Lagos – A state on one-week lockdown!
I am surprised that there isn’t any real movement taking place in Lagos right now. By this I mean the kind of movement that shows you there’s real and expressed exasperation and, consequently, real action to deal with the source of this peculiar concern. Or is it now the case that nobody cares about our life expectancy anymore? Or maybe I should be asking instead: “Did anybody care at all in the first place?” Oh! Come off it, Phillip. Stop rubbing it in all the time!
Well, if you can only pick out the fact that I am rubbing something in, then tough! Swallow it. Life expectancy is important. If you don’t want to live longer than abnormal, then it might well be that you don’t really know that it is the job of government to work to improve every condition that can contribute to making others live longer than abnormal, if you see what I mean. For in truth, we know that Lagos is a state that has now properly been nicknamed LASGIDI – something that you can interpret in what Ken Saro Wiwa called ‘rotten English’ as that state where you MUST know how to struggle (fa a gidi – and that’s Yoruba, by the way) to survive. But it is not a justifiable reason why they should leave us to our own devices, allowing Lagos to be on lockdown for as long as a week – from Apapa to Lekki, to Ikorodu, to Ejigbo, to areas along the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, and many other parts of the state. They then rub insult on injury by leaving us inside the lockdown for hours each day.
For it is true that Lagos being on lockdown might not be regarded as unusual, especially when looked at within the context of normal ordinary occurrences in the state, but sometimes within the boundaries of the usual, some things become unusual. Take traffic, for instance. Lagos has been presenting itself as a knuckle-down state by its officials in the past many years, but it would seem that there are certain things that it is not knuckling down over. Or put differently, there are things that it is no longer knuckling down over! You can be cynical and put it differently and say, “Who cares?” And you’d be right or wrong, depending on who is reading this. After all, some would argue that the big masquerade is no longer going to contest any elections next year, and so if he takes his eyes off the ball, as in catching a little nap, no one would begrudge him!
That’s one reason why you and I should make sure we laugh, as in really belt out guffaws! When we do that, we shall be noticed and they will know those we are directing this at! But it also presents its own seriousness on a relief that would allow everyone else to see and take notice. That relief is to ignore that we should half represent ourselves and half represent our parties. You see the problem when ideology does not direct your steps and you tend to act as if you are in some perpetual isolation, especially if you are lucky enough to be allowed to do eight full years – you then care little what happens next. Even if you cared for your party to come back to power, except you have a lot to hide and you don’t want to be exposed when you are gone, you are likely not to bother one bit if the opposing party’s candidate actually succeeded you. After all, I mean in the real after all of this case, you have arranged for yourself a very handsome pension and the person who comes after you wouldn’t want to tamper with that arrangement, knowing that eventually he or she would benefit from it. After all it’s only four years, eight years if you get a bonus.
But I guess nowadays reality is beginning to hit. That eight years is not going to be guaranteed any longer if you don’t perform. Your people are going to ask you to go home – go be with your family and allow a more man-of-the-people to take charge. And as I overheard on a Virgin Atlantic flight to London last Sunday, the people had just had enough and did not see any need giving four more years to someone who did not come down to their level. Me I see it differently, if you asked me! I think it is the case of people pretending to be democrats but practicing mediaeval African or Nigerian patriarchy! Fellow indulgees, it is that simple. You and I know that there’s nothing like democracy in African patriarchy. That’s why some men in this country who should be confined to backroom advisory role are still being called upon to help shape the future that they would not be a part of; a future that our children will be using technology to deal with each other. It is tough, but it is the reality and the truth! Like it or not, you just have to stuff it!
Politicians, in government or in opposition, fail us all the time. Lagos, Nigeria’s business, commercial and financial capital, goes on lockdown for over seven days and we do not hear, see and feel Lagos elected and opposition politicians frontally behave as if they know that the state went on lockdown. Workers spend loads of hours in traffic. They can literarily feel their life expectancy ebb away and their elected officials – who can use siren to clear the way to their offices or photo opportunity functions – say nothing, do nothing and expect your taxes. Thank God for Ekiti State, it is becoming clearer that for some strange reasons when they allow democracy to function properly, we have enough grey matter to say enough is enough! Diaaaaaaariiiiiiiiiiz vote o! I say, diaaaaaaaaaariiiiiiiiiiiiz vote o! (It simply means, in a democracy the vote is the biggest leveller, it brings politicians to their senses).
PHILLIP ISAKPA