As stranger events tumble over strange developments and as bizarre enactments of Yahoo governance takes firm precedence over the principles of rigour and rationality on which the modern nation-state is founded, one begins to wonder whether the people of this nation-space will not be entitled to some historic compensation for the cruel joke visited upon them.

Just as one was digesting the outlandish largesse by the government to General Buhari’s ancestral cousins in a foreign land, reports came that the federal authorities have characterised the ambush of the convoy of a serving Assistant Inspector Generalin which the orderly lost his life as a calculated act of intimidation by non-state actors.

A few days earlier following on the threat by bandits to abduct the president and one outspoken governor, Malam Belo Yabo, a fearless Muslim cleric from Sokoto, had urged the terrorists to make good their threat without any further delay. Yabo had in addition urged them to make sure they gave the president, a former two-star general, a good roasting on his lean and impertinent buttocks.

Oh boy! Oh boy!!!!! The very thought of the stiff and ramrod-straight good old general from Daura crying for mercy as the crazed terrorists lay it deep in his back. Something new always comes out of Africa indeed. Africans have taken the nation-state paradigm to new dimensions.

This is probably the first time in the history of the post-Westphalia nation-state, a paradigm of benevolent terror rooted in refined violence and calculated intimidation of the citizenry, that state actors appear to be at the complete mercy of non-state actors. At this rate, the European masters may be forced to recall their defective franchise due to its epic malfunctioning in Nigeria.

It was at this point of deep rumination that actual reality sought to upstage fiction once again in their never-ending duel in Nigeria. Okon suddenly barged in wearing a sheepish smile and carrying a huge bundle of fresh atori whip like a devotee of some ancient masquerade. He was immediately joined by a huge, Dervish-looking man straight out of Nubian Sudan. He was carrying a bigger bundle of heavy-duty whips of all shapes and sizes.

Snooper jumped up in fright as the man set down the bundle and began screaming: “Ina dogo….Ina dogo….Ina dogo??”

“Okon, who is this?” yours sincerely screamed at the mad boy.

“Ha oga dis one na Malam Metumbi Pandogari from Niger State”, the crazy boy retorted.

“And what is he saying?” snooper shouted.

“Him dey ask for dem tall one, dem very tall man”, Okon sneered.

“In my house? Meaning what?” one raved in fear and apprehension.

“Ha oga dem mala get kontrat make him supply bread, bullet and better bilala to dem Zamfara bandits. Naim I come dey help am”. At this point, the other man opened with a sinister hiccup.

“Megida, I kukuma get am for all size. Won’na na for dem Yaro Gomina for Kaduna, dis one na for dem big senate fresident, dis one na for dem speaker, dis one na for thief whip and dis na for Babangida. Walahi, I go frog am well well”, the man rumbled as he pointed to the various sizes.

“But Babangida is no longer there,” one protested.

“Ha oga, babangida dey mean master for house”, the mad boy sniggered.

“This thing is no longer a joke”, snooper moaned as one back-heeled to the room.

The Nation