By Chioma Gabriel

“Mchshh”

“ You hissed, Saka”

“I didn’t,”Aminu answered.

“ But you just did”

“Ah! It’s just these papers, one cannot believe  everything written on the pages of newspapers”

‘ Why do you think so? But you are reading it upside down”

“ Are you blind? The matter is also upside down. Didn’t you see the headlines. INEC has released the  timetable for  2015 elections”

“ Oh that!! Let me see. Presidential elections, guber elections, national assembly elections… Ha. But these are staggered elections”

“ Before nko. How were we having it ?”

“ But INEC agreed with the political parties that all the elections would hold in one day and not staggered elections”

“ Grammar. Which one is staggering elections again?” Iyalode chimed in without being invited into the discussion.

“ Who invited you into this talk. Go to the kitchen woman and prepare my lunch. Men are discussing serious matters and you put your mouth…” Aminu scolded his  wife.

“ But I vote. I voted for CPC in the last election”

“ My friend please help me tell my wife to go to the kitchen. She shouldn’t disrupt our conversation. Which one is CPC again?”

“ Maybe she meant APC,”Saka added with a mischievous smile.

“ God forbid. Boko Haram party,” Iyalode said.

“What is  wrong with this woman?  I asked her to go to the kitchen and she is still here talking”

“ Let’s ignore her my friend. So, INEC has staggered the elections again”

“ That is what I was telling you. Look at the papers. They all reported the same thing.(Hiss)”

“ So, we are on the march again towards another election?”

“ Next year. 2015! It’s just close by.”

“ Ha. PDP is finished.”

“Why did you say so? What about APC ?”

“ APC na medicine. You never hear of the drug  called APC. It was  for head-ache”

“ Na  wa for you  my friend. Let’s get serious please.”

“ The truth is , I don’t believe in any of these parties. Jona is not man enough to handle the problems in his party”

“ Is  he  the chairman of the party? What is Jona’s business  with managing the party?”

“ Haba. What are you saying? But he wants to be president again.”

“ Another third term agenda”

“ No. Second term my friend”

“ Don’t join the fray of those calling it third term. It’s second term”

“But you know I’m a Buhari man”

“ Tufia. Let’s get serious. We are done with military regime.”

“ What do  you  mean by  military regime? This is democracy”

“So, Buhari is a politician abi? What did he forget in government house that he wants  to  go back and take ?”

“ The same thing that Obasanjo forgot which he has taken back. The same thing  IBB wanted to go back and take  at some point”

“ I prefer the PDP”

“ No way. It is a finished party”

“ I know but between the PDP and the APC is like between the devil and the deep blue sea. Head, you lose, tail, you also lose.”

“ Why do you think so?”

“Are they not the same people. Haven’t you seen APC going around begging PDP members to come and join them? So what we have today as APC is  made up of the same old PDP members. So, what’s the difference”.

“ I think Nigeria needs prayers”

“ Na today? We don dey pray since even before oyibo come colonise us. They are the ones responsible for the kwashiokor in this country. They have joined together strange bed-fellows and the house is on fire! Even those that joined  us don’t want to see us again”

“ It’s true o.  Nigeria at the moment is not having the best of times in the comity of nations.   Our problems  are  too much.  It will be impossible to discuss everything  in one day. I believe the most serious problems can only be reduced by properly educating Nigerian students that are below the age of 18.”

“ Did you say students, which students? Those ones that have become touts and political thugs. Na for Ghana parents dey train their children now. Nigerian schools only teach students how to read and write and become thugs. Schools in Ghana teach  students morals and character values, critical thinking and good citizenship.”

“ Ghana ke! Were they not our cobblers  in this country?”

“ That was  then. Not now. Things have changed”

“  Our younger generation are more interested in making money, not education.  Many Nigerian youths see a rich man as his role model and develop a compulsive urge  to make  money by any means necessary, including acquiring human body parts for juju  or smuggling drugs to Malaysia, Indonesia or wherever. Our Igbo brothers  don’t  take their sons to school. They prefer them to hawk on the highways and they can hawk anything including human parts”

“ Haba, my friend. Don’t talk  like that. Don’t let my wife hear you. You know her mother is  Igbo.”

“ Our problems are more than education. Lecturers prefer to  stay at  home  than  to be  in classrooms. So, don’t  blame those who  prefer their children to  hawk. Nigeria has gone bad. Nigeria ti ba je”

“ No. Here, it’s eko o ni ba je.  The basic problems facing Nigeria are  wrong leadership and compatriots themselves; any nation which is ruled by wicked leaders can never grow. Because we have not been treated humanely by these set of leaders, all they cared for was their interests. Many things have gone wrong and most Nigerians have gone astray today. That is why, as of today, you would see many Nigerians without bearing. For instance, you would see lawyers becoming Nollywood actors and doctors becoming singers. Think of Dr Alban and Dr Sid. They are medical doctors singing jolomi all over the place. Funke Akindele and RMD are lawyers in Nollywood and Tonto Dike is a Petroleum Engineer who ended up an actress”

“ Have you finished. The latest craze is Church business.  Everybody wants to become a Pastor, Alfa and  Herbalist, all  deceiving people in the name of money.Teenagers are being exposed to money. Youths are being exposed to  rituals. Meaningless things become lucrative. Some artistes sing nonsense; become rich with the aid of evil spirit . There are churches and mosques everywhere and yet evil is increasing ”

“ Religion is the opium of the masses. It’s just like getting drunk and forgetting your sorrows.  Religion is such a sensitive issue in Nigeria that one has to tread carefully in discussions to avoid flaring emotions, or being accused of taking sides or  being misinterpreted.  Religion is an important part of our lives, from birth to death, and commands immense influence  in our national politics. Of course there are voices that argue against mixing politics and religion and others who share the view  that politics and religion are inextricable. But religion has not stopped  fraudsters  in church  from operating. We hear robbers even go to  pastors and alfas to pray for them before going for operations.”

