Please find herein the transcription of a meeting held recently at a discreet location to find out why everybody is angry with everybody. It was presided over by an appointed Family Head, henceforth to be addressed as FH. Here we go.
FH: Let’s start with the civil servants so they can quickly return to their duty posts.
Civil Servants: What duty posts?
FH: You no longer have duty posts?
Civil Servants: Our posts are unpaid for. We work and we do not get paid.
FH: Or you pretend to work? (Laughs)
Civil Servants: Seriously, you think this is a joke? Do you know the implication of working without pay and watching your employers get fat and strut their stuff in your face? Our children are out of school. We are hungry and ill and can’t even afford to uy drugs. What kind of family head are you if you think all that is a joke?
FH: No, I do not think it is a joke . I was just trying to lighten the mood…
Civil Servant: Do you know what it’s like to watch your son suffer for days because you can’t buy his migraine drugs? Do you know what it is like to be hypertensive or diabetic and not be able to buy your routine drugs? Some civil servants even have to resort to traditional birth attendants to deliver their children.
FH: Ah, maybe they should put off making babies until the economy improves, what do you think?
Civil Servants: Are you being real right now? Civil servants should stop impregnating their wives until things get better? Is that what governors and their children are doing? Have you castrated the politicians first before coming here to tell us that? A sensitive family head would be talking about increasing minimum wage and how to force the governors to pay what they owe.
FH: Increasing minimum wage when the one they owe you have not received? Does that even make any sense? I will suggest we focus on how to get regular salaries instead of asking for pay rise.
Civil Servants: You must force them to pay.
FH: That may be a bit difficult because they are constituted authorities
Civil Servants: What did you just say?
FH: Governors are constituted authorities even if you don’t like the sound of the words.
Civil Servants: Constituted authorities my foot. So they were constituted to kill and to castrate civil servants, right? In other words, you will not force them to pay what they owe and increase minimum wage?
FH: You know how it is when a man cannot get it up, it is pointless telling him to sleep with his wife.
Civil Servants: Are you saying the governors are impotent?
FH: Well…
Civil Servants: Well what? They are pretending to be impotent. They are doing things. Just tell them that their ungodly impotence is killing us and that one day monkey go go market, he no go come back? We are done here.
FH: Wait, please let’s iron this out…
Kidnapper: Perhaps you should attend to us next.
FH: Perhaps you should tell me who you represent.
Kidnappers: We are members of KAN.
FH: Christian Association of Nigeria?
Kidnappers: No, K-A-N, Kidnappers Association of Nigeria. We are kidnappers.
FH: W-h-a-a-a-a-t? Suit-wearing kidnappers speaking good English and wearing your vice like a badge of honour too! What has come over our country? You are not even afraid to show your face in public. What if I call the police?
Kidnapper: Go on, get us arrested and let’s see how that solves our family problem. We are just an arm of the national body.
FH: Kidnappers have a national body? I think this family is finished. How did we get here, for Pete’s sake?
Kidnapper: I can help you out with that. For instance in KAN, we have sacked engineers from telecoms, sacked bankers, sacked oil and gas workers, frustrated artisans and graduates from different disciplines who can’t find jobs and so on. We are all united by adversity and fending for ourselves in our own way. Or you expected us to just wither and die when we were sacked? We have old parents, children, families and then we lost our jobs…
FH: And the best you could do is take to crime? You couldn’t find go into trading or do something decent?
Kidnapper: Do you know any other trade where we can make the kind of money we are making? We kidnap a rich guy on Friday and his family pays N20m on Wednesday. We keep him well fed, check his blood pressure and sugar level every day and ensure not a drop of blood is shed. We take our money , he goes back to his family and everybody lives happily ever after. How is that not a good deal? The only thing we do not do is file tax returns.
FH: Osanobua, see how you painted crime in all the colours of the rainbow? You are all criminals.
Kidnapper: No no no. We are only redistributing wealth, taking from those who have and giving those who don’t. do you think those rich people would on their own have paid my children’s school fees when they were thrown out of school just before O’level WASSCE was about to start? Or pay for my deputy’s wife’s surgery when the doctor gave him three days or be ready to buy a coffin? See, in Nigeria, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and the economists are speaking English and telling us about percentages that only they understand.
FH: Eh, the rich are also crying o.
Kidnapper: Ooook, it is easier to cry in an air-conditioned room than under the bridge with only an old raincoat as bed sheet and cover.
FH: So you have no intention of repenting?
Kidnappers: What are the alternatives, old man, watch the landlord take over both my wife and 14-year-old daughter because I could not offset my rent for two years? Did you not just tell the civil servants that their governors are impotent?
FH: So we should all take to crime because the naira is in a bad shape? We should become a nation of criminals?
Kidnapper: Well, you may start by telling me how to explain to an eight-year-old why he didn’t eat throughout yesterday and he has to watch his peers go to school. Do I tell him graduation is now done when you are eight years old or what?
FH: What is wrong is wrong. You must stop. The government has promised to create jobs and we should be patient.
Kidnapper: Cool, the jobs have already been created in the crime sector.
FH: You Association of Distressed Wives, are planning on going into crime too?
(► To be continued).
Re – Dem no dey fear fear?
My fantastically funny Funke, abeg which one be fear fear? You no go kill person. But jokes apart some people get liver, thank God mine dey cut cut. May God give us the heart to dey fear fear AMEN. – John Mgbachi Your best is inexhaustible. Dem no fear fear at all. Funke, disturbing as the topic is, such a disgraceful act predated man on earth. Devil was reported as a loyal “angel” to God until it used the power, acquired from God for its loyalty, to challenge God’s superiority over it; only to be pushed out of heaven by God’s simple spiritual order. And what about Peter, a loyal disciple to Jesus Christ who denied Him thrice as predicted? Long before Pastor Adeboye’s plight, God knew it would happen. The whole issue is before God now. Baba Adeboye should just keep doing God’s will for the rest of hìs days on earth. Evil men, kaasa! -Lai Ashadele.
If those pastors plotting G.O’s overthrow dey fear fear, then the devil wouldn’t be perceived as a liar. They’re finished.
-08034348656
-Dr.EugeneArinze
Re – Your daughter, Daisy
If you want to change a practice you have to change the system. When you change the proclamation of “for better for worse “ . This is said over and over again at your weddings, the meaning is very clear. we know most wife beaters are mostly adherents of religion in Nigeria and it’s on the increase due to scarcity of husbands. If I were you, I would concern myself with changing the system rather than the practice As usual I was enthralled by your piece in SUNDAY SUN of 8/1/17. I can’t help but agreeing with you that a woman that finds herself in this type of situation should run for her life. But the reality I know is that most men are now living in terror of their wives. I know a man whose wife has not given food or sex for one whole year now. She psychologically maltreats her husband that mere beating would have been better for the man. Now in this case who should escape?
-08067969145
-Rowl Ibe, Owerri, 08033357399
I’ve a younger sister who has been living in a hell called marriage for the past 10yrs!She has received and is still receiving more than battering from her supposed husband. The man uses knife on her.
He steals and does not cater for their four male children. I’ve tried without success to get my sister to leave him but she will agree one day and change her mind the next day.
How do I get her out before she dies like Daisy? I love your mature choice of words when you write. As long as l live, no one’s gonna make my daughter a punching bag in the name of marriage and none of mysons will do that to other people’s daughters.
(Identity withheld)
-P Natson, Prolife Plus, Kaduna