Post elections

Unless you’re prepared to wait another six months for INEC to declare the Elections results, otherwise we may have to make do with speculations, historical conjectures and recent elections antecedents in the country. So, going by the above premise, it is right but not safe to assume that the election went the President’s way.

The President may have just been bought a new lease of life of four years. In an unconnected story, some bullion vans were sighted at the private home of APC party leader at the eve of  the elections. But, the gentleman was able to allay our fears that the content of the bullion vans were just money and not election materials. They belonged to him and not the government and he is free to use his money to assist the party. Absolutely, it is just that having bullion vans doing home delivery on a public holiday with less than 24 hours to a general elections seems suspicious to rumour mongers and all sane homo sapiens.

Think nothing of it sir, after all it is not your party that is bent on selling the NNPC. It is your former party member. After all, the estranged member's only thinking out aloud your general or should we say conscientious private thoughts.

The international observers, thinking we are running feudalism and not federalism, have also concluded that the election was free, fair and devoid of violence. They too are right. There were body bags quite alright, but none of it belonged to any observer. A few deaths here and there are expected in an election of this magnitude anyway, in our clime, as it's a ritual. The good news is that the deaths recorded are of natural causes and does not in any shape or from related to the President’s ambiguous timely order.

The Elections has come and gone and we need to take the positives from it just for academic reasons for posterity. I understand that news reaching Sahara Reporter confirmed that Sowore was shocked that people took him seriously enough to vote for him. He will go again, and hopefully will be back in the next four years.

Optimistically, he will have been sober enough to start his entrance into active politics from the house of assembly. And for the rest of the gang of presidential candidates, having their names on the ballot papers must have sufficed as testimonials for now. And with good behaviour, who knows, a Federal appointment may be in the making for the conformists.

Going forward, the President may want to consider the items on his pending file since 2015. And if they are no longer there he could get the vice president to retrieve them before they start the first cabinet meeting. They are: restructuring, energy, corruption without merit and war on terrorism. With no trader moni to distract him, the VP should be back on time and insist on not been locked out, again.

What's next?

Just in case you have been so caught up in our elections and you couldn't know who  R. Kelly is and what he did? Here is a synopsis: the 52 year old multiple Grammy award winner who has been flying for sometime now succumbed to the laws of gravity when he finally crash landed in Chicago, last week. He was at the Cook County to answer charges in a 10-count aggravated sex abuse. While rolling out award winning singles almost on a regular basis in public, the R & B crooner has also been busy privately.

The FBI (an agency in charge of white crimes) has been on his trail for years now. The artiste has been taking advantage of teenagers who were sympathetic to his pathetic desires. Jumping up and down to his music is endearing enough, but having lazy youths  practically answering to his my body is calling pleads is disgusting. And if you still think relationship by association automatically confers celebrity status, then read on.

Like any alleged person who is enjoying the status of presumption of innocence until found guilty, Kelly pleaded not guilty to the criminal liability charges. He was to be released with a posted $100,000 bail that the three time Grammy winner couldn’t pay! With his celebrity friends more broke than him, his temporary salvation came from an unlikely quarters. Still, credit to Kelly for being able to unsolicitedly walk into a court to put records (no pun intended) straight.

Having fulfilled the first item on his to-do list by running the presidential election to a halt, Atiku must now borrow a leaf from Kelly and step into any court of competence jurisdiction to clear whatever is left of his smeared name. We all know that the President will never grow a pair overnight to prosecute him. However, to have him as a credible opposition, it is time to do the needful. Reverse the order of prosecution; the burden of proof is no longer on who alleged.

By the way, he has so very little to lose anyway. Money is gone, connection is lost and wives may soon disappear the way Dele Momodu did. Going to court alone in Nigeria can be terrifying especially if friends with bullion vans no longer have your back.
The possibility of prison experience either in Nigeria or America holds little fascination but Atiku can be rest assured that he will never see the inside of a prison, at least in Nigeria.

Sadly, R. Kelly will serve his term when convicted and two things await him in prison. Either he becomes a rap artiste or he gets saved but not as a catholic. The Pope can hear him calling quite alright, but he has his hands full of priests who have been equally accused of sexual abuse for now.

Oscar

Unlike our general elections, Oscar is done and dusted with minimal fuss- no host, but the event was still graceful. And, it was also a  mixed fortune for blacks in a black month on the world's biggest entertainment stage.

