BRAVERY, COMMITMENT AND AMBITION. - by Kuby Uyanga.

I am in the bus among the myriad of other vehicles slowly crawling along Badagry Expressway toward Surulere and CMS. It's not one of those smaller buses, I am in a big Molue with hard wood backed metal framed seats whose engine sounds like a fifteen year old brown bear attempting a menacing growl while suffering from the late stages of whooping cough, it would seem to die out and the bare bodied driver would put foot to the gas and it'd gurgle back to life. This bus is large enough to give the conductor the 'right' to cram us up to five passengers in a seat. It is warm and I'm already perspiring, the beads of sweat on my forehead have gathered into rivulets and coursed down to form a thin pool in the hollow of my neck.

This is Lagos and in Nigeria we have a high tolerance for suffering so I'm not crying. I rather switch seats into a more comfortable position when an elderly lady with an afro of greasy grey hair disembarks at Mile 2, plug in my ear piece, set my 'Soul' playlist and settle down with hawk eyes watching the sidewalk keenly hoping to catch a glimpse of my friend.
J. Festus is my very good friend. He also has no knowledge whatsoever of my existence. I know him because his name along with his staff number, 003115 is clearly stitched above the ragged monochrome epaulets of his white and leaf green NURTW polyester uniform.

He is the highlight of my morning bus rides to Orile. I usually spot him before my bus gets to that stretch of sidewalk he usually prowls. I admired and befriended him the second consecutive morning I found him at about the same Coker bus stop shaking down bus conductors for the daily N200. He usually does not lead the charge but is very committed to the mission of revenue collection as his own contribution to the Lagos the mega city project by putting up the appearance of a tough lieutenant and echoing all the threats uttered by their black faced mustachioed ring leader. Tax must be raised even if a few side mirrors have to break.

He would stutter, stamp his feet encased in Nikes of indeterminate shape that had a window that ventilated his right big toe while making menacing faces that would not quite hide or take away the probability that he would flee if the altercation progressed from verbal to physical, his hesitant body language suggests. When he his not contributing his coarse Yoruba bawls to shaking down defaulting motorists, he does a gangster lean on the concrete Nepa pole beside the Julius Berger JB sign plate on the edge of the bridge. I have never seen him squat or sit on the concrete bareer like his colleagues usually do. In his heart he wants to be the bad guy, the boss and has to live the part. Or so I think.

I am a people watcher and after a couple of J. Festus sightings I have observed some traits in him. I may be wrong but I've noticed he's neither physically strong rather particularly brave. I respect that! I have also seen a fire in him, an ambition to be that which he naturally is not as a result of his circumstances. I admire that! And he acts the part (he's an amateur actor), I love that! Asides from the money he makes to assuage his physiological needs like Ewa and Orijin for breakfast, I see he feels the need to contribute to a worthy cause and establish his niche on this highway. Maybe he wants to be the NURTW chairman someday, I hope he self actualizes that or any being need he has.

Yesterday I did not see him when I passed and that was unusual. He is usually as true as time, he'd never missed a day before. Was he sick? I wondered. Had he travelled? I doubted. Is he dead? I prayed not under my breath. My friend's welfare had occurred to me a couple more times during the day but my own personal worries had soon relegated the thought. But this morning he sprints into my consciousness the moment I catch sight of the electronic billboard at Festac 1st gate while I ride the molue. So I leane away from the stifling body odour of the middle age man who has just boarded and of all the empty sits has chosen to sit next to me. I ignore his garlicky sweaty ooze while I point out hawk eyes keenly observing the side walk hoping to catch the blunt features and squinty eyes of J. Festus, 003115. I wonder whether the J in his name stands for James, Jeremiah or Japhet like Omojuwa's. I am fast losing hope when we go past his usual lamp post and he isn't there but I heave a sigh when I find him munching an egg roll and moving his oily lips in animated conversation with the hijabed girl hawker while she counts out his change. I heave a sigh of relief because my friend is fine, I wonder where he went yesterday. I admire him because he personifies bravery, commitment and ambition at the grass roots. To me he is a model of sorts.
There are role models on every level.





Kuby Uyanga holds a degree in Civil Engineering. He is a writer who uses words in different formats to impact positive change.
A certified Competent Communicator by Toastmasters International, he speaks professionally on Leadership, Personal & Organizational development.
He is also a Negotiator, Screen Writer and Film Director who functions as CEO/Director of Letters at Kuboid Communications Limited, Lagos.

