resume your nectar-rustling

Your swarms are dying out across the land.
scientists are stumped, and frankly, worried.
our race will starve, it seems, when yours die out.
it is not just your honey, they say. it’s the

Pollinations you do so well for us.
so I have rolled up my Times as usual,
in times past you’d be dead by now, swatted
near the television, by the window

Closed against the cold. but look: times have changed
& my rolled newspaper’s for shooing you
to the safety of flowering trees. there’s
the open window, & my orchard of

Underyielding trees. go, resume your nectar-
rustling, pollination rounds, & just in case
your queen mum ails from a broken ego too,
here’s a poem from us, to honey headquarters.

A Short Memo to An Endangered Bee is a post from: Chuma

19 votes v. 19 signatures

Since then the politicking by state chief executives has claimed much energy and resources – from court cases and duplicated websites, to a succession of factional meetings as our most important administrators crisscross Nigeria in support of their preferred chairman.

None of this is necessarily new. What is interesting is this definition of Nigerian Democracy by the Governor of Abia state, Chief Theodore Orji, who supports the Jang chairmanship. In this  Youtube Video, he responds to a journalist’s question (at 1.31):

Q: What does that do for nigerian democracy? this consensus issue that puts everything the governors do in doubt?

A. No, no, no, no, no! It’s a symbol of Nigeria’s democracy. Consensus… is it not democracy? It is. because that is the choice of the people. Every person agrees. It’s even better. Every person agrees instead of rancour that comes with election… what else do you want?

Of course, when Gov. Orji says ‘every person’ what he really means is 19 out of 36 governors. Presumeably, the 17 governor who were not consulted will be upset without ‘rancour’. Elsewhere, Gov. Orji was asked why the PDP governors broke up the forum – both feuding ‘chairmen’ are from the ruling party – and he had this to say:

… Since the NGF started, there has never been an election in choosing who will be the chairman. To come now and insert an obnoxious procedure is what the people are agitating against…

Of course the surreptitious video of the election showed 35 governors happily watching as their votes were tallied. The anti-election agitations of Gov. Orji’s group apparently kicked in after their candidate lost. All the same, these responses flesh out the Orjian vision of Nigerian Democracy, which betrays more than a passing whiff of the Post-Autocratic Stress Syndrome where ‘selection’ trumps ‘elections’, where elections are obnoxious, and where the ordinary decision of the majority is swamped by horse-traded deals which are given concrete reality by the battering ram of public resources bent to private use by public servants in office.

Unfortunately, the Orjian variation of Democracy opens the door of the Deal Room to influences that are less than democratic. ‘Consensus’ has a chummy, friendly ring to it, until Blackmail, Ghana Mus’ Go bags, The Big Stick, and the bugbear of Peer Pressure also enters the room. The narrow stall of  Democracy by secret ballot on the other hand has space only for man and Conscience. It excludes the beady eyes of the secret cult.  Nigerians can hardly take lessons on Democracy from 36 governors who cannot govern their own confab, and certainly not from governors who find elections obnoxious.

‘Consensus-building’ is a useful part of any democratic process but taken to an extreme it will bleed the electorate of real choice and make peaceful change impossible, thereby making violence and anarchy inevitable. So called consensus candidates usually emerge from cliques that disenfranchise electorates. The document signed by 19 governors for instance denied the balance of 17 governors a say. Even if the majority has its way, this is the entitlement of the minority.

In Gov. Orji’s view of democracy, my opinion is probably irrelevant, but here it is all the same: Disband, dear 36 Excellencies, before we sink so low that we have to take Democracy tutorials from Boko Haram. Your forum is not a creature of our constitution. There is now a Nigeria Governors Forum, a Northern Nigeria Governors Forum, a South-East Governors Forum, a South-West Governors Forum, a South-South Governors Forum and a PDP Governors Forum. This farce of cloning fora would have been hilarious if they were not prosecuted on executive time and financed by the public treasury. And if you cannot even elect one leader out of 36, it is hard to see how all this politicking conduces to the national good. It is also clear what this forebodes for the 2015 general elections.  Return to your turfs and constituents dear governors, until we elect a crop of leaders who know how to win, as well as lose, elections. 

