“As father of the state …” No, you’re not!

Politicians get carried away too quickly and very easily in this country. Even though it’s commonly accepted around the world that power has an intoxicating effect, there are those who still handle it with some decency and a sense of shame. And by ‘a sense of shame’ I mean that they are very careful about what they do and how they do it so that it does not bring shame to their office. But trust the Nigerian politician to always do things differently, especially getting in the face of the electorate and insulting them, even while misruling them!

The other day, in what has now become my pastime, after getting home from work really, really late, I found myself waking up, after accumulating only an hour plus of sleep, at 2 a.m. – that odd time of the night when creepy crawlies usually have their field ‘day’, away from ‘evil’ humans, who would rather have them crushed under their feet. As my bed is always scattered with papers (newspapers, magazines, a book here and another there), whenever I wake up at this odd hour after such a short journey into the world of ‘sleep’, I reach for the dailies to do another round of checking the day’s news play by the other newspapers.

Now, you will find that this is the time when, as a newspaper editor, who’d spent the better part of the day looking at the big picture of news play in the world, you actually get to notice the odds and ends stories in the Nigerian press! And as Nigeria offers a rich world of comedy in captured speech and action, as well as in written words, it is a good time to laugh when everybody in your neighbourhood is probably sleeping. Yes, why wouldn’t you laugh when, as you begin flipping through the papers you come across this picture of what looks like a young man in his late 20s or early 30s, being guarded by men in all manner of uniforms!

 When you wonder what this is all about, you get your first shocker upon being told this is the coordinator of something they call Ochendo Youth Foundation in certain south-east state. The pictures seem like they would come alive because there is so much animation as your eyes run through them. You could see the energy in the images and if you didn’t read the story behind the pictures you would think they were doing something huge for some people. You would later learn that they use such occasion to distribute tricycles to ‘beneficiaries’ of their kindness. You can choose to laugh at that, but wait for these rib crackers. A high up politician as the Speaker of the State’s House of Assembly could be seen clearly cowed in the presence of this seemingly powerful coordinator. The coordinator, as you soon learn, is also addressed as the State’s “First Son”! Can you beat that? The state has a “First Son”. So it was no wonder then that everything in the pictures that were published was all about him! Our politicians like to copy America when it comes to things that personally enhance their status, but when it comes to working for the people, they duck! As I read this in bed that very early in the morning I couldn’t help ‘lil’! Now, for those of you familiar with ‘lol’ (laugh out loud), lil is the opposite (laugh in loud). Problem with ‘lil’ though is that you could engage in it for a certain period of time and actually implode! So, ‘lil’ is one of those things they warn you on television before they go live, by saying: “Don’t try this at home”.

Given our penchant to copy, I am sure there are likely to be tens of first sons in the country. I haven’t done my research to nail it down to an exact number those who actually have male children, but trust that any son with a similar spirit like the coordinator of that foundation, even where they have a couple of sisters older than them, would make first son come alive in double quick time.

Now, that is as far as First Sonship goes. It goes even deeper than the kind of comedy that politicians like to unleash on us all. Since they started this First Lady business, we have seen how they have been using it to rub us blind of our collective resources. As journalists, the kind of things we hear them do with this title sometimes make you feel like you should send some Colorado kids after them. As a very religious nation, however, maybe we should just leave them to God!

 While the incidence of the First Son continues to happen, recently when I had woken up, again following a short sleep after returning from work about 11 pm, I returned to the newspapers. Yes, my life is boring, I agree with you. At 2 a.m., what am I supposed to be doing, when everyone else is probably asleep and I do not want to get out of bed at such an odd time? And do not suggest television, because it is addictive! I do not want to find myself having to wake up (having become a pattern) at 2 a.m. and finding that I have to tune in the television to watch something that might keep me awake until 7 a.m. when I have to again prepare to return to the office!

 Now, I have found myself on occasions having to tell people off for calling me their brother. “Do it for your brother … Don’t forget we are brothers …” The telling off is not the result of not wanting to understand the point they make about brotherhood. But it is just because the brotherly endearment comes when they want you to do something for them. Now, when I have had that said to me, I have responded, to some people like this: “Wait a minute mate. The last time my father, before he departed from this trying world, lined up his children, I didn’t see you in the line-up.” These days, some people on social networking platforms have found another way of claiming brotherly and sisterly affinity. Nowadays, they talk about “my brother from another mother” or “my sister from another mother”. I haven’t heard anyone say “from another father” yet, suggesting to me that it’s fathers or men who have a tendency to distribute siblings all over the place!

Talking about “father”, at another time when I had done my 2 a.m. ‘waking up’, I picked up a newspaper and began to read the story of a certain governor talking about the crisis in his state. The unfortunate situation is that it is not so clear if he was the one actually opening his mouth to say the words or whether he was being worked on as puppeteers would do puppets! At a meeting that had been called to try to find a way out of the state’s crisis of governance, I read the words: “As the father of the state…” I was lying in bed reading this, but the paper dropped as I burst out laughing. Yeah right, father of the state indeed! What makes a politician elected for a four-year-tenure suddenly begin to see himself as the ‘father of the state’? It seems self-delusion, but it is the Nigeria that we now have. Is the fatherhood by virtue of the fact that he is a governor? Or is it that he was one of the founding fathers of the state? Okay, who is the mother? When and where did they conceive the child called this particular state? Which hospital did the woman give birth to the child? Who was the midwife on duty? And the nurses? And the doctor (s)? Let us know everything about how the governor came to become the father of the state, if this is not self-delusion? This man will be governor for four years, maximum eight years and will move on. Someone else will come and govern the state after that. He will become old and die and leave the stage and the state will continue, becoming older than him and life will go on. Why doesn’t he just play his part very well in the time he has to make an impact on the lives of his people, instead of wanting to claim fatherhood? He has his children, they are the ones born for him by his wife and that’s about how it is. Nothing more, nothing less! There are many fathers in the state and they all have their children… they don’t go about claiming that they are fathers of the state. Being a governor does not make anybody the father of a state, nor does being the president make one the father of a nation. Haba, Naija politician!