Acquired Hate and Taste

There are a few things that irk me like a lost identity.

Baba Suwe trended on Twitter 3 days ago because of a TikTok cosplay by Tiago, a skitmaker. Tiago is a white boy that was bred in Ọ̀yọ́ in the palace of the Aláàfin. He speaks eloquent Yoruba and has adopted the Yoruba culture as his way of life.

In his cosplay of Baba Suwe, he painted his face black as the late actor usually did in his movies. That’s where the outrage came. Some people called this act racist because in other countries like the United States, a white person painting his/her face black is considered racist.

That’s my grouse. Why should I be offended by what’s considered offensive in another culture even if normally, I would have not seen any offense in the act? We don’t share the same experiences for me to be offended by it.
It’s inadvertently places that culture over mine.

Some years ago, some people in Nigeria started getting offended at a normally harmless question of asking how one’s night went because in Western Europe, such question translates to asking about your sexual activities over the night. Some Nigerians in Nigeria, learning of this began getting offended by greeting they had hitherto answered or had even asked others. Emphasis on Nigerians in Nigeria, please.

Conversely, you’d see the same set of Nigerians would scoff at some acts that are considered offensive in their own culture. An example is handing over or collecting an object with the left hand, especially from an older person. Over time, many of them have tagged this as archaic and not to be accepted in the 21st century. Another example is prostrating/bowing for older people which the Yoruba culture enjoinds. Same people have likened this to subservience. However, when confronted with the fact that in the Western Europe that they glamorize and tag their culture ‘cool’, people curtsy to monarchs and members of the royalty, it becomes a case of comparing intentions.

Similarly, I’ve always held the belief that conversations on social media have retrogressed. I have a theory for this but that’s not the point of this writeup. A few months ago on Twitter, a tweep was mocked for his name. His name was Ogedengbe. Those who made fun of the name believed it wasn’t cool to bear such name. However, what could be cooler than being named after a warrior and the liberator of his people from the domination of a greater power during the Kiriji Civil War.

In the same vein, a lot of people romanticize and eliticize foreign sounding names, even when they do not know the origin of such names. You know where I’m going with this, right? As long as it sounds foreign, especially if it’s from the West, it’s better than their local names.

Heck, many people anglicize local words that should be left alone.

Longing Organ

She felt the organ harden in her palm.
‘Ahan?! That was fast’, she said as she jumped to her knee but sank just as fast into the fluffy duvet.
They had been laying naked in bed after an initial romp.

‘I no tell you say I don miss you? Abi you think say na lie?’, he remarked.

He let out a soft groan as he felt the warmth of her tongue.
His hand brushed past her dangling breast as he stretched to pick the remote. He needed to increase the volume of the television to subdue the gurgling sound that had engulfed the room.

‘Make neighbours no con disturb us abeg’, he muttered.

A knock on the door snapped him out of his reverie.
His companion, like a deer in the headlights, raised her head and hurriedly covered her exposed torso with the duvet.
‘W-w-who dey there?!’, he shouted as he hurriedly sat up.
‘I say na wh-‘

‘Grandpa, it’s me’, came a child’s voice from outside.

Extinguished at the Genesis

He was already looking forward to getting to the leftover fufu he had hidden inside his traveling bag. The bag contained everything he brought to Lagos three weeks ago. Bro Eneche had invited him to the city from Ozizza because according to Eneche, he was wasting away at home playing with rabbits.

Earlier today, he sent ₦4,550 to his mum in Ozizza. He had never felt that much joy in a while; the joy of making his mother smile.

Bro Eneche had introduced him, the second day he landed in Lagos, to where he could get plantain chips to sell in the early morning Lagos traffic on the Third Mainland Bridge. Though stressful, he did not mind. He ran after vehicles with his wares on his head, like his life depended on it. Indeed, his livelihood did.

As he headed home this evening, with his leftover wares balanced on his laps, he noticed that traffic had started building up on the other side of the bridge.

‘Make I rush go sell before I go sleep abeg’, he thought to himself.

As the bus stopped for him, the disgruntled driver hurled insults at him as the spot he had stopped wasn’t a bus stop.
Unperturbed by the insults, he balanced his wares on his head.

The last sight he saw was the blinding headlights of a vehicle that had passed one-way.

Niger & Its Nigerian Sympathizers

Yesterday, David Hundeyin reported, on Twitter, that the aircraft of the Nigeria’s president was denied entry to Niger’s airspace and that the Nigerien authorities had threatened to shoot the plane down if it ventured into their airspace. While the accuracy of this claim cannot be verified, it was amusing and sad to read the reactions of some Nigerians to this, especially the ones that supported and even wanted the Nigerien government to shoot down the Nigeria’s president’s jet. It was amusing because you could read the juvenile thoughts behind these reactions and sad because of the lack of patriotism in many Nigerians.

Weeks earlier, the military in Niger seized power and in response, ECOWAS, led by Nigeria’s president, had threatened to invade the country to return it to democracy. However, in a predicable fashion, many Nigerians opposed this, not because of a superior argument against the invasion but because it was just fashionable to oppose the government’s policies. It did not matter that the proposed invasion was not the sole decision of the Nigerian president but the joint decision of other ECOWAS states. Some even went as far as jubilating when an alleged military signal about the invasion got leaked. A leak capable of putting our servicemen in harm’s way.

