HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE OLYMPICS

Being in the Olympics is a thing of joy. After all, countries like Madagascar and the Vatican City did not even make it there. So, we thank God. We thank God even though we participated in just eight of the 26 sports.

This is how to participate in a great event like the Olympics.

There really is no need to do all the long term, back-breaking work that countries like the US and China do. Especially China. Those mean guys get their athletes and start drilling them from the time they are two-years-old until they become Olympic-medal-winning machines. That is evil and unfair to children who should enjoy their childhood. Our Child Rights Act forbids that kind of thing. God will look into the matter of the Chinese. We must never be like them. Or like the Americans who have sport programmes in schools across their country -- students are supposed to be reading and doing serious things. It is important to preserve our Universities and secondary schools as places of learning, and not encourage young people to excel in sports. We do not need to spend any money on sports.

As we have shown by example, the best time to start preparations for the Olympics is a few months before it begins. Find a good number of the team from athletes and professional sportsmen and women outside the country who have Nigerian names or at least one Nigerian parent. They need to come to the rescue of their nation. We know they will come. Yes, some will betray us and play for countries like Great Britain, USA, France, even the tiny Island of Fiji (God will judge those ones and truncate their hustle), but the majority will come. With all the financial, social and political crises in our country, we do not have the luxury of spending years developing local talent. Find Nigerian professionals wherever they are. In a cool game like basketball for example, why send a local basketball player from Ogbomosho (who will need to have his English translated on international television) when there are all those Nigerian-Americans with nice accents that we can use? Why?

For those who are already too old, especially for the football team, reduce their ages by half. By the next Olympics, the footballer who was 23 this year will already be too old to even kick a ball, but that is not what matters. What matters is that we find a team today for this Olympics.

As you quickly put a team together for the Olympics, you must, as Sports Minister, publicly express confidence that members of Team Nigeria will win medals. Call our hurried preparations impressive. Because it IS impressive. If anyone questions your miracle of rigging an Olympic team in such a short time, God will look into their matter and judge them appropriately.

Delay the release of funds allocated for the team. Make sure they get the money as late as possible because they really do not need the money to prepare. We all know how money spoils things in Nigeria.

As you prepare to travel, do the most important thing: urge Nigerians to pray for the success of Team Nigeria. Because, among 167 million praying Nigerians, there must be at least one righteous person whose prayers will soften the heart of the Nigerian god and make us win medals.

When you realise that no one is winning medals, quickly declare that your best achievement has been that, unlike in the past, nobody is quarrelling and nobody is fighting with anybody. Nigerians all deserve medals because the Sports Ministry is not fighting with the Nigerian Sports Commission or the Nigerian Olympic Committee. For this, we must give God all the glory.

As a member of Team Nigeria, you must not let anything stop you from having fun in London. Not even sadness due to your woeful performance. Indiscipline might sound like a bad word but, trust me, in Nigeria it has its uses. In this context, I can identify at least two uses. First, it enables you to do things like skip camp and go shopping and sightseeing -- who knows when next you will return to London? Second, it gives the Minister a perfect excuse for a terrible outing -- he can blame everything on your indiscipline. Indiscipline makes everybody happy. But please, whatever you do, don’t get lost in London like those Cameroonians. It is so clichéd, and the Nigerian god really finds it irritating that after blessing your sweat-free hustle with juicy estacodes you would go hide like a rat in a crowded city like London. For tips on how to get to London through other less-objectionable means like applying for asylum, see my article, How To Get Asylum.

Most important of all, learn nothing from the experience when you return. It is too early to start planning for the next Olympics, plus you will be really exhausted from all the shopping and distributing things your Nigerian friends gave you money to buy for them from London. You need rest. If anyone insults you for a shameful outing in London, God will handle their matter.

We wish you a safe return. May you be cured of any injuries you may have sustained at the Olympics, or those you will sustain while unpacking. And may God bless your hustle.

INTERVIEW WITH CHIOMA CHUKA

So, I got a tweet from a friend, Chioma Chuka, New Media specialist, content producer, blogger and owner of the © Fairy GodSister and The Chronicles of The Fairy GodSister, saying she wanted an interview. She had interviewed me more than a year before after the post election crises in the North of Nigeria in April 2011. You can read it here.
You can find the second interview here.

Reading both interviews now, I realise why I like them so much. Chioma. No one makes me talk like she does. The question find the answers in my head. The kind of answers that doesn't make it embarrasing to re-read one's thoughts. It must be a gift. 

HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS IN NIGERIA

Nigeria is a great country with great hustling people. With every hustle comes challenges that must be surmounted. We have perfected the art of keeping our decaying house erect, albeit with the occasional smoke and stench coming out the windows. We are problem solvers. This article is a general guide for new Nigerians, foreigners who have just moved in to Nigeria, Nigerians who have just moved back from foreign lands, and idealistic Nigerians who live abroad.

Ask God for help. Now, it doesn’t matter if you are religious or if you have one of those new religions not recognised by our law. We have one general god -- the Nigerian god -- to whom all solutions are outsourced. Ask for his help in choosing leaders; in changing leaders; in wanting PHCN to provide electricity for that match because your generator is bad; in wanting fuel tanker drivers not to go on strike; in wanting roads; in wanting bombs to stop; in wanting corruption to stop; and in wanting to keep our country one. This is the first necessary, sometimes most important, step.

Create a committee. Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government are of no use in solving problems. Once a specific problem has been identified -- for example, the presence of too many people selling boiled maize and groundnuts on the streets -- create a specific committee to tackle this issue. In the case of this example, the committee would have two sub committees, one for boiled maize, and the other for boiled groundnuts. Then when that committee is done, create a committee to implement the report of the first committee.

Create multiple solutions. So, if as a government official you have a problem with your public image, in spite of having a department of Media and Publicity, create a new department to handle the problem. Call it Public Image Affairs department or something like that. The more agencies attack a problem, the better. Never try to fix the inefficiency of an agency of public institution. Always create a new body. So, if the crime division of the Nigerian Police Force is inefficient, understaffed, underfunded, unskilled, and corrupt, do not fund, train or discipline them. Create a fresh body, like the ICPC or EFCC. There is nothing like fresh ideas in trying to solve a problem.

