The scam called happiness

“Education is a scam”. “Marriage is a scam”. “Politics is a scam”. For sure, you are familiar with these emerging or latter-day clichés.

Fools say education is a scam. They are correct: education is a scam to educated and uneducated fools. Ditto, marriage: it is a scam to those inside and outside it who say it is. We cannot contest their verdict, after all, they wear the shoe but what we know differently is that ours are not.

Personally, my education is not a scam. My marriage is not a scam. Had they been, I would long have de-scammed them and without announcing so. Akwaibomights say no man should call his house dilapidated if they do not want a neighbour to set it on fire.

You know, people who make some of these hasty conclusions really don’t know life. Or they really do not know what scam is nor have encountered the thing called happiness. That is the real scam. We should come back to this in full force, presently.

As for politics, well, I neither have nor know it; I have never really had nor known it: so, I cannot tell. And, I am of the firm belief that you should speak only from the centre-forward positions of balance, experience, possession, time and understanding. Otherwise, I would use my Nigerian peripheral knowledge and bitter experiences to agree with the political naysayers that politics is a scam. Especially, politics Nigeriana.

However, are its second-nature signatures of betrayal, deception, and ingratitude the only sides to politics Nigeriana? Is that it? Is that all it takes to transmogrify into a scam? Has any good thing ever come out of politics Nigeriana?

Alas, I did not come here today to appraise politics nor to apprise politicians of what they should already know. This is only 2025. Two years since the last general ballot, the electorate should be swimming in dividends, not regrets. We thank God though that electoral evaluation is every four years.

Imagine if we had to wait a decade to attempt to kick out those I call purveyors of pain that is concomitant with anger that derives from regret. Father in heaven, thank You for little mercies. The relief and happiness inherent here is not necessarily about change or the capacity to bring it about. It is essentially about the fact that one can at least try to do something about it sooner rather than later.

You never really know what God has done for you until you have taken a second, more critical look at some of these things. Imagine ours was a dictatorship or monarchy. Imagine this forever so-called nascent democracy had to wait longer than four years to replace misfits. Imagine ours was like that of my other country, next-door Cameroon, where the President who was in office in 1982, two years before I left both primary and later secondary schools in the country, is still there in 2025!

And, Cameroon is not a monarchy o. Nigerians are a blessed people, believe me. At least, every four years, we have a semblance of an opportunity to evaluate and re-evaluate and introduce flesh blood, nationally and sub-nationally. Forget the part that most times the process is tainted to the point that what we garbage in is not what is garbaged out to us and even the candidates for whom we had sung the loudest stung us the painfullest. One day, monkey would go to the monkey and return only as meat!

And, 2027 might just be that fateful year when monkey’s age-long talismanic tricks shall fail. Next year, the build-up starts in earnest. “Next year, in the build-up to our 2027 general ballot, this writer shall serve you an entry detailing mannerisms or rather people you should never elect let alone re-elect”. I remind you now so you do not forget to remind me when the time and tide are nigh and high enough, respectively.

Meanwhile, let us go back to winning ways; to the matter that brought us here. Is happiness a scam? Is there a human being who is permanently and totally happy? Like, nonstop: for 24 hours, seven days and from January to December?

Happiness, the way man has made it, is a scam. A child is born happy, very happy. Then, reality sets in and that child, becoming a man, gets to understand that in this realm you work out your salvation, no dulling. From school to work to family to money to death: happiness comes in small doses.

You are happy that you passed your examination and got admission. But, that happiness evaporates every time you cannot pay your fees or afford a meal or pass a course or two. Then, hurray, you graduate and you are happy, very happy; only to wake up to the rude shock that it is not yet uhuru either because National Youth Service Corps says you have to wait another year to enlist or a decade and more, post-service year, no job. Happiness is like a ding-dong, a seesaw, a yo-yo.

Then, you manage to get married. For many, the happiness on that day is epic (almost like joy) but it is not and cannot be -it very soon melts when wedding debts and the marriage itself connive to show spouse and you pepper. Worse if children are delayed. You suddenly find yourself a prayer warrior, casting and binding 25 hours daily.

When they eventually arrive, you are so so so happy until hospital runs and school runs set in. When they graduate and find no jobs, you become born again again, kabashing 24/7 on mountaintops and in the valley. When they become husbands and wives, another round of happiness spasms separated by anxiety and prayers. When grandchildren and great grandchildren arrive, they bring along other chapters which are similar to all others in all ramifications.

And, the beat goes on. You work hard and pray for a car. The day you touch that answer, you start dreaming of a better one or more and a house. The day you receive those in the physical, you graduate to wanting and praying for only God knows what.

Man always wants something. Man always wants more. Elon Musk, Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Femi Otedola et al are all billionaires but because they are human, they cannot stop wanting more. The rich want to be richer because the poor are aiming to be rich.

More than anything else, it is this insatiability that abbreviates man’s happiness. You pray to become local government chairman or honourable commissioner, the day you become you change prayer points. The day you become state governor, you immediately start tonguing for heaven and earth to align and make you president. The same day you conquer that, your mind shifts first into second term gear and once that is in the bag later into craving life presidency.

Man’s happiness suffers too much punctuations because of inordinate ambitions and cravings. We want a black wife today, tomorrow she ought to have been fair. They did not mind a short husband just yesterday but now he must be tall. How can a people this confused be happy for long?

Whose report is that? It is the devil’s, clearly. So, not only must you never believe it, you also must throw it away this instant. The truth is that it is still possible for man (plus including woman) to not only have happiness but also to have it more abundantly and above all, permanently. That is the joy that comes in the morning.

That is the joy nobody understands. That is the joy by, from and of God. Please get it, even if you can’t. Become a child of God today, and acquire joy like a river.

That indeed is my life secret. I am joyful whether it shines, whether appreciated, whether remembered, whether rich, whether whatever. I rejoice always, because my Father is the Centre Referee of the match that life is; which means my team can never lose. Hallelujah, somebody.

God bless Nigeria!