Dispatches From Lagos: Caveat Emptor

Spotted from somewhere around the Oworo end of 3rd Mainland Bridge this morning:

--------------------
CAVEAT EMPTOR

THIS LAND IS NOT FOR SALE

OWNER IS VERY MUCH AROUND WATCHING THE ACTIVITIES OF 419s
---------------------

(The "land" in question is beneath the bridge, in a sprawling slum that something tells me will one day be demolished, Maroko-style, by the Government)

***

Once upon a time, it used to simply read:

Caveat Emptor: Let the buyer beware.

Now, it has lengthened.

And something tells me it will continue to get longer. More and more English (and perhaps Latin or Greek) will need to be added as fraudsters get more sophisticated in their acts...

Until:

One day we shall see a warning, thusly:

CAVEAT EMPTOR
THIS LAND IS NOT FOR SALE
OWNER IS VERY MUCH AROUND WATCHING THE ACTIVITIES OF 419s.
IN OWNER'S ABSENCE, A STATE-OF-THE-ART SATELLITE SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS BEEN COMMISSIONED AND PAID FOR TO KEEP WATCH OVER THIS PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PHOTOGRAPHED AND TAGGED ELECTRONICALLY FROM OUTER SPACE, AND WILL AUTOMATICALLY ENTER AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGICAL DATABASE FOR CRIME, YAHOO-YAHOO, DOLLAR-CHOPPING AND OTHER RELATED FORMS OF DEFRAUDMENT.
BE WARNED.

HOW NOT TO WRITE ABOUT BINYAVANGA!

I read Mr. Uche Nworah’s blog posting on Binyavanga Wainaina - Binyavanga Wainaina Owes Nigerians An Apology - and all I could say was “Oh dear!”

I was – and still am – very painfully embarrassed that Nigeria’s “award-winning Internet columnist” could so shamelessly display his ignorance. And ironically, he has chosen to do so through the same medium by which he has made a name for himself.

Let us take his points one after the other:

Before that, this is the cause of the vexation that vexed Mr. Nworah’s righteous soul:

"I couldn’t also believe that Binyavanga had actually written these words in his article – “The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona)”. "

Now, let us listen to the internet commentator himself:

NWORAH: Such unfounded allegations and stereotypes will not do the African people any good, but rather supports the subservient 'Master's mentality' - the act of sacrificing the interests of the African people to please the Guv'nors in the west.

OMO ALAGBEDE: Where was Mr. Nworah when Binyavanga turned down, publicly, the World Economic Forum Nomination as a Young Global Leader 2007. Is that a symptom of “Master’s Mentality” as well. You turn down a to-die-for global award, and instead prefer to spend your time calling your people names?

NWORAH: I would also have used the opportunity to remind him that Richard Ihejiahi, the man who facilitated his trip to Nigeria is of the Igbo tribe, and that the bank itself (Fidelity Bank, formerly Fidelity Union Merchant Bank) was co-founded by another Igbo man in the person of Chief Onwuka Kalu of Onwuka Hi-Tek fame (Okpuzu of Igbo land)

OMO ALAGBEDE:I think that I should use this opportunity to inform Mr. Nworah that Binyavanga is from the Gikuyu tribe of Kenya (which Mr. Nworah might better understand as “Kenyan Igbo”) – Gikuyu is included in that “money-grubbing” class in the Granta Article.

NWORAH: Would they have still paid his flight ticket, put him up in a five star hotel and feted him like a celebrity if they knew what he thinks about them?

OMO ALAGBEDE: Mr. Nworah apparently assumes that Binyavanga came to Nigeria in order to be “feted like a celebrity.” And in order to escape from “Nairobbery” to enjoy 5-star hotel treatment in Victoria Island, Nigeria. Yeah, Binyavanga turned down a Young Global Leader Nomination, and a chance to travel to China to hobnob with Princes and Prime Ministers and jawjaw on the 2030 World Vision, in order that he might more thoroughly appreciate and enjoy 5-star hotel treatment and a flight ticket to Nigeria months down the line. How sweet of him!

