Lingering Issues In Chinua Achebe's Female Characterisation

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

Recently, (Saturday April 12, 2008), I was at the National Theatre, Lagos, because of Prof Chinua Achebe, Africa’s best known and most widely read author, who many regard as the indisputable father and rallying point of African Literature.  The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) had organised a forum to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s classic novel, Things Fall Apart, published in London by William Heinemann in June 1958. 

*Chinua Achebe 

I was held back at the office by some engagements and so by the time I arrived at the venue, I had missed a substantial part of the ‘Interactive Session’. I came in while Mr. Segun Olusola, a former ambassador and arts enthusiast, was concluding his speech. As I sat down, I heard him paying glowing tribute to Achebe and his novel and saying how happy he was to be at the event. He then announced that he would also grace the Awka event in honour of Achebe and Things Fall Apart coming up more than a week later.  

Achebe evokes a very special kind of feelings in most people that have read either his novels or essays. And this was evident in the emotion-laden speeches made by various speakers at the National Theatre that day. The literary patriarch and icon was absent at the ceremony, but his image loomed large everywhere, and this, mind you, was not because of those large posters and billboards bearing his photographs (and, of course, the emblem of the main sponsors, Fidelity Bank Plc) displayed at strategic points by the organisers. 

His wit, deep insights, the wisdom he conveys with such sagely precision, the simple, subtle diction and disarming style, the impressive imageries he effortlessly conjures and the pleasant local colour he so generously splashes on his narratives, never cease to overwhelm. Achebe is one writer whose reputation and looming image was neither built nor enhanced by any prize. What further glamour can occasional decorations add to an already very colourful and ‘big masquerade’? The man rather dignifies any prize he decides to accept and not the other way round. For instance, as Achebe and Things Fall Apart are celebrated across the world this season, only a few, perhaps, might consider it necessary to recall that a few months ago, he was awarded the Man Booker Prize – a very important prize, no doubt.  Such information, though great in its own right, makes little or no difference to the man’s already solidly established stature.    

It is impossible to read Things Fall Apart without visualizing the village of Umuofia in its alluring freshness in the warm embrace of rich nature in its most exciting vivacity and purity.  This is the only novel I know written by an African that has acquired such a stature and influence, as to be so celebrated in such a grand fashion.

No, doubt, Chinua Achebe is Africa’s rare gift to the world and Nigeria should never cease to be glad and grateful that this giant emerged from its loins.

With his novels, superb lectures and rich essays, Achebe has been able to compel the world out there to significantly alter their entrenched warped views about Africa.

After a speaking engagement in Canberra, Australia, in the summer of 1973, Professor Manning Clark, a distinguished Australian historian wrote to Achebe and pleaded: “I hope you come back and speak again here, because we need to lose the blinkers of our past. So come and help the young to grow up without the prejudices of their forefathers…”

I find this display of sincerity very touching.

Part of the greatness of Things Fall Apart is the significant readership it enjoys across cultures and races; its message continues to register lasting impacts that are rare and peculiar. Not a few Nigerians can recall the instant celebrity status they had suddenly assumed or even some favours that had come their way in one remote part of the world or the other just because they had let it be known that they were from Achebe’s country.

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

Achebe has also remarkably excelled as a critic and essayist. His 1975 Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, entitled, “An Image Of Africa: Racism In Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness,” which I am never of tired of re-reading, has not only significantly altered the nature and direction of Conrad criticism, but is now widely regarded as one of the significant and influential essays in the criticism of literature in English.

As I listened to several speeches at the National Theatre on that Saturday, I could feel the depth of admiration displayed by the various speakers towards Achebe and his work.  The whole thing was moving on well until one lady came up with elaborate praise for Achebe for the significant “improvement” his female characters achieved in Anthills Of the Savannah, unlike what obtained in Things Fall Apart, which we had all gathered to celebrate that afternoon.

 Now, I would easily have ignored and quickly forgotten this comment as “one of those things” one was bound to hear in a “mixed crowd” if I had not also heard similar thoughts brazenly expressed by some female scholars whom I thought should be better informed. For instance, I was at a lecture in Port Harcourt some years ago when a female professor of literature announced with the excitement of someone who had just discovered another earth: When Achebe created his earlier female characters, she said,  we complained; then he responded by giving us Clara (in No Longer At Ease) and we still complained; then he gave us Eunice (in A Man Of The People) and we still asked for more; and then he gave us Beatrice (in Anthills Of The Savannah)! Unfortunately, I have encountered thoughts even more pedestrian than this boldly flaunted in several literary essays by women and some men.

TOBACCO: The Ruthless Killer Next Door

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Today, as I allow my mind to endure the oppressive thought that tobacco still remains the ruthless killer next door, what then shall we call its producers and distributors? The answer can only be simple and straightforward: They are people who prosper at the expense of other people’s lives. They make their billions by ruining other people’s health, and eventually terminating their lives. They should therefore not complain if anyone refers to them as proud, happy, licensed murderers.