A Strange Romeo - Kuby Uyanga

The rhythmic guttural groans of the 911 truck outside the shelter which had arrived thirty minutes before dawn added to Aisha's fever of excitement as she hurriedly packed together her few belongings and tied them in a in the dog tooth patterned shawl Hassan Suicide had given to her the last time he returned from Damaturu. Her excitement was not really happiness but a pantheon of a sense of unfinished business, dread of another major change in her life which she had no control over and fear of the unknown immediate future which created an emotion that made her heart flutter, her eyes cloud over and her thirteen year old mind wander. The strap of one of her scruffy black brassieres poked out of the hole in the scarf she'd always procrastinated on stitching, she poked it back in and went to peep outside using the curtain at the door for shade.


A purplish haze hung over the camp. It came from the exhaust fumes of the truck outside and several other Hilux 4X4 vehicles returning from the surrounding forest with grotesque metal contraptions in their tail pan. Girei Jimeta the plump baby faced bomb specialist jumped down from a Hilux that abruptly turned the corner and startled Aisha, "mai ki ke yi anan?" he bleated at her in his thin effeminate voice. "Dan alla, kiya kuri mallam, mai wan chan acicin mota?" she asked in reply. Girei ignored her and ordered her back inside, "wan chan ba damuwa n ki, shiga gida yanzu!".
She went back inside and retreated into her corner in the chiselled out cave. She had decided not to remove the faded superwax wrapper she spread as bedding. She dusted off the sand and sat with her back to the wall, her arms clutching her tied damask shawl and her mind thinking about Hassan Suicide.


Hassan would have explained to her what the ugly looking metal objects were and why they had earth on them as if they had been exhumed from the ground. Hassan was the love of her life. The first man who'd told her that he loved her after making love to her. Not the first who'd made love to her, her father, the righteous looking Mallam Nasiru was her first. Home had become a nightmare since that night in primary 4 when Mallam first crawled alongside her in the dark hut when Mama had gone to her parents to give birth to little Ali.


That was why she cried along with the other girls only with her eyes when they were taken. In her heart she rejoiced that someone, something had come to take her away from her immediate horror of the staccatic incestous thrusts her father forced on her . She thought about that first night, how she noticed that the dreaded Hassan Suicide liked her when three turns before it would be her turn to be forcefully penetrated by three drooling fundamentalists, he pulled her out, gave a broom to her and ordered her to clean out the shelter they would occupy.
Later that night he came back dressed in a white jalabiya not his frightening camouflage fatigues and woolen face mask. He took her to a clearing in the forest which was shaded from direct view of the lookout posts and unwrapped kilishi which they ate while he allowed her to tell him about herself and estranged family. That night Hassan Suicide made love to her not like the other girls were raped but with tenderness after obtaining her permission, like a responsible Muslim man.


He became her champion and made her sojourn in Sambisa bearable, even enjoyable at times. Finally someone loved her. He had convinced the Boss that Aisha was not a good candidate to include in the YARINYA BOMBER SQUAD. When the air force jets had bombed the first camp she had heard him bellowing her name above the din of the propellers and anti-aircraft gunfire even before he appeared to lift her and run zig zag through the splintered Gmelina trees into safety. Incidentally, he was the one who noticed her first period when he saw the blood on his phallus after ejaculating and withdrawing on one of those nights in the clearing...their clearing. She'd screamed with horror and only then did he realize it was her first time, he'd calmed her, comforted and explained to her. He'd always brought back presents for her. A set of Hollandis wrappers when he breezed into camp two days after planning the Nyanya job, a carton of Tampax that took her a month to figure out how to insert when he returned from Saudi Arabia and the shawl this last time. Her eyes clouded up as she reminisced and feasted on the memories.


