Reflections of the Heathen-master

I use to listen to family father and not often he sings, until I heard sweet mother…I began to wonder if a philosopher is the full business case and a mathematician, the outline business case of a sovereign contractor finance, that can fund affairs of an ideal state of the nation building-construction… building by the philosopher and construction by the mathematician ceteris paribus, though truth and reconciliation would have to occupy the defining leit motif of any federation…we did not forget that the Yoruba woman is usually homesick and the Fulani will take one, though you keep 99…don’t as well forget that this coming elections is probably the first and last chance since 1970 to lay the ghost of Biafra to rest…

I have a close relative seeking elective office. I said to him, remember that Unwara is temptation, Akpoha is mischief, Amasiri is gossipy, Ozizza is sabotage and Ehugbo has no skin pain…don’t throw money in the air, the incumbent is custodian of the mint, the gun and the ballot box…elections, I continued are won or lost from the on-set of consultations…you have social grace but not a popular one, you’ve been class conscious, we are known to say what we mean and you too open eye…people don’t like us, be circumspect…

You see, I continued, few things are sweeter than electioneering campaign, nobody is surprised to see you in their own home, making you feel like a celebrity. At times you play Mother Theresa, making surprise visit to the indigent. I don’t use to have any sense at all, I continued. In 1992, as you’d kindly recall, because somebody I know in Lagos was contesting and I just came back from a multilateral associate experts programme in Poland feeling like an international diplomat, I went and be-decked myself like ichie aro, paid Onye Esefoto and began to post all-over town saying that I too want to go to the federal house of representatives. I should have known I’m supposed to take cover or live up to it when the taxi driver that brought the posters began to tell me how handsome I look in the picture…I was always un-kempt, running errands for mum to shore up my programme… I thought my peers and the elite was aloof, relying much on the blindness of natives and magical sway of the then ward chairman….my hand-full of disciples was after my puke or defecation for they saw I was pot-bellied, but they never complained about the opprobrium of always beating the house-help for dinner, they must have thought that your true wife is with whom you make up…I was lucky to have lost by a narrow margin at the primaries…

You see I continued, the so-called political-structures, the un-democratic republican delegates are the most powerful demonstration of how easy it is, to control political party but not culture…those guys know you don’t have to give but they take all that money and you will not forgive because you have debt to pay but not from your pay…so don’t think of manifesto unless you want to appear surreal…but when it comes to the electorate, don’t forget that post-Anti SARS young people have realized that they can take control and woman never like to be left out of her group uniform…much will depend on how traction can turn mobilization into a movement but it is structure that will sustain the momentum…the outcome I continued, if not akwukwa the danger of adultery, it will be Iko-Ehugbo a festival…

But more pertinently, I went on, a discerning watcher of events in the country will tell you that, if they were ever a sophisticated incumbent, this is one. They appear to be working with a Pan-Arabic intelligentsia, the dramatis personae are puppets and they know it, so that nobody will say you set a trap for me… they are mainly in the kitchen cabinet. It would appear that each actor is told to write his own script but does not know the manuscript and they must be someone you respect…it’s all the way down to governors and across party divides such that you can’t tell when they’re on stage or managing public trust…because of his meek disposition people never believed he will quickly become an all-powerful unitary caprice but that’s what we wanted after two successive fragile regimes…

William Eleje-Abili, Lagos