Packs of Killer Poison

How these people are able to deaden their conscience to go on prospering and sustaining their own lives by producing and marketing a scientifically confirmed poison whose only benefit is its ability to cruelly terminate the lives of their fellow human beings beats me hollow? Tobacco never adds even the tiniest value to life; it only destroys it completely. Without mercy. This is a fact nobody has even attempted to deny.

The Nigerian president should put the concern for the lives of many Nigerians above his often whispered personal tastes and habits and take another look at the massive freedom granted by his predecessor to tobacco companies to fill Nigeria with their neatly wrapped and attractively packaged killer poison called cigarettes. If he cannot immediately ban the production of cigarettes in Nigeria, he should, at least, put in place stricter regulations that would ensure that tobacco manufacturing would automatically become a very unprofitable venture in Nigeria. 

I call on Nigerians with lively conscience and genuine friends of Nigeria, to join this clearly winnable battle, to flush these heartless fellows out of Nigeria. The question I have always asked cigarette producers is: can they boldly come out in the open and assure me that the commodity they manufacture and distribute to hapless individuals cannot be rightly classified as poison? Again, they should tell me one single benefit the human body derives from smoking cigarettes. Has it not been convincingly proved everywhere, and publicly admitted even by tobacco producers, that tobacco is a merciless killer, an unrelenting cannibal that devours a man when his life is sweetest to him?  If then tobacco is a proven killer, can’t those who manufacture and circulate it in society be classified as murderers? Hasn’t even our own Federal Ministry of Health been shouting and warning us with passion, sense of urgency and alarm that TOBACCO SMOKERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG?

What the Health Ministry here is saying is very simple: Anyone offering you a cigarette is only wishing you an untimely death. In fact, he is just saying to you: May you die young! That is exactly what tobacco companies, including the government that issued them the license to transact their deadly trade in Nigeria are wickedly wishing their Nigerian victims! Yes, tobacco companies manufacture products that make people to die young. How wicked and heartless could they be!

Before now, these tobacco companies would erect fresh, beautiful billboards, and fill several pages of newspapers and magazines with glossy adverts. Unfortunately, that option is no longer available to them, because of the ban on outdoor advertising of their lethal products. I am glad that those pleasant pictures of vivacious achievers smiling home with glittering laurels just because they were hooked to particular brands of cigarette which used to adorn glossy billboards and magazine pages, and which had proved irresistible baits to several people, especially youths, have now vanished from the public domain.

As a youth, the elegant, gallant, athletic rodeo man whose image marketed the 555 brand of cigarette was my best idea of a handsome, hard-working winner. My friends and I admired him, carried his photographs about, and yearned to smoke 555 in order to grow up and become energetic and vivacious like him. One wonders how many youths that have been terminally impaired because they went beyond mere fantasies or obsession with their cigarette heroes and became chain-smokers and irredeemable addicts. Managers of tobacco adverts are so adept in this grand art of monumental deception that their victims never suspect any harm until they have willingly placed their heads on the slaughter slab. Indeed, only very few are able to look beyond the meretricious pictures and the pernicious pomp of cigarette promotional stunt and see the blood-curdling pictures of piecemeally ruined lungs and other sensitive organs, murky, chimney-like breath tracts and heart region, the looming merciless and spine-chilling fangs of an all devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry lung and heart diseases, and their associate unyielding killers.

Smokers Are Burning Their Lungs!!!! (pix: pulse2)

I want to challenge tobacco companies to come out and tell Nigerians that tobacco, the product they manufacture and circulate in Nigeria, is no more the resilient, implacable and silent killer, the lethal poison and heartless cannibal that seeks accommodation in the midst of hapless humanity with the sole intention of effecting their eventual decimation. I want to hear that cigarettes are no longer generous distributors of devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry terminal lung and heart disease, etc.

 I have heard tobacco companies pay huge taxes to government, award scholarships to indigent students and embark upon several projects to better the lot of the common man in several communities. But how many people have their lethal product sent to their early graves? How many widows, widowers and orphans are they producing with alarming rapidity?  How many people have been lured to calamity and painful death with their tantalizing and deceptive adverts? How many cancer TB lung disease patients do they produce in a year? How many among their hapless employees are gradually ruined daily because of the insidious fumes they inhale during production of cigarettes? It is so saddening that while in several countries of the world, tobacco companies and their owners are being isolated and choked with harsh laws, they have been allowed to invade Nigeria and other African countries with their filthy billions because we have incompetent and insensitive governments that have no qualms welcoming urbane, but ruthless killers in the name of "foreign investors."


A Poison-Manufacturing Giant


I will never be tired of referring to an interesting development in the United States on June 7, 2001 where a Los Angeles Superior Court slapped an unprecedented $3 billion in damages on Phillip Morris, another giant tobacco company, in response to a suit by a tobacco casualty, Richard Boeken, who had developed incurable cancer of the brain and lungs after smoking two packs of Marlboro cigarettes every day for 40 years. This should serve as eye opener to Africans that with several class suits from victims of tobacco, these evil merchants of death can be forced out of the continent. According to the New York Post editorial of June 9, 2001, 56-year-old Boeken who began smoking as a teenager in 1957 claimed that "he continued smoking because … he believed claims by tobacco companies that smoking was safe." He told reporters in a post-trial interview: “I didn't believe they would lie about the facts that they were putting out on television and radio."


