The two are very obviously street boys. One was asked to suggest solutions to the problems of the country. His answer was that “all our leaders should be given mass burial.” Another sat on a bus and wished the whole world perished that moment so that his own suffering would end. The one who wanted mass burial for the leaders was sure that they were the sole problem of Nigeria. He did not tell how he would bury, in a mass grave, leaders who are not dead and who are not ready to die soon. The two boys are in video clips online. Interviewing street boys can be very revealing and interesting. They are as hard as what they say. It takes tough guys to survive street life. It takes tougher guts to get them to talk facing camera. But they are always a delight to watch. When they talk, they tell all and show their audience the rains that have beaten sanity out of them. Many online platforms now use them to make money — as interview objects. They talk and pull in huge traffic for websites and cool cash for site owners. But they also use the channels to send warning signals that a day would come when the monkey of Nigeria may get lost in the marketplace.
Away from the street, there is the other page of the narrative. The big boys are online too. They create websites and blogs. They go on the social media and fire contents to do battle with the enemy. They flaunt their gait of fear and drama; they dance to unheard drumbeats; they sing with granite voices and think with brains of war.
You have all watched the Dino Melaye victory video. You have seen how entertaining he could be. Great war singer with eerie dance steps. What is your take-away from that video clip? For me, the clip is enough reason to thank the Ahmadu Bello University for giving the senator from Kogi state a chance to earn a degree. The people of his constituency too deserve national appreciation for getting him engaged in the National Assembly. I do not think there is any rational person in this country who would say that Dino is not a smooth, hard man. Imagine having that hugely endowed man unleashed on the society in his raw (or even rawer) form? No one is comprehensively bad. No one is entirely good. This senator is a tough, hard man who would say and do anything then step back to have a guttural laugh. But he has methods. He is neither vague nor ambiguous in his odd ways. He has never kept anyone guessing where he belongs anytime anywhere. And have you ever seen him switch camp in the middle of a fight? The other time he threatened to impregnate a female senator for calling him a dog, he was banished from Lagos — air, land and water. Dino responded with audacious photos taken at the backyard of the Lord of Bourdillon.
You are wasting your time if you join those abusing Dino for fulfilling his mandate. The Kogi senator is a mirror image of our system. We cannot vote in a Dino and expect a quiet Senate. He is a metaphor for Nigeria. A country that relishes trouble, courting it with utmost love and affection. Farouk Kperogi said last week that there was no difference between the presidency and the National Assembly. Can you fault his judgement? There cannot be any division between two siamese entities because they are forever one. Dino is not a lone ranger in his battles. He is an asset to the Senate and to the Villa. Kings have special soldiers and they indulge them. Soldiers have unusual privileges and they enjoy such to the shock of the ignorant. A soldier was dragged before Ibadan’s Bashorun Ogunmola. His offence was that he stole a hunter’s dead deer in his snare. The accused looked deep into the angry eyes of the Bashorun. He reminded his commander how he braved the bullets and carried the dead and the wounded at the war front. “Would I who carried dead and wounded warriors at the war front fail to carry a mere dead animal in a farm?” No. He cannot be guilty, the lord of the court ruled. The triumphant soldier left with the meat as his prize and a bottle of gin to wash it down. Warriors fight and enjoy the loots; they find treasures in war and keep them. They get away with acts that hang others. I suspect a secret admiration for Dino by even those loudly disclaiming him. Dino’s war chant and histrionics were directed at the enemies of the interests he serves. The enemies he was taunting know themselves. They also know what he meant by their laying ambush for a force they cannot beat. When you watch Dino yell and dance and blurt his chant, it is because he understands the firmness of the ground on which he stands.
Some people’s natural habitat is the war front. If there is no war, they create one. A journalist recently reminded a South South governor that he was not a gentleman. The man retorted that there could not be any gentleman at the war front. He was right. Politics is war and the National Assembly is the Sambisa forest of the political class. Apart from Ali Ndume, is there really another person in the Senate today who is anti-Dino Melaye and his ways? Ndume was suspended for attacking Saraki and Dino. Did you hear of any loud opposition to that action from any of the other one hundred plus senators? Even those who called Dino a dog two years ago cannot be quoted again opposing him and what he stands for.
The political class is one anywhere. They can be bitter and fiercely fractious in their rivalry but they do not fight and sink the ship. They know how to survive Tsunamis. When it was obvious the ship of the PDP could not be saved, did they not quickly rebrand and put together a new multi-purpose platform to continue the journey? You saw new faces and a new party and you thought a new dawn was here. What faces are you seeing now after the Change? There was no newness. The journey is unbroken. Nigeria is a franchise. It belongs to some mafia dons. It is a farm where you merely labour. The owners pick the farm manager and hold his leash. They fix the entry and the exit points. They fix and pay wages; they do not share profits. They make rules and breed the enforcers. The enforcers are the big boys. They are pampered, comfortable, untouchable. They are kings of the boys. Whenever street boys like the one with the “mass burial” idea move to carry out their plan, the kings of the boys will step in to “pacify” them. That is why the big boys will forever be relevant — and you forever angry and helpless.
