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Even before I complete the sentence, let me come clean. Beware, the caption is not clean. It is contaminated by what journalists call afghanitanism. You should see through it all if you understand that I haven’t met so many African politicians.
If you don’t gerrrit, forgerrrit. As I was saying: when you meet an African politician, please be over-nice to them. Those guys go through so much. Although most of their burdens are self-imposed, their bosses and the system too have a way of worsening matters.
African politicians go through far too much. You can never tell the shege they see whether to get to where they are or to stay up there. They fight for everything. They fight to be noticed, they fight to be accepted.
They fight to be assigned work, they fight for boss(es) to be happy with excellent work done. They fight for such boss(es) to express that joy, they fight to the point they pay third parties -those closer to the boss(es)- to tell them their happy standing. You are a legend if you decode that. In fact, if you do, you are an African politician.
Those guys can crack anything and everything. For them, nothing is too small or too big; nothing is too dirty or too clean; nothing is too humiliating or too disappointing. As far as one or all of power and position and money is or are at stake, African politicians can take any and every treatment. They die there.
African politicians are gold medalists when it comes to being long-suffering, waiting for their time and pretence. The guys can pretend for Africa. They betray no emotions, no pains, no anger until all the aces are in their hands and time is ripe for them to strike. Until when the holder of the yam and the knife becomes an ex-holder -aka holder of nothing.
Then, only then, do you realise that all those who played cats all along were lions to power two. African politicians are actors. They are chameleons, they are snakes. They are chameleonic snakes.
They carry too much but they never show it. The system forces them to trade their soul or belongings just to serve. In office, godfather and party and the masses breathe down their neck. That’s why the guys devise even unthinkable ways to survive.
They use tinted cars complete with covered number plates, to make assurance double sure. Their phones are hardly answered, so no stray bullet hits them; except when they need help. So-called leaders are like masquerades, you hardly see them. They only go to the office twice or so a week when the coast is clear, and for a few hours.
African politicians can smile through anything. It must have been from them that Nigerian masses copied the stoical mannerism of suffering and smiling. Those guys laugh with you when indeed they are plotting against you. You are here with them playing but mentally they have gone far ahead to wait for you, to deal with you.
Unfortunately, with African politicians, you don’t have to hurt them directly or even indirectly. That you don’t or have never hurt them hurts them more. That you are brilliant or content or godly or peaceable or popular can hurt them to the point that they start bearing tales against you. It doesn’t matter how educated or powerful or rich you think they are: African politicians can play in the sand anytime.
Imagine a professor in Africa -a whole professor- who because of politics and power and whatever else appears in front of the holder of yam and knife to run down a much younger person who is neither from his political space nor interested in what he wants. If tertiary institutions hand out degrees to only those found worthy in character and in learning, to be professor one must have huge deposits of sense and integrity, right? Well, yes, but do not swear for a professor involved in politics and in Africa. Perhaps, primary constituency with something to lose must devise ways of checking what their ambassadors do when they they go outside their jurisdiction to fly their flag.
For instance, as a journalist, if I knew that messing up in politics would get Nigeria Union of Journalists to descend on me, there’s no way I won’t be careful every minute of my tenure. Alas, in Africa, any such fear is cowardice because noting dey hapun. That is why anything goes in politics Africana -if not in every other area of our continental life. The family, the community and the place of worship have all failed to be that much-needed scarecrow.
Our society is now at the mercy of the strong, the devil and the fastest. Nobody cares how you derive the strength or if your speed endangers others. Everybody easily adjusts while the tiny minority who are bold enough to complain risk being called envious weaklings. The thing is going around, with politics being the worst hit.
In Africa, journalists who of course adopted the global sweet pet name of watchdog of the society are no longer watching anything or anybody, let alone barking. We are too busy trying to eke out a living since it is clear no one is interested in virtue. Everyone is asking if virtue pays bills. Africa is in trouble.
And, as if things were not bad enough for the black race, culture takes the matter beyond redemption. Politicians are never expected to cry no matter the pains brought on them. One suspects that only their spouses hear it all. Like when the guys go home, all that fake joy disappears.
It will be good to do or see a Nollywood movie on the double life of African politicians.
Like, how they are all smiles in public but all frown at home: moaning; lamenting about how the same big man they bow and tremble for treats them poorly. It’s a crying shame, those guys. Plus, they are in most cases a huge part of the problem.
They dwell too much on subtraction. They want less and less people involved. An alarming majority of them hate quality. They can sacrifice exvellence on the altar of mediocrity hereinafter addressed as complex or fear or gossip (what they call blackmail).
They can cut the nose to spite the face. They can shut down a road because it would have benefited an opponent’s community. They can withhold budget, project and programme and bring harm to millions just to teach one person a lesson. The next time you are somewhere in Africa (Nigeria not included o), check the state of hospitals, schools and such other public facilities and remember to not forget that I laboured to explain to you why things are the way they are in this over-endowed continent.
Still, Africa can never go down: economically, socially, technologically, politically, name it. Africa is coming. I hear the sound of a new crop of leaders emerging (read arising) and approaching. Pray for the current set of African politicians but pray more (all the way to power 10) for those who shall take over any moment now.
God bless Africa!
Turned 52 in style over the weekend
Last Friday, as the clock lazied towards midnight, I spent the very last 10 minutes sitting on my bed, watching or playing hide and seek with sleep as it tried to mess with my eyes. Strangely, my mind was intact all the time. I found myself appreciating life.
Let me say it now and forever that I am grateful to God for the gift of family and men. Yes, I have been kept by God and greatly helped by men -and women and children. Many thanks, everyone who ever did me good or bad; for your role.
I got to where I am because you all played your part the way you deemed fit. Daughter, Winnie, and her husband, Tyler, even chose the build-up to my 52 to offer me my first grandchild. Welcome, Dear Natalia Eduek MacIntyre.
You bring so much joy and promise and transformation. Even my confession has changed and shall remain so for eternity. I not only feel good right now, I also feel that I am better than good; ready to go to another 52 and another -in the Name of Jesus.
