There are very few places on earth and in the 21st century where an administration could announce casually, via a letter to the legislature, that she has decided to borrow $30 billion in foreign loans - from the IMF, the World Bank, China, etc - and not cause a record-breaking earthquake.
Where I live, a Federal Minister caused a Category 5 hurricane by spending $3,700 on transportation for twenty trips. Imagine if the government of such a country were to announce a borrowing agenda of $30 billion?
A decision that could mortgage the future of the next three generations deserves months and months of patriotic oppositional scrutiny and engagement. Every voice, every stakeholder, every fabric of such a society should have no other preoccupation until the aspiring borrowers in the Executive have been subjected to months and months of grueling national scrutiny and engagement.
I had thought that the National Assembly would treat that request like a bombshell and that would shake Abuja to its very roots. Nothing doing. The National Assembly's response was Saraki's Geneva hobnobbing and Dino Melaye's So You Think You Can Dance video.
I had thought that the opposition would robustly engage the proposition. But, heck, the opposition is Fayose and co. Translation: no cerebral opposition today in Nigeria.
I had thought that the Nigerian media would... for where?
I had thought that the Nigerian people would... for where?
How do people complain about despotism when, time after time, they facilitate the appearance of same with non-engagement or permanent engagement with trifle?
If President Buhari waltzes to $30 billion in loans, it would look despotic. But that would have been because at every level and in every sphere of our lives, his proposal has not been engaged.
Somebody says: I want to mortgage your future.
He doesn't hear from NASS.
He doesn't hear from the media.
He doesn't hear from the opposition.
He doesn't hear from Labour and other unions.
He doesn't hear from national associations.
He doesn't hear from you.
By, you, I mean you.
And the only reason he hasn't heard from you is because you have been busy with other national priorities: The size of Miss Anambra's cucumber.
Who Bobrisky sleeps with - male or female.
How to send Rahama Sadau to join Isioma Daniel in exile.
Miss Anambra, Bobrisky, and Rahama Sadau are all millennials. Their future will be settled once President Buhari gets his $30 billion loan: no future. They will have no future in Nigeria.
My generation lost its future three decades ago when Babangida started his dalliance with the IMF and SAPs. We never recovered.
But, at least, thirty years after our future was mortgaged and ruined by foreign loans - and the domino effects therefrom - we are still able to contemplate and point at the ruins that is Nigeria. Some of us are pointing at the rubble from safe locations abroad. Many are sitting on top of the rubble at home and sending us selfies of rubble to warn against coming back home. Home and abroad, my generation has rubble evidence of Nigeria to show for dalliance with loans and SAPs.
I am not so sure that Miss Anambra, Bobrisky, and Rahama Sadau will be so lucky. President Buhari will get his loan. But thirty years from now, I am not so sure that today's millennials will have rubble to show as the report card of the loans. I think there will be nothing. I think there will be oblivion.
Therein lies some justification for the people's fascination with sex and sexuality in the shape of Miss Anambra, Bobrisky, and Rahama Sadau.
Maybe Nigerians are saying that nations pass away, sex never does.
Sex will outlive Nigeria.
After we have buried Nigeria under the pile of her insurmountable contradictions and self-inflicted wounds, people will still be banging.
North and south will pass away in Nigeria but sex will not pass away.
