Saturday, February 22, 2014

SUSPENSIONS, VIRILITY AND RACE RELATIONS




“Anyone who rides a tiger will end up in its belly and one man cannot change a system from within.”- Sanusi ‘Bowtie’ Lamido Sanusi. c. 2002

“Anyone who knows very well the propensity of a tiger for truncating one’s hustle and chooses to ride it anyway is either suicidal or has anti-tiger juju in his front pocket. And a man who knows the impossibility of one man changing a system from within but chooses to try anyway should at least not do it wearing bowties. A disgraced man looks even more embarrassing in a bowtie.” – Unknown

Finally Goodluck Jonathan has been able to get rid of the bow-tied thorn in his side. Did I not explain last week how those bow ties would truncate Sanusi’s hustle? Did he listen? No. He travelled to Niger Republic to attend a conference of Central Bank governors, with a suitcase full of bow ties. The coup that followed, his subsequent brief detention and the seizure of his passport at the Lagos international airport by the SSS is not surprising. What for me is surprising is that Goodluck, through his oily mouthpiece Reuben Abati, claimed Sanusi was removed for ‘financial recklessness’. What an excuse. 

Me I know why Sanusi was removed. It is not because he challenged Prime Minister Diezani, beloved of the President. I knew Sanusi was going to have to go as soon the rumours of his virility appeared online.  As soon as I read those text messages published by Premium Times where an alleged lover was expressing gratitude for his (non-banking) prowess, I knew Goodluck wasn’t man enough to tolerate such a virile old man in his cabinet. I still remember the Premium Times report like it was yesterday, especially the text message purportedly from Mrs Maryam Waisu Yaro to Sanusi which read: “…I had such a wonderful weekend. You have revived in me what I thought I lost long ago.” And his confident reply: “Alhamdulillah. Love you.” 

I am still not sure what that ‘revival’ consisted of, but I do know it was enough for Jonathan to put him on the watch list. I can understand that. Think of it: some of the most influential members of Jonathan’s cabinet are women: Patience Jonathan, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Diezani Allison-Madueke, and of course Stella Oduah of blessed political memory. Imagine if Sanusi was able to make inroads into these women and cause a mass ‘revival’. Then imagine if Sanusi enjoyed reviving both men and women. That is a palace coup right there waiting to happen. I commend Jonathan for having the sense to make a timely decision based on self-preservation. 

But I want to know what Sanusi was thinking. He is like a little child whose father lost a road side brawl giggling on the way home and thinking that somehow all will be well. Such a child is liable to be slapped out of consciousness at home. After repeatedly contradicting our de facto Prime Minister on how much was stolen missing from the Federation account, he really should have prepared his handing over notes. Now that he is currently unemployed, I advice him to join Twitter. His friend and my older brother, Nasir El-rufai (who has like one billion Twitter followers) can show him how it works. [I overheard once that the fastest way to make El-rufai's blood pressure rise is to stop him from tweeting]. 
TRIVIA: Sanusi is slightly taller than El-rufai (that is when Nasir is wearing a cap).
***
So John Legend’s new music video for the song “All of Me” which he performed with his gorgeous (almost) white wife again sparked conversation in a few corners online. People (mostly black women) were reminded of yet another successful black man who is not married to a black woman. 

“It’s sad to never see black couples in the media anymore,” a (believe it or not) mixed-race woman complained, “they don’t exist.” 

I think I know what it is. It is like that gay thing. You know some of those men who follow non-black women say rubbish like, it is about the heart. That they have no control over who they love. In response to the claim by some gay people that they were born that way, some others have asserted that it can be cured and have gone ahead to set up gay-curing institutions. Those people will make heaven. I think black men loving white women to the detriment of long-suffering black women can be cured too.  I don’t know what that cure will be but we will have to find it. Imagine, we already have more women than men in our country. Which means that even if every black man in Nigeria married a black woman, there would still be single women. We cannot afford an epidemic the like of which is plaguing black America now- single black women everywhere avoided by decent black men. As president, I will deal with this in the short term by passing laws banning the marriage within Nigeria of black men to white women. Find below my proposed legislation. Because I care. 

INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE (PROHIBITION) BILL (2015)
1.        Marriage Contract or civil union entered between a Nigerian black male and a white female is hereby prohibited in Nigeria. It is not good. What do you want the black women to do with themselves?
2.       Marriage Contract or civil union entered between a Nigerian black male and a white female by virtue of a certificate issued by a foreign country shall be void in Nigeria and any benefits accruing there from by virtue of the certificate shall not be enforced by any court of law in Nigeria. We will not allow the West bring this bad unAfrican thing to our shores.  
3.   Marriage or civil union entered between a Nigerian black male and a white female shall not be solemnized in any place of worship either Church or Mosque or Shrine or Eckankar temple or Olumba Olumba (whatever they call their place of worship). Our religions uphold the right of black women to have black men.
4.     Only marriage contract between a Nigerian black male and a Nigerian black female is recognized as valid in Nigeria.
5.     The Registration of interracial clubs, societies and organisations, their sustenance, processions and meetings are hereby prohibited. Why would anyone want to register such? Aren’t there real and urgent problems to form societies for like poverty and erectile dysfunction?
6.      The public show of interracial amorous relationship directly or indirectly is hereby prohibited. This is rubbing salt into the wound. It is bad enough that you are mocking single black women by your secret criminal interracial relationship but to make a show of interracial amorous relationship, ha, that one is aggravated assault on the psyche of black women and is an offence attracting in the first instance a term of 14 years imprisonment and if repeated, forcible marriage (and consummation) with a black woman of the court’s choosing.
7.     Persons that enter into an interracial marriage contract or civil union commit an offence and are jointly liable on conviction to a term of 14 years imprisonment each. The white woman will be deported and declared an enemy of the state. Any attempt by the said white woman to return will be treated as an act of war. What is it with white women and our virile, circumcised men? Mtscheeuuw!
8.      Any person who registers, operates or participates in interracial clubs, societies and organizations commits an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years imprisonment.
9.      Any persons or group of persons that witnesses, abets and aids the solemnization of a interracial marriage or civil union between a Nigerian male and a white female or supports the registration of interracial clubs, societies and organisations, processions or meetings in Nigeria commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a term of 10 years imprisonment. How can you who doesn’t eat dog meat, use your teeth to cut it for others? In fact, 14 years.
10.   The only valid defenses to the offences above shall be:
a.   Evidence in writing of having been violently rejected (texts, bbm, Whatsapp and Facebook rejections are admissible) by at least 20 Nigerian women evenly spread across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
b.    Evidence of a man being infertile, such evidence being from a government hospital of national repute, doctors of which must not have gone on strike in the past six months. To deny your neighbor a stabilizer that doesn’t work anymore is not good. What do you need it for? White women can take our infertile men, as long as the men wear dark grey triangles on all items of clothing so that they are not mistakenly arrested for offences in section 6 above. 

PS. We don't really care about white men marrying black women. We treat it like lesbianism. We just ignore it. It is not like we are going to give them citizenship anyway.  

What of gay people? What sort of question is that eh? 

Sunday, February 16, 2014

HOW A BOW TIE CAN TRUNCATE YOUR HUSTLE



Because I Care #46- A political satire series.

It is with a heavy heart, and resentment to Nigerians for a tenure ill spent, that I announce the sudden departure of Stella Oduah from the Aviation Ministry. She was survived by two bullet proof BMWs and lots of newly painted airports. I blame Nigerians for this. I know I am asking for your votes and all but sometimes as your leader I should perform my god-given role of scolding you when the need arises. Twice on this page I begged you people. Forgive Stella. I explained how America destroyed an otherwise slim, conscientious student from Nigeria and returned a hustler to us. I explained how despite turmoil on the home front she got her groove back and made our airports look cool. But no, you people screamed and pushed and prodded. You spat and insulted. If tomorrow she winds up in hospital to treat depression it will be on your conscience. All of you. I don’t have her phone number, otherwise I would have called to make sure she is ok. It is small things like this that makes people in other countries jump out of 10th floor windows.

So I hear the French president has finally done it. He has gone and dumped the woman with whom he cheated on the mother of his children many years ago. The woman was so devastated after learning that he was riding a scooter to see his new hot lover nearby, she had to check into hospital. And he sent her a 20 word public breakup memo to truncate her hustle as first lady. I almost made the mistake of dating a French person. Just imagine me as your president discussing issues of crucial national importance at a meeting, then finding out that I have been dumped on Linda Ikeji’s blog. God knows that will break me. Join me in thanking God for saving Nigeria from the tragedy of French lovers. 

Kayode Fayemi wants to become Governor of Ekiti again. I don’t know who put the idea in his head, but that is how he went and called bloggers from around the country, put them in a hotel, took them round his projects and put 50,000 naira in their pockets as they were leaving. Whether the money was for transport or per diem is not my concern. Who advised him about whom to invite, I don’t know. Kayode and his people looked at me finish and thought no, we will not invite Elnathan. Well look at what happened to his blogger campaign. Bloggers ended up discussing the 50,000 he gave them instead of the roads he made them drive through. That is what happens when you overlook people like me. Is that not how Jonathan and his people after refusing to take my calls are suffering one political crisis after another? I don’t know why people will not learn from the mistakes of others. 