Back to the issue at hand, I was not surprised going through the reactions making mockery of the Nigeria’s presidency being threatened by a foreign country; I was just disappointed. This is because those making this mockery have not been able to separate the institution from the individual. You might not be a fan of the person occupying the seat but you have to respect the institution he represents. You shouldn’t desecrate the seat or promote its desecration because doing so is weakening your country’s standing in the comity of nations. Look at it this way, when a foreign nation threatens to shoot down your president’s aircraft, they are not threatening to kill the individual that is the president; they are practically telling you that they do not respect your country and whatever your country represents. Thus, the sovereignty of your country is being threatened and no country takes her sovereignty lightly. This has been demonstrated in history.

During the World War 2, it took the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor to pull the United States into the war. Before then, the American public had been lethargic about the war because the war was happening in Europe and they believed there was no need to get pulled into the conflict. In fact, this lethargy was what the Japanese counted on. But everything changed when Pearl Harbor was attacked and the Americans that had hitherto been indifferent about the war were galvanized into a full scale war that ended with them annihilating two Japanese cities with nuclear bombs.

Another instance of countries stamping their authority of not allowing disrespect from others was demonstrated by Israel following the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. In fact, it is believed that MOSSAD became feared following this incident. Having survived the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, a few years earlier, where millions of Jews were killed, it was necessary for Israel to respond to this attack on its citizens. In response, over the next few years, Israel went after those they believed to be the perpetuators of the attack with vim. They assassinated them all wherever they were in the world. To show the seriousness, the assassination campaign took them 20 years to conclude.

In addition, it is also naïve to believe that if Niger were make do on this alleged threat of shooting down Nigeria’s presidential jet, nothing would happen. You don’t shoot down the presidential jet of the biggest military power in the region and expect to escaped unscathed. It is no secret that the Niger’s military is no match for Nigeria’s. Nigeria has one of the best militaries in Africa. In terms of hardware and combat experience, not many countries on the continent can best Nigeria. Many people are wont to discredit the Nigeria’s military by bringing up the Boko Haram insurgency and how the war has been unending. My usual response is that an insurgency fueled by an ideology is not something that is won by the barrel of the gun alone. It is an ongoing process of deradicalization and ensuring that the belief does not have a fertile ground to grow. Secondly, we are quick to forget that just less than 10 years ago, Boko haram was one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, capturing Nigeria’s territories and causing carnage. Nowadays, only whimpers of them are heard. Niger would be careful not to stir the hornet nest of such military.

In conclusion, I believe that the reactions to this alleged threat by Niger are symptoms of something larger. Either that many people who are not fans of the current administration practice the scotched earth policy where nothing is sacred or off limits or that the number of people who do not believe in being patriotic to Nigeria are growing.

The Mammoth That Was Made

‘You come at the king, you best not miss’

Omar Little, The Wire.

With the judgement of the Presidential Elections Petition Tribunal affirming APC’s victory at the 2023 polls, I would be lying if I said I didn’t see APC’s victory coming. This feeling has nothing to do with the APC-led federal government being exemplary over the 8 years they’d been in power. In fact, the suffering and gnashing of teeth under them was unprecedented since our return to democracy. The reason why I saw the victory coming was because APC had now become a mammoth. An opposition-eating mammoth. And you don’t defeat a mammoth by half-hearted efforts. You don’t go after a mammoth without a logical strategy.

Almost everything was up for grabs for the opposition on the surface; Buhari’s past 8 years was deemed a failure, the APC’s presidential candidate had a lot of baggage to weigh him down in his quest, intra-party issues and the cash & fuel scarcity crises we had close to the elections. APC was literally blacklisted yet, the election was still theirs to lose.

I believe that the splintered opposition led to APC winning the election. Just a few days to PDP’s primaries, Peter Obi left the party to another party. With him, went a huge chunk of PDP’S votes. Votes that were traditionally PDP’s. Within PDP itself, there was no unity. Nyesom Wike led a group of governors to overtly work against the party. In Nigeria’s politics, state governors practically own party structures. With these 5 governors out, the party was already down even before the first ballot was cast. Another erstwhile PDP member, Rabiu Kwankwaso decamped to the NNPP. Like Peter Obi, with him went the Kano votes. As the state with the second highest registered voters, that was quite a loss. Kwankwaso also took bits and bites at votes from some North Western states. This splintering of the opposition made many observers conclude that APC was going to win the election. With no united front, the opposition stood little chance.

While acknowledging the apparent rigging and violence that marred the elections, it doesn’t taint the political point of knowing that populism is not enough to win elections in Nigeria. There’s a limit to where it can take one. Where populism stops, structure takes over. You can’t underrate the importance and benefits of having party structures. Party structures is so important that it almost singlehandedly makes and mars political office holders. While there are arguments about the ethics surrounding curtsying to party structures, you have to acknowledge its importance in politics. Alliances, compromises & IOUs are mainstream in politics, especially if you aim to dislodge a party. The opposition failed in this regard and APC, despite its inner wranglings consolidated on this.

Incidentally, APC recognized this principle when it won the elections in 2015. They also defeated another mammoth, PDP. However, PDP as a mammoth at that time was a wounded one; it was fractured. Many people wrongly assume that the APC was a new party when it was formed in 2013 and based their hope of Labour Party winning the 2023 election on that assumption. However, APC was a merger of different parties. Erstwhile parties like ACN, CPC, ANPP, together with disgruntled members of PDP (who named themselves new PDP) formed APC. The stakeholders then knew that PDP had the machinery to win the elections and knew that to defeat such giant, they had to put their differences aside and form an alliance. That alliance paid off.