Political magic has become a staple diet of governance in postcolonial Africa. Why tell a simple lie when a more complicated lie will suffice? Why remonstrate with the truth when you know that dispelling and dispersing it with a canister of lies is a more effective and direct solution?
When a whole Minister of Information, a man who is not always known for fidelity to the truth or loyalty to inconvenient facts, begins to moan and mutter about being bullied by the press, you begin to wonder whether the Oro-born master of dissimulation has taken the biggest flight of fancy from orotund reality. To be tormented by self-created fantasies is worse than being tormented by harsh facts.
Still, we need to be very careful about this business of Diezani’s bra. A woman’s bra often contains explosives carefully tucked away. African big men do not joke with their women or their bra for that matter. In 1975, the then Major Mathieu Kerekou murdered his deputy, a certain Captain Michel Aikpe, on the grounds that he was found frolicking with the First Lady. As Gbolabo Ogunsanwo was to put it in his celebrated column with unaccustomed indelicacy, the late Beninois captain rode to his death on the buttocks of Madame Kerekou.
Mobutu was even known to be more cruel and callous, often forcibly acquiring as concubines the wives of the men he had killed in a ghastly ritual of total subjugation. After butchering one of his wives on the grounds of infidelity, Idi Amin Dada opened the door for her children to view the grisly remains of their mother.
But it is not an entirely African phenomenon. In revolutionary Russia after Stalin beheld the wife of Nikolai Bukharin— his Politburo rival and intellectual superior— in all her rapturous beauty and chic sophistication, the cruel and wily Georgian cooed: “Comrade Nikolai, even here you managed to out-general me!!” It was the death sentence of one of the most gifted men thrown up by the Russian revolution.
After the collection of bra purportedly belonging to Diezani was unveiled by the federal authorities in all their sassy obscenities, Okon roused himself to vigorous action.
“Oga, I wan quickly reach Abuja make man bid for dem Diezani bra. Dem say if man dey smell dem, money go come out yafunyafun. As I no get money like dem Yoruba boys who dey whack am, na good chance be dis one”, the mad boy snorted.
“Just shut up. Is it a fool like you they want there?” snooper screamed at the mad boy.
“Oga no be like dat. Dis kontri no be for Yoruba people alone”, the mad boy retorted. It was at this point that Baba Lekki cut in.
“Okon, I smell a rat “, the old contrarian scoffed.
“Baba which kin rat be dat one? Na Yoruba women dey carry rat inside dem bra”, the crazy boy snorted.
“The bra na from Victoria Secret”, the old man crowed.
“Baba na lie be dat one. Victoria no get secret. Na everyone dey wire dat one”, Okon shouted. It was at this point that snooper drove the mad duo out of the house.
The Nation