Is it just me or does Ngozi Okojo-Iweala increasingly look and act like that kid who was bullied and threatened into joining a cult? You know those ones who are the first to break down and cry when shit hits the fan? I watched her during the Senate hearing on Thursday and she looked like a child under interrogation who, though not the one who stole the stock fish in the pot, knows which of her brothers took it but is too afraid to say. Imagine coming before the Senate and saying that although she initiated requests for documents from the NNPC explaining missing billions, she and the Ministry of Finance had no expertise to determine the authenticity of the documents. This is like going to ask for a wife and then after the wedding ceremony declaring that you do not have the capacity and expertise to consummate the marriage. I can only imagine what internal contradictions Ngozi must be facing. I just want to say to her that there is no shame is seeing a therapist before she breaks down completely. Or just resigning.

Does anyone know why Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is addicted to bow ties? A bow tie is fine for a bartender or a person at a formal dinner. Every other time it just looks pretentious and awkward. Especially on a person his size. If only he would listen to me, I would suggest wearing long ties which can actually make him look taller and make people take him more seriously in government. I am sure the NNPC keeps contradicting him because of his bow ties. It is just hard to take a man who always wears bow ties too seriously. 

Governor Jonah Jang speaking to the fourth Middle Belt Leaders Conference in Jos said: “when President Goodluck Jonathan finishes his tenure in 2019, the Middle Belt should work hard and be supported to take over the presidency.”
I was almost taken over by excitement that the 102 year old Jang finally acknowledges that my young Middle Belt self is ripe for the Presidency until I heard ‘2019’. He even went further to add that nobody would stop Jonathan from becoming president in 2015. I am disappointed in this man. As president, I will ban persons above the age of 100 from contesting positions that require rigorous work like the presidency or governorship positions. 

Ps. This week in a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory, mobs attacked certain men perceived to be gay, molesting them and relieving them of valuables. Nearly 10 men have now been rendered effectively homeless as the mobs have vowed to return. Meanwhile, in Borno, suspected Boko Haram militants attacked twice, killing 39 and 55 persons respectively and abducting dozens of persons, mostly teenage girls. It is hard to understand the reasoning of those who, in a country with real problems, attack people because of their perceived sexuality.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

DRESSING TO KILL



You are conscious of how insidious the city is, how its many parts can creep up on you, good and bad and ugly. You have not allowed the city to snatch questions from your lips, or at least you know how to pick your respondents. You make sure to carry about the words, ‘I am not sure’, in your front pocket. No one says they don’t know in Abuja. When you ask, they just make up the stuff they don’t know in the most assured tone they can manage, carried on the wings of the most distant accent they can conjure.
“Do you know what a life partner is?” you ask, reading from an article she just drew your attention to on the internet.
She doesn’t give you that I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-know-this look. She just pauses for the few seconds it takes her to turn her wisdom into English which is her third language.
“Well, I think it means people who live together but are not married. Not like just boyfriend. It means someone you share your life with.”
Suddenly you realize you should just have googled the thing. Your eyes pretend to continue reading but instead you are counting how many weeks you have spent together in the same house, sharing your lives and cooking and washing in turns. You would have advised anyone else to go slow, but in this matter you seem lost, almost impervious to your own natural instincts. You find ways to seek assurances that you are not choking her out of love. And she says to you in as many ways as you ask, there is nowhere else she would rather be.
On your way to the swimming pool you warn her that you will be wearing flip-flops, the kind some people refer to as bathroom slippers. You find the reference, especially by pretentious Abuja people who declare you a sinner for wearing them anywhere outside your bedroom, irritating. Growing up in Kaduna, everyone wore flip-flops, to walk around, to the shops, to the market. And no one called them bathroom slippers. Just slippers.
She smiles and slips her pretty miniature feet- the most proportionate feet you have ever seen- into her yellow flip-flops for the fifteen minute walk to the pool. You are used to being invisible by her side when you walk- she is the attractive pale-skinned one, and you are just the big black man by her side. The eyes today all follow the same sequence: they stare at her, then look at her clothes and when they get to her feet, they suddenly look at you. The horror in their eyes is so clear you can reduce it to words:
OK, maybe she is a foreigner and doesn’t know that in Abuja you don’t wear bathroom slippers to walk in the streets of posh Abuja, but you? What is your excuse? How could you do this to her, bring her into permanent disrepute? How could you, you miserable cretin!
You smile and explain why, for a change people are looking at both your feet instead of her face. It comes to you as odd that in a country with so much poverty, people are so unforgiving of ‘badly dressed’ people- people would rather drive themselves deeper into poverty than give off any sign that they are poor. Which you think, is probably why you find scores of expensive second-hand SUVs creeping in and out of every backwater slum in Abuja.
On your way back, the growing darkness gives your feet cover. Not that you need it but you can now return to being the invisible black man. You stop to buy some items at a busy pharmacy on Adetokunbo Ademola Way. A well dressed woman in a bright orange boubou, headtie and veil stops you. She looks like any of the posh shoppers trying to find her way to her car. You smile the half, tentative smile preceding a legitimate inquiry.
The woman leans in and whispers from her shiny lips: “Please can I get like N1, 000 from you, I need to…”
You lose the smile and walk off angrily, dragging your partner with you. This woman knows the script. Dress to kill, even when you’re a professional beggar outside a supermarket.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