When you have a big problem like terrorism, especially when our dear President confirms that some of the terrorists are in the Police, you must look for solutions outside our diligent Police Force. Think of something smart. Like one brand new Police Force for each financially dependent state. No, we will not scrap the Federal one. They will exist side by side. Think of how many people’s hustles will be blessed when you embark on this project. New uniforms, new jobs, new cars with sirens, new guns. A new militia for every governor blessed with constitutional immunity. I mean, governors won’t need to have side armies and gangs funded in the dark anymore. Think of it this way; when indigenes fill up the new State Police, terrorism, bombing, corruption, and kidnapping will vanish. Don’t ask what will happen when indigenes and non-indigenes fight and the State Police is called to keep the peace. God will not let that happen. Never mind that there are wicked people who will come up with arguments like states already having problems paying civil servants, and governors already having state legislators in their pockets. In fact, I overheard some evil guy suggest that some governors might fill up their state police with people from their tribe or religion, thereby creating complications and mistrust in cases of communal, religious or ethnic clashes. God will judge that guy. He doesn’t understand that to solve the problem of an inefficient Police Force, you need 36 others. He doesn’t understand the power of numbers.

When a problem won’t go away or is too big, divert it or postpone it. This reduces the pressure of the problem. So, for example, if you have a problem of poverty, which results in slums and shanty towns, instead of wasting time and energy on things like resettlement, development, low-cost housing or creating jobs, do something effective, like demolition. Clear out the slums and let the poor people who want to give our country a bad name find somewhere else to call a slum. Demolition is also very effective if your predecessors in government have turned a blind eye and allowed people to build in unapproved areas. Demolition covers a multitude of sins.

When there are problems and you are in government, you must never allow anything to stop you from travelling out of the country. Travelling is very important because it gives you time to breathe, shop, and learn from other countries.

But if you really want to solve problems effectively in Nigeria, you have to outsource them. There are things that the Nigerian god prefers not to handle. Not that he cannot handle them, but you see, he is clean and doesn’t like to dance in murky waters. For example, if you need to convict or arrest powerful people who have brazenly committed crimes, outsource it to a nice foreign country. I mean, the British used us as a colony to get resources, why can’t we use them to get justice? Tit for tat. Anyone who doesn’t like it should go choke on cassava bread. All good people know that justice for Nigerians is Nigerian justice, whether made in London or Johannesburg.

God bless your hustle and make it problem-free.

How To Behave When Accused Of Corruption In Nigeria

Nigerians are corrupt. Even a suckling knows this. From time to time however, the odd situation arises where one Nigerian accuses another of corruption, you know, like armpit calling mouth smelly.

To be too clean in Nigeria is as bad as being too dirty. You must maintain a corruption balance. Moderate corruption. All our good men have been moderately corrupt. It is the greedy ones, the wicked ones who want to keep it all to themselves, that we call corrupt. The Dictionary of Nigerian Terms defines corrupt as: “an adjective implying inordinate insatiable greed above and beyond the Nigerian benchmark for acceptable theft.”

As a politician or big businessman connected to politicians, your enemies abound. And their favourite social weapon is an accusation of corruption. God sees your heart and He will judge those judging you. Here on earth however, this is what you must do when faced with the threat of corruption charges.

If you are really highly placed, like the President or something, and someone says your wife or other relative is corrupt, ignore it. Nothing will happen. The evil people will talk and talk and then stop talking. Nigerians may make noise on social media but, ultimately, they are too concerned about poverty and how to get fuel for their generators during Big Brother season to care too much. Plus, Nigerians have the attention span of goldfish.

However, if you are still climbing the political ladder, you must act decisively. Put out a press release denying every single allegation, even the ones you are guilty of. Nigerians are wicked. If you admit to something as small as running through traffic lights, they will gather and impale you and proceed to run through several traffic lights on their way from impaling you. So when faced with accusations of corruption, say you have never ever committed a sin or done a bad thing in your life, or peed on the bed when you were little or lied to your friends that you didn’t have money in secondary school.

A great comeback is to declare that the person who accuses you is your political enemy. It is because he wants to spoil the good work you are doing and distract people from the main issues. You must use words like ‘campaign of calumny’ and ‘detractors’ when you reply.

So you made a mistake and collected a gift you thought was harmless. I mean, foreign currency should be harmless. But you realised it was a trap when you started reading in the papers that two months ago, this guy gave you a bribe to do him a favour. You have probably spent half of it already (but then you can replace it). You must go to the press immediately and say that although you collected this so-called bribe, it was your intention to keep it as evidence of being bribed. You have a little evidence room in your bedroom where you keep evidence of such nature. You were only waiting for the right moment. God knows.

Worst case scenario, plead entrapment. What is entrapment? Simply, it means that if they had not offered you a bribe you would never have taken it. Like, if the serpent did not offer Eve the apple she would never have eaten it. With entrapment, it is the person who lured you into committing a crime that is guilty. Use this excuse and Nigerians will believe and join you in asking God to judge those setting traps for you.

You can use this as a weapon also. They say attack is the best form of defence. Every successful Nigerian politician knows this. You must give people money and capture it on tape. This is political insurance. It is important to mark the bills, just in case something goes wrong. Give the money to people you think can turn rogue. No politician can turn down money (Ok, maybe guys like Buhari, but where has that gotten him?). One day, when you are accused, you will bring out the tapes and records of those you have bribed and show it to the world as evidence. Because Nigerians are tribal and selfish, all your tribesmen will support you even in the face of your guilt. They will band together and say that no one should touch their ‘son’. There will be so much controversy that no one will be able to tell the truth from a lie and in all the commotion you will get away unscathed.

This is what you must never do: Never ever resign. Don’t even think of it. It is white people who resign. Look at their countries collapsing one after the other because they can’t stand still in the face of accusations. You are Nigerian; it is a taboo to resign just because they found out you took half a million dollars in bribe.

Never admit to your crime except you are found guilty by a foreign court and taken away in handcuffs. And even then, do it only as the condition for a plea bargain. Nigerians are forgiving – they will hold a public reception for you when you are released from jail.

