By Lasisi Olagunju

A young taxi driver sat on the bonnet of his car some years ago thoroughly frustrated by Nigeria’s unending petrol mess. A television reporter asked him to speak on his experience in that filling station where he sat, stranded. He looked straight into the camera and said he wanted “the world to come to an end, this moment. I want all of us to die – all.” He thought Nigeria was a wilderness with a succession of fake Moses leading the country from Egypt to Egypt. To the taxi driver, mass death of victims and their victimisers would be the neat, equitable way to end all suffering. I watched the video and heard more than what the gentleman said. People who think and say what he said are persons who have run and got to the end of running. They are people who have shifted and shifted and have hit the wall.

Over the course of life, suffering, one way or the other, is inevitable. We do not need a priest to convince us of that. But, why is it that here, in this country, time and change give no relief to the poor?

As I write this, everyone is at the petrol station – exactly as they were 30 years ago when they thought democracy was the messiah that would dry their tears. In petrol stations where there are no queues, the price there is killing; where the price smiles a little, bedlam reigns. If matters remain as they are, driving a car anywhere in Nigeria will soon be a mark of the beast, the ultimate evil. Very soon (and I am so scared to say this), having money to buy petrol will be an exposure to marks of the dragon – the kind that is in the Christian Bible: ten horns, seven heads, “with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” Why is this democracy this ugly and so unprofitable to the people?

There is a joke about a man from Israel who demanded to know why Moses promised his ancestors good life, took them out to wander in the wilderness for forty years only to deposit them in a land that has no oil. I won’t be shocked to hear this said about our democracy. What is the worth of that struggle and that vote that birthed this suffering?

Our dog boasted in the last election that there was no danger in Tiger’s forest. That boast appears to have killed it. A saying in Yoruba approximates this: Ajá kì í dán’nu kò séwu lóko ẹkùn. Stealthy, strong Tiger is an ambush, apex predator; dog is one of its preys. The wisdom here eluded many who refused to trust the truth. They are now left behind, stranded by their faith in man born of woman. In their bowl of gaari, they now have water in destructive excess.

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You are a very senior professor. Your monthly salary is N700,000, pre-tax. This past weekend, you and other petrol users bought a litre for N1,000. Your car uses 10 litres of petrol per working day. There are five working days in a week. That gives your car 50 litres of petrol per week, the cost is N50,000. There are four weeks in a month. Fifty thousand naira in four places makes it N200,000 – just to fuel your car. Because your residence is allocated Band E by NEPA, your ‘I-better-pass-my-neighbour’ generator will use 10 litres of petrol per day. In 30 days, that gives you 300 litres of fuel. At N1,000 per litre, the cost is N300,000. Do the maths. Petrol alone takes N500,000 from your pre-tax N700,000 salary. Tax takes about N120,000. Do the maths again. What is the way out? The Yoruba will join you to ask: Kí ni ònà àbáyo? Kí ni?

With ‘Darkness Falls’ as its title, the second part of Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Weep Not, Child is about a country in distress, about a village where light is morbid and darkness is saviour. It is about a home that is no longer a place for telling good stories. It is here that we are asked to “turn to the Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 24.” Here we are told that we “shall hear of wars and rumours of wars” and that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.” We are told that as horrible as these occurrences are, “they are (just) the beginning of sorrows…And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”

Could this moment be Nigeria’s hour of that prophecy? The havoc wreaked in town today is worse than the experience of the ill-starred, anecdotal sentry of Apomu whose oracle (ifa) got stolen and his wife snatched. He reached for his divining chain (òpẹ̀lẹ̀) and saw it in the mouth of an audacious dog. He pursued the dog to retrieve his last hope but the dog ran and jumped into a deep well. While panting, the distraught man was asked what next? “It is time to leave this town,” was his response – (Ìlọ yá Oníbodè Àpòmù, wón kó o ní’fá, wón gbà á l’óbìnrin, òpẹ̀lẹ̀ tí yíò tún fi tọ ẹsẹ̀ e rè, ajá tún gbé e lọ. Ó lé ajá, ajá kó sí kànga. Wón ní, ‘Ilọ yá àbí kò yá?’ Ó ní, ìlọ yáá…).” Today is worse than that hopeless situation. I have never been as afraid for Nigeria as I have been in the last one week.

