i be naija

On my taxicab ride from O’Hare today, the driver no sooner asked for my destination and bawled fluent Yoruba over his cell phone than inserted a Fela CD into the vehicle’s CD player.

While I have heard Fela’s indictment of Obasanjo, Nigeria’s two-time president, for killing (or at least having to do with the killing of) his mother during Obasanjo’s first presidency in the 70s, I (and I suspect many Nigerians in their characteristic complacency) have not really, and I mean truly, fully absorbed the import of Fela’s charge.

Perhaps I was roused by Fela’s lamentations of the murder of his mother by the fact that I only just finished reading Wole Soyinka’s childhood autobiography, Ake—in which he recounts Mrs. Kuti’s valiant headship of a women’s liberation movement in colonial (i.e., pre-independence) Western Nigeria, that rendered the Alake, the King of Egbaland, the white District Officer, and the at once feared and revered Ogboni, all summarily impotent.

Did Obasanjo kill this woman of whom Soyinka wrote? The one that dared lambaste (to my utter joy) the insolent white colonial D. O. with the riposte,

You may have been born, but you were not bred. Would you talk to your mother like that?

The one that inspired the march on, and siege of, the Aafin, the palace of the Alake? Did dark-hearted, cowards of men, on orders of President Obasanjo and his vice Yar’Adua, really throw Fela’s mother off a balcony onto her death?

Countries and cities vie to host global events like the Olympics, the World Cup, the Miss World pageant, etc., in hopes that the literal convergence of the world onto that geographic space will translate into some real contribution to the local economy, etc., etc.

It leaves one really, truly aghast then, when the argument purportedly advanced by “the spokesman for the Nigeria[n] Olympic Committee (NOC)” to support his country’s bid for hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014 is the need to:

… celebrate the centenary of the unification of its northern and southern protectorate[s].

This refers, but of course, to the British “amalgamation” of northern and southern Nigeria in 1914. BUT… What exactly are we celebrating? The invasion, violation, and exploitation of the peoples inhabiting the Nigerian space circa 1914? Or the arbitrary drawing and re-drawing of geo-political maps and interventions into those peoples’ collective fortunes?

What an absolute goon.

According to BBC News, Nigerian Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential contender, Umaru Yar’Adua (pictured) was flown to Germany last week after he collapsed at a campaign rally.

In other words, the man collapsed out of I’ll bet, no more than mere exhaustion, and had to be rushed—not down the street, or to the next town, or to a neighbouring country—but half way across the world, to an entirely different continent, to be attended to. What does this say about the state of Medicine (amongst a host of other things) in Nigeria? Or, does this reflect the Nigerian perception of local products and services relative to foreign ones? Perhaps it’s a combination of both and many other factors?

How much of an indictment is this of the Nigerian leadership?