The Orjian Definition of Nigerian Democracy is a post from: Chuma

"she (and all her worldly) goods'

When the invaders arrived, Wela barricaded her doors and fled upstairs. As they drove their battering ram against her timbers, she shaved off her heavy weight of hair, leaving red tracks of razored blood. She dusted her young face with ash, daubed herself with the rape-repellent goo from a rotting fish and donned her grandmother’s fusty frock, to dull her curves…. for though her womb was quickening, it yearned for the seed of her suitors, not barbarians.

The pounding on her doors relented. She watched from her window as the invaders overran her village. Swordsman by swordsman, the new army prevailed upon the flower of her menfolk. Spear by overwhelming spear, the amateurish resistance of the villagers was swept aside by the might of the victors. The rout was seared upon Wela’s impressionable mind: of a battleground of men producing worryingly female cries of surrender.

Silently, she washed the blood, the ash and the fish odour off her young body. She olive-oiled her newly glistening head, and robed herself in damask. Then Wela opened her half-broken doors and ventured forth, armed with nothing more disarming than a smile and a dangerous bosom. When the new army left the following day, she (and all her worldly goods) left with them, willing spoils of war, for inarticulate though her womb was, it knew to swell with the spawn of victors rather than the seed of losers.

Winner Takes All is a post from: Chuma

It is the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. I wish her many more years of a peaceful reign, but on days like this we are once again reminded that despite the ubiquity of Mr. David Cameron on the world stage, the United Kindom and her dominions are in the seventh decade of their rule by same Head of State and Commander-in-Chief. When she does join her ancestors (long, though, may she reign) her potential successors are already well-known – and will certainly not be chosen by Plebeian ballot.

Of course the British brand of autocracy has been refined over the centuries so that little more than pomp and circumstance, wealth and grandeur reside in the Court of St. James’. The dynastic reign of the Windsor family is moderated by the people’s democratic right to elect the occupants of parliament, a parliament that sits at the core of British democracy by choosing the Chief Operating Officer of Britain Plc. Despite the fact that Cameron can legally remain C.O.O. for the next 60 years – if he continues to win elections – Britain’s democratic laurels seems secure – proof of a society that has evolved a home-grown, if quirky, system through the centuries to fit with modern exigencies. It also lends a somewhat ironic sheen to the vocal support by Cameron & posse of street protests that flare up against sit-tight rulers up and down the world.

The British evolution is on-going. Some days ago, the parliamentarian Patrick Mercer and other colleagues were caught in a sting operation run by the media. ‘Bungs’ were paid or promised and Mercer agreed that he had received £4,000 (N1,000,000) from fake lobbyists to offer ’parliamentary services’ to the pariah state of Fiji. There has been resignations from committees, from political parties, but Mercer for instance plans to keep his £66,000 p.a. job in Parliament until his term expires. Like the recent Expenses Scandal that hit the English parliament not that long ago, this case highlights a potential lacuna in British constitutional law: in situations like this it is the shame – or lack of it – of the parliamentarian that determines if he stays in office, not the electorate. – The British elector has no power to recall his MP, and the most recent attempt to enact recall legislation appears to have collapsed at committee stage last year.

The British evolution continues. After all these centuries, Britain still lacks a written constitution. Although elements of its constitutional law is gathered in written instruments, it is still mediated by hoary conventions. Nigeria on the other hand, like two dozen other countries including Venezuela, the Philippines, South Korea, Argentina and Taiwan, has a recall provision enshrined in its constitution. Unfortunately, despite the most brazen provocation, not least of all the very public N99,000,000 in bribes reputedly received in February last year by Federal Rep, Lawan Farouk, S.69 of the constitution remains pristine and bubble-wrapped.