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The people are hopeless and helpless but they are quiet. And that is dangerous. There is a passage in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which warns about silence and its potent danger: “Mother Kite once sent her daughter to bring food. She went and brought back a duckling. ‘You have done very well,’ said Mother Kite to her daughter, ‘but tell me, what did the mother of this duckling say when you swooped and carried its child away?’ ‘It said nothing,’ replied the young kite. ‘It just walked away.’ ‘You must return the duckling,’ said Mother Kite. ‘There is something ominous behind the silence.’ And so Daughter Kite returned the duckling and took a chick instead. ‘What did the mother of this chick do?’ asked the old kite. ‘It cried and raved and cursed me,’ said the young kite. ‘Then we can eat the chick,’ said her mother. ‘There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.’ Nigeria’s streets are scanty and sad; neighbourhoods are dank and dark. Where the ice of fuel scarcity appears to be thawing, the price has remained prohibitively high. In food markets, traders’ looks are forlorn; buyers’ heartbeats are irregular. There is darkness in every home where light used to shine. Yet, there is quiet, silence, midnight, graveyard chill where prophets used to warn.

In Matt Lorenz’s ‘The Meaning of life in the Wilderness’, we are told that “the wilderness is a space where human beings can go morally astray.” True, many and more have gone astray here. Henry Bugbee, in his The Inward Morning, says that “our true home is (the) wilderness.” I read this and wanted to disagree. I wanted to ask how our home could be the wildness -uncultivated, uninhabited, inhospitable wild. But, then, I remember William Butler Yeats’s thoughtful line: “…the world is more full of weeping than you can understand.”

As long as we breathe, we keep hoping (and praying) for deliverance from evil. There is a line of divine promise in Ngugi’s ‘Darkness Falls’: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved…” He was quoting the Bible.

We will endure this to the end because we’ve been promised salvation. But, when is the end and where is the saviour? Or, when is the saviour coming? The government is quiet and silent. It acts the perfect I-don’t-care way of lords who have climbed the hills and have seen the very end of the world. But its defenders are not quiet. They blame the past and point at similar acts of official betrayal. What is in uniformity is no longer a shame. There is no new thing under the sun. They open history books of countries outside Africa, the first world. They say “even America once suffered what we suffer. We will be out of the problem one day.” They say the media of that and other countries still reminisce about their own era of anomie. One of such reflections is Reis Thebault’s “Long lines, high prices and fisticuffs”, a Washington Post’s 2023 video on the 1970s petrol shortage bedlam in America. “The line of cars stretches for blocks. Pumps run dry. Newspapers warn of a great ‘gas crunch.’ President urges calm. Panicked motorists turn on one another.” Thebault wrote, mimicking headlines from Nigeria’s future. If the abobaku of this regime come to see this Washington Post content, they will grab it with eureka; they will use it as a justification for the criminal betrayal that professed this suffering. What a country!

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The elephant’s hunger is the shame of the forest. America would have remained where it was in 1970 if what it had were bumbling leaders like ours. To the US, the owner would rather starve than for the thief to be without food. We have that proverb, the United States appropriated it long ago to solve its “pumps run dry” problem. I always wonder why the elephant of oil-rich Nigeria keeps rumbling in the forest and goes to bed hungry. Imagine the Eskimo queueing for ice. But here, children of butchers fight over bones.

What really is the cause of this fuel scarcity? There is neither cohesion nor coherence in the little we’ve heard from persons who sit atop our welfare. All we’ve seen (and we are seeing) are quick-and-slow marches of crass confusion. What are they doing apart from fixing themselves up in vaults? The sheep of Nigerians won’t forget if they do well and provide it just bran. But they are behaving like àgbà òsìkà sowing suffering in people’s lives. They soil their breast pockets with red oil of impunity and keep a straight face. Is it true that this is all about jacking up the price of petrol as instructed by the holders of the Nigerian yam and knife? It is like land grabbers setting fire to a whole market because they covet the land. They are killing us without drawing a sword (apanimáyodà). But, they can eat their excess without scorching the city. Unfortunately, that is what they are doing with their take-it-or-leave it disposition to the petrol wickedness they put on the table. It is dangerous.

I borrow again from Yeats. In his ‘The Wind Among the Reeds’, the poet tells the powerful that he, “being poor” has only his dreams to nurture and keep. Then he begs them: “I have spread my dreams under your feet;/ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” The people are the eye of the earth. If this government must tread on them, it should do so gently.

The author, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju is the Saturday Editor of Nigerian Tribune, and a columnist in the same newspaper. This article was first published by the paper (Nigerian Tribune). It is published here with his permission.

Tunde Odesola

Sleep is the next-door neighbour to good memory. This is the view of neurologist Andrew Budson and neuroscientist Elizabeth Kensinger in their book, “Why We Forget and How to Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory,” published in 2023 by Oxford University Press.

