by Feyi Fawehinmi
Old editions are here. It remains what it has always been — things I heard and observed during a recent trip to Nigeria. If I’m beginning to sound like a curmudgeon, you must forgive me — I’m getting old.
1 There’s not much more one can write about the power situation in Nigeria. But a story I heard made me rather sober. A mall with say, 10 shops charges the tenants a service charge for diesel to provide them with electricity. In the last one year, the price of diesel has gone from something like N150/litre to N260/litre. The weakest link — the shop that was already struggling — throws in the towel and leaves the mall. The increased diesel bill now has to be split among 9 tenants instead of 10. This triggers the collapse of the next weakest link…and so on. Till the mall loses all its tenants and is empty.
I don’t know how many of such stories are playing out in the economic crisis across the country but this one made pause for reflection.
2. Took an Uber on the day I got in and noticed the driver had an American accent. Prodded him a bit and he told me he moved back home in 2010 and was working with a global technology firm. The firm was struggling so in October last year, they merged the Nigerian office with the South African one and fired everyone in Lagos. He’s been looking for work since then and so decided to keep body and soul together by driving an Uber.Had a really cheery disposition though and said he was looking hard for a new job. Was confident he would get something soon. I hope he does.
3. Inflation does some really funny things. In normal circumstances, your car loses value the moment you drive it out of the car showroom. It is very unusual and almost unheard of for the value of a car to ‘appreciate’ over time. But this is what is happening in Nigeria. 2 different people told me that if they sold their cars today (second hand), they would make more money than they paid for it (brand new) just around a year ago, if only in nominal terms.
4. Overheard:
My 10 year old nephew asked his mum to sponsor him to be class governor. So she asked him what he needed the money for. He said he wants to buy gifts for his classmates like pencils. His mum told him ‘but that is bribery’. He said no its not — governors give it to people too and people who give win.
5. On the journey from Lagos to Ondo, I was amazed at the number of checkpoints on the Shagamu — Ore stretch of the road. The Police, FRSC and Customs each had their own checkpoints and sometimes within a few metres of each other.
They obviously do not like to share their loot because what I found most fascinating is that there was not a single checkpoint that had a mix of any of these forces. If these guys cannot even coordinate their harassment, what chance is there that they will remit their revenues to the government?
6. Henry Francis Lyte wrote Abide With Me at a time when he was battling tuberculosis. He probably felt at the time that everyday would be his last and thus wrote the song to steel himself for the great unknown that death is. I like the hymn a lot as it is a reminder that we are never really alone even when we head into the unknown.
What I’m trying to say is that you don’t really need to add drums when you are singing this hymn in church. The piano is enough. RCCG please take note. Not every song is for dancing.
7. Is feminism contagious? If you have a lot of feminist friends do you start to see the world differently after a while? Who knows?
What I do know is that at the funeral of my father in law, I noticed the humiliation of women that goes with these things in the name of tradition very strongly. It was jarring. It was intense and those administering the humiliation seemed to revel in it. People seem to come up with various ways to police a woman’s movement in the name of this tradition.
Now, on one hand, I agree that traditions and rituals around dying are important — it’s just the way we humans are wired. Here’s the great Siddharta Mukherjee making the point:
It’s not death that worries us,” he continues. “It’s dying. The questions people ask — will there be pain? What will I feel like? They’re not asking what will it be like to be dead. They’re asking you what is the process like? We’re culturally bereft in that sphere still. And I think we have become even more so. Our rituals of dying have decreased. And when you remove some of the traditional rituals around dying we need to replace them with other things . . . that allow a good death
But I find myself suspicious of traditions that seem to prey on those who are weak or vulnerable. Moreso when such traditions are not written down anywhere and are open to wide-ranging interpretation. At the graveside, my mother in law who puts the ‘s’ in stoic, lost her composure for a minute and spoke to her husband’s coffin loudly. The response from a couple of people around was to shout her down and ask her to be ‘calm’. It took all of my self-restraint to stop me shouting ‘she’s a human being!’.
