Politics & Moneytics

 

 

Politics and Moneytics

Joined at the spine

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Politicians and Moneyticians

Two roles one identity

Multi-wicked-tasking the economy

 

Politics and Moneytics

Back in the tropics

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Election story

Buy the votes. Own the ballots

Multi-wicked-tasking the polity

 

Politicians and Moneyticians

It happens if you refuse the bribe

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The bullet turns man into refuse

Every one scared

Multi-wicked-tasking the psychology

 

 

Politricks and Moneytricks

Hypnotising the masses

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Swinging Dollar pendulum

The hungry in a trance

Multi-wicked-tasking the consciousness

 

 

Political science and economic science

In confusion

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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