You are sometimes best advised to keep out of fights between wives and husbands because you could end up as the alligator pepper with which they chew their cola nut of peace if you attempt playing the mediator between them. This caveat may not be as applicable to any other adventure as it is to dealing with the Nigerian disparate prepositions.

   I have witnessed, like everybody else, in this forum and elsewhere, how belligerent and vituperate we can get with each other when we disagree, and we almost always do, on regional, ethnical, ethical, political, religious matters and what have you. In fact an outsider must be at pains trying to imagine the prospects of a united Nigeria given our attitude towards our institutions and ourselves. But it is exactly at this point that many such atheists meet with their doom.

   Nigerians can mess with themselves, but don’t mess with them, especially if you are exotic to this unique fold. We eat just about every food on our table as long as it was cooked and served by our own, maybe grouse here and there about little salt, too much pepper, bland and rotten ingredients, etc, but eat and smile we do as long as it is served us by a Nigerian or a purporting friend.

   The devil may care about our random and unabashed wind breaking exercises sequel to the chronic flatulence we incur from these peculiar Nigerian cuisines and we don’t give a hoot about who is complaining. If you don’t like it, blame it on any of our institutions, NITEL, NEPA, NEC, FEDECO, NECON, NADECO, EFCC, whatever they all stand for, blame it on a political party, on our schools, public or private sector, one folk group or the other and if you can’t indict any of those, go hang the president, but just leave us out of it, none of our fault, okay!

   We might close an eye if you pointed an accusing finger at, say, five percent or so of Nigerians. Most of them that dwell on that top floor are alien Nigerians who are culpable for all our calamities anyway. But don’t dare go beyond the forty percent mark because then you’ll be contemptuously including the real we, the hardworking, ingenuous, never-stepped-on-an-ant, progress oriented masses of Nigerians strewn across the Globe, altruistically changing the world and neglecting our own home. How dare you accuse us of any debaucheries?

   When you go that far, you touch our soul, you overstep the bounds, you burst our tolerance threshold and you incur the wrath of a hundred and fifty million Nigerians without exception. Yes, we are a proud people; we shall rise up from our gutters, from our boltholes and citadels and we’ll walk over you. If you are one of us the best thing that can happen to you is to be ostracized and forgotten. Otherwise, we’ll get you if we want you, no matter your hide out, and if it means forced repatriation in a big black box, we’ll get you. Trust us!

   But if you are an outlandish offender, only God can save you. Go ask Ms. Dianne Abbot or CNN or other such offenders, they’ll obviously tell you how it feels to overstep our tolerance limit. And if you are an alien protégé of ours with a perceived proclivity for dragging our international reputation through the mire we simply give you a bad name and let the Hague pick you up when we are done with you, chikina!

   We’ll kidnap you if you mess up with our oilrigs and hide you for as long as it takes for you to settle. We can also fouronenine you if you get too uppity with us, after all your antecedents and you, in cahoots with those inside aliens on our top floor, orchestrated the grand larceny that has kept us in penury. We’ll throw all our differences aside and our latent unity flames up instantaneously. We’ll become rabid jingoists and in one huge voice we’ll ‘yab’ you from the air, land and sea. When you have been thoroughly bashed and flattened on the floor we’ll return to our favorite part-time, self-adulation. You can’t get more narcissistic as a people, can you?

   And then for a breather, warriors do need that once in a while; somebody comes up and says something nice and flattering about us, you should see how fast all those sohon sojas, ilovenigerians and gwobentashis in our midst would sheathe their swords, especially if that person were a young and beautiful undergrad, lol. In a rhapsodic frenzy they’d compose songs of praise and implore Allah’s protection for her and even propose her nomination as our first female president, waiyo Allah! There can be no greater nationalists that Nigerians, I dare say.

   If you are still in doubt about our ultranationalist traits, let me bring it nearer with the world cup that has just ended. Didn’t the world cup end for us as soon as our beloved Green Eagles failed to pick up their ticket to Germany? If the Nigeria Village Square were your only source of information would you have known that such a great football event had come and passed? You see, we were not involved so the one or two articles hazarded by some football aficionados among us received little or no attention. I bet if the Green Eagles were in the final race NVS would’ve been blown apart with explosive football comments in the last four weeks. Who said we are no jingoists? I beg, make una carry go jare!    

   The core of the matter is that we love ourselves so much we could smother each other to death with love any day. All the genocides we have witnessed in Nigeria till now were perpetrated, without exception, out of sheer love; you know that kind of I love you, you must be my wife till death parts us stuff.  But after all said and nothing is done, our future remains very bleak, even 2007 will come and go and we shall still be wallowing in our chronic uncertainties, disappointing our children just like our fathers disappointed us. But let somebody dare tell us in our face that we are a nation of never-do-wells, oh, oh, oh! Someone get the WHO, they know how to make us smile.     

Robot  # 1 | 11.07.2006 07:11

You are sometimes best advised to keep out of fights between wives and husbands beca...Read the full article.

behindtheclouds  # 2 | 13.07.2006 05:07

i love u too

Nkiru  # 3 | 18.07.2006 16:57

Thank you my brother oooo, you always tells it as it is ooooo. I like your style jareeee. You are very creative, thought provoking and stimulating. You put effort and critically think through what you write. It shows in your articles and your book, “A Biafran Odyssey.” You have a trademark in your writing style and your articles branches off from the daily wo/men/political gossips in the NVS. You write esoterically. That’s refreshing oooo. Thanks for giving another view of Nigeria. Your articles always require someone with critical and creative thinking and you write splendidly. Thanks. Keep up the good work ooooooooo. Always your fan reader. I always sort your article first.

Blessing  # 4 | 19.07.2006 15:06

Thank you my brother for the article. It shows that you are a very methodological, creative and critical thinker. Good job. Keep it up!!!