ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Opinion category.

Talking to Myself

I am Nigerian. What exactly does that mean right now? What has it always meant? What has it ever meant? What do I mean to the world? I come from a country that has produced one of the inventors of the supercomputer Phillip Emeagwali, a Nobel Literature Prize winner Wole Soyinka and countless entertainers on the world stage. If there ceases to be an entity called Nigeria in its current political form, what would I be? What would I mean to the world? What would be my identity?

I’ve never been a fan of division, of separation, for a simple reason that even if we change the current political structure of the country, we would still not be able to do anything about our geographical contiguity. We are in fact still a bunch of different peoples living around each other. The British creation called Nigeria never really made us one, so removing the “Nigerianness” would not make us any different, or separate, than we already are. We still all live around the Niger River. The North is still the north, with its attendant conservatism, and the South still the south with its liberalism. If we wake up tomorrow and have ten nation states in that region instead of this large one called Nigeria, our problems would not immediately disappear, if they will at all. We would still be the same different people, still fighting ourselves, this time with our sovereign mights and alliances.

It is three days before a new year, and I am worried, very worried, that there is going to be crises in Nigeria. I hope not. I am praying against it because my friends and relatives are there. Selfish, I know. Right now, there is a shortage of fuel (gas) even though we are the 6th largest producer of crude oil in the world. The president of the country is in a hospital, and his state of health is uncertain. I’d joked around last week that I’m afraid that the customary new year’s message from the nation’s president will be delivered this time with a Morse code. Now, I’m beginning to fear that I may be right. It has been thirty-eight days and we have not heard a single word from the country’s leader. Is he alive? Is he conscious? If he can’t speak, can he write? Can he at least tap out his messages on a board? By December 31st, the Chief Justice of the nation will be ending his term, and ONLY the president can sign his tenure extension or his replacement. If the president is unconscious in a hospital as it now seems, and the National Assembly can’t remove him, as it now seems, come January the 1st, there will not only be a vacuum in the Executive, there will be one in the Judiciary as well. Just what the country needs.

I am Nigerian. I want to remain Nigerian, but what exactly does that mean right now? What has it always meant? What has it ever meant beyond the negative? What do I mean to the world? I come from a country that has produced great brains in various fields. So what? If there ceases to be an entity called Nigeria, what would I be? What would that mean to me? What would be my identity besides being the man from that country that is now no more? Who am I? Where are my people? Who are they? And what do we mean to the world?

On That Nigerian Guy

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a 23 year old man from a comfortable home in Northern Nigeria who attends a university in the United Kingdom. He’s now notorious for trying to denotate an explosive device on a plane. I have tried not to talk about him before now, but who am I kidding? It’s in the news on every station and the word “Nigeria” pops up every time. Even on twitter, the words “Nigeria” and “Nigerians” have now become trending topics. By now we know that his father is a Nigerian banker who had warned the US about three weeks ago about his son’s suspicious affiliations. Well, three weeks ago, the US was busy debating the Tiger Woods story to pay attention to an errant Nigerian…

On a more serious note, that idiot from Katsina state has given the rest of us a bad name, as if we didn’t have enough troubles of our own already. Think of how many people are now subject to more restrictions because of a foolish act by one unthinking idiot. I’m happy that I am not travelling to anywhere soon, but I don’t envy those who are, and who are from Nigeria. I’m disgusted enough with having to remove my shoes, jacket, sweater, and even belt every time I try to board a plane. Now, they’d probably want to search my anus as well for firecrackers since I’m from a country whose name is now popping up now and then beside the word “terrorism”. For many Americans, it must be hard to see us in any other light now, except the people from whose country the terrorist came from. On the bright side, this takes the shine of “Nigerian Internet Scam”, if only for a minute. Heck, it even takes the shine off the death of South Africa’s anti-apatheid writer, Dennis Brutus, who died on the 26th December. Very sad indeed. (Update: another Nigerian passenger was arrested today Sunday the 27th because he spent one hour in the airplane bathroom on a similar flight, and was “verbally disruptive” – read Nigerian “uppity” – when questioned.)