NWORAH: Perhaps this would serve as a lesson not only to Fidelity Bank but also to other Nigerian businesses that are increasingly importing ‘foreign experts’ to facilitate seminars and workshops in Nigeria.

OMO ALAGBEDE: Any Nigerian company that will be inviting a “foreign expert” to facilitate a seminar should be made to, apart from a visa application, submit evidence of his lack of prejudice against all two hundred and fifty tribes of Nigeria:

The Uche Nworah Declaration:
I, “Foreign Expert” do solemnly swear and affirm that I do not currently hold, nor have I ever held, espoused, blogged, published or thought anything unkind or uncharitable against the [Name all the ethnic groups in Nigeria] of Nigeria.

However, indigenous or local experts like Uche Nworah should be allowed to take a bow and go ahead to give their seminar, irrespective of what they believe.

NWORAH: Again I wonder if Binyavanga is aware that her new chum, Chimamanda Adichie is also Igbo

OMO ALAGBEDE: This is where my embarrassment begins to become a malignancy. Binyavanga as Chimamanda’s new “chum”. Laugh out loud. Now!
Now listen to this next piece of bull:

NWORAH: And speaking about Chimamanda, I would like to believe that she is not aware of what Binyavanga said about her people; else one would have expected her to demand a clarification or even an outright apology. Perhaps it is for this reason that she should mind the company she keeps. As an 'Igbocentric', I’m sure that she knows that even the elders would counsel her likewise.

OMO ALAGBEDE: Here our award-winning columnist is warning Chimamanda to beware of the company she keeps. Yes. It is true. Now that Chimamanda is a global celebrity at such a young age, she needs proverb-laden elders like Mazi Nworah to dish out unsolicited guidance and counsel, so that dreadlocked, Igbo-hating Kenyan fundamentalists like Binyavanga do not mislead her and destroy her shining star.

NWORAH: It would help the African literary course if Binyavanga sets out to educate himself a little more about the Igbos seeing that he is now benefiting from them.

OMO ALAGBEDE: I think it’d also help if Mr. Nworah sets out to educate himself a little more about Satire, take a course on “How to Read ‘How to write about Africa’”, and learn a bit more about Binyavanga (the internet will help here).
Apparently (I’m repeating myself here): Binyavanga came from wherever he was (Nairobbery?) to come and be “benefitting” from the “Igbos”.

Last but certainly not least in BC (Bullshit Coefficient) is this:

NWORAH: Perhaps an apology from Binyavanga Wainaina and a clarification from both Fidelity Bank and Chimamanda Adichie may be necessary at this stage to prevent the Nze na Ozors in Igbo land from calling on their Chi and on Amadioha to get on Binyavanga’s case. We don’t want that, do we?

OMO ALAGBEDE: Nworah has finished his part. Now he is handing over to Amadioha to “get on Binyavanga’s case.” At this point, he can no longer trust Chimamanda and Fidelity Bank to “deal” with the Kenyan racist. Amadioha must step in.

But of course I trust Amadioha to know that this battle is not his battle. No. It is not a matter for the gods at all. It is not even Fidelity Bank’s battle, or Chimamanda’s.

The battle is Nworah vs. Nworah, and the boxing ring exists solely in the satire-phobic mind of Nigeria’s award-winning Internet Columnist.

Bell! Bell! Bell! ROUND 1. BEGIN!

PS>
1. Binyavanga won the Caine Prize, Mr. Nworah, not the Commonwealth. Update that on your blog now.
2. All through the article Mr. Nworah is complaining bitterly about how the Ndigbo have been slighted. Then it’s time to title his article and he packs Nigerians under an Umbrella and asks them to demand apology.
You might need to change that title sir – to Binyavanga Wainaina Owes Uche Nworah An Apology.

Dispatches from Lagos: Two Policemen

1.

Saturday, Aug 18, 2007.
Early Afternoon.
Unilag Gate Junction, Akoka.
A mobile policeman (aka MOPOL or Kill-n-go!), gun aloft (cocked most likely). He marches menacingly to the junction where there the cause of the gridlock is, to clear the traffic for his “convoy” to pass. He looks mean, barking out orders aimed at making bloody civilians piss in their pants and clear their bloody cars out of the F***ing way.
But it is his gun that catches my attention. It is pure poetry. A rust-scarred, trigger-happy, stray-bullet-loving, battle-weary, armed-robber-fearing AK-47, it has a sticker on it.