She had feverntly prayed to Allah that he came back from their big meeting with the federal government in Saudi Arabia before they were ferried to Maiduguri and onward to Abuja as rumor that preceded their return and recent unusual activity predicted.
She had also hoped to see the mysterious Boss for the first time. Only a handful of trusted high level men like Hassan Suicide had ever seen Shekau not to talk of knowing of his whereabouts, she suspected that only one or two people at a time knew where the Boss was.
What would be out there for her? Hassan had not been able to find her mother when he went searching the last time he went to Chibok. She wasn't interested in finding her father.
Would the federal government provide a house and pay school for her? she pondered. Or would she have to resign to a life of penury, begging and depending on charity like Hajiya Samira who used to sit by the south gate of the Bama road mosque with her outstretched plate back in Chibok? What was out there for her? Anything? Nothing.
She made up her mind and decided she would not join the rest of the excited chattering girls who were keen to go back, back to what? The fools, no she would stay back.
She got up and went out in the warm early morning sunshine to search for Girei Jimeta so she could tell him she was not leaving with the bevy. She would negotiate with him. She would offer her services for free. She would cook, wash, cut firewood, clean a gun, do anything to stay. She was determined. She would stay.
She would wait for Hassan Suicide.



Kuby Uyanga holds a degree in Civil Engineering. He is a writer who uses words in different formats to impact positive change.
A certified Competent Communicator by Toastmasters International, he speaks professionally on Leadership, Personal & Organizational development.
He is also a Negotiator, Screen Writer and Film Director who functions as CEO/Director of Letters at Kuboid Communications Limited, Lagos

Dear General Buhari, Nigeria Has Moved Beyond Your Era.

“The length of our days is seventy years – or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” – Psalm 90:10(NIV)

General Muhammadu Buhari, was Nigeria’s 7th head of state from 1983 to 1985; a child born within that period would be between 29 and 31 years old today(some having produced their own offspring). These kids(at the time) were told that “they are the leaders of tomorrow”, 31 years after their then head of state once again aspires to be president, to perhaps cement his place in history as a leader of Yesterday,Today and Tomorrow.

 

The scripture quoted above is apt for the situation GMB finds himself. A man who attains the age of 70, should consider himself lucky for so many reasons and should put his house in order having already groomed a successor, to take over from him. Nigeria’s civil service rule makes it mandatory for all civil servants to retire at 60 years, because it is believed that at 60 plus an individual can no longer give his/her best. The above reasons explain my reservations about the candidacy of the General in the forth coming elections. At 72, contesting for a record fourth time to be president, should not be paramount in GMB mind. Aside the fact that he has failed three times already(and is likely to add one more number to that), by now the General should be able to tell Nigerians boldly “after my fifteen years of political sojourn, I present to you —–, whom I can vouch for and have nurtured to lead Nigeria, the way I would have done if I was given a second chance”; after all in leadership it is said that “a leader has not completely fulfilled that role until a successor is ready to take over”. If at 72 GMB has not found that successor, then obviously his claim to being a leader has ‘k leg’.

I have heard many of GMB supporters make reference to the number of times Abraham Lincoln lost elections as the basis why GMB should keep contesting at 72 and maybe 77, what they miss or maybe deliberately refuse to mention is that Lincoln(after all the defeats) was 52 years old when he was first inaugurated as President. Another propaganda of GMB’s supporters is that the man has no ‘skeletons in his closet'; unfortunately those who should ‘know better’ like Professor Wole Soyinka and Nasir El-Rufai disagree with them.

 

“The grounds for which General Buhari is being promoted as the alternative choice are not only shaky, but pitifully naïve. History matters. Records are not kept simply to assist the weakness of the memory, but to operate as guides to the future…” – Wole Soyinka. What the professor is simply saying is MOVE ON Nigeria, let Buhari remain history.
As the ‘Accidental Public Servant’ put it “General Buhari has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as a military head of state and AFTERWARDS, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded. His INSENSITIVITY to Nigeria’s diversity and his PAROCHIAL focus are already well known…”. El-Rufai’s statement was made in 2010, four years after those words still echo the reality that GMB is not the shining star of a nation seeking to embrace a glorious future.

GMB at this time should follow the foot steps of the Sardauna as advised by Sheik Ahmed Gumi. In the words of the cleric “your weakness is your inability to control men(age could further worsen this weakness)”. “Good intentions are never enough”, if GMB has good intentions as he and his supporters want us to believe, he should step aside and allow this nation move to a future, far away from the ghosts of a past so terrible. If he did not groom a successor, he can start now ahead of 2019. If he decides to go ahead with his ambition(assuming he gets his party’s ticket), it’s all good – but the result won’t be different from the last three.

Enenim Ubon is on twitter @enenimubon