SHORT MEN CAUSE ALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD



Because I Care #45

I will say again, as a presidential hopeful come 2015, I have nothing against small people. However, great writers before me have articulated the problem with short men. Ian Fleming, the writer of the James Bond novels, for example said of short men: 

“They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big - bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”

Nasir El-rufai is on my mind. He was in the news again, this time taking a swipe at Asari Dokubo. He said: “Asari Dokubu is a thug. I do not compare myself with thugs.” I mean look at the man Nasir is challenging to a fight. At 6ft I would not push my fingers into Asari’s nose. But no, not Nasir. He could not even qualify the word ‘thug’ with something capable of cushioning the effect of his barb. I would’ve said something like, “Asari, a thug whose beard I envy greatly, differs greatly from my good self”. Sometimes I try to understand Nasir’s indefatigability in throwing sand in Jonathan’s garri and I just can’t. I think that at 4ft something, when you go through life having a conversation with people’s nipples, that has to affect you adversely. 

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has again insisted that the NNPC has stolen 20billion from Nigerians. The NNPC on its part has replied saying that these are ‘wild allegations’. Maybe Sanusi is right and our money is being stolen. But again maybe Sanusi just needs to attend more pool parties. Here is why. A pool party is very egalitarian. In the water, especially the deep end, you cannot tell who is tall and who is not. Thus the burden and frustration that comes from being Sanusi’s height is greatly reduced. 

The SSS claims to have also arrested Asari this week. This came on the heels of accusations that before Nasir El-rufai was ‘invited’ and detained, he hadn’t said one tenth of what Asari had been saying for many months. Marilyn Ogar should tell us if Asari’s invitation was the same as Nasir’s. Or if it is just for show. Because for all I care Nasir could have been grilled in a hot room for hours while Asari might have been chilling with Marilyn having margaritas talking about why it is so hard to find fresh periwinkles in Abuja. Ok, so maybe Asari doesn’t drink margaritas but I just want to know. 

So in a letter to the Goodluck Jonathan, Catholic archbishop Ignatius Kaigama said that the Same Sex Prohibition Act is a “clear indication of the ability of our great country to stand shoulders high in the protection of our Nigerian and African most valued cultures of the institution of marriage”. I have no opinions in this matter only to ask the good archbishop a few questions. Which Nigerian or African values of marriage does he mean? Is it polygamy which upholds a man’s right to multiple (sexual) partners as practiced throughout Africa? Or polyandrous marriages practiced by the Lele people of Congo where a woman could have as many as six (or more) husbands to take care of her and all of whom could have marital relations with her? Or the marriage between older men and prepubescent girls as practiced in many parts of Nigeria and Africa? Or levirate marriage in which the brother of a deceased man is obliged to marry his brother's widow, and the widow is obliged to marry her deceased husband's brother as practiced in parts of South Africa, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan and Zimbabwe? Or the custom of marriage between two women, one of whom has no child or is seeking a male heir, (whose biological father will likely be a lover of the younger woman) which has been practiced among the Kamba of Kenya, the Basuto of South Africa, the Igbos, Opobos, Ijaws, Igalas, Yagbas and Akokas of Nigeria (to mention just a few)? Or the ghost marriage where when a single man dies, the younger brother of such a man is supposed to marry and have children in the name of the deceased, the wife being married to the deceased socially and the children belonging to the deceased man as practiced in Sudan and among the Zulu and Lozi of Southern Africa? This confuses me. But I know the man of God knows what he is talking about. The spirit has a way of revealing things to these men. 

Just this week in a debate with a British consultant and writer who has spent 10 years in Nigeria and is uncircumcised, my circumcision was challenged as being ‘abuse’. So basically this man said that the removal of foreskin from my male organ, as supervised by my parents was a form of torture and abuse perpetrated against my good self. Let me just say that I object vehemently to this and reiterate how proud I am of this good member of mine. And perhaps to add that if I had grown up uncircumcised, I would have taken myself to a hospital. Because I care about how my penis looks. If you have seen a flaccid uncircumcised penis, you will understand.

Ps. I have given it thought and I believe that while male circumcision has its medical benefits, male babies should not be circumcised. (As I think the ears of young girls should not be pierced without their consent). Adult males should have the choice to remove or retain their foreskin.