The kind of sticker you see on cars.

The sticker simply read: JESUS.

2.

Saturday, Aug 18, 2007
Late Evening (close to 11p.m.)
The Road connecting Mobolaji Bank Anthony in Ikeja, and Toyin Street.
I sight a band of blue lights (from torchlights), dancing excitedly in the darkness. I slow down, brace myself for whatever might come my way.
Park!
I halt, then swing off the road, and park.
Open your boot!
At this point I’m wondering what I have in the boot that might earn me regret.
I greet the policeman who is “handling my case” (others are busy flagging down new prey). I greet him very nicely. Then I step out of my car. Greet him again. I head for the booth. I open it.
As it springs open he immediately asks me to close the booth. Without even inspecting the contents.
And what does he say next?
He tells me that he has decided not to search me anymore because of the way I greeted him. And because I smiled. (I didn’t even know I smiled).
My name is “A*** I****, he says. What is your name?
He holds out his hand for a handshake.
I tell him.
I must open the door for you, he insists. He does, dashes ahead of me to open my car door for me.
I am looking like mumu, calculating how much this unmerited, unsolicited kindness will cost me. He tells me that he knows that I will make his weekend fine. I sigh, in my most regretful tone of voice I tell him that I am on my way home, and I am empty. Nothing. But that I pass that way often. And I will look out for him when I pass.
He doesn’t protest. Doesn’t plead. Simply tells me that he, A*** I**** is usually at that checkpoint. He smiles and asks me to proceed.
I wonder why we do not have more of him in the Nigeria Police (Extortion by) Force.

MADE MAGAZINE ISSUE 2

MADE MAGAZINE II is out with a bang!

Be sure to grab your copy (and subscribe!).

Omo Alagbede appears with a restaurant/bar review in the Issue (sneak preview here). My piece on "Getting Rid of Unwanted Houseguests" appeared in Issue 1.


MADE MAGAZINE – PRESS RELEASE

Following the hugely successful launch of MADE Magazine Volume 1 Issue 1 in June 2007, Issue 2 will be available as of Monday 20th August throughout Nigeria , Ghana and the UK. MADE is Africa ’s No. 1 publication.

Issue 2 is NOW available for digital download from MAG TANK. This tool has been developed due to growing demand from readers as far as Australia, Israel and Hong Kong.

We are delighted to launch Issue 2 to market. MADE presents a significantly improved publication; with Issue 1 we were happy to finally be out there because dreams have a way of being just that until they actually come to fruition. However, with Issue 2 we can truly say now that we have begun the great ascension in terms of design quality, editorial, content development and overall packaging.

MADE launched in June this year with 5000 copies and sold 1000 copies in its first week, with the remainder selling out soon after. MADE is available in the business class section of every Virgin Nigeria flight in and out of the country.

Due to the success of Issue 1 and the considerable volume of traffic to www.mademags.com we will also be distributing MADE Issue 2 outside of Nigeria and providing a great digital download publication for our truly global audience.

We implore readers to subscribe as this is the surest way of getting a copy of the magazine. For our readers based in Nigeria, a cheque for N6000.00 (6 issues, including postage and packaging) should be made out to Nebula Media Ltd accompanied with a small letter (business card will suffice) stating name and address at which you would like to receive your magazine.

Yours sincerely,
Gbenga Ashiru
Editor-In-Chief
www.mademags.com

NYSC - In Memoriam

Today, the 2006/2007 Batch B NYSC comes to an end. I can imagine the relief that most of those thousands of poor things must be experiencing (lol)... it is not for nothing that NYSC is called Now Your Suffering Continues...

A year ago, August 19, 2006, my NYSC (Batch B 2005/2006) came to an end. I served in Asaba, Delta State, at the Okwe General Hospital, along the Benin-Asaba Expressway, five kilometers from the Niger Bridge...

