A WALL VERSUS A LINE

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[Theme Music: The Real Slim Shady]

May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please?!

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

I repeat, will Lagos Bus Drivers please line up?!

So I was in a bus the other day and mid-way through the random journey, the driver cleared his vehicle to the side of the express and got down. We, the passengers, were wondering what was going on but before we could say ‘area boy’, Mr Danfo Driver faced the vehicle, whipped out his....yes you guessed right.... John Thomas and started spraying (not us o, just the tires).

[Do not be alarmed, proceed]

The phenomenon that I have just described is very normal and even the ladies among us knew this, so they were free to examine the driver's equipment which, if I might add, he brandished with flair. That singular act, not the displaying of equipment, no, the other one, peeing in the middle of the express, is a sign of one of the major flaws in our society’s virgins, sorry virtues today; indiscipline.

Again I was in a Keke/Keke Napep or Okada with three legs (anyone you prefer) the other day and the driver was doing at least 80 (trust me, that's fast for a keke) and as he was taking the sharp bend into the street on the left, he did it! He coughed up a hair ball (figuratively of course) and just spat on the road, con-crete road! 

[Pause, Please be alarmed, Proceed] 

Honestly, I could make an excuse for the Bus driver's behaviour if my life depended on it, like, “Owh, he has a medical condition and a small bladder and if he doesn’t pee, his bladder might burst and then he’ll die and then the police will come and catch me and then, and then…”, you get the gist but the Keke guy, the Kee-kee guyy…that was just disgusting, no excuse! Indiscipline has become our new national anthem; it has tied gélé and joined wrapper. The level of lawlessness in Nigeria is high and still on the rise; to put it succinctly, a lot of people need strong cane (not the pleasurable kind). Top on my ‘Need To Be Flogged’ list, in fact, taking the top ten spots on my list is Bus Drivers. These guys, thee-se guyys are the worst!

Lagos bus drivers are the reason I am bitter! How can people block an entire four-lane express!? I mean, they will leave the two-lanes created specifically for commercial vehicles, come to the middle of the main road and just park, why? Don’t even get me started on lining up: from Agege to CMS to Costaine to Ikeja to Ketu to Maryland to Mile2 to Ojuelegba to Ojota to Onikan to Oshodi, I could keep going for the next ten minutes; the story is the same. These danfo guys need some serious reorientation and some strong cane. What stops the black and yellow bees buzzing all around Lagos from organising like real insects? Or has it now become a sin to be organised? Why can’t there be lines at bus stops and why can’t one bus load at a time? Why must twenty buses heading in the same direction struggle for one passenger and why must twenty conductors be shouting “Airport Road!” like some bull-frog choir? Why can’t we just be civilised?

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The worst part about this new banthem (bad anthem) is that it affects 'other' people more than it does the mumu people perpetuating the folly. The traffic caused by blocking the express for instance turns what should ordinarily be an hour’s trip into at least a three hours journey. This same type of madness, but in different flavours, ripples throughout our day, every day and in some cases, is far more boggling than can be easily comprehended by the rational mind. Another example, common sense dictates that there should never be vehicles parked on both sides of a narrow street, however, it seems common sense has long since stopped being a dictator.

Critics may want to argue that living outside the circle of propriety and existentially within the amorphous figure of impunity is the only way citizens have learnt to survive the nonchalance and ineptitude of the government but the critical question then becomes, “Who is the government?” and the honest response is that the government is the people, for the government rises from within the ranks of the people. So in essence, the people are ‘surviving themselves'.

[Pause, let us digress briefly, proceed]

You see, there is something most people take for granted. There is a part of our surroundings that we believe has no effect on us, that part of our surroundings that we believe society has shaped, that part that we can now neglect and take for granted. I refer to that part of our environment in which 'other' people, usually the less privileged than ourselves, exist. What we and our myriad of little communities fail to see, however, is that after 'products of our society' are given birth to, these products have lives of their own and have the potential to shape affect and manipulate us.

