MY PROFESSOR

 

 

          I skimmed through the result rapidly until my eyes fell on my registration number. The crowd at the notice board was the type kind seen at CMS bus stop on a day labour was on strike. The almighty CS 401 result had just been released and no sooner had the news flittered in that the entire final year class came rushing to the notice board. My heart almost tearing through my chest, I traced the row on which my registration number was to the column of grades, all sorts of images forming in my head. What I saw was unbelievable. Certain I must have traced wrongly, I ran my eyes through the row again, this time making sure my gaze was exactly on the row that bore my registration number but behold, the “F” was still there, conspicuously standing out from the ‘B’ above and the ‘D’ below. I felt blood ascending to my brains, my heart racing away. Furiously, I edged my way to the front of the board to have a closer view, hoping that I might see something different but the verdict turned out the same. The F was mine.

          I elbowed my way out of the crowd clutching tightly at my handbag. I wasn’t quite sure where I was heading to but I just kept moving. At first my head was blank, only the blows of the traumatizing headache, which had suddenly set in, reminded me I had a head. The clouds grew heavy inside my eyes and soon the rains came trickling down my cheeks. I had just failed a course I had no business whatsoever failing. My stomach felt empty, like a criminal before a firing squad. Professor Mbah has finally made good his threat. It was now certain I was going to have an extra year.

          Professor Mbah was renowned in many respects. While he commands an intimidating presence among scholars in his discipline, he was more popular among his students for his randiness. Stories had it that the University had once suspended him on account of his he-goat like weakness for any thing in skirt but given his current activities, that suspension hardly achieved much. Until the day, early in our first semester when he requested that I see him in his office after his class, I had preferred to treat all I had heard about him as mere rumours,  By principle, I never got myself enmeshed in class gossip and so gave very little credence to the stories by some other girls about being threatened by professor Mbah to go to bed with him.      

          There was virtually no reason why I should have believed them. Firstly professor Mbah was a very old man. The whiteness of his hair and the limp in his steps reminded me of my papa Nnukwu who Daddy said was almost eighty. I couldn’t imagine some one his age bothering to go after ladies who were not yet born when he acquired his professorship. Besides, professor Mbah was a knight in the church and was very regular at communion. Himself and his wife hardly missed morning masses and usually sat side by side in the front pew of the campus church. Above all, I thought the man had a reputation to protect. He was one of the world’s most respected mathematicians and condescending so low as to chasing his students about for sex was something I felt was most unlikely.

          All that however changed that day he invited me to his office. I entered the office silently enjoying the privilege of gracing the interior of the great professors office and totally oblivious of what he had up is sleeves. He motioned me to a sit and did not mince words in making his shameless demand. Initially I was taken aback, the respect I had for him evaporating like dew on a sunny morning, but I held my self back from sounding disrespectful even though that was exactly what he deserved. He went on saying how beautiful I was and well end owned with the right amount of flesh at the right places and how he gets so aroused while lecturing just by looking at my face. He wanted us to fix an appointment in a hotel off campus later that day where in his words; he would make me feel like a woman.

          I was disappointed and at the same time felt sorry for him. I felt very irritated when he in an attempt to back his words with action, came over to my side, his fragile senile fingers attempting to reach for my breasts. With all the strength in me, I shoved him off so hard that he hit his head at the edge of the book rack as he went crashing to the floor. I needn’t say more, my answer was clear. I bolted away from the office slamming the door nosily.

          If I thought that would be the end, then I was mistaking as professor Mbah continued to pester me. When cajoling me to the extent of buying me costly gift items didn’t achieve results, he began to threaten. He reminded me time again that he was a god in the department and had the ability to decide who graduates and by what grade. He made it clear that it was either I co-operated or he would see to it that I remained around for as long as my resistance lasted. Failing me in CS 401 was his way of letting me know he was serious.

