‘Now that journalists have left and all of us are politicians, we should be able to speak the truth. If we will be honest with ourselves, we all know how we rig elections in this country. We compromise security agencies, we pay the electoral officials and party agents while on the eve of the elections we merely distribute logistics all designed to buy the votes…’ That was the late President Umaru Musa ‘Yaradua speaking! The quote came from Segun Adeniyi’s book, Power, Politics and Death. Those must be the ‘shortcomings’ that he was talking about at his inauguration. Even though we all hailed his honesty when he used it in reference to the elections that brought him to power, I was thinking ‘shortcomings’ was too short a word for such fundamental aberration. But those are the lies politicians tell themselves so they can call it winning and ride the ‘victory’ onto the thrones where they rule us. And they are not alone.

A lecturer goes to class to teach for two hours. He is not prepared for the lecture because he believes the students will not miss anything anyway. In the first place, he is using a 30-year-old curriculum that recommends a 40-year-old text. He goes to class 20 minutes late, takes 15 minutes to settle down, dictates from the textbook for another 25, and uses the last one-hour to ‘chitchat’ with the students. In the end he sets examination questions, finds a way of giving the students ‘area of concentration’ and bends the result to reflect a good performance. He will tell himself he has done well for the students and for himself.

A doctor will go to a hospital. He will sit for some hours and attend to patients. From the kinds of illnesses that they present with, he can see the ravages of abject poverty and illiteracy. He can sense the hopelessness in these patients. He can taste it. He knows that whatever drug he will prescribe for these patients, they will not be able to afford it. He will prescribe anyway. It is not his problem. He knows that the equipment needed to help in proper diagnosis is not available, he will refer anyway. He knows that there are more patients on the queue, he will leave anyway. He will go to his house to enjoy the fruits of his labour with his family, telling himself that the rest is not his problem, anyway.

A banker goes to the office before 7am leaving his wife or ‘the driver’ with the job of dropping the children at school. The children were sleeping when he left. He spends the day working, too busy to call home even during the break time.  He comes in around 7 – 8pm by which time the kids are already in bed. He eats, showers and goes to bed. The only quality hours he spends with his family is in Church on Sunday if he is a Christian. The Muslims do not even get to go to the Jumuat mosques on Fridays with their wards. They go from the office to the Mosque and back to the office. No time for children, no time for wife, no time for relations and no time for friends. But the banker tells himself that all is well, all is fine. After all, he is providing for their upkeep. His wife rides the best cars. He sends money to his parents, ‘what else do they need?’ And by the time his child calls him ‘uncle’, he will shrug and go back to work.

A civil servant goes to work and contractors come to his table. The contractor has just completed a job and the officer is to certify that the job has been done well for the contractor to be paid. The officer says the file is missing, the job is substandard, the goods are fake, etc. The contractor, looks one way and another, and then passes a bulging envelope under the table. Suddenly, the missing file gets found, the job turns superb and the goods are original. The officer tells himself, ‘Where you work is where you eat.’ How else can he get his share of the national cake? He goes home and feeds on that while his salary accumulates in the bank.

I went to Mr. Biggs with my family for a little outing the other day. Counting cups of ice cream, burgers (chicken and beef), fiesta, fried rice and chicken, etc, you can estimate the thousands that went down the drain. On emerging from the air-conditioned interiors, my black skin was assaulted by the hot sun outside. I had already clicked the door unlocked before reaching it. My family and I were rushing into the car to escape the heat. As soon as the doors were locked, and the ignition turned on, my child pushed the AC button and selected ‘high cool’.  ‘

It is so hot,’ my little girl was already complaining. That was when I noticed we were surrounded: a middle-aged woman with five kids, one of them strapped on her back. They were dirty, haggardly and sick.

They were by the windows. Two of the younger ones were pointing at the polythene containing some of the takeaways and then touching their mouths. I began fumbling for a ‘small change’. Right inside me, I was thinking of N20. I just wanted to leave the place. I found one, rolled down the glass, gave them, rolled it up and left. N20 for six people. Six human beings. What lie was I telling myself?