Now, that is exactly the issue. Tobacco companies deploy beautifully packaged lies to lure people into taking their fatally poisoned wraps called cigarettes. Their billboards do not present cancer patients treading the cold, dark, lonely path to a most painful, slow death, which is where tobacco happily leads victims. Every society has a responsibility to defend its unwary and the ignorant, and Nigeria and the rest of Africa cannot be an exception. The argument that smokers ought to be dissuaded from smoking by the hardly visible warnings they put out on their packets, and that people are merely being allowed to exercise their right and freedom to make choices, is akin to endorsing suicide as a lawful expression of freedom? Why allow a killer-poison to circulate among humans in the first place? Do we all have the same capacity to discern and resist the allurement of this clear and present danger called cigarettes?

Cigarette Manufacturers Want You To Die Young!!!!


It is widely known that many tobacco producers are non-smokers because they know too well how deadly their products are! In court and in several enquiries, tobacco producers have admitted that their product contains very harmful substances. So why should the government not protect its citizens against it? Tobacco is a killer. So are its manufacturers. Nigerians should rise with one voice and unified strength and resist this cannibal in our midst. The battle is winnable.

scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye In Conversation With Placid Aguwa

 PLACID AGUWA, a New York-based attorney, is the Managing Partner of the law firm, Placid and Emmanuel, P.C., and former president of the Nigerian Lawyers Association (NLA).  Since 1991, he has practiced law in state and federal courts in New York and Nigeria. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (March 2007), he speaks on the activities of the NLA, and some of the challenges faced by Nigeria in its tortuous journey to democratic and economic stability. 

Excerpts: 

*Placid Aguwa 

UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE: When was the Nigerian Lawyers Association (NLA) formed, and what are its objectives? 

PLACID AGUWA: Thank you for your interest in learning more about the Nigerian Lawyers Association (NLA).  NLA was incorporated in 1999 as a not-for-profit, non-partisan association of attorneys. NLA represents the interests of attorneys mainly of Nigerian descent both in the United States and all over the world. It advances the professional needs of its growing members and provides leadership and advocacy for the legal needs of and interests of the minority community in the United States and around the world.

NLA's principal objectives are to cultivate the science of jurisprudence, facilitate and advance the fair and equitable administration of justice, serve the needs of the members of the Nigerian legal community, as well as the minority communities as a whole, in their understanding and access to the law and to educate and assist such persons in their day to day dealings with the law.  

In Nigeria, Yar’Adua Reigns, Obasanjo Rules

(First Published Thursday, July 12, 2007, Less Than Two Months After Umar Musa Yar'Adua Was Sworn In As President Of Nigeria)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

At various formal and informal discussion points across the country, and on listserv and discussion boards on the cyberspace, Nigerians are not hiding their deep pain and frustration that the obnoxious Third Term Project which they unanimously and disdainfully rejected not too long ago has been so smoothly and successfully imposed on them with such brazenness and flourish that seem to dare anyone who is not comfortable with the set-up to find himself the shortest route to hell. 

The demoralising situation as we have it today is simple: Umaru Musa Yar’Adua reigns in Aso Rock; Olusegun Obasanjo rules Nigeria from Ota.

It is a classic case of post-colonial Indirect Rule. The “Emperor and Conqueror of Modern Nigeria” is still perfectly in-charge and has no intention of leaving any one in doubt about that. He has merely delegated Umoru, one of his very loyal “boys” to stand in for him at Abuja to implement his orders with maximum accuracy. So, while this “accredited Servant-leader” treads softly within the hallowed ambience of Aso Rock Villa with the title of “President” timidly attached to his flowing agbada, full Presidential powers reside at some cozy corner of a multi-billion naira farm in Ota, Ogun State . 

I Am The One In-Charge Here, Right!
A Case Of Post-Colonial Indirect In Nigeria?


What makes the matter even more revolting is what clearly looks like the utter helplessness of President Yar’Adua, a 56-year-old former academic and two-term governor, with enormous powers of State at his disposal, before such a repugnant affront from someone who now sees himself as some kind of “Senior President”, as somebody pointed out last Friday. This is very sad.

Now, even though Yar’Adua became president through what has been widely described as the worst election in human history, the only hint of consolation in that horrible, broad-day electoral robbery was the hope that by May 29, 2007, Nigerians would be rid of the flamboyant incompetence, and pugnacious person of Aremu Obasanjo, the man whose entire energy in the past eight years appeared to have been solely channeled into the accumulation of so much unearned resources to build himself the wealthiest dynasty this side of the sea, while the country he was supposed to be ruling decayed beyond what anyone would have imagined was possible. Nigerians just wanted a breath of fresh air, an entirely new face, but unfortunately, they have been shortchanged once again. The man they had become sick and tired of, and thought had gone for good, is still very much around. 