[Let us return, continue]

Bus drivers conduct themselves without discipline and we believe they are just products of our society. I believe they have become more, I believe they are an example of who we are. These undisciplined products are currently exercising their potential to affect their creators (almost everybody in Lagos drives like they are on cheap drugs) but I strongly believe that if we can teach the bus drivers to be organised and disciplined then, the lessons will come round full circle and be delivered to the rest of our society. How can we leave the foundations in shambles and expect order at the top? Fogerrit, izzalie it dont work lai that.

“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable, procures success to the weak and esteem to all”

George Washington

“Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild”

 Immanuel Kant

“Discipline is just doing the same thing the right way whether anyone’s watching or not”

Michael J Fox

We need to learn to think as a single army with one soul, shunning our crude and unrefined nature to do what is right regardless of an audience or the absence of one. We need to learn to obey the lines of chalk and not wait until a wall is built around us before we are forced to live within the circle of propriety.

If only Lagos bus drivers would just line up.

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[Theme Music Continues: The Real Slim Shady]

Ha ha

Guess there’s a Slim Shady in all of us

Fxuk it let’s all stand up.

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MACHO MEN: THE SWEAT AND THE GLORY!

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King Leonidas and his brave 300 fought in sweat and in blood till death for glory. The 300 Spartan soldiers faced without fear the Persian ‘god-King’ Xerxes and his unimaginable army of more than 300,000 men at that faithful narrow pass befittingly named the Hot Gates. Theirs was the Battle of Thermopylae and that narrow path was without a doubt their road to perdition; for that night, they surely dined in hell as King Leonidas promised. #300

"THIS…IS…SPARTA!!!"
- King Leonidas

[Switch-Up] Spartacus, Gannicus, Crixus, Oenomaus, Ashur and all the other gladiators of Capua fought gallantly on the Blood and Sand in the ludus, they were Gods of The Arena! But out of Vengance (because of babe) Spartacus himself decided to lead a revolution against the House of Batiatus and then against Claudius Glaber and the rest of the Roman Empire in a War, of the Damned! #Spartacus 

"My *Rock* Rages On!" 
- Gannicus 

[Switch-Up] He-Man was the most powerful man in the universe - with an intellect to match. He was also the Prince of Eternia and you will know him if you were born in the 90s and watched a lot of cartoons. Along with his pet Tiger ‘Battle Cat’, a mighty sword and a super sorceress (an Ekaette) by his side, he protects Eternia and Castle ‘Gray Skull’ against the forces of Skeletor!. He-Man could lift and throw a castle, a mountain or an iceburg with his bare hands and despite his strength and physique, he was quick and acrobatic! #HeMan

"By the power of Grayskull! For the honor of Grayskull!!!" - He-Man

Enough with all this reminiscing [check out Reminisce’s album ‘Baba Hafusa’, I hear say e dey blow, no carry last o]. What do 300, Spartacus and He-Man have in common? Yes, you’re right, very plenty macho men! Do you know what it takes to be built like Brock Lesnar, The Rock, The Undertaker, Me, Hulk Hogan or Triple H? Do you know what it takes to be a perfect Greek 6pac statue/demi-god? Let me tell you now, it is not easy. It takes a lot of hard work; sweat, time and effort but at the end of it all comes the Glory! Ahhhh!!!

Most people these days just want to wake up and *tada* have everything they have ever wanted right there at their feet. To them I say Ogbeni wake up well! The one that you are waking up now is from sleep level 2 just like in Inception, we are still waiting for you in the real world. 

We the people of this generation are suffering from a very terrible perception, one whose source I cannot accurately pinpoint but whatever its origin, we must change it. We are suffering from a mentality that demonizes hard work but still wants the glory; we all just want desk jobs where we can sit for 8 hours a day, do almost nothing and get paid a million at the end of every month. I laugh! - but sha if you know any job like this, abeg hook your boy up o. Do not misunderstand me, it is good to aspire to great heights but some kind of dreams, especially those not backed by solid plans and diligence are equivalent to ‘longathroat’, grand theft and larceny! You have to pay your dues because overnight does not happen in one night.

