Now, surely, this is no longer sent from heaven

I had three English Literature teachers at King’s College, Lagos. Mr Chukwudifu taught me drama. Mr … who liked to wear sun glasses and look and feel hippy, taught poetry. And the immensely popular, short, stormy petrel (with all due respect and reverence that I can muster from within me), Mr Ibiam taught me prose. It was Ibiam who helped us navigate the works of Samuel Johnson, including Rasselas, Prince of Abbyssinia, a book whose subject revolves around the futility in the search for happiness.

It’s actually what someone explained as the “discrepancy between what is wished for and what is obtained,” which I considered rather more apt. You will soon see the connection.

But talking about navigation Nigeria is a diffiuclt place to navigate! No, I am not saying I am or want to be a sailor and that I want a ship to go round the country. After all, if I were to attempt that I would soon find that there are indeed landlocked areas in the country that I just can’t reach by water. But I was actually thinking of a much broader scheme. That maybe, just maybe, we all, the entire 150 million of us, need to be put on a very, very gigantic plane and flown 35,000 feet above the ground, over some no-end-in-sight wide ocean, with some turbulence that forces the pilot to announce to us he does not understand and haven’t a clue what’s going on. I can see most indulgees are saying: “Aye! Aye!” And this should in no way be confused with Fela urging fans, during those iconoclastic performances of his while he was still with us, “everybody say: ‘Yeah, yeah!’ And it doesn’t matter if this is Felabration month, indulgees are banned from confusing the two acclamations, period!

And just in case you are wondering why I might be wishing this on 150 million of us, the thing about us is that we are all so resillient that the only thing that seems able to shake us up is when we know that there is no chance in hell, or heaven, that we can survive a situation. It is the very reason why I think that we are still going about groping in the dark and with very little or no care that the world is leaving us far behind, even when we say, jokingly and mockingly, that we want to chase and catch up with a pack of BRIC by 2020. I am just imagining at 35,000 feet (and I must not hear you say: “Dis bobo wicked o!”) with 150 million people on board this gigantic aircraft that is experiencing turbulence, what sort of confessions and supplications would be taking place at this time. It would be difficult to really tell, but I can just imagine that there would still be the selfishness of Nigerians on display, with more words than 150 million said be every one asking that they personally be spared, if the plane goes down. You can also be sure that there would be those who would be there believing that there is a slim chance of escaping the disaster by hook or crook! Over all though, you are likely to find a very sober people asking for one last chance to make amends.

“Phillip, why a plane? Why so high up?” Well, you can deduce several reasons but I think the closest would be that Nigerians and Nigeria truly need a shake out! And such a shake out would have to come by way of something in which Nigerians would find themselves helpless over, where their power of influence, authority and manipulation would be of no use whatsoever. If you were to put all 150 million of us on a gigantic bus travelling by road and there was turbulence, there would be those who would excape and run away to wait for the next person who would do the say so that they can sign that long outstanding contract. If the plane was to fly low and not over a no-end-in-sight sea of water, there would be those who would see the land below and take the risk and call up all the babalawos, marabouts and dibias that they know in the hope that they would escape the onslaught. But it seems that in some ways, every Nigerian, caught up in some form of trouble on a plane flying at above 30,000 feet resort to some self dignifying resignation. And I thank that’s what we need to make progress with Nigeria.

And I think too that that would be a time when it would be possible for me (now, this is, again, very selfish) to get my friend, Wole, to repay my kindness by liquidating his indebtedness to me! I am not going to name him in full today because I believe he is still my friend. I will only want to beg our mutual friend, my very senior colleague, Ogbeni Tope Awe, to intervene. Perhaps, just to remind Tope by saying that matter of over two years ago with Wole has not been sorted. “Egbon Tope, I believe you remember. My personal sacrifice, knowing that I am not a businessman, but took out of my savings to save a situation has led me into more trouble o.” coming out like this is like being at 35,000 feet on a plane facin turbulence, as you can tell. And like Fela would say: “Next time, I go open my mouth o!”