After 14 years of the operation of the 1999 constitution, not a single senator or representative has ever been recalled from our infamous legislature. In 2010, during a public meeting at the Nigerian High Commission in London, I asked Prof. Maurice Iwu, then chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission why this was so. He explained that his commission had actually facilitated a few attempts, which petered out. He was frustrated that in Nigeria sometimes the person who ‘called the cops’ was the same person who came back to beg said cops not to prosecute.

Clearly there is something to be said for organic development. Spanking new constitutions that are grafted onto bemused countries often belongs to constitutional lawyers. It takes a virile, non-comatose electorate to develop the muscles of constitutional safeguards, and to tone them with constant application. The challenge is for middle classes up and down the world to rouse themselves from their salaried stupor and wrestle accountability and change from the occupants of smug State Houses. This is the only way for societies to grow fairly and sustainably, and avoid the anarchy of Syrian-type conflagration.

Democratizing Autocracy; A Very English Example is a post from: Chuma

'God is Great, God is Great'

God is with us still, to judge from the Name on every tongue.

He is there when hands rise in Benediction. He is also there when hatchets rise in murder. He is the inspiration for the raising of cathedrals, he is also the inspiration for their razing to the ground. In the prayer, in the oath, in the offerings and the tithes, He is the Headline and the sub-text, the reason and the Client.

And it is alleged that when Mr. Uzonma Attang, former Chief Accountant with the Police Pensions Fund chose to embezzle N1, 141,309,080.25 of the money entrusted to her, she did it by writing 1042 cheques made out to her corporate vehicles with names like Royal Diadem Business Logistics Ltd, and Amazing Grace Property Development Company.

Although Isaiah 62.3 says:

You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

This was surely not what the prophet had in mind. 

Jesus Saves Street, Immanuel Concrete Industries, Grace and Truth Plaza… the saintly names multiply, and so do our iniquities… it is enough to cry out for a moratorium on ‘holy enterprise’.

‘God is Great, God is Great…’ cries the bomb- and machete-wielding fellows looking for their own memorial newspaper headlines. Perhaps. But what is certain is that these unmentionable idiots crying His name are neither godly nor great.

They are murderers. 

A Moratorium on Holy Enterprise is a post from: Chuma

'the madly-burdened biker'

the hungry road,
she sees the madly-burdened biker,
& licks her dually-carriaged 
tarmacadamed lips
 

The Hungry Road is a post from: Chuma

Asymptote, April, 2013

There are probably many ways of securing World Peace and Understanding known only to the men in black who command the vast arsenals in our ministries of ‘Defence’ worldwide, but a small team of editors in a worldwide network strung out from Singapore have a fun idea: how about getting literary editors and translators across the world to blend a regular stew of the best of world literature, so that readers can access from one page, fresh writing and thinking that emerge from different languages. There is now a myriad of literary voices across languages. How about improving the quality of our listening?

The most recently curated edition is now available. It doesn’t have a lot of African writers yet, but that is probably where you come in – as well as the newly appointed Kenyan editor at large, Natalya Din-Kariuki…

The New Asymptote is a post from: Chuma

I once fell into conversation with a young Pakistani in Oxford. A likable young man, it soon emerged that he had only spent a week in England. ‘Where have you just come from?’ I asked, ‘The United States?’

‘Oh no. this is my very first trip outside Pakistan.’

‘But your accent…’ I began,

‘I know,’ he grinned. ‘I love American films.’

And that was a total answer. It made sense of course, for it wasn’t just the accent that was American. It was the entire package. He might as well have strolled out of a box pack of Gray’s Anatomy. In that of course he was no faster on the uptake than those who only need a two-week foreign vacation to debut a strong alien accent. On the other hand I once met an English professor at the British Library who had lived twenty-five years in Nigeria. Until he said that, I hadn’t picked up a clue as to his Nigerian residency from his voice. Why do some people retain their native accents throughout their lives despite the daily provocation of foreign domicile, and others lose theirs permanently in the course of a Gatwick stopover? The answer might lie in the perception of power, with people readily adopting the accent of the metropolis. This trend will even be observed regionally within places like the USA when Southern, rural accents collide with the New York accent.

