BURNING POT BY DR. PRINCE CHARLES DICKSON

 

Abba Kyari—almost just another episode

pcdbooks@yahoo.com

 

By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed, and you can beat a fool half to death but you can't beat the foolishness out of him. African Proverb.

 

If you ask me who I go ask—it was Omowumi that sang the song. And true to Nigerians we are never constant or consistent in most matters, we lack a staying power. We at most make all the drama and move along, we are often than not riddled with the best producers when it comes to the national soap opera by the most porous of dramatis personae.

 

While we regaled Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, DSS, Kenya and what’s the word again; yes! Extra rendition abi! Entering Sunday Igboho and our neighbors Benin Republic, the Germans almost entered the matter as that was Sunday and his wife’s final destination. Interpol was not left behind, and then you remember Brutai the erstwhile army chief who’s now ambassador in Benin Republic. We still dey settle the matter for court in Cotonou!

 

All these were on the burner, and episode 101 of this administration entered the fray with a twist of the Hushpuppi series introducing a new act in the person of super cop Abba Kyari as supporting act of the year.

 

I would spare us the story which already has served several twists and turns with the FBI of the US and a US district court also issuing X, Y and Z. For me and I want to rightly presume sane Nigerians, this is it; if Abba Kyari our super cop is robed in such hush tailored attire, imagine how dirty our dirty cops would be?

 

Secondly as is with most things Nigerian and with Nigerians we again have proved that we cannot seem to agree on any moral issue whether it’s right, or wrong. We first go the way of humor, then we give the matter a religious and then an ethnic twist and give it time we all forget and next episode please—we lack the staying power to agree on solutions, we can’t even agree on the problem.

 

We are all Abba Kyari, we are the tailors in our collective affairs, we decide the material, the size, cost and it’s funny, the end product. I am guilty, you are, we all are guilty. Let me say conclusively even before my admonition takes shape, Abba Kyari’s matter will come and go. We are only victims of a contagion that spreads fast and as it is, for now the cure seems far from us.

 

Abba Kyari is trending, we will soon forget and move ahead, we are birds of the same plumage product of the same faculty, the institute called Nigeria. Forget what a section of the media tells you Abba Kyari erred and we have failed as a people, and as usual we only succeeded in giving Nigerians another drama. Something to engage us while they loot away and we create sainthood of otherwise political miscreants. And what Abba Kyari exposes is the poor cerebral quality of the men on top, and the high amount of hooligan quotient in them regarding their actions and inactions.

 

Nigerians learn slowly when they manage to, but sadly forget quickly, but for increased awareness, the social media, and a big plus, whether we like it or not a growing democracy (problem is in which direction). The Abba Kyari drama is only a repeat episode of Patami, a repeat of Jibril, a repeat of Cubuna, it’s a continuation of the herdsmen and farmers misfit narrative that has cost countless lives…look deep and retrospectively you will see nothing really new.

 

Of all that I have read, know and what informed sources say, at best, the entire Abba Kyari matter is no fight at all, it is all diversionary, nothing will come out of it, we won’t even learn from it.

 

What saddens me is that Nigerians have refused to learn, I hate this psycho-make of us. Unfortunately it is partly who we are.  We are either fighting ourselves or fighting for those that are misgoverning or looting us blind because we share faith, creed and identity and not on any defined ideology.

 

A lot of the things we debate on leaves a sour taste in the mouth right from time, we  become fanatical, we cannot change our mind, we cannot change the subject, so we continue to grapple with the same problems, only the styles that change and new terminologies developed but the ideology be it corruption or ethnicity it remains largely the same. So our culture has been shaped by the Nigerian factor, one that we have been forced to develop for lack of direction, for lack of a beginning, a middle or an end. So as a nation we have continued with a culture of indifference. Now it is a hushkyari thing, till the next episode.

 

I will end with this small gist, its author is unknown--There once was a farmer who discovered that he had lost his watch in the barn. It was no ordinary watch because it had sentimental value for him.

 

After searching high and low among the hay for a long while; he gave up and enlisted the help of a group of children playing outside the barn.

 

He promised them that the person who found it would be rewarded.

 

Hearing this, the children hurried inside the barn, went through and around the entire stack of hay but still could not find the watch. Just when the farmer was about to give up looking for his watch, a little boy went up to him and asked to be given another chance.

 

The farmer looked at him and thought, “Why not? After all, this kid looks sincere enough.”

 

So the farmer sent the little boy back to the barn. After a while the little boy came out with the watch in his hand! The farmer was both happy and surprised and so he asked the boy how he succeeded where the rest had failed.

 

The boy replied, “I did nothing but sit on the ground and listen. In the silence, I heard the ticking of the watch and just looked for it in that direction.”

 

A politician was charged with profanity for calling an opponent a bastard: the politician retorted, “When I call him s.o.b I am not using profanity. I am only referring to the circumstances of his birth”. Whatever direction we look at the Abba Kyari drama, again we can only hope something will be done to bring destiny and fate to conjure up some good for us all?

 

So, it is, you can educate a fool, but you cannot make him think, a whole lot of us as Nigerians have refused to sit on the ground and listen, we are all talking at the same time, are we really engaging in any critical-problem solving manner, we just do not want to agree on most things, so how long this episode—Only time will tell