But it doesn’t have to get to that. In the end, if you play it right, your enemies will fail and God will bless your hustle.

HOW TO CELEBRATE DEMOCRACY DAY

People ask me why I always bring God into my advice. It’s really simple. Nigeria is a nation loved by God. When we needed independence, instead of making us fight like the Mau-Mau in Kenya or the ANC in South Africa, He made the British leave in a peaceful handover ceremony. When the military planned to stay in power forever, we didn’t have to march in protest. He sent angels (some say of Indian origin) to take out Abacha. And when it seemed like the minorities were going to die under the oppressive yoke of the major tribes, He gave them the Presidency. Nigerians affirmed God’s gift by re-electing him in a landslide. Thank God for democracy.

 

This surely is a thing worth celebrating, dear President. This is just how you must celebrate it.

The country is being crushed under the weight of violence, darkness, poor infrastructure and corruption. You know this and do not need to be reminded by wicked people who call themselves men of God. So when you are planning the celebrations and some man of God decides you must spend your day saying amens to anti-corruption prayers, ignore him. They have no idea the heavy thoughts you have for this country. How can you waste your time saying endless amens? It is noisy and noise is bad for thinking.

You must prepare a speech. Every Nigerian, including the wicked unpatriotic ones who refuse to watch the local channels, tune in to watch the Democracy day speech. You have the undivided attention of the entire country so the speech must be long and impressive. It must, like a short story have little twists which will reveal exciting things. 

Evil people who cannot see that you have achieved so much in so little time need to be reminded of all they have missed in the past year. They need a little history lesson. How God cleared the way for you to get where you are. People thought there would be war abi? But God was faithful and our democracy is stable. Isn’t that enough for people to be thankful? 

And oh, cassava. They don’t know but you must tell them that cassava is the thing that will replace oil in this country. I mean your Aso-Villa Cassava Bread is already a best seller and you are sure that when it hits the market and Chinese people get used to its taste, they will be buying so much bread from us, that we won’t need America to buy our crude oil. Imagine one billion plus people eating our cassava bread, soaking our garri, swallowing our eba, snacking on our cassava chips on the way to work. People don’t know yet, but one day, they will thank you.

You must say in your speech that although the terrorists are succeeding, Nigerians are resilient. God will judge those terrorists. They can never, ever make Nigeria disintegrate. That is why you are really doing nothing serious about it. You just feel it in your heart, the way you knew you would win last year’s elections, that they can never, ever, succeed. 

You must give Nigerians a gift. Every democracy day, they expect a gift to keep them happy until the following year. Pick a university and rename it. Like the University of Maiduguri. Because you feel guilty about the way the Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf was killed, rename the university after him. I mean he was a bad guy and all but no one deserves to be shot with handcuffs on. So call it ‘Mohammed Yusuf University’, MYU. I know the students will be confused about what to call themselves. Provide useful suggestions, like Yusufiyya’s or Sufi’s for short. Greatest Sufi’s! They will love it. Oh, then announce the establishment of an Institute of Anti-terrorism studies in the university.

You must not in your speech talk about corruption. I mean it’s becoming a cliché and Nigerians are tired of hearing it. It doesn’t matter that the House of Representatives just unraveled damning information about corruption in the oil sector. After all, your former mentor called them rogues, so we can’t trust a word that they say. 

You must not apologise to the Youth Corp members who were not paid for many months. Young people these days are just ungrateful. I mean you see many of them carrying expensive phones- iPhones and Blackberry’s. Some Corp members even have cars! God is watching them. When you were their age you barely had shoes, so they should stop whining. 

People are hard on you. They have been since day one. Nigeria’s problems didn’t start with you. You tell them this but they refuse to believe you. So you will announce the opening of a museum housing images and legacies of all our past leaders just so Nigerians can visit and know just how each of them contributed his quota to spoiling this country. When they see it they will be grateful. Those who still refuse to see, well, God will judge them.

God bless your reign.

HOW TO BEHAVE ON A NIGERIAN HIGH TABLE

(first published in Daily Times Nigeria)

I am on the left. PHOTO CREDITS: M. DABOGI.

Ok. I must say this: last Saturday was not my first time on a high table. In fact only last month, I represented a friend of mine who couldn’t make it to the Kaduna Polytechnic to give his speech. But this was the first time I was consciously engaging with the whole high table culture. 

I was delivering a speech on Identity and Politics in a Time of Crises. First let me say that the high table is for me a deeply uncomfortable experience. This is because I am a restless person and do not like being watched by a crowd like an animal in a zoo. Also I like to react to things and I have realized that it is a waste of time for me to hide how I feel about something or someone. My face tells all. So the high table is not the best place for me. 

However, I learnt a lot from last Saturday and instead of writing a glossy motivational book titled ‘How to be a Public Speaker in Nigeria’ or ‘Seven Habits of Highly Successful Naija Speakers’ and have my books sold at every hold up in Nigeria, I have decided, to risk poverty and share my thoughts with you for free.

LESSON 1: ALWAYS ASK WHO WILL BE IN THE AUDIENCE

I almost ran away when I walked into the hall and about a quarter or so of the hall was full of secondary school students- including students from a new Almajiri school. So that rendered nearly half of my speech unusable. Unfortunately one of the organizers saw me before I could sneak off and claim sudden illness. I had to instantly start mentally re-writing my speech.

LESSON 2: DRINKING THE JUICE REQUIRES SKILL

Now I assume that the juice on the table is not for decoration, but when it comes to eating and drinking in front of 300-500 people, I get very shy. Thirty minutes into the event I suddenly got very thirsty. In front of me on the high table were a bottle of water, a pack of juice and a glass cup. Everyone else on the high table ignored them like saints avoiding sin. The people on the high table even avoided eye contact with the juice. With every passing minute my frustration and thirst grew. I tweeted while on the high table and got some useful suggestions like, ‘it doesn’t matter’, ‘the rest are also waiting for you to drink first’ and ‘drink the juice with panache’. The last one, by a fellow writer struck me. ‘Panache’. I checked the word on my Encarta dictionary and saw the definition: ‘dashing style: a sense or display of spirited style and self-confidence’. I practiced pouring with ‘style and self-confidence’ with my hands under the table. I concluded that I would be better off not bringing the whole body of writers into disrepute by a lack of panache. By the way, the juice promptly disappeared as soon as the event was over just when I thought I could finally have a quiet sip beyond scrutiny. 