“ Those are the lucky ones. At least they are working, getting busy and making money with the blessing of their pastors and their guns. What about those who have no talents at all. Sorry, they have talents as armed robbers and many are graduates”

“ So, what do you expect them to be doing after graduating for years without job. A jobless man is an idle hand and that is the devil’s workshop”

“ You have started again Saka. Now, you want to blame the innocent devil for nothing. Is  it the devil that give them guns?’ Haven’t you heard that some policemen and security operatives who hold guns loan same to armed robbers for a fee and they still get share of their loot after shedding innocent blood”.

“Too bad. There is nothing unemployment cannot cause”

“But you said the devil before. Now, you are blaming unemployment instead of  bad leadership that brings about unemployment.”

“ I think there is a problem. Nigerians always blame the government in power for the problems of the nation even though many of these preceded the government in power. Why do we always do this? Ask any Nigerian what the problem is with Nigeria and they will say that it is leadership, forgetting that Nigeria’s leaders come from amongst us; and if we are saying that our problem is leadership, we are invariably supporting the doctrine that a black man would thrive best under white rule.”

“ So if our problem is not leadership, what then is  it?”

“ Unemployment”.

“ There you go again. Unemployment is the talk of the moment in Nigeria. This  is rendering  people frustrated. What happens to our graduates after their  studies in the tertiary institutions? The situation pisses many Nigerians off. This is one of the major causes of  increase in crime in Nigeria. When the graduates stay in their parents homes for a long time, the next thing is the inflow of negative thoughts.

This makes them to start engaging in filthy things because their minds are occupied with bad thoughts. Do you know that till today, some  who graduated about four years ago have not seen any area of their study to fit in. I must tell you that this is  the  torn in the flesh of the Nigerian graduates . That is where the devil comes  in and that is in the form of insecurity.”

“ Ha! Nigeria  we hail thee! Now this problem of insecurity is giving many citizens of this country  sleepless nights. People can no longer walk comfortably on the streets. Nobody  knows if bombs are planted under the ground he  wants to step on. Today, Boko Haram is a well known agent of destruction in Nigeria. Many innocent families and individuals have been wiped out, many others maimed and thousands rendered homeless while schools, markets, churches, media  houses have also received bitter doses of Boko Haram tragic attacks. The students in the northern part of the country pray for safety every day forgetting their study because of these hidden anti-security group”

“ You know my friend, there is this deduction from media  reports that more than 935 people have been killed in about 164 suspected attacks  linking Boko Haram since it launched its campaign of shooting and bomb attacks in July 2009. Report and survey put the number of deaths in the last three years of Boko Haram insurgency at  over 3000”

“ Innocent lives.”

“Yes, innocent lives”

“ The ruling government is not performing its  functions very well. They do not allow the youths to be fully involved in decision making. Many who are ruling in many areas do not play their roles very well. They are busy enriching their pockets due to their selfish interests.”

“ I agree with you. They have many faults : the law makers are at the same time the law offenders; the anti-corruption agents,  the corruption promoters; the fraud fighters,  the public fund embezzlers; preachers of peace,the agents of  disunity. It is now left for you if you want to remain in poverty, if you cannot give your votes to people that can bring smile on your face. Some people would be saying if Nigeria  splits, they are not concerned; which means your life is not their concern . You should not open your eyes and allow particles to sparkle  into  it; be wise enough. Everybody in the land must be very inquisitive  in choosing their leaders, if you don’t know, these are the  people controlling your life directly or indirectly.”

“ Our leaders  have  failed us. And we don’t have a good alternative. Both sides have betrayed irretrievably Nigeria’s high destiny. The countless billions that  Providence poured into our national coffers would have been enough to  transform  the lives of our poor and needy. But what have we done with it? Stolen and salted away by people  in  power and their accomplices; squandered in uncontrolled importation of all kinds of useless consumer merchandise from every corner of the globe; embezzled through inflated contracts to an increasing army of party loyalists who have neither the desire nor the competence to execute their contracts; consumed in the escalating salaries of a grossly overstaffed and unproductive public service.”

“ That is corruption you are talking about. It has eaten deep into our body polity, Saka. It is safe  to say every problem we have in Nigeria today has its roots in corruption. We would be living in a fool’s paradise  for years .  Rather than roll up their sleeves and concentrate on fixing Nigeria by fighting corruption frontally, our leaders have resorted to wishing the problem away by selling a warped ideology and diverting attention to insecurity. We are doomed! I wish  them good luck.”

“ Where  is the goodluck? Patience is what we need now because the way everything is going, if we don’t have patience, things can get worse.”

“ Or should we drink APC to calm our headache?”

“ That one na expired drug. Do you still remember the company that produced APC? It is expired  my friend. APC is no longer effective.”

“ Then we are finished”

“ That’s a bad case then. May God help Nigeria”

“Amen” Saka and Aminu chorused.