Yar'Adua: Merely Reigning?

It is not only Yar’Adua that appears so helpless. For the past one week, I have read several columns on this matter, and all I have seen are passionate appeals to former President Obasanjo to, please, leave Yar’Adua alone to rule Nigeria the way he deems fit. Now, this makes no sense at all. Should we be begging an ex-president, obsessed with a grand illusion of boundless powers he no longer possesses, to leave the man with the real, statutory authority and powers alone to function? No, wait a minute! This would have been most laughable if it was not such a serious and pathetic matter, with far-reaching consequences to the survival of our nation.

As the nation’s opinion moulders weep and beg Obasanjo to, please, take his retirement in good faith and quickly dump himself in the unedifying company of failed leaders where he ought to feel very comfortable, and allow Yar’Adua free hand to conduct the affairs of the nation, what none of them appears to be asking is whether Yar’Adua himself is even desirous and eager to be rid of the overbearing influence of Obasanjo? Is he really ready to take charge? Are we sure that the “Servant-leader” is not even too grateful that Obasanjo’s meddlesome and looming shadow are providing perfect alibi for what is gradually appearing as his stark visionlessness? I would certainly want to know those great ideas of Yar’Adua’s which Obasanjo’s meddlesomeness is preventing him from unfolding! The truth, as we know it, is that Yar’Adua never wanted to be president, and so, he never sat down to draw up anything that vaguely looks like a blueprint for the country’s redemption.

When he was conscripted by Obasanjo and imposed on both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Nigerians at a time elections were merely a couple of weeks away, he was too preoccupied with the thought of winning elections to have any time to concentrate and think about how he would rule Nigeria. And so when he eventually became President through the “Iwu-ruwuru” elections that took place last April, one of the first statements he made was that he had no plans of becoming a “Jack-of-all-trade” President. A nice statement though, except that it left a bold hint that the man who uttered it was already feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of Nigeria ’s problems.  


Olusegun Obasanjo: Power Behind The Throne?


Quite early, Yar’Adua began to make a singsong of the “Energy Challenge”, how he was going to confront it headlong, overcome it, and give Nigerians an uninterrupted power supply. This, if you would remember, formed the high point of virtually all his usually terse, uninspiring campaign speeches. It is more than forty days now since he became President, and the impression of him out there is that of a pitiably confused leader groping his way through an impenetrably dark alleyway. I am yet to encounter anyone with the slightest hint of how he plans to confront the ever-worsening “Energy Challenge.”

All he did the other day, to the consternation of many Nigerians, was to summon the same gaggle of failed “experts” in the Ministry of Power, the same people that ensured that Nigeria remained submerged in pitch darkness throughout the eight dark years of Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime, and ordered them to either come up with a blueprint on how to solve the nation’s energy crises immediately, or he would declare a State of Emergency in the power sector? So, with all the talk about tackling the “energy challenge” headlong, the Servant-leader had no clear idea what to do? So, all these while, his hope had been on the same dead woods that could not achieve anything for a whole eight years? What a shame! I am sure, that it is equally becoming clearer to him that the Niger Delta problem which he promised to solve in a couple of months is much more complex than he had imagined.

No doubt, Obasanjo is clearly enjoying the show, filling a gaping power vacuum that clearly exists. When he said that the reason for his “reforms” in the “PiiiiDiiiiPiiii” was to change it from a Movement to a Party, where discipline would reign, so that his successor would not encounter the massive indiscipline he suffered, it was clear he was merely erecting an out-of-office power base for himself. He handpicked his comrade-in-arms and loyalist, Brigadier-General David Mark, and made him Senate President and installed a certain Patricia Etteh as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Next, he shoved aside Tony Anenih and installed himself as the PDP Board of Trustees (BOT) Chairman, and equally formed and became Chairman of what he calls PDP Legislative Agenda Committee whose business, we’re told, would be to vet the bills to be presented by PDP Senators and House Members. Already he is the “Life Leader” of the PDP.

In the light of the amended PDP constitution, the Party (read Obasanjo) is supreme, and even higher than both the president and the governors, and can dictate to them. And to underline this fact, Obasanjo recently summoned a meeting of the governors in Ota. That those wishing to be ministers had to lobby at Ota instead of Abuja is no more a secret; ditto for the fact that the list of the ministerial nominees were delayed until it was approved by Ota.

So, it is true that Obasanjo still rules Nigeria , but he is doing so, because Yar’Adua thinks he should. Or put another way, it suits Yar’Adua to still have Obasanjo in charge, while he enjoys the perks of office without the responsibilities that go with them. And at the end of the day, when another four years of devastating failure must have been successfully enacted, Yar’Adua can conveniently come up with the theory that he was not allowed to implement his ‘superior ideas’. So, please, no one should insult our intelligence any more with the old wives tales about how helpless he is before an overbearing ex-president! Because he knows full well that if he truly wants to halt the entire charade, he can. Even this morning!