A country would usually have a basket of recognisable national accents, and even within a language group there would be a whole spectrum of twangs from familiar marketplace to aspirational board room. So comedians can have fun code-switching before a microphone, and with every shift in accent the listeners can picture every characteristic native to the speakers of that particular strain of English.

The problem of course is that the accent in many aspirational Nigerian circles – from boardrooms to night clubs – is no longer ‘Nigerian’ in the strict sense. It is not American either, to be fair, or British… nor is it any discernible brand of internationalese so that the best we can own is that it is ‘foreign’ or not ‘typically Nigerian’. It is a mongrelised Nigerian English. Most Nigerians can fluently code-switch from Pidgin English (Naija Langwej) to standard English. Sometimes there’s something to be said that can only be properly flavoured when rendered in Naija. And that’s just great. It would also be great if we could code-switch from our regular accent to this ‘Mongrel English’ that is not native to any country in the world, but this attempt to speak, say, American  is rendered on the level, without a wink, in an accent that would have the average American head-scratching.

So although an accent is a terribly personal thing, and a voice is subject to many personal dynamics, a communal inferiority complex is problematic where people are so apologetic about their accents that they are ready to acquire any approximation of the speech patterns of others.

Listening to Nigerian radio is sometimes a trial because of the accent of some presenters. There are many Nigerian ‘normative’ accents for speaking English and any of them should be acceptable for pubic radio. What is jarring, what screams loudly of a psychological crisis in either media recruiting policy or our presenters themselves, is the mongrelised English that passes for Anglo-American. Radio broadcasts come in different languages of course, from English, through indigenous languages to the Naija langwej stations. The indigenous and Naija language stations have no identity crisis and go about their merry business. (If the Naija stations have any problem it is the tendency to treat their listeners as though we all have a collective bullet in the head. There’s no need to describe the Ministry of Health is the ‘ogbonge gofment office wey dey look health matter…’ on each reference – Pigin listeners should be credited with some more sense, but that is clearly the subject for another blog!) Most Nigerian presenters on English stations are comfortable in their own skin and accent. They can also hack a faux accent when they want to, for comic relief, or just for the heck of it, and that is well and good. But there is a persistent fringe that may have gone so far down the route of exterminating their real deal accent that the faux foreign twang, which actually imperils communication here and abroad, is all that is left. Bad grammar often comes in as part of the package, along with the laboured mispronunciation of local names (Ketu becomes Kitu and Owerri become Owayrei…).

Time out: the Nigerian accent is a valid, beautiful variation of the spoken English and should be the gold standard for media broadcast in Nigeria. The energy we put into morphing our accents will be better spent improving our grammar. Those of us who may have, by long residence – or vacations – abroad, lost the virility of our native Nigerian without quite acquiring a viable foreign accent that can actually be understood by the foreigners we are trying to mimic should attract public sympathy from foreigners and our compatriots alike, not the opportunity to further mongrelise our national accents with the visibility of daily broadcast.

The Mongrelisation of Nigerian English is a post from: Chuma

The other day, a case was being made against the infamous eba.

It was labourers’ food, said three beans-eaters arranged around a hungry man. It had none of the sophistication of moin-moin, for instance. A ten-year-old could make it – dump gari in hot water and it was done! Plus it was tasteless and bland, relying squarely on the soup of the day for any flavour at all. Hungry Man put water on the fire to boil. The beans-eaters continued to declaim: gari was potentially poisonous, they said – it was made from cassava, a source of cyanide. Poorly processed gari caused everything from goiter to ataxia. And for what? The food was so sour and tasteless it was swallowed without chewing! Worst of all, gari – and distant cousins, akpu and pounded yam – were responsible for the six or seven million premature potbellies on young, otherwise marriageable men in Nigeria alone! (Such was its weight profile, its starch content, its fibre load that it sat in their poor stomachs, distending the muscles of those flaccid organs until marriage-threatening paunches resulted.) Emotions heated up around Hungry Man as the water began to boil. The gari of the day was yellow, fried with a little palm oil. It was Agbor-bought, from a family that fried gari for a living. The yellow meal sat in a yellow bag. The water boiled feverishly. Hungry Man sprinkled handfuls of the powder into the pot until its water was soaked up and eba, also known as utara, was born. Then, with a ladle he stirred the mixture over a slow fire until the starch in the dough was angry and stiff, snatching at the pot, at the ladle. Eba was cheap, the beans-eaters said derisively as he spooned it onto a plate, it was the prostitute of Nigerian cuisine. The doughy lump sat there, a woman who felt no need for make-up. Effete restaurants loved to make neat spherical balls of their eba, to justify their stiff prices. What sat before Hungry man was an honest slab of food. Ugly, if truth be told. A spoon of egusi soup joined the eba. And another. Eba steamed lazily. It was not even nutritious, said the beans-eaters, somewhat desperately, one percent protein! Nought percent fat! Nought percent vitamin…