The tears ran down my cheeks in a steady flow. I was still walking. My legs were taking me somewhere I wasn’t quite sure of. Everywhere seemed dark, like the sun had fallen from the skies. I just wanted to get away from it all, to somewhere I could sit down and cry my head out. That place was just ahead I thought, so I kept moving. I got to the end of the walk, my legs refusing to move any further. As a looked up, I discovered that I was right in front of professor Mbah’s  office. I couldn’t quite say what I was there for.   

 

            Ifedigbo Chikwenze Sylva 

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

08063767306

 

SO MUCH TROUBLE FOR ALITTLE CHANGE

There is always this annoying traffic hold up as you approach the NNPC mega filling station in Abuja. This hold up is particularly annoying to me because it is responsible in a way for my five minutes daily late arrival at work which my boss frowns at and as a youth corper eager to impress in order to place myself in a good position both to receive little weekend tips as reward for my dedication from my boss (a favour I ardently desire to augment the meager allowances) and to be possibly retained by the establishment after my service year, this means a lot to me.

I once read in the papers some years ago that the filling station was wrongly sited and would be relocated. I wouldn’t know if that is still being thought about by those whose business it is to, but I know it generated quite some ruse then. You might be wondering what was particularly wrong about the location of the station after all it was sited just by the side of the road like every other filling station. Yes, this filling station is by the side of the road but there is some thing different about it . If you were a first time visitor to Abuja approaching the NNPC Mega station, you would think that some serious fuel scarcity has hit town. The queue of cars (both flashy and jalopies alike) extends beyond the station and takes up the outside lane of the adjourning road and when you drive that way, for those of us driving ahead, there is a whole lot of braking, clutching, sweating, choking, screeching, yelling…..which ultimately makes me end up about five minutes late at work.

The simple reason why every one wants to buy from the NNPC station even when all the other stations along that route and around town had fuel and without a queue was because a liter of fuel (PMS) sold at sixty nine naira (N69.00) there and Seventy naira (N70.00) at others thus making it one naira (N1.00) cheaper. Just One naira cheaper and all those cars take the pains to queue up, blocking up the road in the process for it.

Nigerians would do any thing just to save a few nairas. It’s our nature, an unconscious survival strategy, an adaptation for austerity, a belt tightening procedure, our defense mechanism….our way of life. We see it play out in the way we bargain for goods in the market, the final selling price is always a negotiated compromise between the seller’s realistic profit margin and the buyers in born desire to save some change at all cost.

I see this remarkable ability of ours to go through a lot of trouble just to save a few change equally exemplified in our patronage of the big transit buses that are popular in the FCT popularly called Elrufai buses after the former minister who introduced them.  For instance in the mornings, there is always a long queue among which includes civil servants who should be at work by 8.00am, business men who have appointments to meet and students running rate to school, all standing and waiting, enduring the early morning sun and the sickening discomfort of just waiting, in order to go by the government bus which is twenty naira (N20.00) less than the fare charged by the privately owned smaller buses that are more in supply. Many would prefer to pay sixty naira (N60.00) for a standing space in the Elrufai bus (after close to an hour wait for it to arrive), than to pay Eighty naira (N80.00) in the smaller buses in which they would be comfortably seated, for a trip of close to 30 minutes from Kubwa (a satellite town in the FCT ) to Wuse (a district of the city center).

The same scenario plays its self out in virtually every other aspect of our daily dealings including those that are of grave consequences to our health. For instance, one would rather buy antibiotics spooned out of a plastic container at a drug store which was generally known to be of lower quality but which was cheap, than to buy that which is in a sealed sachet which was costlier by some naira no matter how surer of the efficacy we are. So many other interesting examples of this abound.

With a continuously depressing economy, a sky rocketing cost of living, a staggering inflation rate, a mind burgling level of un employment, a sickening degree of corruption, a meager and often unpaid salary scale and a continued prevalence of bad governance and ineptitude on the part of our leaders, it is not quite hard to imagine why our people have to go to such lengths just to save up some extra change. In doing this however, we inadvertently and unknowingly cause some even greater problem of unquantifiable cost for ourselves and even the country as a whole.

