by Macdonald Ukah

         “The pathetic thing about fake scandals is that they remain scandals anyway.”

Despite being only 22, I suffer to a considerable extent from a benevolent malady that is more associated with the older ones. It is called NOSTALGIA. It stalks me daily and I want to believe it stalks the lives of many besides me. In riveting as well as comparatively mundane aspects of life, there’s a strong yearning for a reenactment of the trappings of the past. But what’s all of this cryptic talk about, anyway? Why have I invited you to take this readership excursion and to endure the utter lousiness of my pen? It is the product of a narrative that is by no means uncommon.

As I write, a close friend is wishing away the probable emergence of a scenario that could threaten his relationship with a highly adored and adorable young woman. At this point, Instagram, Twitter and the Blackberry Messenger interface, all three creations of ingenious intellectual exertion possessing the capability to involuntarily pull out one’s closet skeletons and circulate the unsavoury details with celerity are his friendly enemies. I’d spare you the details lest I betray my friend.

Technology certainly has betrayed Chidinma Ekile, the petite sonorous damsel who has stolen the hearts of many and who’s been in the news in recent weeks for all the wrong reasons. The pathetic thing about fake scandals is that they remain scandals anyway. They would continue to stalk. It matters not that I am convinced (at least I want to be) of her innocence. The mere existence of a smear campaign can do sufficient damage and as she advances her career, she may have to continue to convince the cynically disbelieving of her innocence.

It is a crucial reminder to us that technology can betray you by conjuring up skeletons and stashing them in your closet; you need not commit any misdeeds to be betrayed. Chidinma’s stock in trade is music, another beautiful element of creation which complexion today triggers nostalgic yearnings in many. Again as I write, I’m flipping through radio stations, hoping they would help me animate some of the nostalgia. It has not captured all of the available territory; it may not even have captured half. But cacophony masquerading as music is pretty ubiquitous these days. Fortunately, there’ still a lot of content in today’s music that reminds us of the soothers of the not-so-distant past. Chidinma represents the likes disposed to this endeavour of gap-bridging, if she does not stray.

We can go on about the points of nostalgia ad nauseum. But there is this didactic lesson I learned from a not-too-exceptional work of fiction a few years ago that I intend to share, musings from a scene in the deceased Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. A murderous African dictator had just touched down at the JFK International Airport, New York, poised to address the United Nations General Assembly and consummate an elaborate con designed to enable him evade international justice.

As he was being ferried through the Brooklyn Bridge (or was it the Verrazzano Narrows?) to Manhattan, location of the UN Headquarters in New York in the company of his Dutch mercenary Chief Security Officer and a detachment of US Secret Service agents responsible for his safety on American shores, the fictional Dr. Edmund Zuwane reflected on the physical transformation that New York had undergone since his previous visit 30 years before.

His CSO, attempting to leaven his talk with relevance reminded, “30 years, Dr. Zuwane. Things change.”

“They diminish!” came the terse reply.

Obviously, there was something immaterial that the politician had prioritized, which I still conjecture about. One thing was however clear: he was not impressed by the infrastructural transformation.

Perhaps he was decrying a growing sense of material superficiality, which seems ever present these days. He was the story’s villain. That did not keep me from catching up to the profundity of the message. Nostalgia is certainly not a quality exclusively reserved for old curmudgeons. It is available to all who decry the increasing daily assault on our collective sense of innocence.

I am not the delusional type that is not open to change. My philosophical leaning is only partially conservative and my conservatism is waning, hopefully not too rapidly. But regarding many aspects of societal life, there is a strong overwhelming sense of a better past. Those feelings I now project.

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Macdonald Ukah is a graduate of Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is currently a Senior Research Assistant at Edward Kingston Associates, Lagos.

30 Days, 30 Voices series is an opportunity for young Nigerians from across the world to share their stories and experiences – creating a meeting point where our common humanity is explored.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija