If you asked why ex-President Goodluck Jonathan crashed out of power, no one may be able to tell precisely. Again, if you asked why and how extant President, Muhammadu Buhari, is failing, his health and all, the same may apply. However, in both cases, some of the signs are as self-evident as Lagos go-slow. And those signs are? Their aides, advisers and or special assistants are pointers to evidence of dysfunctional, even rotten, systems. They are such bad advertisements for themselves, their principals and offices, it is almost nauseating.
Currently trending are the examples of the odd models, Reno Omokri and Lauretta Onochie. And these two are perhaps the best of the rot, respectively, a la the administrations. In a latest social media post, Omokri almost called, okay, implied too directly, that Onochie is ‘’a runs girl.’’ That is a slangy way to say she is an akwu na kwuna, a prostitute. And not one shred of evidence adduced. My God, have things come this low?
But fair is fair. So how did the roll down to the mire begin? I think, at least from where I joined the thread, it was Onochie who fired the first salvo, taking the bottom off Omokri. She started by calling him, okay, implying he has been a treasury looter under Jonathan. That looked and sounded silly enough. At least Omokri has not been indicted. Yes, he may have stolen, but there are no judicial or prosecutorial records to that effect. Legally, he smells of roses. So why trivialize a matter of such gravity, and this at presidential levels?
But Omokri, alas, had to confirm that he plays in the same prostituting league. It is now a question of two oddballs, one an alleged akwuna kwuna and the other a putative treasury looter. And the two are out, running wild and naked in public spaces. And to remember that Omokri is a pastor, and that Onochie wears her residency in England as a civilising mascot? God, how have you done this to us?
The question is, who recommended these folks to the Presidency? Or were they personally known to their principals before hire? That is, were they literally birds of same feather, flocking together? How did such as these get to serve the greatest public offices in the land? If you compared presidential communication in other lands, including some African ones, you don’t get to see such inanities. It belittles not just the special assistants as agents, but their principals and, of course, this abused nation.
Otherwise, how does one explain things? How dare one comprehend that, like brain-impaired President Donald Trump of America and Kim Jung-Un of North Korea, the two are taking on one another doggy style? And all steamed up they are barking over their fences via the social media. God, the quality and quantity of their self-shaming verbal incontinence would be beneath the personal assistants of NURTW bosses at Oshodi. How has Nigeria come this low? So low that there is no dignity in being in or out of office, great offices of the land?
Finally, when Nigeria dies, what would have killed her would not have been poverty. It would be ignorance, the ignorance of the great and the mighty. Ignorance not just of subject matters. Ignorance of culture, of high culture, a sense of balance and restraint. And this, the matter of dignity in and out of office, is as ancient as the Greeks, the ancient Greeks. One remembers Pericles and is ashamed there is a country called Nigeria.
Otherwise, how does one explain that those serving at the highest points are akwuna kwunas in office and thieves out of office? And those are the main issues at work and play for these characters and their admirers? Ahiazuwa.
Well, it might serve well to post excerpts of this brilliant article on Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany. My Berlin correspondent forwarded it to me. It is especially for Omokri, who sometimes self-identifies himself as a pastor. Self-control is a form of practicing Christianity, of practicing civilisation. Of Onochie, well, she might as well get high reading this. Last time I saw her on Channels TV programme, Politics Today, she was pitched against a guy from the #Our-Mu-Mu-Don-Do activist group. It was a disaster. She spoke and was shouting down on her fellow guest. She never let him take his place under the klieg lights, after having taken hers. And somehow magically the anchorman, Seun Okinbaloye, let that be. Okinbaloye is a great dude at his job but on that day one almost thought: was “good olde” Okinbaloye a closet Onochie cheerleader or was he suffering a momentary failure of nerves?
Onochie, like the rest of us, can shout at her dog, even at her walls, but she should not be allowed to shout a fellow guest out or down. Hers was a poor show of feral dominance, in our modern, too modern, age. It did not do her or Channels TV any good. Channels must learn to stop such guests who take up their time and won’t allow others theirs. It is not in her or any guest’s place to determine what is correct. We listeners know a thing or two when we hear them. Leave vengeance to the Lord and judgement to listeners. The listening publics are not the little or naïve persons she thinks. The environment is completely ‘adult’. She cannot be the only or the last ‘virgin’ in America, sorry Nigeria.
The German piece reads: “Nobody is like her,” says Mr. Gregor Gysi, who was opposition leader in parliament for much of Ms. Merkel’s current term. Mr. Gysi is widely considered the wittiest speaker in German politics, and his job in the Bundestag was to needle and provoke the chancellor. But all of his attacks fell flat. Merkel never took his baits; he never got a rise out of her.
Mr. Gysi, now retired, does not contest the point. Ms. Merkel, he says, reminds him of his experience in the 1970s, when he was a lawyer in the East German dictatorship. During interrogations, he could always crack the men, he says, but against a certain kind of woman he had “no chance”, provided they did not make the mistake of trying to be like men. Hillary Clinton made that mistake, Mr. Gysi says. She blew a presidential election in America against a man who is almost comical in his pseudo-virility. By contrast, Mr. Gysi says, “Merkel’s secret is that she has found a method against the men, but the men have found no method against her.”
“Merkel gets stronger by letting the men be men,” Mr. Nowak agrees. Many of these encounters resemble that televised encounter with Mr. Schröder. “She let him do all his wrestling poses,” recalls Mr. Nowak. And in the end the macho always throws himself on the mat, with her left standing.
Take sex out of the equation for a moment, and her approach is reminiscent of the Japanese martial art called aikido. Its fighting style is based on channeling, rather than countering, the energy (ki) of an opponent in such a way that the opponent overcomes himself. The underlying insight is that, as an aggressor attacks, his centre of gravity is necessarily in flux and becomes unstable. A skilled fighter uses this. The result has less to do with tipping the opponent than with letting him fall.
(Angela Merkel: The Body Language of Power, by Andreas Kluth, August 4, 2017, Handelsblatt).
Igboland: What number (autonomous) communities?
How come Igboland has more autonomous communities than the devil can count? By one account, Igboland has more communities than the rest of black Africa put together, and counting. And of course there are the characters called Igwes and Ezes to match. What happened? What still happens? Boy, it is an ongoing macabre warfare dance!
Perhaps, we should wait no longer. Perhaps, it is us that are being waited upon. Our new book will give us a third eye. What looks commonplace will be shown for what it really is – a stealthy genocide guided by martial-legislative-judicial diktats. It was all in the guise of uniform and unitary development. But the intent for a target section was pernicious. And the rest is history, the million-plus count of autonomous communities infesting Igboland today.
However, it is indicated that that which is hidden be brought into the open and that that which is in the open be brought into perspective. The good news is that our publishers, The Stone Press Publishers, have promised to fast-track things. They are now talking in terms of weeks, of days, not months.
It will be a revelation. A hint: how many genocides have been exacted on the Igbo by the Federal Government and or its dictator-agents, would you know? Okay, let’s list them: 1. By General Murtala Mohammed at Asaba, acquiesced to and or approved by General Yakubu Gowon. And for this we have to thank Ogbuefi Igbo-Nnyelugo Emma Okocha. 2. There is the anti-Christ mass or industrial starvation enacted by General Yakubu Gowon himself.
Are there a 3rd to the Nth ones? This book will unveil things and awaken the nation to its covered up genocides, holocausts. This is a new Nigeria. Ours is to prove that truth is higher than empire, as it is in all civilised times. Please follow me on Facebook.