters threatened vehemently

The water will be cut off

 

The rains will cease

The draught with start

The rivers will halt

All frozen by wickedness

 

Warn the fish to set their house in order

Warn mami water to migrate to the Atlantic

Warn the cattle to write their wills

The herdsmen will soon disperse.

 

Who will battle the cloud’s boycott

Of an earth soaked in blood

They Shoot at the clouds and seek a leak

yet no rain will fall.

 

The Bills should have been pain with love

Compassion and kindness

Paid to the vulnerable ones

God’s cashiers on Earth

 

The Bill was justice

Good will and equity

 bestowed in small instalments

On the divine tax collectors

 

The great hate the poor

But they cannot hate water

Crocodile tears on all the faces

The water has been cut off.

 

Humanity failed before the crops failed

Famine reigns with allies of hunger

Death looks on about to strike

The looting start but no what we thought

 

They stepped past the Gucci

And raided the fridges

The revolt, a preparation

For a hunger revolution

 

Command the troops to bomb the clouds

Shoot the river beds And threaten the rain

Mother nature is fighting for her children

The cabals are thirsty, the water has won

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the famine, a spring comes forth

Flowing to all the land bringing peace

The kindness returns, the great ae now humble

The Bill has been paid, the water is back on

 

 

Babawilly

 

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

 

23/10/2020

Politics & Moneytics

 

 

Politics and Moneytics

Joined at the spine

Like

Politicians and Moneyticians

Two roles one identity

Multi-wicked-tasking the economy

 

Politics and Moneytics

Back in the tropics

Like

Election story

Buy the votes. Own the ballots

Multi-wicked-tasking the polity

 

Politicians and Moneyticians

It happens if you refuse the bribe

Like

The bullet turns man into refuse

Every one scared

Multi-wicked-tasking the psychology

 

 

Politricks and Moneytricks

Hypnotising the masses

Like

Swinging Dollar pendulum

The hungry in a trance

Multi-wicked-tasking the consciousness

 

 

Political science and economic science

In confusion

Like

These youth don’t obey the conventions

A new world order

Multi-cyber-tasking the old guard

 

 

Babawilly

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

20/10/2020

Unconsciously Patriotic?

 

 

 

After watching the Annual Festival of Remembrance 2014 on TV relayed live from the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the United Kingdom, my son told me he was ‘proud to be British’. Instantly my brain flipped to the ‘Naira equivalent’ of what I had just heard for that is what the Nigerian does. There is that exchange rate mentality that resides in our brains. I thought about my devotion to Nigeria and the excessive fondness we all have for anything Green White Green, and concluded that the Nigerians are the most patriotic beings on the planet. A strange kind of patriotism it is though.  A ‘siddon look’ patriotism deciphered only by forensic experts (such as yours truly). I have sniffed out the patriots and this is my thesis.

Now let us deal with the elephant in the room. Can a man who complains about the state of his nation all day long be patriotic?

Being obsessed with national shortcomings is endemic to Nigerians but does the fact that they wake up thinking of their nation not make them patriotic? What about our biggest musician to date, the activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti? Was he patriotic? Were the millions who bought his music patriotic? Reducing the national leaders to Solider go solider come and Vagabonds in Power? Dia ris God o!

Everyone should formulate their own answer. It is natural to complain about ills especially when these ills in society are preventing the realisation of great national potential. Patriotism is a love for one’s country; everything that the country stands for, the culture, areas within the nation of outstanding beauty and the general idea of ‘Nigerianness’. To that add putting the country’s good in front of personal gain.

Two Americans born into prestigious clans spring to mind. Janet Jackson and JF Kennedy.  I know you know where I am going with this. These two both born in May are known for two important questions- J Jackson’s “What have you done for me lately?” from her 1986 Control album (wetin Nigeria don do for me since?), and JFK’s, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” during his inauguration speech in 1961 (no ask Naija wetin dey? Ask yuasef wetin yu go take settle Naija).

Apart from complaining about the country, some citizens break the laws of the country. Are lawbreakers unpatriotic? What about a soldier fighting for the country, putting his life on the line yet he ignores the Geneva Convention and tortures captured enemies who happen to be fellow countrymen? Is he unpatriotic because he is involved in war crimes? The pickpockets, white collar thieves and armed robbers who haven’t been caught yet. Are they not capable of exhibiting patriotism?

Some say Nigeria is too big to love everything about it. The love has to be zoned and channelled into sectors. Zoning after all is our national philosophy.

I think that Nigerian patriotism needs interpretation. It is there but it has to be looked for.