While we were in orientation camp at Issele-Uku(August 7 - 28, 2005), I kept a diary. Recently I stumbled on the entry I made on the last day of camp.

---------------------------
WED 28TH SEPT 2005
06:06 a.m.

Everyone woke early today, in order to submit their mattresses. There was a queue as usual. I submitted mine at 3 a.m.

The hall looks like a rotting body, hacked at angrily by a band of vultures – more and more of the flesh is disappearing, leaving the skeleton beneath. The beds have all been shorn of mattresses, the bunks stand like iron skeletons. All that is left is folks and their luggages.

Most are giving out their buckets, pillows etc, both to lighten their load and be philanthropic in one act.

In a few hours, I can imagine what this place will look like. The ghosts we chased out will file in one by one, singing “It is good to be back Home.”

---------------------

In the last few weeks the papers have been awash with the NYSC quota controversy... apparently the NYSC intend(ed) slashing down the number of persons to be mobilised this year, claiming funding problems... so they sent quotas to Universities. The University of Ibadan for example was given a quota of about 600 out of its eligible student population of 1,500...
Considering that NYSC is a prerequisite for MOST jobs in Nigeria (unless your father or godfather is a VERY BIG man), the implication was that the destinies of thousands of Nigerian youth would have been placed on suspension for at least the next one year.

If that had happened, I can imagine a swelling of ranks of the armed robbers in Lagos, and the kidnappers and militants in Lagos, and the "Amala" thugs in Ibadan...

Read about the NYSC controversy here

The Federal Govt has however since stepped in and ordered the NYSC to "behave"... read about it here

Dispatches from Lagos

1
Yesterday (Sunday) Night I was walking along Idejo Street, Victoria Island, at around 8.30 when I saw this drama:

A taxi takes off a few metres ahead of me. Then this mobile policeman (apparently one of those attached to IBTC-Chartered bank) emerges from the darkness and tries to stop the taxi. He hits his gun on the bonnet and barks at the driver to stop. The driver picks up speed and leaves the cop behind. The enraged cop lifts his gun, cocks it and points at the speeding taxi, all the while running after it and barking angrily. I stand transfixed, a cauldron of terror and excitement. The taxi driver eventually slows down metres ahead, and parks. The mobile policeman throws himself upon the taxi, gun cocked and aimed, and orders the occupants to come out. From where I am standing I see the driver and his sole occupant come out, hands raised in surrender. The cop ignores the driver (most taxi drivers in Lagos are harmless, tribal-marked, elderly men from Ibadan – slight exaggeration) and seizes the passenger. The prisoner-of-war, hands in the air, is kicked to the security post by the cop, who then proceeds to assault him. The POW is very terrified, and is pleading. Of course by now a crowd has gathered.
I wonder what exactly he must have done? Did he attempt to rob the bank?
The taxi had an Oyo State Number – XA 997 SHK.

2
Yesterday Night, in an Ogba-bound danfo (yes, I take those contraptions) a woman sitting in the row in front of me had her NOKIA phone bound up in a knot in the hem of her wrapper, in the manner of Yoruba market women who tie up their money in knots which they expertly untie every time they need to add more money or give a customer change.

She removed it to take a call from someone whose “caller ID” read SERIKI’S MUM.
The woman with the phone in a knot must have sensed that I was intrigued. She turned back to smile and tell me why she knotted-up her phone. It was a way of safeguarding it, especially as she was carrying too many things. I quite understand. Phones are the easiest things to misplace.

3
The guy next to me also took a call. From someone with caller ID: Bro Gbenga.

4
Sometimes I like to imagine and create lives for these strangers at the other ends of telephone conversations in buses. At the motor park in Ogba a woman came to a business centre to call someone called SUNKANMI. She spoke for less than 10 seconds. She only wanted to ask a question: had Sunkanmi helped deliver a message? Yes. Thanks. Bye-bye. She paid 20 naira.

Sometimes I like to imagine and create lives for these strangers at the other ends of telephone conversations in buses. These Seriki’s Mums and Bro Gbengas and Sunkanmis. Their hopes, their fears, their secrets, their sex lives or the lack of it, their eating habits...