For instance the traffic hold up at the NNPC filling station makes me and a whole lot of other folks including those on the queue for the fuel themselves, go late to work or other appointments. The cost of lost productive time is unquantifiable. This is aside the discomfort, increased blood pressure and accidents it causes. On the other hand, waiting for the ELrufai buses has sort of enthroned mediocrity and complacency in public service as the workers are now use to arriving when they like thus working less hours the effect to the economy of which is un imaginable. In the same way, when we buy a cheaper drug, a cheaper car tyre, or we build with cheaper materials, we are simply endangering our lives and those of others.

While it is wise to save, it might, if we check again not be so worthwhile after all. The solution to this “problem” is quite simple. If the economy is better which translates into our people having more money to spend , having well paid jobs or owning their own business, etcetera, they would begin to think more of their comfort and wouldn’t fancy going through great trouble to get things which are not necessarily of superior quality at a lower cost. The responsibility of seeing this happen lies squarely on government and if the provision of Section 13(b) of the 1999 constitution means anything at all to them, they better start doing something fast because I dread like hell to see that annoying traffic hold up on my way to work every day. By this I don’t mean relocating the filling station.

Ifedigbo Nze Sylva

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

08063767306

 

A GENERATOR GENERATION

A GENERATOR GENERATION

It might interest you to know that I am writing this piece with the help of a half spent candle light which my neighbour had been generous enough to offer me. I had returned late (at a time all the shops in my neighbourhood had closed for the day) to the startling realization that I had run out of my stock of this highly essential and precious household commodity. I really hope I don’t forget to put it off before dozing off lest I end up in the casualty wing of one of the hospitals around nursing 3^rd degree burns.

I am finding it extremely difficult to concentrate on my writing. The sound of my next door neighbours generator in union with those of several others around the area had now reached a crescendo. It was no more the usual humming sound; it was more like some kind of drum was being played right on my skull. Had I not once read something about the ‘high cost of darkness”?. Only last week I read in the papers that President  Yar’adua was now getting set to make good his promise of declaring a state of power emergency which he promised us glibly during his campaigns. Power emergency, fine, but what exactly does he mean by that?

I dutifully listened (via my GSM handset fm radio facility because there was no power to watch television) to his May 29 media chat where he not too successfully tried to explain this much taunted power emergency thing and sincerely I couldn’t get anything out of it. Perhaps I wasn’t attentive enough or I am just plain daft but if you listened to that media jamboree; I can swear you wouldn’t have gotten anything either beyond that we shouldn’t expect any thing near constant power in Nigeria until sometimes in 2011. We are talking about three years from now, just about the time President Yar’adua will be leaving office after his first term that is assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t throw him away before then. If they (the President and all his array of advisers and assistants both special and not too special) knew it would take forever to get the power situation right, why then hurt the thoughts and sensibilities of Nigerians with the talk of an “emergency” and generating false hope among the people?.

2011, we’ve heard those stories before. Our leaders should try to understand that we are tired if not now out rightly irritated by their empty-sweet sounding- promises.  Not too long ago the late Bola Ige then later Liyel Imoke told us the same stories. The latter’s  case was so dramatic as he with a vault face (much the same way he had made the promise) told Nigerians that he never promised us a steady power supply. That was when the deadline he himself had set was near at hand and billions of naira had gone under the bridge with nothing what so ever to show for it. He , typical of the irony that is the Nigerian nation returned to a rousing welcome by his people in Cross River and was ‘elected’ governor. Such things only happen in Nigeria.

When will things ever get better or is it simply impossible to get things right in this part of the world? Now we are even finding it difficult to agree on whether it was 6, 10 or 16 billion dollars that the Obasanjo government squandered of the white elephant Independent power Project [NIPP]l. Some time ago, I read that the House committee investigating the NIPP had to relocate to the solace of some foreign hotel room to write their report. For what reason and at who’s expense?

