Wetin bloggers dey do self?
Icould’ve hung up my pen if I didn’t live in cold Canada where the people are so annoying. There is absolutely no reason taking Panadol for other people’s headaches. From time to time, Canada touches the last of my nerves and forces me to remember home, sweet home.
A few weeks ago, the government of Canada erected a monument in honour of six people who lost their lives in a vehicle collision. In case you didn’t get that, that’s half a dozen people. Pretty annoying I could have even paid to pull it down. That same week, dozens were killed in Boko Haram attacks but they escaped Sai Baba’s mournful eyes looking up to heaven for the revelation of the next batch of minusters. Canadians would honour a soldier who dies in Afghanistan with a ceremony so envious it would make living combatants consider dying in battle a royal honour.
There are stupid people who still believe that Naija is broke. They would go into the archives and exhume reports showing state governments that could not pay salaries and need federal endorsement for loans from the World Bank to bail them out. They would rehash almajirai pictures from Kano, Sokoto and anywhere else to blackmail performing governors and confuse the rest of the world that poverty is a northerner. They would go to Anambra and snap erosion sites just to show that there are issues more germane to the Igbo than dreamland Biafra. They would go to the Naija-Delta home of the likes of Tompolo, Mama Peace, Mujaheed Asari-Dokubo and Boyloaf as if President Jones never made billionaires of his own kinsmen - and women.
Frankly, I think Sai Baba should be monitoring social media. It seems like there are people hell bent on tarnishing the bad image of this nation at all costs. I mean, these people are worse than Nnamdi Kanu and his Radio Biafra. They are more outrageous than those overfed Yoruba elders who fariga as Olu Falae, one of their ranks was kidnapped and fleeced by the new John Blame - Fulani herdsmen. These elders resolved to secede, even if it meant leaving behind Yemi Osinbanjo in Abuja. When all else fails - secede.
I am thinking of seceding from my children but I think I will wait until the next school fees are demanded. I will secede from my wife the next time she asks me for chop money, and if my siblings ever ask me for assistance of any sort, I will secede from consanguinity and affinity. If I ever drive on Naija’s population-depleting roads again, and the police ask wetin I carry, I will secede there and then. If the government ever asks me to pay taxes again just because my children need their citizenship certificates signed, I will secede to any local government that does not require internally generated revenue to run things. I am putting you all on notice, that I will be wearing a secessionist hat if anybody touches my raw nerves.
I strongly recommend that children should secede from their parents anytime they are asked to do dishes or run errands. And what more, government should secede from any worker who demands to be paid his wages or demands a pay raise.
Our country is rich, not just in the silly 34 untapped solid minerals compiled by Obiageli Ezekwesili, but also in stupidity. Our riches are sometimes on display in the worst of places. They are on display in the London garages of ex-ministers or governors. Mobile telephone companies wantonly display our doltishness by giving out to the charity of their choice - their so-called brand ambassadors; the kind of cars that the most hardworking Canadians cannot even dream of. There was a time a telephone company gave out an airplane to a teenager. Which other country endorses such competition?
They do this, while leaving services at the same level they found them in 2004. Need we say that the brand ambassadors are not local farmers, longserving teachers, honest drivers or street sweepers? Need we say that these brand ambassadors are never the harassed women by the roadside who raised five unemployed graduates from her akara business? To qualify as brand ambassador, you have to be a nouveau-riche artist who climbed into the upper echelon of the social ladder by waxing lurid lyrics that debase womanhood and corrode societal morality.
Just last week, Linda Ikeji, a hardworking socialite and blogger exhibited her N800 million mansion in the paradise called Lekki. This, a year after she bought the latest Range Rover in a country where Grade 1 tokunbo car owners use religious stickers to drive with fear into armed robbers. Thank God, Lagos no longer has ghettoes or area boys. Linda must have paid millions as tax to the Lagos government to, in the words of my jealous friend Tope Fasua, become local versions of Kim Kardashian - whoever that is. I know some of you would love to ask Linda Ikeji - wetin bloggers dey do self?