LESSON 3: USE AN IPAD OR NOTHING

Everyone comes to an event with an iPad these days. Pastors, Imams and those who don’t own iPads. I tell you they wanted to make me feel small, all those iPad wielding people. And here was I cuddling my dear ACER notebook, Magdalene. I could almost feel Magdalene feeling fat and ordinary in the face of those sleek things. But she kept her head up, dear Magdalene.

LESSON 4: USE THE TOILET BEFORE YOU GET ON

I hope it’s not abnormal or anything, but I feel the urge to pee when I am nervous and when  I am cold. I will google it to be sure. Anyway, the combined effect of nervousness about giving a good speech, frustration about the juice and the discomfort of so many eyes, I felt this urge to pee. When? Just when the speaker just before me was close to the end of her speech. Suddenly it felt like all the people in my village who were conspiring against my success had finally gotten to me. Gladly, the organizers came to beg me so they could sneak in a brief performance just before my speech. 

LESSON 5: BEWARE OF THAT GUY IN THE AUDIENCE WHOSE SOLE AIM IS SHINE AT YOUR EXPENSE

So I gave the speech. That was the best part. It emboldened me to at least open the bottle of water in front of me. I deserved it. All that speaking! Then during question and answer time, this guy, who eventually came up to me to inform me of his just having returned to Nigeria six weeks ago from Harvard, stood up to give a little speech of his own. He reeled out all the big social science terms and theories and although he claimed to be disagreeing with me, ended up summarizing my speech. All I could say (in my mind of course) was ‘God is watching you!’

LESSON 6: ALWAYS CARRY MONEY FOR PHOTOGRAPHS (OR WARN THEM NOT TO TAKE YOUR PHOTO)

So this woman photographer (God will judge her appropriately), with many photos of me in her hand, came right to the High Table before the program was over, to whisper that each tiny ugly photo was 200 naira. I felt sweaty all of a sudden because my wallet was far away where I had parked my car. Not that there was money in it. I would have to go to an ATM to be able to pay her. Now, the other people on the high table were looking at me. No, God will judge that woman! This is one of the few moments when I have been thankful for being a lawyer, trained to squeeze water out of a stone. I told her with a stern face: ‘I do not take photos. I do not like photos. I did not ask for my photo to be taken...’ I might have gone on and on and accused her of blackmail, of being an agent of my enemies and village people, but the woman by my side said, don’t worry ill just pay for all the photos. I initially protested, careful though not to protest too hard, lest I would have to make the uncomfortable trip to the ATM.

My prayer for you is that you are blessed with better high tables and more juice loving people on the high table. And that God shows you those plotting your downfall before they see you.

My Kaduna, of Bombs

I was going to give you another dose of Nigerian survival secrets, but as you all heard, they bombed my city again last Sunday. So, I stopped and asked myself: What does it profit a poor columnist to save the whole ungrateful Nigeria and lose his limbs and life?

The bombers had sent a message about two weeks ago saying Kaduna was going to be bombed soon. We knew but, trust me, nothing can prepare you for a bomb attack. I was in the toilet when the bomber prematurely detonated his bombs. The window rattled and because there is a quarry near my house, I thought, ok, Bulus and his boys have started. But I got the phone calls to say ‘our people’ have come again. You see, when I heard it went off prematurely, I felt a bit sorry for him. The bomber, I mean. I hear he is supposed to say a final prayer for his soul or something. Apparently he didn’t get to say that prayer. I wonder where that leaves him. Kai, a serious mission like that, you go without final words? Bad.

Anyway, the reality of the situation dawned on me. My dear Kaduna is now Iraq reloaded. In the past, when they tell you so-and-so is killing people with machetes at so-and-so junction in Kaduna, you could at least avoid the junction. With bombs, there are no warnings, just a loud ‘kaboom’ and plenty deaths.

It has changed everything and everyone. I see a man driving unusually slow in front of me, I overtake or stop completely to let him go past. I notice a man has gallons in his car, empty or otherwise, I turn off at the next junction. When I have to take public transport, I am kind to everyone. I say ‘shift’or ‘dress’ very kindly, just so I don’t annoy any potential bomber. And if some scary looking guy refuses to shift, I will tell him “It’s ok not to shift, I can manage” with a smile.

I have heard many stories of taxi or bus drivers who unknowingly transported Boko Haram people and were only saved by their kindness. Half of them are lies of course, but the coolest stories these days in Kaduna are ‘How-I-survived-deadly-Boko-Haram-passengers’ stories. I just acquired my own story. I left my jalopy with the mechanic and took a bus into town a few days ago. There was this man by my side who was unusually quiet. The other passengers, still reeling from the effects of the bomb the previous day, began complaining, cursing, hmmm-ing and ahhh-ing about Boko Haram. Through all of it, he was casting passive aggressive glances at the talking passengers. As he leaned back and put his hand into his pocket, I immediately shouted to the conductor that I had to drop. Now! Nearly 1km before my stop. Truth is, he could have been looking for money to pay the conductor, but what do I care? I have my ‘how I survived a Boko Haram bus attack’ story. This story will be retold with increasing colorfulness and imagination on what could have happened to the remaining passengers after I alighted.

I am sad that many of our cities are now so unsafe. That I get sweaty in hold-ups, not because of the heat, but because I know that if some dude decides to blow himself up, I have nowhere to run. That because of the sins of a few, innocent men with beards and caftans get profiled and dragged to corners and searched in ways that diminish human dignity. That there are only two certain things in Nigeria these days: power outages and the Boko Haram attacks. I am sad that people are scared to report anything to the Police because that is a sure death sentence. That the Police are powerless in this matter. That the government seems powerless.

But there is hope. As I write this, the second batch of trainees on the use of dogs in the fight against terrorism have just completed their training. God bless the Nigerian government for responding to this Boko Haram threat with well-trained dogs. What a Nigerian man cannot do, a foreign dog can do.

