INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE (PROHIBITION) ACT (2015)

An Act to prohibit marriages or civil unions between Nigerian males and white females and other matters related thereto.

Whereas the Federal Government of Nigeria has discovered the very American problem of decent, intelligent black men gravitating toward white women creeping slowly, imperceptibly into the Nigerian space

Whereas it is agreed by all well-meaning people that it will be a tragedy to end up with a situation where black Nigerian women cannot find partners and spouses among the pool of black Nigerian men:

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.)

7.  Anyone engaged in the public show of interracial amorous relationship commits 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. 

8.     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. 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. 

11. It shall not be an offence for white men to marry black women. (We treat it like lesbianism. We just ignore it. It is not like we are going to give the white men citizenship by marriage anyway.)

HOW PRESIDENT BUHARI CAN HELP BLACK AMERICA

I have to write about America. Again. All my well-wishers have advised against it, especially as I do not yet have an American visa. And every Nigerian traveller knows that all actions need to be filtered for things that can jeopardize a visa application to a first world country. I realize the potential damage to my hustle but my calculation is that by the time I will have achieved the American visa requirements of “strong social and economic ties”, they might have forgotten about this article. You may say: what if God should bless your hustle sooner than you expect and you need to apply for an American visa, would you not have spoilt your chances? I say: let us not preempt God.

The racial tensions in America worsen by the day. One would expect that after the last few cases of police brutality and callous shootings of black people captured on camera, things would at least slow down. In the one year since the watershed event at Ferguson, Missouri where an unarmed Michael Brown was shot to death by a white police officer leading to massive protests and violence, over 300 African Americans have lost their lives in interaction with law enforcement officials.

I have written a bit about this but as a Nigerian and African I ask myself what can I do about this? I feel like posterity will judge me harshly if I do not try to save the black people in America. But I cannot send drones and I am not powerful enough to impose sanctions in America (even though I feel like it will send a powerful message if all Africans stopped keeping up with America’s most loved family, the Kardashians.) Also it is not like there are any rebels that could be supported with arms and military training. All I have are words. So I have decided to write a speech that I suggest President Buhari reads at an international press conference. I feel like Obama will listen to Buhari since they just recently became best friends. So, here is a short speech donated free of charge to President Buhari:

Dear Americans,

For the past year since the senseless killing of Michael Brown, the extraordinary turbulence happening in the greatest nation on earth has not gone unnoticed. I might have spoken up earlier but I myself was preparing for a turbulent election where I sought to dislodge politicians feeding fat on poor Nigerians. The battle was tough, but that is a matter for another day. Today it is time to speak up. Like I said once, I belong to everybody, and this includes America. In city after city in America, black people are rising up to demand basic human rights and dignity in the face of police brutality.

The wind of change that brought us into power has not stopped blowing and although it has achieved certain success in Nigeria we wish to redirect that wind to America. The events in Ferguson and the violent outbursts that have justifiably followed again and again, show us that strategies of repression reminiscent of a country under military rule are no longer sustainable. Social media and 24 hour cable television has exposed a world of astonishing contradictions where standards for global human rights are set but broken in the most brazen way.

I hear the voices from black America and they sound to me like the clear yearnings for change. I recognize those voices the same way I recognized the millions of voices in Kano, in Kaduna, in Lagos. In too many black neighborhoods in America, power has been concentrated in the hands of a few white policemen and politicians. But I tell you, change must come to America.

It is not enough to have an African American as president without the collective political will to change the decades of systematic abuse of minorities.

The wind of change can be delayed but it cannot be stopped. Nigeria opposes the use of violence and repression against the minorities of America. We look forward to working with all who embrace genuine and inclusive democracy – one that includes descendants of former slaves as well as descendants of former slave owners.

As a last resort however, we will encourage the movement of minorities to Nigeria at no cost to them. Getting a Nigerian visa is relatively easy. Even an ISIS leader and fugitive from Lebanon recently got a visa to come into Nigeria. If someone in a terror group can easily get a visa, how much more a legitimate American fleeing persecution and violence? I am not saying that we welcome terrorists and in fact we have ordered an investigation into the matter, but I am just giving you evidence that it is easy to come here. In fact I am informed by some of my aides that it is possible to buy a Nigerian passport. While we are doing our utmost to stop that, we urge as many black Americans as possible to take advantage of the window before I actually appoint officials and Ministers sometime in September.

Ultimately, it is for the blacks to take action. Whether they choose to remain in a country that tries to kill them off or take the easier route of getting Nigerian travel documents, we are committed to helping in any way that we can. That is the least we can do after helping us to dislodge the PDP.

God bless Nigeria and long live the oppressed black minorities of America. 

Thank you for listening.

PS. I also recommend that President Buhari updates the travel warning for Nigerians travelling to the United States. He is a busy guy so I have gone ahead and written the travel advice for him here.