Morning after the funeral, we went to see her first thing in the morning. Next thing — at 6.15am! — I hear someone downstairs beating a drum very loudly. I run to the balcony and start shouting in Yoruba ‘who the hell is beating a drum down there at this time in the morning?!’ My wife and someone else quickly ask me to stop that it’s the ‘tradition’ and that they will come make that racket every morning for the next 7 days.
As we were leaving a few minutes later, of course the drummers started pestering me for money. I was so irritated, I practically threw the money at the guy. He naturally collected it without even saying thank you.
I could have paid them not to beat that damned drum once for the next 7 days. Tradition indeed. There’s always a monetary waiver for them.
8. On Friday 24th, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu aka ‘Aketi’ was inaugurated as the governor of Ondo state. As usual, I was minding my business when I overheard this:
Aketi’s friends kidnapped the Accountant General and his deputy and took them to Ibadan until Thursday 5pm when they couldn’t possibly sign any payments again. They had planned to spend the Paris Club refunds that came in on Monday or so.
Politics in Nigeria remains a contact sport.
9. Ile-Oluji in Ondo is a small town — the 2006 census put its population at just under 180,000. Given the gravitational pull that Lagos exerts on the South West, I doubt the town’s population is much bigger than that today. From an economic perspective, these small towns can be depressing.
There is no industry of note in the town (with the exception of cocoa perhaps) and the whole place seems to rely on burials, in particular, to keep it going — a kind of income redistribution programme. It’s not hard to see people descending on the town every weekend for one party or the other. You, the visitors, thus become just business to the people of the town, no different from the people who came last week — just spend as much money as you can.
This economic stimulus is contingent on people dying regularly and at a ‘good’ age, of course. There is no data on life expectancy in Ile-Oluji but if it helps, I glanced at the headstones at the cemetary and saw a low of 71 years and a high of 88 years. Not bad. If people are dying before they are 50, it will be very hard to throw parties to celebrate their death.
What can one do to infuse life into the economy of small towns in Nigeria? A discussion with some friends on this issue caused one person to offer this answer — universities. As someone who attended a university in the otherwise dead town of Ago-Iwoye, I intuitively feel he’s correct. A university in a small town is transformative. But it is clearly not sustainable. Nevertheless, governors continue to play this university economic empowerment game. They either establish a new one (Ondo now has 3) or they move an old one to a new site (usually in the governor’s hometown).
10. Here is a video I shot of what I will call a vulcanised cow.
https://youtu.be/8TBpsETYgUc
Ever since I’ve known my left hand from my right hand, this is the way this has been done in Nigeria — you blow up the cow and then you shave off the hair. Only thing that has changed is that they now use a vulcaniser’s pump to blow it up. I recall many years ago that some guy would simply blow it up with his mouth.
But why is it done this way? In other places, they simply use a clipper to get rid of whatever hair is on the body of the cow even when its still alive. But this might not work given how thin Nigerian cows always look.
I feel like it’s just something that is done this way…because this is the way it has always been done. Maybe the new way to do it will involve the shaving guy losing his job. In a country with excess and cheap labour, there are many reasons to delay the use of technology to solve problems.
11. Staying in Ile-Oluji. Where might one find excellence or high standards in such a place? St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral, that’s where. As we entered the church, I glanced around and did not find a single bulb not working. Some bulb sockets were empty but all the ones in place were working. I did not see any broken windows either and the walls had a nice coat of paint on them that did not look like it had just been done.
Yes, the carpet has seen better days but even in its dotage, it was clearly regularly cleaned. It also had nice stained glass paintings set against a high marble wall.
The service started right on time at 10am and the first part was done exactly one hour later. The Anglican seminary is also clearly still functioning well as the (young) officiating ministers all carried out the service in a very disciplined manner. Ok, the Vicar lost his composure for a bit when a large donation from the family to the church was handed to him. But he quickly gathered himself together and declared that, being a Friday, the cash will be deposited into the church’s bank account as soon as the service was over.
At the graveside, the pallbearers got carried away and thought it was a good idea to collect some more money before finally lowering the coffin into the grave. This drew a very angry and stinging rebuke from the Vicar who asked how they could have thought it sensible to solicit money there and then.
Maybe my expectations were low. But it was useful to see the church being cut from a seemingly different (and better) cloth than its environment. Otherwise, what is the point?