Since the story broke, I’ve been trying to look on the bright side, trying to find the laughable side to it. Yesterday, I started looking for verses in Nostradamus’s predictions that mentioned “Nigerian”, “Christmas” and “terrorism” in the same sentence. No luck. I hope that soon, my search engine will come up with something I could use. For now, my hope is that if or when the suspected “Nigerian terrorist” is eventually convicted, he will be taken straight to Guantanamo to have a taste of the American countryside he so desperately desires. He can do with himself over there whatever he wants. Only for his sake, I will be petitioning the President Obama to keep open that detention facility indefinitely. We do not want the fool in any prison in Illinois like the president is planning for other Guantanamo inmates, and I’m pretty sure that they do not want him in Nigeria any time soon as well. Don’t take my word for it, check out this Facebook Group that has been set up primarily to throw the disgraceful Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab under the bus, virtually, since – the horror of horrors – we are not able to do it physically.

At age 23, I was struggling to get a University degree rather than of playing around with explosive firecrackers. At age 23, I’d never even been on a plane before. Well, there’s a lot you can do if you’re a spoilt kid with a privileged background. Who cares for common sense when you can easily and effortlessly disgrace your family and country with one thoughtless act of jackassery in a foreign country?

Of Townships and Ownerships

I was not too surprised when a fellow FLTA from France said to me two weeks ago over dinner at the Union Station in Washington DC that the city was developed by a French person. She is french, and, as she said so, everything had just fallen along the line of positive French stereotypes in my mind. They designed the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, they must also be the big brilliant brain behind the planning and beautiful layout of the country’s capital. It was my first time of hearing the story, and though she didn’t have the name of the said designer, I believed it.

Today, I had a different conversation with Papa Rudy who says the city was developed by a black man. Now I’m confused. I told him of my discussion with the French girl, and he insisted that a black man did the city’s design. And somewhere in the conversation, the name Du Pont came up. Now I am familiar with a DuPont Circle in Washington DC, and reading more on it this afternoon showed me that it was named after a man Samuel Francis Du Pont (from the famous Du Pont family who really were originally from France). However, he is neither black nor an architect. He was a rear admiral during the Civil War. The wikipedia article on the beautiful Paris-like city does not say much about the “designers” of the city, so I’m giving up.

Or not. I have now come up with my own theory, that the person who conceived the brilliant layout of the city with the Washington Monument obelisk standing almost in its centre, could only have been the son of Oduduwa (the fabled progenitor of the Yoruba people). That’s the only explanation that can suffice to clear the air on the similarity between the Opa Oranmiyan obelisk in Ilé-Ifè and this Washington Monument obelisk. The Opa Oranmiyan was erected at a spot once believed to have been the burial site of Oranmiyan, a grandson of Oduduwa. Archeological evidence has now shown it not to be standing on any burial spot at all, but to be just a visible memorial to the fabled progenitor whose name it bears on it’s body. On the Opa Oranmiyan, as has been since its (undated) erection is an inscription in middle-eastern letters that archeologists have accepted as corresponding in sound to “Oranmiyan”.

It’s not the same in height and size as the Washington Monument, but that’s beside the point. The only other way to look at it is that Oranmiyan himself walked over to Washington DC from Ile-Ife with the Washington Monument on his right hand as a staff of office, and planted it firmly at the centre of the city as an artifact for future generation of archeologists to behold. What about that?

D is for Dogma

It began as a mild argument about whether one could precede every sentence with “The bible said…” and where I stood was “Not every part of the bible can be quoted as being representative of Christianity, spirituality, or the mind of God”. The person who immediately became my opponent was none other than (Let’s call him X), my fellow Fulbright colleague (also sometimes known, mostly as “pastor”).

His his first response was “You are wrong! You can start EVERY quote from the bible with “The bible said” because ALL the words in the bible are words from God.” Now this argument is very suspect, and never fails to amaze and amuse me because I am familiar with the bible as a collection of texts that include not only historical accounts, prophesies, fables and inspirational writings, but also poetry and personal letters. As a religious book, it is a document that holds the faith of the followers, but as text, it is also a collection of words on which a certain authority has been stamped by the church as representative of the faith. So I said to him, let me show you a part of the Songs of Solomon, I think it was Chapter 4 vs 5:

“The bible says – to use your word – ‘Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’ Right?”