On stage was Africa’s biggest export in comedy, South Africa's Trevor Noah. His climb to the zenith of creative comedy has been a combination of hard work, ingenuity and clarity of purpose. Just like other comedians, he’s talented but where he stands out is his ability to consistently engage intellect, shun mediocre jokes and acclimatize his wit to his environment. Such a pure class, you'll say, but I digress.

The Oscar wasn’t about Trevor; his time is surely coming.  It was to be about Black Panther, the $1b grossing movie of an almost entire black cast partly filmed in Nigeria. The movie got looked over at the coveted best picture category as the award in that category went to the Green Book. I have seen both movies in a disproportionate times, and still cannot quite figure how Wakanda lost the ‘election’ to the Green Book. Before heading to court, a proof is needed.

It has to be a Sunday. With every member of my family gone to church, I picked an armchair, remote, parchment and pen and settled down with a bottle of something as company to watch the Black Panther. Again, the movie appears to tick everything in the box. But for Killmonger, the villain in the movie last request, “bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the bridge because they knew death was better than bondage”. This seem to cynically address the  challenges obstructing black excellence like cynicism, racism  and slavery. The dispassionate council may have found this obtrusive. There is no point in going to court on this one, it is a premeditated decision. I will lose.

Backstage at home and capitalising on the tribal benevolence of Buhari, Atiku has continue to make a parody out of a famous Yoruba idiom that speaks to his alleged reputation as a kleptomaniac. Presently, a court is entertaining a case of stolen mandate that Atiku brought querying why the people allegedly chose his kinsman over him.

But the President is not threatened as there is no proof of any malpractices. The President is equally finding it difficult to get evidence to establish a case of corruption against his kinsman. And if there was one, there is an acting Judiciary to serve both actors fairly by ensuring that neither case is won or lost at the expense of another.

Pretty Young Thing

Until death did my mum and superstition apart, she never believed in coincidence. She felt the universe was too orderly for the chaotic nature of happenstance. So, if I came home early from school with the excuse of early dismissal, she still wanted to find out why? It is a good thing that I didn’t inherit that as a maternal trait, from her. It comes with endless burden on the conscience when I already have enough financial burden.

Last month was meant to be a black month for some reasons my mum would have queried. Why picked an incomplete month from a dozen other available months to celebrate a race as black as blacks. Anyway,  joining us in celebration in a way that shows They Don’t Care about Us. The whites chose the same month to change the time. They moved themselves up an hour into daytime and at the same time dragged half of our race back by eons. The significance of such a minute change probably would have escaped everyone as mere coincidence if not for this unrelated occurrence.

By airing Michael Jackson’s documentary on sexual abuse of kids, HBO has in a way opened a pandora box of new scourge called pedophilia haunting black celebrities. This sordid behaviour may have been induced by drug, broadcast by Oprah and taken advantage of by the whites but these guys are as guilty as Atiku, if you ask me. Ooops! My Bad.

The evidence against MJ may appear totally Off the Wall but my mum would still have pondered why a black man would commit a white man’s crime in a strange land (it was actually done in Neverland) but she still won’t be pacified by the change of address. And in fairness, it doesn't matter whether Michael  is Black or White, anyway. Don’t chuckle, my mum was minimally read like our President.

It is now being whispered that selective prosecution of black celebrities may be another way of telling blacks to Beat it. Hence, both blacks that were forced and those that came to US on their volitions are stigmatised as Smooth Criminals.

And now, it doesn’t matter if we built their rails, did the farms, developed their sports, help with the inventions and even got involved with governance. All we have to show for being redundant or participatory guests is prosecution with evidences? It is time to leave. Good enough, the timing is right.

After a Thriller of an election at home, President Buhari is desirous of people of integrity who have never listened to Michael  Jackson’s Pretty Young Thing (Our democracy is too young to be exposed to political pedophile, but if you ask me, a 20-year old democracy's come a long way. As you all know, at 20, you're also no longer a Stranger in Moscow). If interested, you have twelve months to be back home for an appointment. Afterall, it took the President six months to pick the present cabinet he has not been able to work with.

National Anthem

I have just listened to the instrumental version of our National Anthem on Lagelu FM. It was awesome. It resonated light-heartedly, intensely and didn’t climax. The fantastic composition and arrangement have little or no semblance with the state of the nation. We may not be able to account for the fervour and patriotism in it, but we need to keep the lyrics safe for our kids.

Our leaders lurk.