Ok. I am done complaining about my city. Find below, an abridged version of what should have been my article:

HOW TO REACT OFFICIALLY TO NEWS OF TERROR ATTACKS

1. Do nothing. Yes. At least for the first few hours. Do they know whether you were in the middle of a meeting or drinking session when they attacked? What if you were praying –they don’t expect you to interrupt your prayers to the God who won you the elections, do they?
2. Release a statement through one of your aides, calling it a dastardly act. Promise that by June (or some other far away month) the bombings will be a thing of the past.
3. Set up a committee to look into the bombing.
4. Send a high-powered delegation to visit the site of the bombing
5. Commiserate with the traditional ruler of the area and with the governor, because they are the most affected by the blast, not those who actually lost friends and family.
6. Swear by your God that you will catch them.
7. Set up another committee to look into the recommendations of the first committee.
8. After a long time, visit the scene of the blast.
9. Award a contract for the importation of good Israeli dogs to counter terrorism.
10. Go back to whatever it is you were doing before the blast.
11. (Or tell people that the bombers have infiltrated your government, the army, the police, Immigration, Customs, SEC, EFCC, your town meeting, and there is nothing you can do about it.)

This article first appeared in Daily Times Nigeria

HOW TO REMAIN A RESPECTED POLITICIAN AFTER LEAVING POWER

Power is sweet. No one knows this eternal truth better than you.

Some days –especially in the early days after the tragic loss– you lie down, wondering how it all happened. You no longer have free government money, no armed orderlies and SSS operatives, no official cars with sirens and green plate numbers, no people queuing to kiss your feet. In fact, the number of cards and hampers you get at the end of the year is now a paltry 10% of what you used to get while you were in power.

You see the way people look at you, not with trembling and awe, but with pity. Their eyes remind you how far you have fallen from grace.

Consider this advice proof of my commitment to your success. Because I still care.

The first way (I only advise this if you are truly tired of seeking power) is to disappear altogether. No big functions. No award ceremonies. No keynote speeches. In fact, you know that Abuja mansion you used as a base? Refuse to renew the outrageous rent (those Maitama landlords are greedy anyway). Move to your country home. Spend some quality time with the family and take your vitamins and anti-hypertension drugs religiously. Attend only a few necessary events, like the Council of State meeting if you were once Head of State, and the weddings of your friends’ children and grandchildren.

Now, if you still want power, there are two other ways of remaining relevant (relevant means that although you are not in office, you still make it to the front page of dailies).

Note: You have lost power, you did not resign. They schemed you out. The guy in power is not from your region; he is not your friend. He has new friends and loyalists who do not understand the pecking order –some of them are even criminals who now have executive backing. God will judge them.

Listen. This is the time to fall back on your tribe, region and religion. Yeah, yeah, I know you once called yourself a de-tribalised Nigerian and all that, but that was when the going was good. Form think-tanks and call yourselves progressives. The others are not progressives because they don’t want your progress. Begin underground moves to return power to your region so that at least you stand a chance of returning to power. When the President makes a budget, sit down with a team of experts from your tribe and analyze the budget. You are bound to find something. Complain bitterly about how he has budgeted for his region N10 more than yours. Remind him that one day, power must change hands. Write moving analyses of how corrupt the government is. It doesn’t matter that you were once part of it. What matters is who is corrupt now that you are out of office. If you are technology savvy, get a Blackberry or iPad. Then create a twitter account where you can scream about every impropriety of the government. Don’t worry, as an ex-something-in-the-last-government, you are sure to get many followers. Post attention-seeking tweets, hold twitter interviews and Q&A’s during which you can properly insult the government. Swear that while you were in office, you were pure perfection. Because we have lazy journalists, your tweets will be turned into screaming headlines. For example, if in reply to the question, “Do you think the military will take over if things get worse?” you reply, “Maybe, nothing is impossible”, a journalist will print the headline: “MR. EX-SOMETHING PREDICTS COUP IN NIGERIA”. The only bad press is no press. All you care about is that you are in the news.

Open your eyes to opportunity. Hijack a protest. Jump on the back of a truck and give a moving speech. Because Nigerians have amnesia, they will forget who you were and be moved by your righteous indignation.

For credibility, swear that even if His Excellency offers you a post in his government you will not take it. Of course you know he will not offer you anything, you just need to prove that you are too cool for this government.

But please, do not get carried away and sponsor groups to blow things up and destabilise the government. It is easy, but resist the temptation. Why? Come on man, you never know how these things will turn out. Today, you are the benefactor giving money for weapons and bombs; tomorrow, they grow wings and turn on you. Be wise. Nigeria is the cash cow that must be kept alive. You need it in one piece for when you come back to power.

There is one simpler, albeit more humiliating way. You must swallow your pride for this one. Become an executive praise singer. Sponsor ads in newspapers. Find out the birthdays of His Excellency, Her Excellency, His Excellency’s girlfriend (this one you take gifts to in private, she has great influence), His Excellency’s in-laws. Do not miss a single event organized by the Political Party, where you must make open donations. Be loyal to the Party. Do not join factions. Sponsor a biography of His Excellency or a collection of essays in honor of one of His Excellency’s closest friends. Then do a launch of the publication and donate the highest amount. Make big donations to Her Excellency the First Lady’s pet project. Sponsor full page, full color editorials about the legacy of this government. People may laugh at you, but before long someone in government will fall out of favour and His Excellency will be looking for a new minister or ambassador or senior special adviser. Because you have been loyal, your name will come up and all those laughing at you will swallow their tongues.

Who said politics was easy?

However, by far the most effective way is to die. Death confers sainthood on a Nigerian politician. Your crimson sins will become immaculate white. They will name halls and streets and bridges after you. Many will mark the day you died. You wll become a statesman, a detribalised Nigerian, a god-fearing nationalist. For it is evil to speak ill of the holy dead.

Whichever of these you find relevant to your circumstances, I wish you all the best. God bless your political hustle and arrange your comeback.