“Oh no,” he responds, jumping with all visible agitation, “the Songs of Solomon are not as carnal as you have read it. They are a representative of the love of God to the church.”

What?

“You wouldn’t know,” he continued. “you are not a spiritual person. You are only trying to use your knowledge of books to analyse spiritual things. The Songs of Solomon are God’s message to the church.”

I have heard this argument before, and I like the rationalization given to portray the lyrics of Solomon’s love poems are possessing a higher import beyond their face value. But they are just words. They are seductive lines written by a rich and content king to many of his almost uncountable number of wives and mistresses. They definitely are the least representative of the mind of God to man. I could not imagine Jesus being flattered by reference to women’s breasts as representative of his thoughts towards mankind. No no. So, I told my friend that, and he was really furious. He perspired heavily, shouted, and jumped around so much that with a little push, I feared that he could have fallen down right there.

The argument escalated in pitch and intensity, in the open lobby of the Hyatt Hotel where the four of us stood idling away before our proposed excursion around the city. The more everyone intervened with a point that seemed to punch a hole in our friend’s righteous argument, the more livid he became, shouting this time at anyone “How would you all know? You are not born again. I know because I am. It is a spiritual thing…” And then he added “Everything in the bible is the word of God to us, and I believe them all.”

Here, I asked “Everything in the bible? Even the part that says you shouldn’t eat pork, in the old testament?”

Here he hedges a little, unable to find a right answer, and says that “that’s in the Old Testamant. I will not argue with you. You are not born again. You cannot understand the spiritual things of the bible.” He was livid. The argument took turns and angles, until he eventually stormed out of the hotel to get some air, but mostly to avoid more opportunities to explain why he should be trusted as an authority on a subject that is obviously not mainly spiritual, but practical. We were all supposed to be scholars, free of the clutches of dogma, but it was a moment of enlightenment to discover that we were not all. And it was sad. Here was a particular case of the first ill: “I’m right, you’re wrong” quickly escalating (and degenerating, I should add) to the ignorant condescension of “I’m righteous, you’re dumb.” The last and usually brutal stage of such unchecked arrogance is, as Nigerian Nobel Laureatte Wole Soyinka puts it clearly: “I’m right, you’re dead!” If we had given to it, who knows how physical the argument could have become (between us two friends no less) on that floor of the Hyatt Regency.

No, not money, fanaticism is sometimes the root of all evils.

With Love From Lambert

Dear Blog,

What does one do while sitting idly in an airport cafeteria on a Wednesday morning while waiting for a flight that may or may not be cancelled due to weather conditions? Look around and observe everything that moves and those that don’t.

The cafeteria has a banner just above the bar that says “Carpe Cuervo. Seize the day and the night.” It also has four television sets, each showing different programmes. CNN goes back and forth between The War President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Afghanistan and the terrible snow storms that has got so many flights delayed and many cancelled all through the country this morning. ESPN is on the NBA games, and occasionally the channel flickers to the Tiger Woods story.

The food is horrible, and I’ve returned 3/4 of it uneaten. It’s nothing that I recognize, and I should have obeyed my inner voice never to make an order on the advice of the waitress… The lemonade is good though, and I get a free refill while Fela Kuti sings Follow Follow into my ears. Oh yea, there is also this book that I just bought: The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson. It has been made into a movie featuring George Clooney and Kevin Spacey among others. Well, I haven’t seen the movie, but nothing says that I can’t read the book first. The woman at the cashier when I bought the book said I could return it anytime within 90 days and get half the money back. I’ve told her that I have no such intention, yet she gave me the coupon nevertheless. It was so cold out today. You should see how many layers of clothing I’m wearing, yet suffering from occasional invasion from the random wind that blows in my direction even here where I sit in the corner of an indoor cafe.

But wait a minute. If a president who has just sent more soldiers into the war front in a foreign country goes to collect the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo tomorrow, what does that make him? A Nobel Peace Prize War President? Would his Nobel Speech be written by the same person who wrote his West Point address that signified the intention to send 30,000 more soldiers into Afghanistan? If so, would he make apologies? If not, would the Nobel Speech distant the man from the policies of his government?

Well, I should probably shut up at this point. It’s ten o’ clock and I’ve got some reading to do, and some people watching.

See ya.

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