It’s my considered view that lack of sleep can twist the head backwards, like Humpty Dumpty-headed Nigerian leaders, who amass fleeting riches, little realising that life is a transient journey exemplified by the birth of Solomon Grundy on Monday, christening on Tuesday, marriage on Wednesday, sickness on Thursday, worsened on Friday, death on Saturday, and burial on Sunday.

Macbeth murdered sleep and he slept no more; Nigerian leaders murder sleep, yet they snore even more because hell lives here.

Both Budson and Kensinger believe that memory isn’t a bank that just sits somewhere in the brain. They aver memory is an active and effortful process. Using FOUR as a mnemonic for things to do to get information encrusted into memory, both researchers opined that the mind must (F)ocus attention, (O)rganise the information, (U)nderstand the information and (R)elate the information to something the brain already knows.

According to the authors, when someone goes to a party and can’t remember anybody they met or when a student studies for an exam and can’t recollect the content they know, such an individual cannot focus attention. When struggling to retrieve information from memory, the scholars advise the individual to avoid the urge to generate possible answers, saying in those trying moments, the individual should use retrieval cues such as remembering events at the party or what he read the last time he studied for the exam, ‘the context, and the possible connections’.

To store up information in memory for longer-term access, getting enough sleep is one of the most important things to do, counsel Budson and Kensinger, adding that, “Sleep helps information to move from being briefly accessible to being stored in long-term ways.” Eating right, engaging in regular exercise, keeping a healthy body weight and being socially active are other ways of keeping the brain healthy, says the researchers.

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Budson, a Professor at Harvard Medical School, contends, “There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing your memory or using memory aids. I offload my memory as much as possible. I have all my passwords written down in a secure digital place. I use calendars, planners, and lists.”

Kensinger has a piece of advice for the student studying for an examination: Do not cram! She explains that the need for sleep and the time it takes to reach understanding make it important for students to start their preparation early and keep it going throughout the semester rather than cramming right before a big test.

Chair of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Professor Kensinger says when the individual is aging, and not struck with Alzheimer’s disease or age-related diseases or disorders, the brain prioritises the gist of events by embracing the similarities across events rather than trying to hold on to each individualised event.

In an article, “Why We Have to Forget to Remember,” written in The Sunday Magazine, a psychologist, Oliver Hardt, says: “If we lost the ability to forget, we might also lose the ability to remember.” Hardt, an assistant professor at McGill University, explains the brain needs to free up space to make room for new memories.

Hardt, who specialises in cognitive neurosciences, says, “The brain is some form of promiscuous encoding device. It just forms memories of basically anything you pay attention to. If that goes on unchecked for days and days, the brain will be flooded with an army, almost, of useless memory demons that distract you in any way possible. That’s where the brain’s automatic forgetting process comes in.”

Furthermore, Hardt says ‘neuromodulatory events’ help the brain figure out which experiences are important. “If you get excited, or afraid, or you have a moment of surprise, or there’s something novel in it you didn’t expect, these experiences cause the release of certain substances in the brain (like dopamine and norepinephrine). They improve the memory-making process that is going on in the moment. If there is a strong emotion associated with a memory, there’s a greater chance it will withstand the brain’s natural forgetting process,” he explains.

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Although none of Budson, Kensinger or Hardt links brain health to corruption, the way Nigerian leaders loot the treasury while the populace hail will, no doubt, reveal profound research findings. Essentially, corruption is a function of the mind, with Nigeria being the rich farmland, where Òkété, the pouched rat, shoots at the farmer; ignoring the folkloric song, Òkété o ma yin’bon s’oloko, popularised by senior citizen Tunji Oyelana. With mouths full of palm kernels, pouched rats in government aim the bullets of inflation at the skulls of the masses as prices of goods and services soaraway.

Nigeria’s òkété leaders ignore the fate that made Macbeth describe life as ‘a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.

If you read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, you will understand there’s nothing humans can do that animals can’t do when the ink in the quill of a writer is drawn from the well of creativity. Also, if you listened to Fela Anikulapo’s evergreen belter, Beast of No Nation, you can recollect the ‘egbékégbé’ atrocities performed by ‘òturúgbeké’ ‘animals in human skin’.

Once upon a time in Kogiland, there lived a little òkété called Bello. Due to its insatiable greed, the òkété could store plenty of palm kernels in its mouth for days and watch other òkétés’ children and aged òkétés starve to death. Inasmuch as its own children, family and friends eat and live well, it doesn’t matter whatever happens to all other òkétés. Because of its agility, the òkété can also store palm kernels in holes and treetops. It doesn’t matter if the palm kernels rot away, it’s okay insofar Òkété Bello’s family and friends have enough to feed and waste.