12. Overheard
This one is small. For Ayo Balogun, once you spray her N1 million, she will call your name in her next album
Also
I know some boys who break their bottles (Jack Daniels, Hennessy etc) after drinking them at parties. You know all these people who come round your table to collect bottles as if they are clearing up…they take away the bottles and go and refill them with something else. That was how someone was once bought fake Jack Daniels at Ikoyi Club.
If you see people doing this at a party. Maybe they are not spoilt mad brats afterall. They are merely doing their bit to fight adulteration.
13. There’s one other good thing about small towns like Ile-Oluji. The food is very cheap. 6 of us went out to eat at what must surely be one of the top top restaurants in the town. When we finished and the bill came, it was a grand total of N6,500. Or £12 +VAT as we call it in Blighty.
14. The intensity of the begging was quite something though. At the funeral reception, some guy came to meet me and said
Iyawo mi bi mo a de ti ni owo ikomo
I was slightly taken aback by this. Your wife just gave birth and the goal of your crowdfunding is not to buy baby food but to throw a naming ceremony party? Whatever. I told him to come back to me later.
He let me be for about 30 minutes before he accosted me again to remind me of my solemn promise to him. I dipped my hand in my pocket and pulled out N1,000. He took it and went away. Some 30 minutes later, he returned and started pestering me for money again. I asked if I hadn’t just given him money. He said
Ehn, 1 le fun mi
That is, I could not possibly have given him ‘only’ N1,000 when his wife just gave birth and he needed money for the naming ceremony.
Right inside the church, some guy came to me and asked for money that he wanted to eat. I didn’t want to bring out money in front of people in church so I just walked away. Next thing he slapped my arm in a way that said ‘didn’t you hear when I asked you for money or do you want to be unfortunate here today?’
And so on. I allow that the gini-coefficient is off the charts — what is nothing to me might be the difference between someone having a decent meal or going hungry. Still, this is just sad stuff to see.
15. We stayed in a hotel in Ile-Oluji that had ‘Jesus’ in its name. I asked if they had a bar where I could buy drinks and before I could finish, they proudly told me they don’t sell alcohol there.
Good on them. But I was only slightly amused given that the same hotel staff had been watching Big Brother Nigeria non-stop and discussing all the ‘bad things’ the housemates did the night before rather excitedly.
16. I got caught on the wrong end of Emefiele’s latest forex policy shenanigans. As I came to spend money., you’ll permit me hoping to get the best possible exchange rate for my Pounds of Sterling. I went to Eko Hotel on Wednesday night and got quoted N580 to £1. My wife who got into Lagos a week before me had changed money at N630 to £1. So, naturally, I got angry and took my Elizabeth Reginas across the road where I got a quote of N560 to £1.
This was why I left Nigeria after only a few days — I was getting poorer by the hour. I am happy to do my bit for the country but the thing with volunteering your head to crack open the coconut…
Fare thee well, Ebenezer Olatidoye Akinniranye — honest as the day is long. Lived once, lived well and when he had had enough, he took his exit. A bit abrupt, but the nature of these things is that even with a 6-month notice, you’ll never be ready anyway.
He was of a generation of men that were ‘cursed’ to never retire. He had people living free in his house in Ile-Oluji and in Lagos. He was still taking care of people half his age or less. Doling out money to this person, paying for that person to look after their health. The needs are endless and by virtue of even attaining a middle-class lifestyle, you carry the weight of responsibility for all your life. This is what passes for a social security in Nigeria afterall.
I used to work in an area that had a lot of pensioners living there. It used to be a sport with my friend counting Range Rovers everytime we went out to get lunch. Or in the evening when we were walking to the carpark, we would walk past pensioners laughing as they queued to enter a tour bus taking them to the ‘panto’ or Bingo. Because they don’t have a care in the world, pensioners in Britain are balling.
There’s no deeper story here. I just think about this and often wonder how, for a 6 hour flight, what it means to be a pensioner takes a 180 degree turn.
FF
P.S No, TWOTS does not yet have a sponsor. But I do have friends and one of them just opened the place below. Go try it out if you’re in Lagos. I think you’ll like it.