HOW TO BECOME A RENOWNED ACTIVIST

You stare at the Nigerian on CNN; at his gleaming forehead. He is taking his time answering questions about Nigeria in an accent that is improved for export. After his name comes the title, Activist. This man has gone places with this title. You are not quite sure what this guy does, but you like the fame. There is NGO money involved for all the noise and ah, he travels. He goes everywhere. Places you dream of, London, Vienna, New York.

Ok. Calm down. I am here for you. You can be just like him. Just listen closely and you will very soon be acclaimed as one of Nigeria’s foremost activists.

Find something to be angry about. Nothing special. Nothing revolutionary. Something easy you can handle. Like fuel prices, corruption or electricity. Finding the right thing to be angry about can be the key to success. Many people in this business have gotten international interviews for organising town hall meetings with projector slides and statistics. Call it anything. Fuel-up Nigeria. Road-up Naija. De-corrupt Nigeria. Whatever. In fact don’t call it anything. Just be angry about something.

Be angry at the right time and in front of the right camera. Foreigners won’t give you cash or attention if they can’t access some tangible evidence of your work. Have a friend follow you around with a camcorder which will eventually be used to make that CD or DVD which will sell you to the clueless international media for whom Nigeria is a just a country with two regions that hate each other.

An activist doesn’t need to do anything in particular. So, avoid projects that will make you work as hard as Kenya’s Wangari Maathai whose Green Belt movement has planted 10 million trees. That is the real deal and it takes decades to get any recognition that way. So no Wangari moves, god bless her soul.

Let’s say you choose, Road-up Naija. You see, you don’t have to build roads, that’s the business of government. You don’t even have to organise communities to pave their own roads with mud and stones to show the government how it’s done. Not like that other Kenyan Evans Wandongo (heish, these Kenyans are spoiling the Activist business) who, instead of holding Light-up Kenya town hall meetings in the heart of pretty Nairobi, made nearly 10,000 solar powered lanterns for the good people of rural Kenya. The man thinks he knows too much eh? Well, like my friend would say, a plague on him! For our Road-up Naija project, we will do press conferences, write scathing articles, and rent a projector for our town hall meetings in pretty Abuja and posh Lagos. Kano, Kaduna, Ebonyi, Akwa-Ibom are too dangerous.

Now to be a successful activist, social media is a prerequisite. Twitter and Facebook. Twitter especially. You must spend a lot of time on twitter tweeting angry thoughts and statistics. You must say to the government, ‘I am watching’. Have the right people following you on twitter, those with many followers who will be awed by your intelligent anger given in 140 character instalments, so awed that they can’t help retweeting. I’d choose someone like popular gossip blogger Linda Ikeji. Just make sure she retweets you. Gbam. Slowly you will gather followers and one day, you won’t even need Linda.

Ok. Let’s go hardcore. Just in case you get bored and want a little action. Not the real deal- no hunger strikes and crap like that. Just something sufficiently wild that you can boast of. Let’s get arrested. Don’t panic. It’s not that bad. Just be in the right company so that it gets in the news. Then brag about it for the next many years. Tell people who doubt your activist credentials that you spent so and so period in jail with so and so and that they don’t know the half of it. Name the cells you have slept in and how awful they smell so that your accusers will bend their heads in shame and curse the day the thought came up in their minds to challenge you. Prison or police-cell time boosts your activist CV. It sells you. Before you know it, you will be spending more time in London and America than you could have ever dreamed of, holding meetings with NGO’s trying to help suffering black people.

Be prominent in a protest. You don’t need to start the protest. That is plenty work. All you need is to be in front where the cameras are. The videos and photos of you frothing at the lips raining curses on the government won’t say who started the protest or why. Even though you have houses in your home state, in pretty Abuja or Lagos, and in London, you speak for the masses. Wear a lousy t-shirt to prove it. The masses will be grateful and will speak about your goodness on radio, on tv and on twitter.

There are landmines though. Landmines that you may miss due to the short-sightedness inflicted by greed. Say you do your activist business and get a little popular. You start feeling like the best thing since nkwobi. You start getting invitations from the Presidency people to represent and speak on behalf of groups you know nothing about. Then they stab you by leaking information of the transport fare they provided (which you totally deserve by the way). It could be a mere fifty thousand, an amount you spend on recharge cards and shawarma in a month. But when it hits twitter that ‘favourite-activist-so-and-so collects fifty thousand from government’, it will look like a huge bribe delivered in Ghana must go bags. Then people will hate you, with the same fervour with which they loved you.

Another landmine, closely related to this, is that, you begin to have government contacts. You will become friendly with too many people in Government house, that when the time comes for a real event, say a protest you could have exploited, you are already too entangled with these people to join in insulting them. So you offer half witted statements on twitter or disappear from twitter altogether. And people WILL notice! Lesson: don’t play god or get greedy.

So, there you have it. I wish you a long and fulfilling career as an activist. I wish you many CNN, Aljazeera and BBC interviews. Many awards and twitter fans.

Acceptance News...

A beloved 5,000 word story of mine has been accepted for publication in the Spring 2012 issue of Per Contra. I am excited about this because that is where I first read the short stories of Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters Street. They have also published stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Petina Gappah. Cool stuff! And yes, they pay!

A creative non-fiction piece of mine has also been accepted for future publication in Evergreen Review. Barney Rosset, 86, 'the most dangerous man in publishing', the man who published Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' and fought puritanism on many fronts is the publisher of this reputable journal.

Also, the last issue of Sentinel Nigeria published my short story 'Your Man'.

This is a good year already. And there is more to come. Watch this space.

How To (Mis)Govern Nigeria

How to (Mis)Govern Nigeria and Get Away With it

first published at http://dailytimes.com.ng/blog/how-get-away-misgoverning-nigeria

Begin the celebration of your victory by acknowledging it as an undeniable act of God. Tell your opponent that power belongs to God and this year God doesn’t give a shit about him. Establish this fact by holding special lavish thanksgiving services where you thank God that due, only to his special and mighty grace, you escaped being caught for rigging or killing opponents or manipulation all of which you must swear you never did. God doesn’t like those things.

