By Ugoji Egbujo

That wasn’t the coronation that was planned. The girls stole the shine.   Now, nobody remembers what the incoming governor said on the big stage. At some point during the ceremony, cameras swung heavenwards to avoid eye contact with two the ‘ troublesome girls’ in lovely dresses, enacting an abomination on the front row. Yes, children should always be protected from such nuisance.  

The wife of the outgoing governor left her seat to seek trouble. The way she walked, with gaiety, arms flailing, towards her target, it had all seemed she was going to hug a friend she hadn’t seen for ages. But it turned out it was petulance. She went to exact a vengeance she might have harboured for ages. What she told her victim wasn’t explicit. But as cameramen and journalists tried to cut the scene, the unthinkable occurred.

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Some said Gov Obiano’s wife had sauntered to Bianca Ojukwu to taunt the former beauty queen. Others said Mrs Obiano rebuked Mrs Ojukwu, whom she said had swallowed her vomit by attending an APGA event. Yet others said someone called someone a prostitute. The cameras were at a remove. But something defining must have been uttered. It had to be something razor-sharp. It must have cut to the bone. Because what followed happened in a flash.  

Yes, all that glitter are not gold. And often have we heard that said. But who would have expected such gutter conduct from those glittering women? A governor’s wife. A beauty queen, the wife of a late deity. Who would have believed they were capable of such filth. Of the childishness that can’t be found in a decent nursery school. Of the callousness required to desecrate such a hallowed occasion.

Perhaps ladies, like oil, go rancid too. The news spilled into the street and left titters. The lesson was lost in the silly banters. A young man ran to me delirious.  He said that Mrs Obiano deserved what she got and that he would celebrate Bianca’s feat with a bottle of beer.  He said he was happy Mrs Ojukwu had set a record. But what record had been shattered and set? He said Mrs Ojukwu had become the first person to slap a governor’s wife.  He said, “Mrs Obiano’s own has become too much.” He couldn’t have been blamed for feeling like a child watching WWF on television and wanting the gladiators to break their necks. Some things come with youth. But he wasn’t alone. That mundane development has since become the dominant slant of the conversation. Slap is trending. Many have been congratulating a taboo, criminality.

The women are both chiefs. Chief Bianca, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Spain, is in her mid-fifties. Chief (Mrs) Obiano might be older. Both have grown children. Every day sane people bump into mad dogs and retreat, walk away. Binaca could have acted as a proper beauty queen. Why would the wife of a former deity employ violence to resolve a verbal provocation? Society must protect the boundary between verbal insults and physical violence with sharp-toothed social and criminal sanctions. These are mothers and founders of NGO’s. I know the parents of today worship their children. But parents don’t help their children when parents behave like wild puppies in public.  

A study once showed that Nigeria, despite the madness that pervades the polity, prosecutes a lower number of assault and battery cases than developed countries where law and order reign. Our police simply plead with the victims and extort the offenders. Perhaps that is their idea of mediation, part of their effort to reduce the prison population. But the outcome is a society where millions of fights happen every day and issues are resolved by threats and violence. The Accident and Emergency centres in the hospitals are the best places to observe the cost of that choice.