What, for instance, stops Yar’Adua from threatening to resign and giving as reason his unwillingness to have history credit him with the disastrous outcome of another man’s decisions? It would be interesting to see how Obasanjo would respond to this challenge. Either way, both Obasanjo and the PDP are losers. At least, Yar’Adua would be able to redeem his name if he is forced to make good his threat. After all, he never wanted to be president.

 Again, he could dust up the PTDF file and set up an Independent Commission of Enquiry to look into its management and, in fact, the whole Oil Ministry since 1999, and follow it up with a pledge that anybody implicated, “no matter how highly placed” would face the full weight of the law! The heavens would not fall.

Nor should he fear impeachment by the Obasanjo foot soldiers in the National Assembly, because the mere thought of its implication to the contentious issue of power shift would effectively kill the thought in the legislatures. Even if they now impeach him and his deputy, both Obasanjo and the PDP are still at loss.   So,  that option would remain unattractive to them.  

So, please, spare me all these tales about Obasanjo’s overbearing influence on Yar’Adua, as if both the Inspector General of Police or Chief of Army Staff reside and take orders from Ota. Truth is: Yar’Adua is not yet ready to take over power. He should be sincere enough to tell himself that. When he is ready, we will know. He is still content with merely reigning in Aso Rock, while ‘Senior President’ Obasanjo rules Nigeria from Ota. That’s probably what he wanted from the beginning. What a sad situation.
--------------------------------------------------
    
scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
First Published Thursday, July 12, 2007

 

Baroness Lynda Chalker Again!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

I must confess that I am becoming increasingly weary, sick and utterly disgusted by  the way and manner one British woman they call Baroness Lynda Chalker carelessly throws her totally unedifying and exasperating self and words into the affairs my country since the second term of this “woman-friendly” Administration of President Obasanjo. 

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

I sincerely hope that the end of this unpopular and failed regime some few days from now, will mark, to the utter relief of the nation, the end of whatever brings Lynda Chalker (the unrepentant enemy of the Nigerian masses) to Nigeria. What I find particularly irritating is the arrogance that wraps her diction, and the way she carries herself each time she feels compelled to shoot her mouth to remind her naïve paymasters in Abuja that she is still relevant and worth the huge pay packet she takes away periodically. Baroness Chalker was Britain’s Minister of State for Overseas Development when the Conservative Party was in office, and until February 2005, when I stumbled on the report of the outrageous statement she made at the Nigerian Investment Forum in Abuja, I had practically forgotten about her, and even what she looked like.

 No doubt, Chalker, had since ceased to be of any real use to her country, and had probably been politely dumped in the camp of yesterday people, but you can trust my country, the Giant of Africa, with an unbridled lust for obsolete “tokunbo” materials, to find her attractive for a very lucrative appointment. President Obasanjo has appointed her the Chairperson of the so-called Honourary International Investment Council (HIIC). Her brief, I am told, is to use her real or imaginary “powerful influence” and “wide connections” to persuade the much sought-after foreign investors to troop to Nigeria in droves. But in this job, as any person can attest, she has woefully failed, just like the regime that hired
her.


 
Lynda Chalker: What Manner Of Service




And so in order to justify her devastating failure, she reached into the repertoire of over-recycled phrases of the highly discredited Nigeria Image Laundering Project (NILP) of that time, dredged up the most hackneyed logic therein, beautifully plagiarized it, and slapped it on the Nigerian media and Nigerians in the Diaspora. Hear what she reportedly said in Abuja in February 2005:


“Many good things have happened in Nigeria in the last 18 months than in any other country in Africa but the outside world needs to know this to be able to take positive investment decisions on the country. . . . But often all that we see outside Nigeria are the negative things. The media and Nigerians in the Diaspora must take the challenge of telling the world that good things are happening here. Nigeria stands a good chance of attracting foreign investors if they have adequate knowledge of the real situation rather than the perception which is often wrong”. As this silly statement reverberated around the country in that February 2005, I imagined President Obasanjo, nursing a wide, pleasant grin, muttering under his breath: Tell them my dear girl; tell these ungrateful people!




 
President Olusegun Obasanjo: His "Woman-Friendly"
Regime Hired Lynda Chalker


In my reaction in this column in March 2005, I had taken up Chalker on her clearly preposterous statement. It was clear to me that her conscience, if she had any, had since been seared beyond reclamation, that Nigeria and Nigerians meant nothing to her, and that all she was doing was straining to earn a living. Well, a character in Chinua Achebe’s classic novel, Anthills of The Savannah, had noted that it was okay to admire Castro and sing his praises if you know very well you won’t ever have to live in Cuba.