It is possible to be disgusted with what you love. The Boko Haram insurgency drives Nigerians mad with good reason. Foreign observers who walk up to Nigerians in heated national discussions always assume we hate our country till they decide to join the country bashing with their own stories and are surprised that everyone rallies against them. BH in Nigerian is a bit like a nasty virus in the human body. While the symptoms of viral infection can be painful, the owner of the body still loves himself dearly despite the virus living within his anatomical borders.

Many Nigerians in the diaspora are patriotic to the point of obsession and they don’t know it. They claim to hate Nigeria when we chat at parties but the content of their plate betrays them. What of their apparel? Lace aso ebi in winter complete with fila. I met a guy who was complaining about Nigeria so much, he gave a lecture worthy of a Harvard tutorial in between mouthfuls of jollof rice and moin moin.  He washed it down with Gulder and continued his talk. From 1954 to modern day Nigeria it was anecdotes and statistics galore, throwing in a few coup d’état and the civil war. He knew so much but claimed to be disgusted with Nigeria. To crown it all before he rushed off to the dance floor to Skelewu with ‘madam’ who was beckoning, he said he was ‘going home’ next week but complained that the ‘exchange rate’ was not favourable. As he danced we all commented on this strange fellow. He knew the dance moves, eats the food, wore the clothes, married the Naija girl, knew the history and the current affairs yet claimed he had no devotion to his country. You should have seen his face when the DJ slipped in a Chris Brown number. “DJ give us chop my money!” screamed the guy who hated corruption.

Waves of patriotism

In the sixties the waves of nationalism spread through Africa as each country fought for independence from colonial masters. Political ideologies came to the fore front as people clamoured for freedom. It took South Africa and Mandela a while but they got there in the end.

Post-independence nko? Confusion break e bone! Ye pa!! Countries in Africa were either going into war or coming out of war. Coup d’état and boundary readjustments were a daily occurrence.  Survival was more important than patriotism in the early post- independence years.

Next wave – Peace at last?

Post war, everyone becomes suspicious, for one knows how to express love for a country whose armies massacred friends and family. Patriotism is thus expressed through the national football team, the movies and the music. And did I mention the romantic relationships with fellow nationals? Well, if you love the ogbono, you must love the woman who cooks it. All na patriotism.

Babawilly

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

18.11.2014

Money talks, Poverty Explodes!!

 One could hide one’s wealth with a bit of thought but to conceal one’s poverty is almost impossible. The wealthy adopting to live a humble life is betrayed by his prompt decisions when faced with a sudden crisis. Like a serpent that bites without provocation he might say, “don’t cry we will buy another one”.  The poor when faced with a crisis have no such reserves to fall back on. They cry and lament their state.

Many children are faced with poverty – the type that creeps in silently like the tide on the coast line and drowns its victims. The tide is an invading army that maintains a line of attack. So is poverty.  Gregarious by nature, it lines up on either side with disease, violence, illiteracy, malnutrition, confusion, low expectation and a miscellaneous host of mesinaries too numerous to mention. It attacks like an occupying force with no plans of ever leaving. Once the victim is overcome in defeat, poverty sinks in.

It takes a whole village to impoverish a child – the global and local villages that is. Poverty is like an emperor that just sits and rules things. He needs all the help he can get.  In a village setting, once the leaders divert resources to themselves and their cronies with nothing left for communal programmes, poverty wins.  The leaders get used to their lifestyle and the commoners in penury get used to their fate.

Poverty makes people crazy. Drives them into frenzy and transforms their lives into a bomb site. No one is responsible for their actions in the vicinity of a bomb that has just been detonated. The air is filled with panic, anguish and smoke while escape is the one and only thing on the agenda, and that by any means possible. Stopping people fleeing from such explosions to ask for directions will not work. They will end your life via a stampede. Intelligence is lost and those in ultra-hasty escape can run into an oncoming train in the name of desperately seeking safety. But who can blame them when they have experienced the deafening destructive force of poverty? Those not killed instantly survive only to live in fear of its return. Poverty is an unforgiving relentless demon.

My middle class friends always tell me how rich Nigeria is. They fly from England and are picked up from the airport in air-conditioned cars. As soon as the plane touches down, they are switching sim cards and making calls. After disembarking they have only one thing on their minds, their luggage. They look not to the left or the right. In their cars, it is catch-up time as they chat away oblivious to the thousands they drive past trekking the streets and living on $4 a day. They soon find themselves at the gates of the house where they would be staying and use the small estate as some kind of economic indicator of the wealth of the nation. Of course the privileged live well but Nigeria is a poor country. A painful kind of poor for it makes an income but very few live a millionaire lifestyle.