Diversifying education

Nothing thrills the poor more than the rich stewing in problems. Anything to take their mind off their present predicament for a second is so gratifying . Yes, the rich also thrive in buying stuffs they don’t need to impress the poor that they equally don’t like. Nothing sadistic should be read to this mutual feelings. There has never been any love lost between these two. So, it was a bit weird when the news of school bribery scandal broke and started trending in the USA.

The FBI, needing more education on how to effectively wrap up their relentless investigations into the 2016 general elections, busted a ring of rich parents bribing their kids into elite schools. I honestly don’t know why a no news like this is tripping the headlines, except for the fact that the poor are happy to see celebrities and the rich (some black celebs are poorer than their adoring fans) in trouble. Nothing tweets better for the poor than a raven bearing bad news to the palace.

Rather than buying smart kids; there are these 33 parents and 13 coaches who are being prosecuted for the cheating scam with figures ranging from $10,000 to half a million dollars to secure admission for their wards in Ivy league schools. By the way, Ivy league schools are schools you can drop out from and still be relevant in the world. The only news here, is that Trump is not mentioned, he must have safely left school before the news broke and before his dad died.

What is however painful is that black kids generically referred to as poor kids are being denied spots in an educational system that was designed to give them a head start in an unfair environment. Sports scholarship that for sometime has become a short cut to sports admission has similarly been hacked. With the rich slamming shut doors of opportunity on the poor everywhere, you wonder if an egalitarian society is possible here or the poor should just wait for the hereafter.

The rich, back home, are not as daft as to be paying to draft their kids into schools like their American counterparts.  What is the point in buying admission when you can own the entire school? And when they cannot outrightly buy one like the religious leaders, they simply donate school library, laboratory and dormitories to schools whose Ivy league status is determined not by academic excellence, but rather by the virtue of the population of rich kids there.

Pending when our school admissions process is subjected to similar investigative scrutiny, it will continue to enjoy the concept of presumption of innocence from the society, and vote of confidence from our President who ironically got his certificate by home delivery.

Casting the first stone

I paced around the platform in time and on time with my hands deep in my pockets. The rumblings below my feet and the gentle vibration of my cell in my pocket nudged me into two simultaneous but different activities. I looked up and the flickering information board confirmed the timely arrival of the train as it hissed to a stop.

I checked my phone to confirm the video message of the untimely arrival of our locomotive engine train maiden trip to Abeokuta in fanfare. I boarded, unslinged my backpack and sat down. The seat was comfortable and it was not supposed to be after all, it's a mere mass transit, I started writing this piece in an air of stale disappointment.

The Abeokuta train’s arrival time was an era off, so also is its single rail track system. India, Senegal and even Canada would have joined us in an overwhelming celebration if the train had arrived post colonial time - sometime in early 60s. Well, better late than never is  hardly a consolation advice for a single lady who is experiencing a protracted delay in getting a spouse. Every guy who knees to tie his shoes will be perceived  by her as a prospect suitor.

For this priceless antique, are we not supposed to be grateful? No, but we are. It is the government's responsibility to provide this and so much more for her citizens. If however, you had frustratingly waited for 16 years on an empty promise, every fairly used  items that comes your way from abroad will look like a gift from above.

The good thing is that the soul train will run free of charge like our educational  system  pending when the elections will be over, after which presumably you may  have to start using your PVC to get you on-board.

In the last four decades, we have all watched from the popular stand as the physical infrastructures the colonialist left behind slowly crumbled due to our lack of maintenance culture. Also, our inability to accommodate social infrastructures  in our discourse is the reason for our evident systemic failure.

Consequently, on board the slow moving train were the best wavering minds circumstances can put together to discuss why we are still this far behind in the comity of  nation.  The contingent includes a Nobel laureate, paramount ruler (I wonder the relevance of a king in a republic), party chieftains and some white folks to give the belated occasion some semblance of respect and make it colourful.
On arrival, the contingent gave a warm speech to show appreciation to the government, knowing fully well they will never board the train again.

Contrastingly, Ogun residents had to wait for the President’s campaign team to wisely arrive by road to express their indebtedness. Sadly, the campaign team had to leave in a hurry to avoid any injurious vote of thanks as the people decided  to cast their first vote with stones and not PVC!

My train’s screeching stop  brought me back from reverie. And as I disembarked I wonder why we have to necessarily start our own journey by first going back to the terminal, rather than just boarding from the nearest train station to us?