 Yes, to the Baroness, Nigeria was merely a generous casino box where she hoped in from time to time to collect jumbo consultancy fees with a very long spoon, and that’s all. What a hellish way to earn a living. Now, what I found particularly offensive and grossly uncharitable in Chalker’s demoralizing remarks was what looked clearly like a conscienceless attempt to stop a cruelly hit innocent child from crying out? I could not understand why Chalker would choose to descend on me for daring to insist that my country had no business remaining in the prehistoric age of darkness, even after my government had announced that it had plunged more than 2.5 billion dollars in NEPA/PHCN, Nigeria’s official Agent of Darkness?  Why should my country in the 21st century remain the biggest dumping ground for all sorts of poorly manufactured candles, hurricane lanterns, and lots of toy generators from that country of criminal prosperity called China?



With A Friend Like Lynda Chalker


 Yes, why must I write this essay with the aid of candles, while my colleagues in nearby Niger, Ghana, Togo, Benin Republic and even AIDS-ravaged zones like Swaziland, countries not up to the size of Ikeja, and which sometimes look up to Nigeria for handouts, have since forgotten what it feels like to experience a blackout? Now if I must ask Chalker, how many times has she experienced a blackout in her country? Did she hear that whole families have been wiped out in Nigeria due to the generator fumes they had inhaled in course of  providing power for themselves, because the government, whose praises Chalker vulgarly sings, is allergic to performance and success?

 So, for fear of scaring away Chalker’s foreign investors, I should keep quiet and die in silence while the immoral bazaar goes on in Abuja uninterruptedly? Would Chalker be able to keep quiet if power supply was withdrawn in Britain during the next winter when she would need to operate her heating device? Will she be able to survive it? Has anybody tried to tell her that Nigeria does not start and end in Abuja, that there are fellow human beings with blood in their veins like her at Ilaje, Badia, Sari-Iganmu, Ajegunle, etc., who are forced by the very ungodly rulers Ms. Chalker is  hugging and cavorting with to live in hell on earth? She cannot deny that she is unaware that the outgoing regime is the most corrupt that ever passed through Abuja.

Interestingly, at the time she was rebuking the media for reporting accurately the sordid activities of our rulers here, a man called David Blunket, in her own country, was being forced to resign as Home Secretary just because he had hastened the visa process for the nanny of his ex-lover? But here was Baroness Chalker hailing flamboyant treasury looters in Nigeria, men who sank billions of naira belonging to Nigerians in clearly spurious and criminal deals and expect to be applauded for that?  What made her stance so scandalous was that at the time she threw up her outrageous statement, she was still the Chair of the UK Chapter of Transparency International (TI).

No wonder the Abuja regime always found it so easy to rubbish TI ratings. One of their own was in bed with them. So shameful. 

How many of Nigeria’s public schools or government-owned hospitals has Chalker cared to visit? Now, say the truth here, Baroness: assuming you had a child or grand-child, would you send him or her a Nigerian university? Would you agree to be admitted in a hospital belonging to the government you said had recorded wonderful achievements? Would you even recommend any of them to your worst (white) enemy? Now, are you not a bloody racist for applauding clearly dilapidated institutions which Nigerians patronize because they have no choice, but which you would not even risk taking your dog to. I don’t blame you. I only blame those whose inferiority complex goads into the unwholesome preoccupation of inflicting the likes of you on Nigerians to insult us from time to time.   

 By the way, how much, Baroness Chalker, are you being paid to utter these damnable heresies on-behalf of these clearly reprobate minds in Abuja? Could you please list those wonderful achievements of this government, which only you saw from the comfort of your home in the UK?  You are trying to attract foreign investors to Nigeria, what is the fate of the indigenous ones? Have you ever bothered to ask your paymasters in Abuja why Nigerians are moving their businesses to Ghana and some other even poorly-endowed African countries, and developing those places and offering employment to the youths there instead of this place?

 Have you heard of Slock Airlines now flourishing in the Gambia after several hundreds of Nigerians were rendered unemployed because it had to be frustrated out of this place because of base and primitive politics?  Baroness, honestly, you make me sick, very sick, to the very pit of my stomach! Baroness, your desperation is so palpable. I can see that you are worried that the incoming Administration may not want to inherit the needless burden that you represent, hence your indecent haste to endorse an “election” that has left the whole world astounded and disgusted. You were quoted recently as saying that “it is all very well to believe that the system in America and Europe are without faults. They are not. I can tell you that I have had dead people vote against me in elections. We have evidence to prove it.” 

What a racist arrogance! So, crimes are acceptable in Nigeria once Chalker can produce evidence that they are also being perpetrated in Europe and America? What a gratuitous insult! May I suggest that Prof Maurice Iwu should move over to Britain to supervise your next election there since you don’t mind his kind of elections. What a bag of rubbish! Baroness, you must be willing to admit that the sole motivation for these horrifying remarks about the Nigerian media, Nigerians in Diaspora, and now election monitors and the international media, is just the juicy consultancy fees you collect from Abuja, which you are, perhaps, fearing may cease to come once the underachieving, “woman friendly” regime disappears into the pit of infamy on May 29. Nothing more, nothing less.