I believe that everyone in a civilised society should live a millionaire lifestyle.  Put simply, if you drive on roads that cost millions then you are a partaker of the millionaire lifestyle. If a multi-million pound health service is at your disposal, if your street has houses that run into millions, if your water supply, policing bill all run into millions, then you are living the lifestyle.

If hypothetically a town has one billion pounds and the chiefs embezzle the money and create five millionaires, the town remains poor. But should the money be invested in roads and schools, then everyone who uses the roads or schools, for the time they are on the roads or in school is experiencing a million pound amenity for themselves. Money actually goes a long way when many people enjoy what it buys.

Poverty robs people of the ability to think. Education is a way out of the ignorance that poverty brings but thinking is involved. How can a young lad with Plasmodium swimming in his blood stream and nothing in his stomach think? Homework will never get done if he has to go home and hawk his wares after school to make ends meet.  Living in a ghetto where violence is ever present means the focus will have to be on self-survival and not inquisitiveness or academic excellence.

Every single person in Africa who faces poor roads, poor governance and poor security suffers despite their bank balance. They are also united in their belief that there is only one cause of poverty in a place where natural resources abound. That is bad government. One does not need to be told. Looking at the actions of Africans tells you they believe. Those with a spoon in the pie stay put to maintain their position at the table but everything else is done abroad. Health, education of kids, having babies, having a ‘small rest’ and safe keeping of money. Those on the other hand without a spoon in the pie want to leave the poverty explosion to countries where they think poverty does not explode and kill. That explains the lengths economic refugees take to escape such as boat pushed out into the Atlantic hoping to reach Europe (where the roads all cost millions of pounds), walking across the Sahara desert and hoping to cross the Mediterranean at night, the list is endless.

The government and its people have no trust in African institutions of health, education, security or social justice. So everyone flees. The top government officers and politicians flee with their cash to hide just in case the next government probes them and makes them poor, while the poor populace flee away from their poverty. Everybody is fleeing the explosion.

It is ironic that the stolen cash and the deprived populace always head in one direction!

Babawilly

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

01/09/2015

Cometh the People

 1

Cometh the hour

Cometh the People

Birth the finest hour

O wombs of brave compatriots

Change has come

For all tribes and kindred

The sun sweetly shines with

Rays of hope and inspiration

2

This nation shall be built

From the ashes rise the towers

Join hands with brothers and sisters

Put strife and hate aside

The years of vile stagnation

Behind us in the past

Our back and hearts are strengthened

The future is ours to take

3

So ring the bell o People

Our destiny has began

The tears and pains are buried

Faith rises from the soil

Obedience unites a People

As Nigeria insists on change

That hour is upon us

The people shall arise

 

4

We work hard as a People

We toil and never sleep

We leap across big mountains

Overcoming every foe

Though History points a finger

That mocks our new resolve

Our God sends great assistance

Our compatriots shall excel

 

5

So tell the unborn nation

Still in the loins of men

Their future will be better

Than what has gone before

For they will be a people

Much mightier than we are

And they will owe their fortune

To Change that is happening now

 

 

 

 

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

 

Babawilly

03/05/2015

Before

 

 

 

Before

Before the smiling

Comes the toiling

Before the fancy drive

Is the inner metal drive

Before development

There is the darkest of rooms

Before  the mountain top

There is the valley

 

Before the bright glory

Is the lengthy story

 

Before the Positive

There is the vanquished negative

The road to that final product

Is built with blocks of stubborn raw materials

 

Before the Hit

Is the Miss

 

 

06/10/2020

 

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

Babawilly

Shaku Shaku phenomenon

Shaku Shaku phenomenon

By

 admin

 -

May 15, 2018

First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu

Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly

It is everywhere. Youths with handcuffed hands, nodding and marching on unsteady ground into an uncertain future. There is a side to side rhythmic sway like one walking and nodding in a narrow canoe on the River Niger. Suddenly, there is a pause and the handcuffs are off. One hand points in the direction of the Promised Land while the other hand is shaped like a phone and placed on the ear calling all friends to alert them that El Dorado might be in sight. Welcome to the new dance craze called Shaku Shaku originating from the land that gave us the Agege bread.

Yes, Shaku Shaku is said to have been invented on the streets of Agege organically. Like all dance crazes, there is music to go along with it. Olamide is the King of the music but other performers such as Reminisce, Mr Real, Obadice, DJ Prince, Small Doctor, Dammy Krane and Slimcase also keep the Shaku feet shuffling.