Òkété Bello soon grew big and arrogant. One day, it saw its reflection in the mirror inside the farmhouse. Òkété Bello didn’t see a pouched rat in the mirror, it saw a lion, a White Lion! It shouted, “Wow! Na mi bi dis!?” It took many steps away from the mirror, looked at itself fully, shook its white mane, and suddenly dashed forward, like a lion after a prey, stopping just an inch from the mirror, and roaring at the mirror, “I am a lion, a white lion!”

In a dark corner, the Tortoise cleared its throat, startling the òkété, who let out a squeak.

Tortoise: I bow and tremble, the White Lion.

White Lion: Are you talking to me, Tortoise?

Tortoise: Are you not the White Lion?

White Lion: Ehm, yes, I am.

Tortoise: Why don’t you go to Kutuwenji to join your fellow lions? I can lead you there.

White Lion: Sure? When?

Tortoise: We can go right away, I hate procrastination.

White Lion: I won’t devour you, don’t be afraid.

Tortoise: Thank you, sir.

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They trekked for three days and three nights, arriving at a wild plain by dawn. “You see that Iroko tree?” asked the Tortoise, pointing at a lone tree on the horizon, “Yes, I see it,” answered the White Lion. “Beneath it is the den of lions,” said Tortoise in a nasal tone, “Go and join your kindred, stop eating palm kernels, go and eat fresh meat and crack fresh bones.”

“Are you going back?” the White Lion asked Tortoise, who said, “Yes, I’m going back to Surulere to oversee the palm kernels on your behalf.”

There was a fierce battle for power when White Lion reached the den. Nobody noticed it. The aging lion from Katsina was abdicating the throne and aspiring lions were jostling to take over. The ferocious fight raised a cloud of dust. The den quaked. White Lion watched and pitched its tent with the Katsina pride against the Lagos pride.

The Katsina pride needed to bind the pinned-down Lion of Bourdillon, but the paws of the lion couldn’t hold the rope, so the white Lion strutted forward, “My claws and mouth can do the job. I’m the White Lion!” The Katsina lions looked at one another, they kept silent. White Lion, using its claws and mouth, ran the rope tight around the Lion of Bourdillon, calling the leader of the Lagos pride names. The Lion of Bourdillon kept silent, calculating.

At the last minute, the Lion of Bourdillon roared to life, shattering the rope and launching an onslaught. Lagos and Katsina lions fought all through the night and victory swung the way of Lagos in the morning. After the dust settled, the aging Katsina Lion retired to Daura. EmefieLion was the first casualty, White Lion is the second, and there will be more to go. In the winner-takes-all jungle, lesser animals mustn’t toy with the lion’s share. Lions don’t forget, only humans do.

The White Lion has transformed back to òkété aje lójú onílé, and has run into a hole. Nigeria’ll forget this drama very soon.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

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By Suyi Ayodele

We were in Abuja on an official assignment; one of the entertainment engagements of Globacom then. The phone rang. The leader of the team, a Director in the Marketing Communications Department, looked at all of us sitting at the table, brainstorming on the evening’s assignment. We got the message. The Big Man was at the other end. Silence! We could hear the voice from the other end, though the phone was not on speaker. “Awe o, we need you to be in Johannesburg this evening or first flight tomorrow. Do you have a South African visa?” Our Director responded: “No sir.” “Ok”. The line went off and we resumed our talk.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again and the Director jumped up, picking the phone and moving away from us. We were by the pool side of the hotel. I prayed silently that our boss would not fall inside the pool. He was just nodding his head, with intermittent “Yes sir”; “Mo ngbo yin sir”- I can hear you sir. The call ended and the Director returned to our table. “I need to take my passport in the room. Suyi, tell Tosin (one of the drivers attached to the project) to get the Hilux. We are going to the South African Embassy”, he announced. Minutes later, we were on our way to the embassy. I asked our boss what was in the offing. He responded: “Baba said someone will be waiting at the embassy.”

To cut the long story short, we got to the embassy, and we met a woman waiting for us. We were ushered in and the Director was taken into an inner office. Half an hour later, he came to join me at the waiting room. I asked him again (curiosity won’t kill my cat sha): “Are you getting the visa, today?” He answered that he was asked to wait. We didn’t have to wait long. A young man stepped out of one of the offices and asked our Director to follow him. A few minutes later, the man came out of the office and beckoned on me. In the car, he showed me his passport with the visa approval. Wao! Then, the director sent a message to the Big Man thus: “Thank you sir. I got the visa. Agba yin a dale -may you live long- sir.” The simple response from the Big Man reads: “That is why I am the Chairman. My name opens the door for you.” God, I must be a big man!