Renovations! Your predecessor dirty saboteur that he is, messed up the accommodation really badly. I mean he made the official residence totally uninhabitable. You must renovate your official residence at an amount that you can use to build a new residence. It is not your fault. They should blame the last bad belle. This is why you always preach about maintenance culture. Nigerians lack it. Let them pay the huge bill for the renovation and they will see how well you will maintain yours. If you can, let the money be used to renovate your personal house (because you are too cool for government house) and perhaps even get paid for living in your own house in office.

It is important to declare that the wind of change will come sweeping. How do you achieve that? I don’t know. Don’t be asking me hard questions like that. Just say it. It is good enough. But if you insist, there are things you can do to appear like there is a wind blowing, whatever that wind may be. One way to do this is to create what we call an Agenda. 3 point, 7 point, 11 point, it doesn’t matter. You may even christen your Agenda and give her a name. Call her, the revitalisation Agenda. The resuscitation Agenda or other such synonyms. Agenda na Agenda.

It is ok to be narcissistic. Repaint old projects with your smiling face. Commission plenty worthless, glossy books about your achievements, hard back books containing empty speeches you have and will make, and if your are narcissistic enough, a book about your regalia and cuisine. There are plenty hungry writers for hire. It is quite easy. If you are Governor, every state project must carry a large photo of you looking straight at your subjects so they know the secret behind this whodunit. Then let there be a smaller photo of your deputy by the side. The Deputy’s photo must always be on the left and smaller so they know who is boss. If it is a Federal Project, look for a huge photo of Mr. President and then yours, a smaller one by the left where your Deputy is supposed to be.

Make sure every small project is commissioned at an expensive elaborate ceremony, where a separate contract is awarded for the commissioning ceremony itself. This is how a country is governed.

So, you have no projects, no thanksgiving services and nothing to show for it. You are getting nervous because some nosy people have started raising hell in the papers which if not for that nonsense free speech you would have banned. They are talking on TV shows, criticising your God-anointed government and saying there are no roads, no hospitals, no schools, no electricity, no water. God will judge your enemies and devote a special part of hell for them. But before God does that you need to take care of the situation here on earth. Just like you took care of the elections. You can thank Him later. What you need now is a smokescreen. Some toys for the people to play with so they don’t bother you so much. Give them something to fight about. This is fairly easy. The country is full of people who like to be defenders of their tribes, defenders of their cultures, and everyone’s favourite, defenders of their religions and Gods. So, find a common enemy. Someone we can push the blame to and call their acts, dastardly acts, call them enemies of progress.

Like who? Ehen. Good question. We all know those gay people who are, yes, abnormal. Create a law banning them. What? We already have a law banning homosexuality? So what if it’s already illegal? Just create something that will give the Christians and Muslims something to cheer about. They are the majority, no other religions officially exist. Tell the gays, we know you are already illegal, but we want to make you even more illegal, and anyone who sympathises with you! Gbam. The holy people of this nation will praise you for coming to the rescue of God’s law in this particular serious issue. No, sir, God’s law doesn’t affect corruption or fornication with girls. As long as you are not gay, sex is fine, 13 year old, 14 year old, your sons wife, the neighbours wife, the secretary, the Youth Corp members. This is not covered by God’s law. Confused? It is simple, straight sex is good. Gay sex is bad. Gay anything is bad. Unafrican. Immoral. Yes I said it, unAfrican, we never had a single homosexual in African culture, all those stories about ‘yan daudu in Hausa culture and homosexuals in other cultures are all lies, perpetrated by heretics, agents of white people to destroy us. God will not let them.

You see in all that confusion, no one can possibly realise that not a single thing has been done, that prices are going up, that electricity is horrible, that roads are still the death traps they have always been. Before you know it, it will be election time, and God who did it for you before, will do it for you again. Do I hear an Amen?

ONCE UPON A LOVELY IGBO GIRL WITH NO MAKEUP

I can’t remember her last name or where exactly we met. Just a smile that started from the eyes and spread to the rest of a smooth brown face, and a name, Ngozi. I have always thought it was Ngozi, even though now that I think of it, her name could have been Njideka. But it doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter the last time we met, in a hospital ward a few years ago in Kaduna.

I was making my way through the confusing, identical wards, looking for a relative of mine, avoiding the grim stories on the faces outside the wards. Sometimes I couldn’t help looking; the faces said many things, asked many questions: Why aren’t the drugs working. Will we find the money for the operation before it is too late? Where will we find the money? We are in God’s hands. I wish we came a bit earlier. Why me, why her, why now...

It was her face I saw first as I peeped in the dreary sunlit room that reeked with a smell we described growing up simply as hospital smell- a mix of strong disinfectants, antiseptics, the metallic smell of blood, food, and bananas. She had put on weight but her fuller cheeks had done nothing to alter her face. It was still the same lovely brown face without makeup. Her lips were a light shade of pink and her nose, was pointed and had a little mole on it.

She was sitting on the bed and looked at me with a familiar smile. I smiled back and walked toward her to say hello and long-time-no-see and sorry-I-didn’t-know-you-were-in-the-hospital and God-bring-vitality-back-to-your-body and sorry-again, all at once. She didn’t have many visitors like the others. During the awkward silence that followed the shock/awkward reunion/prayer for good health, I wondered whether it was rude to ask why she was in the hospital. Perhaps this lovely Igbo girl with no makeup read my mind, or maybe it was just coincidence that she then decided to adjust her sitting position to show me what brought her there. I noticed the bandages on one side of her chest where a breast used to be. She caught my eyes as it widened, involuntarily at the sight of her chest. She smiled a smile that said, I know, I couldn’t believe I lost the breast too and looked away. Just then I heard my name from across the room. It was my aunt standing by the bed of the relative I came looking for.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, walking away in disbelief. I greeted my aunt who asked in Hausa where I knew her from. I realized then that I couldn’t remember where I knew her from. ‘From school,’ I said, preferring the burden of a lie to the complication of explaining why I stood for so long by the bedside of someone I wasn’t sure where I met. It could have been the external examinations I took when I was trying to switch from the sciences to the arts many years before. Or maybe the friend of a friend. We didn’t ask each other where we knew. Our eyes met, and we just knew. It didn’t matter where we met.