5
Coining Words – over the weekend, a couple of friends and I, over fish barbecue and Smirnoff Ices at Kuramo Beach, coined a new terminology for "masturbation" (pronounced MAH - STORE - BAY - SHEUN):

"SELF-LITIGATION".

Synonyms: Self-Mutilation, Self-help, Self-study

PS> NaijaBlog has a post HERE on the dangers of the unspeakable act.

6
How Nigeria works. Nigeria is a deadly virus. It infects victims and attacks the cells in the human soul that produce a sense of wonder and a capacity to be surprised and astounded. That is what Nigeria does. A few days/weeks/months/years (doesn’t matter, all those times are the same; a thousand weeks is as one hour is as one million months) after infection, victims progressively lose the following:

MEMORY:
which is why just a few years after Abacha, we were clamoring for another Eternal President. Him only the cap fitteth; him only the key that unlocketh our national destiny.

CAPACITY FOR SHOCK:
Nothing shocks us anymore:

- dead bodies on our streets, bloated and torn to pieces by speeding cars

- armed robbers who invade a neighbourhood and for FOUR hours go from house to house, raping, killing, maiming, emptying...

- Police who go around arresting every arrestable thing:
“improperly”-dressed men and women,
cars,
laptops,
danfos,

which are all eventually "bailed" without receipts.

- Universities that refuse to give certificates to graduates who have successfully completed their course of study but have contracted HIV/AIDS or failed pregnancy tests.

- Police Inspector Generals whose capacity and talent for stealing would make armed robbers envious...

Been doings and To dos

I've been a bit busy in the last few weeks:

- The Chimamanda Workshop

- A Young Adult Novella commissioned by a UK publisher seeking to enter the African educational market (I'm new to YA fiction. Huge learning experience)

- An episode of an ongoing Nigerian drama series (I'm new to screenplay writing - my only experience before now was as a member of the writing team for Episode 9 of the BBC Worls Service Trust Radio-drama STORY STORY in 2006 - steep learning curve it was, very challenging but also exciting. It's not the easiest thing in the world switching gear from "poetry" to "screenplay". It's manual transmission, not auto.
But after doing it, one will never see the world in the same way again)

- Regular submissions (poetry mostly - anthologies, journals)

- My articles for MADE Magazine. (restaurant reviews, an interview)

- A 6,000 word piece on Mental Health in Nigeria (should be due out in -------- magazine before the end of the year.

TO DOS

I want to enter for the Acbebe Adaptation (Theatre) Competition organised by the Association of Nigerian Authors to mark 50 years of the publication of Things Fall Apart

I want to enter for the BBC African Playwriting Competition 2007

I want to do a few short stories - short stories are a weak point for me. I always get caught up in the temptation to be over-literary, playing with language at the expense of telling a good story, Chimamanda style. (I read Helon Habila's story THE IMMIGRANTS this afternoon. Men, I wanna write stories like that. Subtle, understated, filled with emotional truth, stories that linger with you long after you have left those pages...)

I learnt a lot of stuff in the writing workshop, that I'd like to put into practice. And of course it goes without saying that, as I write any story, I will be glancing over shoulders regularly, hearing a voice behind me saying:

WHAT WOULD CHIMAMANDA AND BINYAVANGA THINK? LAWL!

Tom Clinton Baba vs. Alhaji Jerry Gore Atiks

This came into my mailbox today... hope the text is readable... (YOU MIGHT HAVE TO DOWNLOAD/SAVE THE "CARTOON" ONTO YOUR COMPUTER AND OPEN WITH ONE OF THESE PHOTO-IMAGING SOFTWARE BEFORE READING. THAT WAY THE TEXT SIZE IS BIG ENOUGH. UNFORTUNATELY MY TECH-CHALLENGED BRAIN-MATTER CANNOT THINK OF ANOTHER WAY OUT. SORRY)

WE ARE BUT GHANA-MUST-GO IN THE HANDS OF THE PDP...



TO GOD BE THE GLORY... WATCH OUT FOR PART 2