Don’t let that bother you. I mean don’t be curious to know who I might be talking about. It is not really a case of David Vs. Golliath or Big Corporation wanting to swallow up big business. Sometimes, it’s good to experience a shake out and then allow it to shape you going into the future. It is just that some shake out can be so severe that you might not survive it. And that’s the kind of shake out Nigerians need, the one that they clearly can see that there is no chance of survival, all of us. It is always when there is a chance that some people can survive, that they very often allow the rest of us to die. And in a dog-eat-dog world, very little matters!

The problem with our situation is that we have too many troubles to deal with. We have our individual personal troubles, and then, we have to add on our national problems. When we are not able to solve our personal woes, some of which are connected to the way our country is organised and run, we are helpless looking up to our country to provide a soothing balm to calm our worries. Here’s what I mean. those who know, especially those who try to keep this away from the rest of us because they can hop on the plane and pronto they are in Johannesburg, Dubai, Paris, Milan, London,

New York, know that there is a huge benefit in retail therapy. They know that you really don’t need to have money to engage in this self-healing regime. That the fact that you are in shop full of beautiful things has both aspirational and psycological healing powers. It is one of the reasons why in those places listed above the governments build or encourage the development of lovely cities with beautiful shopping complexes all over the place, accessible to all so that their people when they feel pangs of depression can go heal themselves with some retail therapy. The good thing though is that in those places they also make it possible that people are able to find things that they can afford. Here, in Lagos in particular, if you are not on any of the Islands’ axis, it’s always a punishment to go do retail therapy at The Mall, Park ‘N’ Shop, and Spar.

Before we get consumed in this wild talk about retail therapy, I think we better return to our Muse, flying at 35,000 feet above the ground and being in serious turbulence with some 149 million other Nigerians, including those who have naturalised but still behave as if they are enemies of this country by the way they run their companies, treat black

Nigerians who work for them and syphone every profit the places where they are originally from. I suppose for this latter-day naturalised ‘Nigerians’, one day a true Nigerians would be sent from Heaven and he would be good to everybody but be firm in dealing with those who claim our citizenships but treat black Nigerians as if they less than human. I have heard a lot said about this treatment by those we have welcomed with open arms into our country, both to do business and to live with us. One day, it will snap, I tell you!

You are cruising at 35,000 feet above the ground. Your headphone is plugged in and you have made a selection of music on the in-flight entertainment system. Then the soothing voice hits your eardrums. You can hear its a familiar voice and a familiar song. It’s Keshia Cole singing

Heaven Sent, which actually begins with “Sent from Heaven. Sent From Heaven.” As you listen to the song and take the moment to feel strongly carried away by it, you realise that the Nigerian tragedy is both personal and national. For as you keep telling yourself that you can’t wait a whole life wondering when it’s going to come or where, indeed, it has been, you realise how much happiness eludes you, and how much happiness eludesNigeria. So everybody gets to look up to heaven, hoping that something, someone will be sent. And that when that ‘something’ and that ‘someone’ is sent that they would seize it and run with it and spread happiness to as many a people as they can. There is the rhythm of Keshia Cole. There is the lyrics too. If you are 35,000 feet above the ground you are going to have those two things to battle with. You will enjoy the rhythm because the voice is powerful, but you might be tempted to get carried away by it and forget the message in the lyrics.

There are indulgees, many of them, who follow what they read here religously. I know because they sometimes call me, send me SMS and emails.

To them I want to say we are all still in this together. I believe that the human search for happiness comes in very diverse sorts of ways. Many of us are seen as successful in what we do, great in who we are, happy in how we look and even believed to be without a single problem in the world.

For still many and that so-called group of “many”, it’s like watching the BBC comedy ‘Keeping up Appearances’ that starred Patricia Routledge and Clive Swift. At the end of the day, as a nation we are deeply unhappy. As individuals this deep collective unhappiness feeds into us and robs off on us, and so we are unhappy. Personally too, we have our indiviual battles to deal with. For some of us, we might have thought that those personal battles were dealt with when we thought someone, something had been sent from heaven. If Keshia Cole’s song, Heaven Sent, once did it for you but no longer does, hang on in there. You are not alone in saying: “Now, surely, this is no longer sent from heaven.”

By: PHILLIP ISAKPA