 Well, by taking such an immoral stance, which is clearly against the Nigerian people, you have clearly exposed yourself as overly unfeeling and an enthusiastic collaborator in this grand design to kill Nigeria.  Indeed, you have most willingly and most clearly awarded yourself a prominent slot in the infamous list of the unambiguous enemies of the Nigerian people, and if you have any modicum of decency still remaining in you, you should hastily give up the juicy appointment that brings you to Nigeria and retire to the chilling embrace of your perennially inhospitable climate.  That is the only path of honour remaining for you, Baroness.




—————————————

First published in the DAILY INDEPENDENT of Wednesday May 16, 2007 in the column, SCRUPLES
 scruples2006@yahoo.com

February 20, 2008 

Big Brother Africa: Debasing Self For A Fee

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

Recently, Big Brother Africa (BBA2) reality show ended in South Africa amidst much din, slimy scandals and lingering controversies, and the only coherent statement it was able to make was that in this our very unfortunate and bankrupt age, money has acquired an even greater and awesome powers, and its capacity to compel otherwise rational human beings to gleefully part ways with every bit of their honour and dignity, be disdainful all considerations for decency and self-esteem, and enthusiastically indulge in several nauseating, self-debasing acts, has exceeded what anyone had  thought was possible in decent society.

I am not a fan of the Big Brother nonsense, and all such shows, like beauty pageants, where people are paid and cheered on to throw their honour and dignity as human beings to the dogs, to satisfy the depraved taste of irredeemable voyeurs. In fact, if there were no generous reports about these events in the media, which one occasionally glanced through, I may never have known that anything like BBA2 ever took place. But I am a grateful that I read some of those reports, because, it would never have occurred to me that some murky-hearted fellows, with excess cash to spend, could go all out to turn their fellow human beings into a little less than animals, confined in some glorified human zoo, where the most depraved among them could go as wild and immoral as he or she could, to dishonour and make a very big fool of himself or herself, before millions of TV viewers in Africa and beyond, in order to earn $100, 000. 

While this lure of lucre endures, do these fellows ever stop to think that the footage of their disgraceful outing in South Africa would survive tomorrow, and that they would have children and grandchildren whose sensibilities would be perpetually assaulted by the awful pornographic footages they were gleefully producing in their blind rush for $100,000?

According to reports, the Housemates took their bathe together during what they called “Shower Hour,” and while the boys stripped to their boxers, the girls bared everything, not just before the boys whom they had never met until they were selected and confined in the Big Brother zoo, but, also, millions of viewers out there, which may have included kids from their households and neighborhoods! (Forget the age-restriction crap). Imagine the kid brothers and sisters or tender nephews and nieces of the Housemates seeing their big aunties they once held in high esteem flaunting their stark nudity on the screen with every brazenness and shamelessness. What in the name of all that is decent and noble can we possibly call this?
 

Well, some of the girls, however, occasionally bathed with their underpants on, and only bared their chests, but that, no doubt, did not diminish the grave obscenity the whole thing still constituted.

Now how would these clearly bird-brained fortune hunters rejoin and face the same society before whom they had shamelessly and grossly cheapened themselves, by flaunting the pride of their womanhood before every willing eye? Should even  $1billion dollars be enough to compel anyone to indulge in this madness? 

Tatiana(Angola): Her Debasing Immoral Acts With  

Richard ( a married man!)  Scandalized  All Persons  Of 

Decent  Disposition

Indeed, Feminists and Women Rights activists would never protest this clear debasement of womanhood, because this is not the kind of advocacy that attracts juicy grants.  This should not be surprising to anyone because it is still from the same cabal that prosecutes these obscene shows that the major bulk of sponsorships flow.

Although virtually everything about BBA was horrible, revolting and scandalous, a consensus exists that the most horrible scandal it yielded, now popularly known as “fingergate,” reportedly, took place on Saturday, 27 October 2007. I first read about it an article by Ms. Bolanle Aduwo. Please permit me to quote her account of the obscene incident:

“…Biggie had provided plenty of booze (undiluted, Russian vodka) and what resulted was an incident that will definitely go down as one of the most scandalous moments in Big Brother history.  The housemates became crazed, drunken zombies and engaged in acts better suited for a porno movie. The evening eventually ended in what many call a possible rape! Or how do you explain the actions of Richard, the 24-year-old Tanzanian film student and the only male occupant of the House fondling and ‘fingering’ a comatose, blind-drunk Ofunneka, a 29-year-old Medical Assistant from Nigeria?” 

This incident had provoked serious outrage across Africa. A Women Rights group in South Africa had called for the footage of the incident, only to announce later, after viewing it, that it agreed with MNET, that what happened between Richard and Ofunneka was consensual. Nigeria’s House of Representatives, groping for some form of self-redeeming tasks, after Ettehgate, had also waded into the matter, something I had thought was an entirely private misadventure between the girl and the South African prurient millionaires who produce it. But why does it seem Africa has suddenly awakened from its moral slumber just because  fingergate happened? 

Richard (Tanzania), ‘Winner’ of BBA2: Rewarded 

for Moral Irresponsibility And  Unremitting Waywardness? 

