Tag Archives: Nigeria

issues

BARBECUED BINGO: MY ISSUES WITH ‘DOGMEATISM’

Let me start by saying I don’t eat dog meat, I have never eaten it (I hope so), and do not imagine any instance of my eating it in the future, except of course a terrible war breaks out and man must survive. Fair enough. But the more probing question will be if I support the consumption of this highly controversial delicacy, which by the way, the Chinese consume far more than Nigerians, if we were to go by numbers. The very mention of dog meat as a delicacy produces “yuk!” as a response, or a feverishly face rumpling grin that is typical of drinking Epson Salt. But dog meat is an increasingly popular delicacy in many parts of Nigeria and indeed the world, therefore no disdaining approach will change anything.

I grew up in Calabar with my brother, and we both knew that one thing will never grace our cuisine-polished tongues; dog meat. Down an adjoining street to ours was Mr. Friday, who operated a joint notorious for a large sign posted outside the shack with the tag “404 vs Palm Wine – Come One Come All.” We detested the people who went in there and kind of saw them as vile men, lacking control of their bellies. What made it worse for us was that every Fridays, a pickup truck would pass by loaded with a huge cage containing over twenty frail looking dogs that were probably aware of their approaching demise. Then a few hours later the whole street will be stinking of dog blood, and most people probably do not know that it has a foul odor. These all made it absolutely impossible to sit at table with a hot serving of barbecued dog meat.
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issues

AND LEAD US NOT INTO STUPIDITY…

Anyone seen the movie/documentary “Age of Stupid”? Every time I think of Nigeria my mind zaps back to the film, which coincidentally was partly shot in Nigeria. The basic storyline is that someone sits in the devastated future (2055) and watches archive footage from 2008 and wonders why no one did anything to stop the calamity that befell mankind. As extreme as they may have characterized the central thesis of their flick, what draws immediate consideration is the point we always have the opportunity to change things and predetermine the course which we may take. But what always makes history is the fact that we do nothing until our writers have to laboriously record on the pages of our sad histories what grave mistakes we have always made.

We always have the chance to make things right when things go wrong. This is an ability and privilege given to all men wherever they may be. But when it comes to collective decision making, too many cooks will spoil the broth, therefore we entrust that ability to certain men to make choices on our behalf. Well, this is predicated on the hope that the ones we choose to make such decisions are truly them that represent the nearest possible values which we all cherish. So when the ship of State appears to hit high waters, and the terrain becomes rough, we trust that the captains on board will grab the wheels and twist and turn until we steer clear of danger. But when the boat is rocked, and our captains are shocked, I refer to this as “a plot of stupidity”.

For a while, I have refrained from writing about the utter mess going on in Nigeria because I cannot always make a clear case from a point of anger. I have tried to coat my emotions by creating punditry out of the myriad of commentaries on the matter. I have watched also as many Nigerians have managed the ongoing by mockery and mild jocosity, all in an effort to wade off the immense stress that such nonsense can mount on the human mind. From one case to another, Nigeria has featured severally in the international media as playing the case of the preposterously bizarre-like character that you can always find in plots of revenge seeking movies. While we are dealing with the bad public make up we have just been slapped with as a terrorist nation, we are busy generating bad breath internally as though an ugly face is not bad enough; it must be matched with foul odour from the inside.
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issues

RECALLING THE KING OF NIGERIAN ROADS

As I boarded the vehicle to hit the airport, after a heated holiday in Nigeria (I mean this literally), I somehow managed to notice the brand of car I was about to ride. But when we hit the Third Mainland Bridge I became conscious again of all the cars zooming past our crawling automobile. I was a bit taken aback to see that eight out of the first ten cars I counted were of the same brand as the one I was in. I kept counting to prove me wrong on which car maker dominated the Nigerian market. I only rested my case when I had probably counted like a hundred of them.

Toyota clearly is the brand that rules the Nigerian car market, and if my zooming research is anything to go by, I would easily conclude that 80% of the cars on Nigerian roads are of the Toyota brand. Do I have any beef with that? Certainly not! Toyotas are cheap, easily maintained, and Nigerians love their Toyota models, especially their Prados, Landcruisers, Lexus, 4Runners, Avensis, Highlanders, Rav4s, Camrys, Corollas, Yaris, Avalons…should I continue? These cars are the dominating models featured on the auto-fashion shows on our roads. If it were possible, there would be Toyota coup in the country.

Toyota prides itself in stating that its guiding principle is “contributing to the development of a prosperous society through the manufacture of automobiles”. Obviously we may not question that at this juncture until certain questions on key indicators are asked. My main concern is with the recent developments with the car makers based in Japan on the recall of their vehicles in the US, Europe, and China. While there is probably a bigger market in these locations than in Africa, especially with the environmentally friendly Prius model, I am hoping that there will be an immediate recall to all affected vehicles in Africa, especially Nigeria.
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