THE TALE OF THE GOVERNOR AND THE SENATOR

Today I am interrupting my usual commentary to tell you a fictional story about a governor and a senator. Sometimes inspiration just comes to me unannounced like power outages in Nigeria. Remember: all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Once upon a time, there was a senator with a receding hairline and an afro. But this senator was not always a senator.  And he wasn’t always going bald. Once upon a time, the senator was a young man with a respectable hairline. A full head of hair does something to young men; makes them boisterous and arrogant. So this senator – when he was a young man – joined a group of people who fought with the military government of the day and was sent to prison. Fortunately, although he was expected to spend a long time there, a new government took over and he got released. From that day onward he resolved to never miss an opportunity to talk about the terror he experienced in prison. He swore that even if someone said good morning to him, he would find a way of sneaking in the fact that he was once in prison, responding to the salutation with something like: “did you know that on some days in that terrible prison we did not know when it was morning or night?”

Somehow being an activist paid off, because eventually, in addition to his prison experiences he became able to chip in the fact that he has a house in London and Abuja.

Once upon a time, this activist got some money, ran for office as a revolutionary and won a seat in Nigeria’s senate (all the while refusing to trim his afro in spite of his receding hairline. That takes guts.)

Because he suffered so much in prison and was an activist and revolutionary, the senator decided that the first action of his, (to ensure that his time in politics was radically different from the past corrupt and wasteful set of politicians) would be to, literally, raise the “steaks”. How did he do this? He looked at the records of corrupt politicians before him and remembered that he had criticized some of them for giving handouts to people in the form of rams during Sallah and Christmas and he said to himself: I, Senator ex-Prisoner and Revolutionary will do a revolution. There will no more be rams. I will give the people horses! (Or maybe it was camels. I always get this part of the story mixed up. But it doesn’t matter.) He gave the poor people of his constituency an animal bigger than any corrupt politician had ever dreamt of. He was a great, visionary man to think of giving his poor constituents animals as big as horses. (Or was it camels?)

Once upon a time, while all of this was happening to the senator, there was a governor. This governor was not always a governor. He was once a Minister who tried to do his job, even though of course many of his friends and the people around him were corrupt. He too had a receding hairline but wasn’t presumptuous enough to grow an afro. Lack of confidence. He won elections in the same state as the senator but because of his wickedness, decided to begin work right away. No break. No room for business as usual. No allowing the poor people used to dysfunction enjoy the last bits of dysfunction. Wickedness! The senator hated this. He thought that he had set a good example for the governor to follow by giving the poor masses horse meat (or was it camel meat, I still can’t recall). He told the whole world that the governor hated the people by getting right into development and reforms instead of feeding them first.

And the senator was wise in saying this. Just as when you find a starving, sickly person at the point of death, you do not pump them with solid food immediately but slowly introduce liquids and light food, you do not begin governing a state by trying to change things, no matter how bad they are. Sometimes, all poor people need is the meat of an animal bigger than that of a ram.

This governor did even worse things. He stopped people from stealing government land and reduced waste by cutting his own salary and the number of appointees. He also tried to stop people from begging in the streets. The senator was so indignant (rightly), he spat onto the floor. What kind of governor stops people from encroaching on government land? Is democracy not a government of the people by the people and for the people? Does this not then mean that if you steal government land, it is not really stealing because you are the people and the people are the government? If you take a shirt from your own wardrobe, is it stealing? And really we all know how colorful a city can be with beggars singing praise songs at junctions and traffic lights. A city without its beggars is a poor city, without a soul. Where will people who need to do rituals that involve giving food to beggars find beggars if we drive them out? What if the beggars went on strike and refused to be part of the system through which prayers of God-fearing hustlers are answered? That would be a disaster! The senator knew all of this and so he proceeded to denounce the balding governor in public, calling him an enemy of the people. The senator was oh, so wise.

And one important fact is that while the governor wore glasses, the senator did not. Meaning that the senator could see better. Who knows, maybe the governor was blind. Blind to how development and change can actually hurt a state. Blind to the nutritional value of horse meat (or was it camels now, I forget). Blind to the fact that sometimes you must take a horse to the river and give it a straw to make life easier; that sometimes you do not teach a man to catch fish when he is hungry: you simply give him horse meat (or camel meat) which will last longer in his stomach than fish.

Some people lied about the senator saying he was already trying to replace the governor at the next elections and that was why he was upset. But the senator was not blind. All the senator wanted was to show the people the way, especially as his eyesight was better. And as someone who created these fictional characters, I can assure you the senator was not interested in becoming governor.

This my dear readers is the moral of the story: Camels and horses are better than rams, and nobody, really, likes real change when they can have horse or camel suya.

Thanks and God bless for listening.

PS. Forgive me, I am still working on deciding on whether to use horses or camels for the story. I’ll let you know.