Hungry Man ate.

Gari on Trial is a post from: Chuma

'Free booze doesn't count, Pastor'

-Let’s do it, Pastor.
-Are you sure?
-One hundred percent.
-Drunky-Dickson! One hundred percent is not enough. You have wasted my time too many times before.
-Don’t call me that, Pastor, look at my eyes. I am serious. Bring out your Bible, I’m ready.
-Okay, we shall see. Let me finish my avocado.
-Let’s do it now. I passed your kitchen on my way here and food is almost ready. If your pear won’t wait, is it hot groundnut soup that will wait?
-You have a point. Let me get my Bible… by the way, this is the last day of March, a bit too late for new year resolutions. Are you sure this is not an April Fool’s joke?
-It is not, Pastor. I saw Evuka’s new house. Jesus-borrow-me-naira! And this is a young man who used to be my boy-boy in secondary school. So I’m ready. God, I’m ready!
-So Evuka’s new house did what all my sermons couldn’t do? Well, anything that works for you, Dickson. Get on your knees. Raise up your hand. Do you swear to give up alcohol?
-I do.
-Including gin and kokori and whiskey?
-I do.
-Plus Star and Gulder and Guinness?
-I do.
-…you are very, very sure?
-It’s like you don’t believe me, Pastor. I am cock-sure! Every money that enters my house now is going to my building fund, as God is my witness.
-Plus wine with 12% or 9% or 5% alcohol?
-Even 1% alcohol wine! If it says alcoho… I’m not buying!
-Alleluia! Stand up, Dickson, let me pray for you. This is the biggest thing that I have ever done since my ordination fifteen years ago! God be praised! This is bigger than Dame Maggie’s pregnancy after ten years of marriage! So you are telling me that you will go to your cousin’s burial this evening and won’t touch a bottle of beer?
-…What are you talking about? This evening I’m going to soak very well.
-…Are you joking with me? Why have you been wasting my time?
-Free booze doesn’t count, Pastor. Did you know that my cousin is a manager at Nigerian Breweries?
-You have just sworn on my KJV/NIV/GNT concordance Bible to give up alcohol! All alcohol!
-Am I mad? Did you see the refrigerated truck of beer  my cousin parked on the main road? I won’t spend my money on beer, that’s what I swore! God knows my mind.
-What does it matter who is paying for the beer? You’re still going to be drunk by midnight!
-On another person’s beer, that’s different.
-Look, Dickson. It is not just the money for beer that Evuka saved up to build his house. He built his house by going to bed with his common sense and waking up with good ideas, he built his house by…
-Pastor, today is not Sunday, preaching on Saturday is not… it is just not fair…
-Well, my groundnut soup is here now, Dickson…
-I can see that!
-And I don‘t pray for alcoholics who want to specialise in Other People‘s Beer. Are you ready for a total ban or not.
-Total ban? Then I am not ready. Em… is that the body of a grasscutter that I am seeing inside the soup?
-I will soon find out, but this is another person’s soup you’re looking at. Bye, Drunky-Dickson. Your cousin should have opened his refrigerated truck by now.

The OPB Specialist is a post from: Chuma