My mechanic, for instance, has an apprentice (like a Jedi padawan from Star Wars) and this apprentice is still quite young but the tenacity with which this chap is picking up the trade, I believe he might own several proper garages before he hits 30! He has started paying his dues, putting in hours a day to learn and understand and later when he blows, bad belle will start to worry some people that are sleeping now. The ability to use our hands to earn a living, artisanship, is a skill we must also never forget; not always Suit&Tie, sometimes bend back and sweat! Regardless of the level of your intellectual education; be a professor or super scholar, there is a certain satisfaction that comes from being able to create or do something tangible with your hands. Even if you want to create something that cannot be touched, there are a million and one fields for you, like music. I in particular have a thing for guitars and my guitar is named Schlum.

A danger, in my opinion, of modernization or westernization as we often call it (why west, why not east, north or south?) is that it tends to make hard work look like a sin. As I said before, people just want easy money; ‘do nothing and make millions’ kind of money. If the great Egyptians and Romans of old were like we are today, who would have built what we now call civilization. Yes I know they had slaves but at least they worked to catch the slaves before the slaves could do the rest of the work.

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We have so much demonised hard work that some people will even be forming ‘bad guy’ to sweep their own rooms *sigh* just filthy. We like to pretend that we never have to do any dirty deeds, always forming fresh, and then some of these ‘fresh bad guys’ wonder why their bank accounts are dusty and collecting cobwebs. Clean up your act; bend your back and sweat! Now, let me tell you a story that will tell you something.

[Story, story…stooory] For the longest time, my father had this newspaper vendor, one of those ones that go from street to street blowing those infamous newspaper horns. I don't even know how to transcribe the sound of that thing, I think it goes *poopu poopu*, lol. There was something special about this vendor; it was a sleight of hand that could easily be missed if one was not very observant because the gentleman carried out his job with a certain degree of poise and panache. Mr Vendor was special because he reminded me always of Blood Diamonds (hmm, the second Leonardo Dicaprio Movie in this piece so far) simply because he was missing a hand. Not a whole hand, just from his right wrist up. Despite his handicap, however, the man marched on day after day, in sun or under rain to deliver the morning papers.

Finally, there is a certain ‘feel good rush’ that can only be felt from sweat. Even if you unscrupulously become as rich as The Wolf of Wall Street, without hard work, your story will remain as tragic as the Titanic’s or that of Romeo and Juliet. We need to Unchain ourselves like Django, but this time from the slavery of laziness, so that we can become as Great as Gatsby not because we work with the Gangs of New York or because we are snitches from The Departed but because we are simply great like J. Edgar, founder of the FBI. 

We need to fly like Aviators above any form of Compulsive Disorder that makes us want to take that devilishly quick route and remember, that the devil’s road only leads to the mad-house on Shutter Island.

So be a Macho Man (or woman), Sweat and feel the Glory!

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[PS: If you are a true Leonardo Dicaprio fan then you will truly understand the last two paragraphs, if you are not, well, then you have a lot of movies to watch, 12 by my count]



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RABID RABBIT – EAT MY FOOT!

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I initially considered calling this piece ‘Warrior Rabbit’ or ‘God of War Rabbit’ but finally I settled for what you can see at the top. I am still, however, a bit conflicted about what it should have been titled, so after having a go at the piece, you can decide for yourself what you would have preferred to call it. 

So rabbits; those cute and cuddly creatures that we all THINK are extremely adorable  - yea right. Have you ever seen one of those things turn into a ferocious monster? Have you ever seen one of those things go wild? Have you ever seen, a rabid rabbit!? No? I didn’t think so. Those fluffy bug eyed creatures can become beastly in the twinkle of an eye and those buck teeth that you think are only for nibbling on vegetables can become more dangerous than Zulu spears! - I kid you not. Then again, how would you know this dark side to creatures that are so small, so cute and so adorable that some of us even have them in our homes? They are somewhat like little children who we like to give carrots when they are good but what we tend to forget unfortunately, is that when they are bad, they need....the stick! 

A friend of mine said to me the other day, "Dude it's like you don't like lil kids mehn" and I laughed and said "Far from it mann". Let me tell you the background to this conversation before you think I am some kind of child hater. We, my friend and I, had just decided to go grab some shawarma from a regular joint (boys no fit dey soak garri everyday nw) and when we got there, some child-ling was, in my opinion, throwing the most annoying tantrum. I think the whole screaming, rolling and beating-back-at-parents episode put an expression on my face and my friend did not miss the look of irritation I was wearing. The rest of the conversation, you already know (Note, this child was too old for this kind of behaviour). 