Well, if you ask me, the matter is very simple: Even if there were no “fingergate,” all the people who participated in BBA2 had irremediably soiled their honour and dignity, even though the lower press are not helping them to fully grasp that! What sort of girls would gleefully strip themselves nude to bathe, not only in the full gaze boys, but also before more than one million TV viewers across Africa? (If the boys wore their shorts and the girls chose to bare everything, what kind of statement were they making about their gender?) Just the other day, while gathering materials for this piece, I stumbled on a blog where a photograph of Ofunneka was posted holding her towel apart and proudly baring her not particularly appealing chest for all to see! So, even without “fingergate,” was that not self-demeaning enough?

On Monday, I visited a website, www.ofunneka.com, where all sorts of hate posts were heaped on the doorsteps of “Richard the rapist,” who “stole the crown.” All sorts of stories were dredged up to rubbish the Tanzanian, as if he did not rubbish himself enough while in the BBA zoo. But while countless sympathizers were out there condemning MNET for the indecent show and calling for Richard’s head for “sexually abusing” Ofunneka, the “innocent, well-behaved, but stone-drunk symbol of decent African woman,” the girl was at the other side of town addressing a press conference, apologizing for what happened and dismissing reports that she was raped. 

Saturday PUNCH of November 24, 2007, quotes her as saying: “I will say that I let down my guards a little, but then I am human.” 

I am seriously touched by this girl’s predicament. It is painful to imagine that she might carry the shame of her disastrous BBA appearance all her life. It must be clear to her now that whoever counseled her into the BBA folly has done her a grave harm. The most noble job she must engage herself in now would be to always dissuade any other person she encounters to avoid BBA like a plague despite the money.

  Ms. Ofunneka Molokwu (Nigeria): grossly abused  

       

In this internet age, it should not surprise her that countless blogs would spring up tomorrow, attracting serious traffic to themselves with footages of “fingergate” and some of her nude pictures from Shower Hour at the Big Brother zoo. A costly mistake has already been made by going to the BBA house, and a costly price must be paid. But, if by her own painful predicament, other young Africans are able to learn that it is practically impossible to safeguard one’s honour and dignity in such a morally bankrupt enclave like BBA house, created solely to promote obscenity and depravity, to service the vulgar tastes of prurient men and women, she should consider the sacrifice worthwhile. Who is even sure that “fingergate” was not scripted and directed by MNET, to diminish her rising profile in the media as the symbol of true African woman, which would have created serious problems for MNET when eventually Richard was declared the “winner”? 

By awarding "victory" to Richard, what statement has MNET succeeded in making? That it was alright for a man who was married to suddenly “fall in love” with another woman he had just met on a reality TV show; engage in open and revolting adulterous acts with this new lover or concubine on satellite TV, knowing full well that his wife was at home watching; and then while in the same bed with his new lover, he engages in wild sexual acts with yet another woman, on the same bed! 

And after it all, according to a report in the newspaper,  Namibian, of October 29, 2007, he excitedly pronounced: “I have seen the rivers and mountains of Big Brother…I’m going to bump all the women in BBA house.” 

What a vulgar celebration of hideous conquests! With all the nauseating exploits of Richard’s, which earned him the prize, what MNET is saying is that for anyone to win the next BBA (assuming this won’t be the last), he must simply become an animal like Richard, because it is only animals that that can do what Richard did to win the MNET price; yes, such a person must regard and treat women as mere playthings. 

Maureen (Uganda)–Another Housemate

Now the point has also been regularly made, namely, why watch BBA if you know it would offend your mind? Indeed, amateur porn channels and websites like BBA abound, but they do not attract generous positive, promotional reviews from “serious” newspapers as BBA does. MNET can afford to inflict its violent obscenity only on interested viewers if it could check its invasion of our newspaper pages the way it does. 

Nor should the government show more than a passing interest in shows like BBA, as the Nigerian House Assembly or the Federal Government did recently. Now, I have no problems with the Information Minister, Mr. John Odey, offering a job to Miss Ofunneka Molokwu, as he reportedly did the other day, if that would console her, but he has no right to declare that by appearing on that reprehensible show, she has “represented us well” and has, today, become “the Heart of Africa.” Excuse me!

Meryl (Namibia): Reportedly Relished Flaunting Her

Nudity Before The Cameras — What would her children 

say tomorrow when confronted with those pictures?

No doubt, it must be clear to the Information Minister that he was speaking for only himself, and I insist that he makes this clear immediately. In fact, President Umar Musa Yar’Adua must call him to order before he uses the stain of BBA to further rubbish his ailing regime. On no account must the Federal Government appear to endorse such a horribly obscene show that has offended many decent people in Africa and has even been banned by some African governments.

Since Mr. Odey appears to have excess time to squander, he should have merely consoled the girl, assuaged her pain over the BBA misadventure, but more importantly, used that opportunity to urge other Nigerian youths to shun such shows no matter the huge prize money they dangle, if they do not wish to encounter such tragedies like “fingergate.” 

And I think I am right.
---------------------------      

February 18, 2008

scruples2006@yahoo.com