Brazil 2014 World Cup F-l-i-c-k-s
There are a lot of activities and people you see here in Brazil that make one to easily seek divine intervention. Scantily dressed women who have no sense of decency, who leave nothing to imagination are the worst offenders. It is not considered inappropriate for them because they are everywhere. Visitors who consider them as inappropriate do not mind as we all feed our eyes and lust after their exposed bodies.

This is more so if you are coming from a place where women dress decently. So, seeing what they hide in your country being exposed here sparks that curiosity of feeding your eyes and letting imagination do the rest of the job for you.

After all, enjoyment is enriched by imagination. I am not alone in this. Well dressed women also enjoy looking at their females as they wriggle their waists to samba music which can be provided by mere clapping of hands and sticks or with drums. The sound of the samba makes them go haywire. And that is the time you see men clap more to encourage them to open up more. At such times, you need this verse of Our Lord’s prayer – Lead us not into temptation. But if you fall into temptation, you can also console yourself with yet another verse which says – Forgive us our trespasses.

It is not only with the women that you need assistance reciting our Lord’s prayer. With prizes of everything hitting the roof top because of the influx of visitors for the World Cup, many traps are set for people to fall prey to. But Nigerians learn from other people’s mistakes. The hotel rooms are so small with small beds, the types we used in dormitories in my secondary school days. But the rooms are furnished tastefully. The TV sets are still bogus with the old big box.

Only few hotels have the splendor of flat screens. But the refrigerators are so stocked with assorted drinks – beer, champagne, whiskey, soft drinks and water that one might fall into another temptation, the type my friend and colleague, Jacob Ajom fell into in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He had seen the fridge stocked with alcohol that he feasted gleefully on them. He thought they were part of their hospitality in entertaining their guests. The law of the bottle caught up with him. The more you drink the more you thirst.

He paid dearly for it at the check-out counter. Such traps are laid here in my room. The exotic drinks are tempting. When I saw them all lined out, I laughed and screamed the name of Jacob. Get thee behind me satan! In London, a prominent Nigerian fell to their tricks when he watched adult movie on TV. He came to my room to tell me to tune on my TV set to the channel. I refused and told him mine was not working. He led me to his room to see for myself.

On the day of check-out, he was almost physical when they gave him the bills for watching porno. When he saw the Police, he grudgingly paid to avoid a scandal.

The London trick of watching porno is not here because these people treat you to a live one. But that of setting traps cannot happen to me because experience is the name we give our mistakes. Experience is a great teacher but the price may be too high.

What does our Government do for its citizens?

Adekunle Salami is one man you can hardly agree with. He takes the opposite side of arguments no matter the subject and reels out convincing points. I was taken aback when I saw us agreeing totally after I asked him what Nigerian leaders can boast of giving back to its citizens. We left Lagos to Brazil on a Qatar Airways flight. We travelled eight hours to Doha and another 14hrs to Sao Paulo making it a total of 22 hrs. If Nigeria had a national carrier like Nigeria Airways of old, it would have taken us 7hrs to fly direct from Lagos to Brazil.

All other national airlines must maximize profit and touch base in their country before proceeding to wherever you want to go. Nigeria, the giant of Africa does not have a national carrier. So, its citizens can travel to Japan on the back of a tortoise. Nobody gives a hoot about your well being.

The belief back home is that Brazil is a poor country. They rely majorly on football but you need to be here to know if any of our cities including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja can be compared to the cities in Brazil. Yet we think we are bigger and better than USA. Electricity in Brazil does not blink. The people do not know what it means to say there is no light or there is a power outage. They inform their people when they make repairs and it does not last more than 30 minutes.

Back home, some areas stay months without electricity and the people still pay for not having power. The roads in Brazil are all tarred, the Government build high-rising buildings where the people live at reduced costs. There are no dry taps here. Security is guaranteed 24hrs with smart and well-trained Police in all corners watching fanfares and maintaining law and order. There are no accidents – accidental discharges where you kill innocent people for no sins of theirs.

The list is endless. Benefits of governance. There are jobs for the youths. They don’t recycle dead men walking in the name of godfathers still working and holding big positions when they should have died or retired or tried for sins against their fellow Nigerians for not providing comforts when they were active.

The dream of youths being leaders of tomorrow has died. The youths have become old waiting and hoping for the elders to give way. It is like waiting for a dead man’s shoe before you wear shoe. What can Government boast of doing for its citizens? But for God, if it were possible, Nigerians would have been paying for air. We live in a country where we have been pushed to the wall, where Government does not care for the lives of its people. It is only in Nigeria that a Governor tars roads and make ceremonies declaring it open and taking up adverts in national newspapers.

A Governor once counted opening Mr Biggs as one of his achievements in a state. I feel bitter each time I travel and see countries less endowed than Nigeria doing well for their people. Annoyingly and shamelessly, too, our leaders travel to these countries and learn nothing from their experience. Instead, they prefer to send their children to schools abroad while our education has fallen to the dogs. They prefer to go to hospitals abroad and leave our hospitals turn to mortuaries and our Doctors go on endless strikes or check out in search of the proverbial greener pastures.

Dogs, cats and other animals are better taken care of by other governments than our leaders take care of their citizens. We deserve something better than living in bondage, misery and pain. We are tired of being kidnapped and playing politics with lives. We deserve something better while we are alive. But where can our help come from?

When men turn to Cat’s food

A hungry man, is usually said to be angry. Angry because you don’t have the means to buy food. Sometimes, angry because you don’t understand the food around you or you are not used to the food. Angry that no matter how you try to eat what you

don’t cherish, you’ll still be hungry. But the expensive nature of Brazil can force you to eat what you ordinarily dare not touch. As hotels are expensive to lodge, we have turned wiser moving from place to place with better offers. Living in flats are the best options as the prices are affordable but the risks are higher. Some of the flats are far and detached that when bad things happen, there would be no immediate rescue. Police are everywhere here and bad things happen every time. Some Nigerians who have taken over flats risk paying through their nose for transportation. It is like Solomon Nwoke who pays less in accommodation in Lagos but ends up spending what he saved on rent on transportation. Here, those who live in flats pay the price in transportation coming to town and going to the market to buy food items to cook. But they eat something close to what they are used to. They don’t run the risk of frequent stooling. There are stories of some Nigerians who live very far away in the outskirts of Sao Paulo in a cheap flat. The occupants have gone on holidays and rent out their flats till the end of the World Cup. I learnt that our Nigerian brothers have run out of food and have resorted to eating the food meant for cats in the flat. The cat’s milk were not spared. My fear is that we don’t come back from Brazil after the World Cup to be mewing and purring, trilling, hissing, growling and grunting like Cats. That would be an expensive price to pay for the World Cup.