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Age grades are in three categories in my native place. The first set is known as “Boranje”, which literally means those who don’t give a damn about the consequences of their actions. They have the energy and they represent the restive segment of the society. Those in this category are materials for recruitment into the community’s army. The middle class is the Elekurupa. They are the moderates. They fill the gap between the first and the last categories. They are the intermediate class. The last group are those we call Agba Ule – Council of Elders. This categorisation is at the family level. They are the elders. Their first selling point is their wisdom. Whatever the Elekurupa cannot resolve, the Agba Ule class handles. They only refer very knotty issues to the Agba Ulu- council of community elders. Agba Ulu is presided over by the oba of the town. Incidentally, most Agba Ule are also members of Agba Ulu. So, whatever decisions taken at the level of Agba Ule are mostly sustained by the rulings of Agba Ulu. To get to this last grade, age counts. Depending on the level of longevity in a family, there are cases where people in their early 60s are still in the Elekurupa age grade. Whereas, in some families where they are not blessed with long life, some people in their 50s are already Agba Ule. However, anybody who has crossed the age of 70 is an Agba Ule. One unique mystery about Agba Ule is their ability to stand where others fail and fall. How is it?

There is a saying that illustrates that. It goes thus: Nnkan ti agba fi nje eko ti o ra lowo wa labe ewe. I attempt a transliteration here: what the elder uses in eating eko (corn meal) without smearing his fingers is underneath the leaf. Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr, the Chairman of Globacom, turned 71 years old yesterday, Monday, April 29, 2024. At 71, the man known as Mr. Chairman, is a qualified member of Agba Ule and Agba Ulu. Many things qualify him for that position. I would not be dwelling on those ones here, but, as an eminent Agba Ule, Dr. Adenuga has demonstrated over and over again that the mystery of the successes of his business empire lies only with him. Nothing demonstrates this more than the recent breakdown of the underwater cable services across the West African sub-region a few weeks ago. Globacom, the telecommunication outfit of the Ijebu businessman, has one of the independent, and the only single underwater cable owned solely by an individual, the Glo 1 Submarine cable that runs from Lagos through 13 different countries to the United Kingdom with a point of reference in New York, United States of America.

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Whatever it was that happened to other international underwater cables, such as the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) and MainOne, Glo 1 remained standing. The company, Globacom, came up with a statement to reaffirm that its facility was not in any way affected by the damage that caused a lot of disruptions in the telecommunications industry with companies having huge bandwidth suffering unmitigated losses. In a discussion with some people while the submarine cable crisis lasted, someone asked why Glo 1 was spared. My immediate response to that is that the fortune or misfortune of any business concerns depends largely on the mission and vision of the promoter(s) of the business. And this is true with Globacom. It is practically impossible to divorce the resilience of the owner, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. from the success of the company.

The underlying principles of “People, Power, Possibilities”, on which the business was established cannot but speak for it when things are tough. If you have ever passed through Globacom, you would realise that ‘impossibility’ means “I’m Possible” in the system. Theirs’ is a diehard, never-say-no spirit which empowers them to navigate through the cruellest terrains. An average mid-level manager in Globacom is a super CEO of any other company. Why? Because Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. ‘roasts’, ‘cooks’, ‘fries’ and ‘fires’ every fibre of his employees till they become the best anyone can be. The working environment may not be the best; it is no doubt an institution that brings the best out of the individuals in its employ.

In the introductory story of this piece, the Big Man, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. was quoted to have said his name opens doors. I think it does more than that. Nigerians will never forget that it is the name, Adenuga, that bailed them out of the financial enslavement of the earlier entrants into the nation’s GSM business by introducing the Per Second Billing System (PSB), at a time they were told it was not technically possible. What about the BlackBerry revolution: didn’t Adenuga’s name open that door? Do we talk about the first deployment of 3G network, rural telephony and cheapest acquisition of telephone and people-friendly and affordable tariffs? Nigeria’s entertainment industry today is what it is because a Dr. Mike Adenuga opened the door of bountiful corporate endorsements for our artistes.

So, if you have ever wondered why Glo 1 stood gidigba while others fell yakata, know that the man behind the business, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. is a complete Agba Ule. And as such, know also that Nnkan ti agba fi nje eko ti o ra lowo wa labe ewe!

Here is my toast to the epitome of Nigeria’s resilience at 71! Here is wishing Mr. Chairman many more years in sound health. Happy birthday, the Great Guru himself! Agba yin a dale sir!