And do we ever get tired of scandals? Everyday new ones are uncovered to our delight. The papers today [The Nation, Thursday 19^th June 2008] revealed the fraud in the award of oil blocks by the OBJ administration. Some days ago, we were treated to that associated with the award of contract to a Chinese firm for the construction of rail way lines in the country. These are to join other celebrated scandals such as the Ettehgate, Iyabogate, the 50b naira Police equipment fund scam, the NIPP scam, the Elfufai-FCT Scam and a host of others.

While the grabbing goes on, our public utilities continue to rot away and what do we get?….promises, dates, visions, agendas….nonsense!

Today in Nigeria, we effectively have a generator dependent people. Time was when owning a generator was a status symbol. A brand of small toy-like generator which is now ubiquitous in the country was given the nickname “I pass my neighbor” but today virtually every one now owns one and we might as well rename it “All neighbours are equal”. It is now most difficult to imagine surviving without those tiny, noisy machines. It is in fact impossible to fathom. We run a generator powered economy with all the air pollution, noise pollution and extra expenditure that goes with it as a way of life and believe me, we are simply a generator generation.

Ifedigbo Nze Sylva

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

08063767306

Gwagwalada Abuja.

 

NIGERIAN MEN OF GOD AS CON ARTISTS

MEN OF GOD AS CON ARTISTS

I am about to steer the hornets’ nest, for in Nigeria, no issue can be as sensitive as religion. My apologies to those who might be offended by this piece, but what must be said must be said.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am a practicing Christian and by all standards I consider my self a good one at that. I believe in the existence of a God and in the reality of Heaven and Hell. But I also know where to draw the line between spirituality and deception.

I don’t know if the Churches pay tax, if they don’t, they ought to because they are now very potent money spinning institutions. At some point in our national life, I had held a strong opinion that since every other option had failed, the only hope left for the nation was the religious institution. I was not alone in this conviction, the generality of Nigerians thought so too. Then, as it is still now, the nation seemed on the verge of breathing its last with a combination of bad leadership, corruption and tyranny driving the people to desolation. Every one turned to the heavens for help like the children of Israel in the wilderness. This massive return to God was evident  in the rapid spread of Pentecostal and new generation churches across the land and an increased call for prayers for the nation by the few founding father that were still alive. One former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon perhaps not too brave as to entering the trenches to fight the draconian Abacha Regime called on Nigerians to Pray through his “Nigeria Prays” campaign. I remember even the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria formulating a special Prayer for Nigeria in Distress. God and what ever reassurance we heard from the pulpits became the only solace for the common man and I tell you, Sundays were a day most people specially looked forward to.

            Soon however, the whole religious revival fever generated its own problems. It gave rise to a new set of Chief Executives going by various names such as general overseer, supreme shepherd, founding bishop and the like. These individuals who driven either by a foresight of the boom that lay ahead had set up their own churches suddenly turned into kingpins as their congregations transformed from mushroom gatherings into business empires and very large conglomerates. Gradually but steadily, a new class of bourgeoisie emerged, this time around in the vineyard of God and thus unquestionably divine.

      We watched as the focus shifted from an intercession to save our nation from final collapse to a grandiose scramble for the same old root of all evils, money. Pastors who had tasted the pleasures and comfort of the elite class by virtue of their headship of various churches and the unhindered assess it gave them to the common wealth of their congregation sustained their position by spreading a new gospel of prosperity. Under this new revelation, they made anyone who chose to come under their spell believe that God never wished for any one to be poor and that every child of God could become rich and have everything they wanted only if they could be bold enough to put the Lord of the harvest to test. This in reality translated into giving more passionately from their meager earnings to sustain the ministry and indeed the pastor’s new standard of living.

It was at this point, when it became obvious that religion had become business with the key players acting in no way different from our civil leaders, that whatsoever belief I had for a miraculous rescue of our nation by the Churches died. One event had been central to this. Once, the church I attended had had the rare privilege of hosting Our Founder. Rare in the sense that it was not every day such a senior man of God came visiting and with the visit were expected many miracles, testimonies and special anointing. The joy of the church members knew no bounds and a lot of preparation went into according him a most befitting welcome.