I waved her goodbye as we were leaving but she was busy with the nurses and I decided I would return to see her the following day. On the bus home, I wondered what it meant, to lose a breast. Would she wear a normal bra, stuff the other with some padding? How would she feel? Is she married yet? If not, how will this affect her. These were the questions I slept with; the same questions I woke up with and pondered as I returned to the hospital the following day. Walking to the ward, I thought of how she turned away when she saw that I had seen why she was there. I would sit with her and talk when I got there, I told myself. I would not walk away again if she turned her face, even if my aunt called me. I would not let my eyes go wide with surprise or dim with pity; I would smile, like she did, from my eyes, from my heart.

I reached the hospital the following day and Ngozi’s bed was empty, a dreary green sheet spread over the space she occupied the day before. I asked my aunt and she gave me the details with her arms across her chest and pity on her face. Discharged. Breast Cancer. Very friendly, wallahi.

This October, the month set aside as Breast Cancer month I have been thinking of Ngozi, who might have been Njideka. Ngozi who could have been a friend of a friend or an old classmate. I never saw her again. I do not know if the cancer stopped, if she found a way around the bra or gave up altogether, if she had supportive family and friends, if she found someone to still love her or knew that she was still beautiful. I wish now, that I had sat down a little more with her that day or knew where she was so I could visit. This October I remember the lovely Igbo girl without makeup who had breast cancer.

The Women Whose Men Were Taken

THE WOMEN WHOSE MEN WERE TAKEN. (A VISIT TO ONE OF KADUNA’S INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS)

I walked into the camp not expecting to feel anything new. I was born in this once peaceful, cosmopolitan town, and seen it quickly turn up dead bodies, some burnt, some cut to pieces because they belonged to the wrong religion or tribe; I saw it ultimately become a town of religiously exclusive, non-interacting communities- wholly Christian or Muslim. Seeing displaced persons would not make me lose any sleep, after all I had once been displaced by violence myself and in a sense, most people had been displaced, having to move to communities whose religion they belonged to, at least nominally. So I went in with some researcher friends of mine when they asked me to come along.

The smell from thousands of bodies crammed into a small space greeted me as we drove in. One of the leaders of the camp welcomed us and started showing us around. Hundreds of children ran around, unattended. Old men sat on tattered mats, staring at us. Women in hijabs sat in groups, some staring at us, others minding their children. Cooking was done not far away from open sewers and the flies buzzed all around, not minding the heat from the cooking.

The first hostel, an open hall without beds or even mattresses housed 130 widows and their little children. All of them victims of the April post electoral killings in the South of Kaduna State, mostly from my village Zonkwa, Kafanchan and a few other surrounding villages.

They took us to the store to see what they had left of their food supplies. Rotting tomatoes on the concrete floor, about five bags of rice some oil and a few other items. It was here that we heard the stories. The stories that made me finally feel something.

The killings in Zonkwa, they maintained, were planned, premeditated and not a spontaneous reaction to the violence elsewhere. The killings were systematic. Women and children were spared and in fact hauled off to the police station by the very men who were doing the slaughtering. For the boys, most under the age of 10 were spared. The man who was our guide said, his son, who was 12, was killed. A woman, whose quick thinking saved her son, lied to her attackers that her son was 9.

Many of the victims knew their attackers, some even by name. One of the girls whose father was decapitated and had his stomach torn open said she saw who did it. She knew him well. He was her history teacher. She said to the teacher as he attacked her father, ‘please sir, spare this man, he is my father’. The teacher ignored her, and went about the business of cutting her father open. We were told, that he apologised to the girl after he had finished.

The women were very nice to us, even after we told them we only came to ask questions and not to render any form of assistance. The women leader in the camp said, ‘We are very happy, it doesn’t matter. Whoever takes interest in our plight enough to come here and see how we are faring is welcome.’ She said it with a broad smile on her face and wished us Allah’s blessings.

The men explained that it would be difficult to return to a place where the men who slaughtered their children and men still walked around confidently, without any punishment. The State government he said, tried to force them to leave the camp, even though what was offered to those who had lost homes , businesses and loved ones, was 15,000 naira. ‘What can we do with 15,000,’ one of the men asked.

As they spoke of how they suffered in the crises, how they were killed and how the charred bodies received a less than dignified mass burial, I wondered how they would feel if they knew I was in fact from Zonkwa, from the same village and tribe as the men who took the lives of their loved ones and literally, shattered their lives.

‘We the common people have no problem with each other, it is the politicians and tribal elders who instigate the violence,’ one of the camp heads spoke in impeccable English. He added that they wanted justice and did not get it at the Judicial Commission of Inquiry. One of the lawyers who was on the opposing side during the commission’s hearings, was now the Attorney General, in charge of implementing the report, he complained. He was bitter about the violence and contrasted it with the violence in Jos: ‘This is not like the case of Jos. We the Hausa Muslims in the South do not get involved in the politics of the indigenes. We do not seek elective positions. We do not drag power with them. We are farmers and traders. In fact, when there is dispute between the tribes, we are sometimes called upon as neutral arbiters. Why the killings?’

I heard the names of people I knew as they spoke of their frustration in finding justice. I felt so close to the issue, so ashamed that all this was carried out by my kinsmen, perhaps even, by some of my relatives.

As we were about to leave, the phone of one of the camp leaders rang. To our amusement, his ringtone was the popular Dolly Parton song, ‘Jolene’. He was slightly embarrassed. We smiled shyly as Dolly Parton begged Jolene not to take her man and I, standing there, lost in thought wished that somehow I could have done something, begged my kinsmen to save their men. Nothing, not even a need for reprisal, justifies slaughtering your neighbours.

We have gone on for too long, ignoring the need for justice after riots and killings. Consequently, we breed a whole generation of bitter people among both Christians and Muslims, who hearts know only, a desire for revenge, for some form of justice. By sweeping it all under the carpet, we set the stage for further killings and broaden the base for potential killers and arsonists. People don’t forget when they watch their parents decapitated in front of them. People don’t forget when they watch their sisters and mothers gang raped. They don’t forget, especially when they know that the men who did it, walk and breath, even more freely than they do.