Day by day I think deeply and un-deeply about this country: your country my country our country. I think about this country every blessed day and every un-blessed day – every second, every minute, every hour and hour. What do I see? What do I feel? What do I inhale? What do I smell? What do I touch? What do I taste? What do I…? What do I…? What do I… as I do the thought and thought on Nigeria the un-beautiful? What is laid bare before me? What is laid bare and illuminated before me? It is its real life – or do I say his real life – or her real life? In this wise which gender is the most appropriate to apprise us of Nigeria?
Do we go for the neuter gender or for the feminine gender or even for the masculine gender? All these are not light questions from whichever or whatever angle we wish to partake in the process of Nigeria’s decipherment.
Whatever truth there is for us to know or read or to arrive at about Nigeria of today lays bare and illuminates the proof of the trueness of the whole picture of our meditation on Nigeria the un-beautiful, on Nigeria the ugly.
The real life of Nigeria which can be said to be the only life we really live now is the life of ugliness. This is Nigeria’s current life which is its literature. Nigeria’s current art or song or sensation or image is that of ugliness. Nigeria is a place and thing of ugliness devoid of the human, that is, feminine or masculine sensations or feelings of the real, of the human real.
There is nothing beautifully beautiful – there is nothing beautifully humane, about Tinubu’s Nigeria. To put this in another way, and simply so, President Tinubu’s Nigeria is Nigeria the ugly that is deficiently ugly in every material way. We are saying and humming this loud and clear because we want the president of this country to rediscover and re-invent his image and dreams – or to re-enter the joy-room of his presidential campaign promise of renewed hope for Nigeria the beautiful.
We want Tinubu to climb back towards the light of his presidential election campaign and re-feel in himself the joy of re-discovering the real that is the real regarding his renewed hope sensations that should give Nigeria unerring sufficient proportions of light and sunshine. President Bolaji Ahmed Tinubu should re-discover his memory and banish his forgetfulness and give Nigeria her literature or art and landscape of joy and happiness that should ensure the triumph of justice and restore the moral unity of the nation.
Very quickly… Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senate President Godswill Akpabio are on my inquiringly inquiring mind. The Senate President has reacted to Senator Natasha’s petition to the Police Inspector-General relating to the worthy female rebel’s allegation against the almightily fabulous senate president who she has accused of plotting to murder her.
Although I consider the senate president’s denial as kind of weak and a product of his artless survival instinct, it is not out of tune for him to do what he has done. Yet the gleaner and his co-gleaners are of the view that he should have indicated he would ever be ready to submit himself for proper investigation – or an investigation of any kind – as Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s petition logically or interpretatively made plain.
But clearly of paramount importance which this gleaner’s literary, artistic binoculars vividly captured was the subject of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s sexual harassment allegation. Trivial or not trivial the number one denizen of the senate should have petitioned the Inspector-General of Police in a manner that would have logically compelled the top police chief to investigate him.
Akpabio’s seemingly lame denial was not enough – and it is still not enough. It is not at all late for him to stake his integrity and honour – if he truly possesses them – to tackle the ideas formed by his accuser’s pure intelligence in order for us to arrive at a logical, a possible truth. As a matter of fact, Godswill Akpabio should apprehend the mind of anyone who believed (and still believes) Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s compelling or seemingly impressive allegation.
The senate president’s blunt un-willingness to yield to the demands of his integrity as senate president only gives the impression, however trivial or faint the criterion of truth is in the allegation, that Mr Akpabio is a precious icon of Nigeria the ugly.
But Akpabio is not the only precious character of talent who is in President Tinubu’s government and good, precious book of renewed hope of Nigeria the ugly. Nyesom Wike the minister of strength who never goes astray – although he is always diligently or dutifully on the astray lane – is causing relentlessly absurd realities of the present time destined, or, better, fated to lead Rivers State to an untoward end. The really good thing about the emperor and Samson of Rivers’ politics is that there seems to be no Delilah waiting to ambush him.
The preciously precious man, however, has an enviable anatomy of a fellow whose moral laws flow and circulate uncontrollably in a manner that a diligent prosecutor cannot but subject to acute renal investigation.
What this supremely talented fellow of fellows whose alleged price-tags for betrayals are legendary and are not lacking in a study or studies of laws of political impositions of willing imbeciles every adroit artist of political realities in Nigeria will find poisonously ugly and enchantingly enchanting on account of their gross impropriety.
What did Sim Fubara allow himself to get into? What political theory or literary theory of the crack of doom is before us now in Rivers of the emperor who fears no heavens that will fall or that will not fall with or without a bang? The Rivers vision we see is the vision of Nigeria the ugly.
And the killings and killings in the land – in the hills and rocks of Plateau, the desert and savanna of Borno, the forests of Edo, Delta, Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti, and boiling cauldrons in the Niger Delta and INEC’s inspired war-drums in dollarised Warri where the ugliness of the oppression and suppression of the minority owners of lands that are their lands are being ludicrously despised and despoiled – what are we to say or write or paint or sculpt about them?
What are we to draw attention to in the landscapes and waterscapes that we know not to exist even in the moon of homeless migrants, but which Tinubu’s renewed hope is perhaps trying to birth and carve for them through the instrumentality of incompetents in several of our rudderless institutions?
Our president should brace up and rebirth a Nigeria of true justice and new morality; no time is better than now for President Tinubu to rebirth Nigeria of no ugliness, our Nigeria that should not be known and call Nigeria the ugly. Our real life is and must be our new life that he must re-dream for us now, and shed light on today.
Credit:The Guardian