      The Holy man of God while in the full glory of his Episcopal regalia on the day of his visit stood before us on the alter and began what I prefer to call a lecture on religious capitalism in the name of preaching a sermon. To make matters worse, he spoke for so long a time that for me it became not just boring but also irritating, yet for what ever reason, the excited congregation kept clapping and cheering. His every statement was about money. Money to spread the gospel, money to furnish the new bishops house, money to change the bishops car, the bishop now needed a private jet to ease his movement, what of his wife?, she needed a good car, money to over haul the bishops wardrobe, the importance of sowing a seed in the life of the minister of God, and how blessed it was to give than to receive.  Money for this, money for that. All these was nauseating enough but it was when he confirmed the rumours that had been making the rounds -a story I had argued and prayed was false- that he accepted a donation of five million naira and a Jeep from a member who was found to have defrauded a bank that I lost my patience. What justification? God accepts everything brought to him as offering whether earned, stolen or looted. I couldn’t take it any more. I got up and left the church through the back door. I never returned there and I am afraid that since then, I have not been able to hand my soul to another man of God.

            What we have today are mega rich, celebrity, Super star, stage con-artists parading in the name of Men of God. I am often seriously amused when I watched their broadcasts on the television and indeed I will advise any free-thinking individual who wants to be amused to tune to those broadcasts any time he/she can. From the outset, they leave no one in doubt that the emphasis here is not about what the Bible says but a stage-managed effort to delude and by extension hypnotise their highly gullible congregation into parting with more naira notes. Some times, it just looks like drama.  Indeed, it is drama if you ask me.

The Man of God stands on the pulpit in a polished Italian Suit the type whose price tags in boutiques read like telephone numbers. Depending on his preferences, his hair could be in jerry coils or a bushy afro cut into a style called Punk. He speaks with an annoying accent (preferably American for desired effect) which he’s been able to cultivate and perfect over time and bounces all over the pulpit throwing punchy remarks or cracking jokes to the delight of his congregation. Much of what he says is incomprehensible, thanks to his accent. Occasionally he goes to the glass stand where his bible is and reads out a verse then spends the next fifteen minutes explaining it. Most of his talk is about Wealth, Prosperity and Miracles which sometimes sees some of his listeners’ rising up and jumping senselessly into the air which kind of spurs him on. It goes on and on and on.

            It’s no secret that a good number of these Superstar men of God have built business empires. Agreed, every individual has the right to own and operate a business, but when the capital for this is reaped off innocent Church-goers then it becomes morally questionable. Owning Private Universities seems to be the current craze among them. Universities that a greater percentage of their congregation cannot send their kids to because of the cost. Owning eye-popping Jeeps and flashy rides is now a minor thing and if you think your State Governor’s convoy is intimidating, wait until you see that of one of our more prosperous Men of God. Holiday trips abroad are a normal way of life and hey, they, like the banks keep opening new branches nationwide.

They, like the showbiz celebrities are not spared of controversies. We read about one pastor attacking another (a competitor) on the pages of newspapers. We read about their illicit affairs with female members of their congregation and how their marriages are collapsing because of one flimsy issue or the other. We also read about some more obscene stuff like their setting people ablaze in the name of casting out demons or deluding dying AIDS patients who should rather be seeking medical help into believing they can cure AIDS. And of course it is always at a cash and carry basis. The congregation pays for even the smile they wear boldly on their faces.

 Now, would we be right in always attacking our civil leaders of corruption and deception when our religious leaders are worse?  Would it be wise for us to continue to fall prey to these self-serving individuals who claim to be speaking for the Supreme Being when clearly it is evident that they are just toying with our sensibilities? I have a feeling that this was what Karl Marx had in mind when he said that religion was the opium of the masses…..a potent item to make them sleep to their reality.

As I scribble this down while the bus am travelling in drags along on the Lagos –Ibadan expressway in a frustrating traffic jam caused by a church crusade holding on the expanse of land that had now become a church estate along the road, a familiar feeling of annoyance envelopes me. An annoyance against every institution that deludes the masses that they lead.

Ifedigbo Nze Sylva

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

08063767306