PPS. In totally unrelated news, I thought to give you all (married people) some advice. I feel like every married person should take the time to study their wedding photos. (If you got pregnant and moved in together, that's ok. I'll address you some other time.) Wedding photos reveal a lot. One thing you get to see is those friends who attended the wedding but were not smiling as you were rejoicing. Those are the friends you should find and deal with, before they find a way of wrecking your marriage. Just saying. (I am sorry I could not find a more appropriate photo to illustrate this point. Below is the closest stock photo I could find.)

CECIL THE LION

Life is hard for humans. But even tougher for animals. I was filled with outrage recently when I read of this American dentist who paid 55,000 dollars to shoot a lion in Zimbabwe. Not just any lion. A lion with a name. Cecil.

Let us pause for a moment to talk about Cecil. Writing about this is very emotional for me, but I will try.

Cecil must have grown up in a pride of lions not knowing if he was going to survive. Only one in eight male lions ever make it into adulthood. If they are not killed by adult lions, they die of hunger, injuries or illnesses. Then by the time Cecil would have reached the age of sexual maturity for lions, the other members of the pride would have done the ritual of kicking him out to fend for himself, alone, in the wild. Because that is what lions do to males that reach maturity. It’s a bit like how white people make their kids leave home and get jobs after they are 18. Lions are not like black people who live with their parents until they get married.

To survive, Cecil would have had to find his own home and this might have involved taking over new territory and possible face aggression from the new pride they will be entering. Cecil did all this and became that one-in-eight male lions that make it to adulthood. Cecil lived until the ripe lion age of 13 and fathered many cubs.

While Cecil was going about the business of catering for his pride, a white American dentist was preparing his bow and arrow with which he would kill the lion. Cecil would eventually get shot, wander around in pain for 40 hours, be tracked down by the dentist and beheaded. Let me get some tissue.

It cost 55,000 dollars to kill Cecil. I know 72% of Zimbabweans live on less than 1.25 dollars a day but I do not know their names. I know Cecil’s name. And today we are talking about Cecil.

I am angry about a few things. First, I am thinking of what 55,000 dollars can do for me. I would easily have let that man shoot me in the thigh or something for half that amount. Cecil would have been alive today. I don’t mind dressing up like an animal since what really gives him the thrill is shooting animals. I would grow a mane if I had to. And I am not even saying the whole amount. Just half.

I know that in the US there have been at least two black people lost to police-related deaths in the media recently. There was of course global outrage but nothing close to what Cecil got. And that is how it should be. After all Cecil was said to be the most popular lion in Zimbabwe. The poor black people in Zimbabwe and those black Americans who died at the hands of white police officers are all regular people. It would be unfair to try to compare Cecil, with a regular, unknown black person – Cecil who by sheer dint of hard work, determination and good fortune rose through the ranks and beat the odds to live for 13 years. No.

One thing we know about male lions is that if the head of a pride dies (or say leaves his family to go start a new one elsewhere like some Nigerian men), the male that takes over the pride will kill the cubs of the previous head. Simple self-preservation. Every male lion wants his own children to inherit him, not the children of some other male.

What this means is that not only Cecil, but his entire lineage is now probably wiped out. Think of that. No Cecil junior. Ever. Hold on. I need some tissue.

My only consolation is in the assurance that Cecil is in the hereafter and doing great. Yes. I read this assurance from American Animal Communicator Karen Anderson who claims to have spoken to Cecil from the afterlife. On her Facebook page, she posted that she was moved to tears when she heard Cecil’s words to her. According to her, and I trust her because she is a professional with her own YouTube videos, website and all, Cecil said the following:

"Let not the actions of these few men defeat us or allow darkness to enter our hearts. If we do then we become one of them. Raise your vibration and allow this energy to move us forward. What happened does not need to be discussed as it is what it is. Take heart my child, I am finer than ever, grander than before as no one can take our purity, our truth or our soul. Ever. I am here. Be strong and speak for all the others who suffer needlessly to satisfy human greed. Bring Light and Love and we will rise above this."

I am not so devastated after reading those words. It is helpful that Cecil spoke clear articulate English to Karen Anderson. Think if he had spoken in one of the Zimbabwean languages, or even in an accent so strong she couldn’t understand. Then Karen would have thought her skills had failed her and we would all have gone through life depressed about the fate of Cecil. God bless Karen Anderson. God bless Cecil. God bless everyone who has been outraged about this horrific killing.

They say a living dog is better than a dead lion. But not a dead lion with a name. Not Cecil. 

Show Cecil you care. Look for an online petition relating to this killing and sign it. Cecil will know. And Cecil will appreciate it.

Ps. A US petition to extradite the lion-killer dentist has surpassed 100,000 signatures. I love it that Americans can rally together when it really matters.