Dance crazes are not new at all. Recently Psy had his ‘Gangnam Style’ make waves across the world. The principal move is quite similar to Shaku Shaku except that with Psy’s dancing there is a dramatisation of South Korean youth riding imaginary horses as they gallop to the beat. Gangnam Style has the dancer gyrating with two hands forward in a movement that mimics holding onto the reins of a horse. Shaku Shaku, on the other hand, is a dance of youth uncertainty and bondage, as opposed to Gangnam Style which is one of middle-class affluence and youth aspiration. Barrack Obama and David Cameron both had a go at Gangnam Style but I don’t see President Muhammadu Buhari bursting any Shaku Shaku moves in the foreseeable future.

For a long time dances have been imported into Nigeria. The 60s had the highlife brought in from Ghana, followed by American dance imports. James Brown moves were quite popular in the early 70s with local performers such as Geraldo Pino providing good imitations of the JB shuffle.

In 1974, ‘Kung Fu’ fighting by Carl Douglas took the Lagos youth by Earthquake. A bizarre dance hat had us jump and land frozen in a Kung Fu pose. Sounds silly now but felt Avant-Garde at the time. ‘Ring My Bell’ by Anita Ward ushered in a dance called ‘feelings’ in which the shoulders heaved in time with the beat while alternate legs were stuck out to the side. A dull and monotonous occurrence but, again, felt like the coolest thing to do. In the 80s, dancing definitely got harder with the breakdance and rap music influencing the music scene. Michael Jackson was the pin-up boy of dance in the 80s and everyone tried to learn some of his moves.

The new millennium brought a feeling that Nigeria had banned the importation of foreign dances (instead of petrol and diesel which we should have been refining ourselves). Yet that Makossa groove from Cote d’Ivoire came and took Nigeria by Earthquake. Magic System’s ‘Premier Gaou’ put a BMW engine in every pelvis instigating rotations that broke the laws of physics at every Nigerian party. Some of those moves looked like ducks with genital herpes doing the moonwalk.

Ajegunle boys soon brought us Galala and Swo aided and abetted by Daddy Showkey (there is always a ringleader) and Marvellous Benji.  Then Olu Maintain hit with Yahozee, a strange dance that involves swinging the arms like a pompous orchestra conductor and then suddenly looking at one’s hands lifted in the air. I have noticed that Lagos Island is yet to give Lagos a dance. We are waiting

Alanta was a strange dance that had the youth in seizures grabbing at various parts of the chest and beating the abdomen like some weird radioactive scabies was crawling under the skin. The dance came with a sardonic facial expression representing a crazy economy and untold hardship for the masses. Fela called this state one of “demo-crazy “aka demonstration of craze; essentially a failed democracy.

More was to come, Iyanya brought us Kukere a dance that gave the impression that one was afflicted with painful piles which had to be dislodged by shaking each leg alternatively like a pneumatic drill while clenching the buttocks.  For a change from Kukere, Nigeria lifted its ban on imported dances and Azonto came in from Ghana.

The boys from Accra took their dance ascendancy for culinary supremacy and began to boast about their Jollof rice.

Nigerians went back to the research laboratories and a breakthrough came by way of Davido who brought the Skelewu dance which had the youth move and groove with their tongues hanging out while they reversed an imaginary car with one hand while the other hand was akimbo. Walking backwards was a strong metaphor for the Nigerian economy at the time.

Lil Kesh hit with Shoki which had the youth squatting to the ground to pick up Nigeria, few grains of sand at a time. They wiggled the outstretched hands of sand high up but the winds of corruption blew the sand in their eyes. They gave up and dunked the remaining sand away and had one hand over their bad eye.

Alas, we are in the Shaku Shaku era. A move that binds Nigerian youth the way a winning Super Eagles team can. I say, make a Shaku Shaku mix version of the National Anthem for a revived young Nigerian nationalism. There are no tribal variants of the move. Unlike JAMB examinations that have different pass marks for different states of the country, Shaku Shaku is an equal opportunity dance craze. When that track ‘Wo’ by Olamide hits the airwaves, the expectation is the same from Kano, to Port Harcourt and Lagos. Bust a move and the best one gets the most likes on Instagram; a pure meritocracy.

Those of a certain age complain that they cannot cope with this new footwork. I implore them to practise and avail themselves of cerebral plasticity. Those old neurons will reconnect and the moves will make sense in the end. Dance at parties sometimes is a bit like an archaeological site. There are levels of deposited soil that represents various time zones. How people dance dates them to the exact month they stopped practising the new moves.

Learning new moves for some is just not a priority so they might become stuck at the Anita Ward ‘Ring My Bell’ era in 2018.

It’s all good. The heart and lungs don’t mind what the moves are. Just move and the heart benefits accrue.

Shaku Shaku could grow like reggae did and produce billions for Nigeria. First, we need our own Bob Marley and an indigenous version of Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. World domination beckons.

Just ‘Wo’!