These days, parents do not seem to really be in control of their kids. Yes I know children will be children but back then, once your mother gave you ‘the look’, you knew all hell would break loose if you as much as breathed noisily; if she heard 'pim'. Today, however, you literally see a child screaming at the top of his or her lungs like a baby goat and even the father will be there - all the while I'm like OMG, his daddy is there too??. Let me just break it down for you like this, my father never beat us or anything like that while we were growing up, my mother was delighted to always 'set us straight' but besides, there was never any need because my brother and I had the righteous fear of God. Kids today, not so much.

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Do you remember Dennis the Menace, that cartoon from way back in the day? The kid with the trademark scruffy, dark hair and evil smirk, the kid wearing a black and red stripped t-shirt; he was the World’s Wildest Boy! Denis was a badly behaved, visually rebellious and uncontrollable school tot who took pride in causing chaos and mayhem, aided by his trusty funny looking dog Gnasher. Denis the Menace is a perfect example of how naughty children turn out when they do not receive the stick; they become even more of a menace! Shun all the modern oyibo ways, kids actually need a little hard love. I am not talking about chasing a child round your compound or yaad (yard) with a broom or some other ungodly object or even plastering infant eyes with pepper - I hear people do these evil acts - I am speaking of a spank of reasonable force every now and again when words alone appear not to be enough. In fact, if you have really read any old English stories or followed a bit of history then you will know that oyibo headmasters back in the day were the kings of cane and koboko.

Sometimes I wonder what really is the cause of the increase in the number of tantrum throwing toddlers I seem to be coming across these days and sometimes I muse to myself that it might just be the names that we give our kids today that are making them go bananas. Names like Phelony, Nevaeh-Hope, Hashtag and in Nigeria in particular, Millionare, SuperStory, Unchangeable. Names like these can really affect a child’s psyche or make other children make fun of that child, leading to a whole nexus of future psychological issues. 

Whatever the cause or causes may be, we are facing a critical problem that needs to be checked. Human beings are social creatures and ought to live together to truly survive and progress as a race but if the basic sense of community and discipline is not learned by the Homo Sapien when it is still young and impressionable then when it is old and stubborn it will only contribute chaos to the world. 

Permit me here to digress further for a second while borrowing our friend the rabbit again. Apart from looking cute and eating carrots, there is something else Oryctolagus cuniculus like to do, they like to multiply *evil smile*. The world’s population is expected to increase to 7.13 billion by 2040 - a 40% increase - we are multiplying like bunnies and I think this could be a problem. This is my opinion because as things stand, the demand we are putting on planet earth is already very high and if you are in doubt then go and research on global warming; polar ice-caps are melting, climate is fluctuating and natural disasters are on the rise. Again massive youth unemployment is another problem we are facing and yet we are looking to add more rugrats?? Whoever is planning to be doing any unnecessary mathematics should please stop it now and apply some birth control please; guiding the world’s population may help to curb some global issues.

[Back to the Matter] Your pimp hand needs to be strong! You have to practice that left-back-hand on a tree at least twice a day, morning and night, until you can comfortably take down a tree with just one slap. Then, even a side glance from you would put the fear of God in children and keep them in order. Dennis the what? Gerrarahia! Nga machi gi nti! Igbo for I wee treat your ₤cUk up! Children, kids, kpikin dem need beating! This is why we of the 1980s/90s generation all love our Nigerian mothers and that is particularly why #YouKnowYourMumIsNigerian has been trending for the longest time on social media, those women beat the crap out of us but still, the love is strong! 

Now if you have been blessed with stubborn or troublesome progeny, do not fret nor be disappointed, just apply ‘the look’ and ‘the left hand of god’ and everything will be alright - never use the right hand, it does not instil the same fear of reckless abandon as does the left. Again, remembering that even Dennis the Menace saved his town from potential disaster once and also the fact that he was brilliant at mechanics, I believe there is always hope even for rabid rabbits but first they have to eat my foot! Nonsense!

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[P.S.1] I love little kids and I don’t eat them for breakfast

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