On the following lines are stories of spectacular successes and spectacular failures and flops of 2007. There were bungling of anticorruption fight, regulatory meddling and legislative inertia, drama in the house of madness, election, selection and senseless killings. Put on you sit belt, relax and enjoy this bumpy ride through the year as we get ready for the madness of 2008.
I
What a quasi-stable year
There were booms and busts
There was scheming and conniving
As the power-thirsting villain
The civilian dictator shamelessly bowed out
After a botched third term
Leaving behind a mess
An oversized and meticulously crafted dragons
Incredibly strong and dangerously intelligent
This can’t happen here again
Well,
So we thought
If it does we will fight
Or someone else will fight for us
But it happened
Something we have anticipated
There was an election
Sorry, selection
The result,
Entrenchment of political bankruptcy
Egocentric political aids
Chronic brainwash of the masses
And everyone was disappointed
Someone tried to cry though
A whimpering cry
Then we all went to sleep
II
Night will offer a natural cover for darkness
But not for Iwu and cohorts
We were treated as an object of fun and ridicule
Acceptance of failure was impossible
And controversy was our constant companion
Ah
If life was ever so simple?
But we know it is not
The economy still repels investment
So we have stagnation
With unpaid pension arrears
Pangs of hunger hammering infants
Educational institutions rotten and begging for help
III
We crawled sluggishly forward
Like a tortoise carrying a house
Bugged down by ministerial aids
Sycophant-like shelf
Hunting for squirrel to diffuse a quarrel?
The unemployed
Seeing the bareness of job offers
Took scour in the churches next door
With human spirits
Filled with wine rather than spirits
Masquerading as holy spirits
A new dynamic sense of spirituality?
IV
There were mild dramas
As EFCC finally summoned courage to scratch some bulls
As the judiciary castrated some he-goats
Cleaning out the disbelief, anger and the pains
That reverberated in my head
But not much has changed
The scavengers are still in control
Then the pungent smell from the untouchables
The Ubas, Adedibus, Atikus, OBJs, IBBs, Odilis, Igbinebions
Just a hint of rot from the endless list of cabals
But bad enough to make one sneeze
The air smelled like a burning oil pipeline
Then burning flesh
Then blood
V
Etteh finally resigned
Raucous laughter soon responded
To exchange of jokes and anecdote
Country dwellers listen with mock astonishment
To accounts of events from the House of Madness
City dwellers slapped their thigh
At exaggerated expression of rural earthiness
Corruption
Ex-governors and their loot
Drama at EFCC and office of AGF
Corruption in the fight against corruption?
Something about these seems sinister
It all stinks
Their actions black and filthy
Its depth impossible to fathom
With corruption, everyone pays
Even the poor and the unemployed
VI
The phone rang
“The president’s nose”
“What about his nose?”
“It’s true”
“It’s false”
“His moral character stands very high”
“Yet, he communes with the untouchables and the sore evils”
Click and the line went dead
So, the debate stopped again
One day,
We will wake up and find ourselves dead
It is then that we will
Cover our mouths
And cry out in pains
Until then,
This present insanity may continue
Merry Christmas Nigerians
Am already looking forward to the madness of 2008
