Opinion
God Abeg!
Published
6 months agoon

By Toyin Falola
The sociolinguistic property of God Abeg became bare after Oludare Alaba’s hilarious video hovered around social media platforms and raised continuous conversations. Alaba, a graduate of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, returned to the school languishing that his “certificate is worthless.” According to his story, Alaba is not a lazy Nigerian young man; he has no one to support him. He has searched for a job and farmed, yet, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel has remained elusive. Alaba’s travail was worsened by the destruction of his farmland by unchecked nomads whose cattle saunter and feed on cultivated farms. Only God knows how many God Abegs Alaba would have cried out before giving up hope and returning his certificate to retrieve the school fees he had paid. Alaba, you cannot return your certificate for a refund!
God Abeg means “God please” and depicts a cliché prayer to God for help in difficult situations, especially those beyond one’s ability or control. In many instances, it is not that one has decided to shift the onus of responsibility to the Almighty or that one has not attempted to make efforts that would resolve the situation. No, it is that after all these, nothing changes and one remains trapped in the labyrinths of hopelessness. Afterwards, people resort to chanting soft but resonating God Abeg. Oludare Alaba’s experience captures this situation, and he is not the only one in this misery. About 89 million Nigerians who live below the poverty line and the millions of underemployed and unemployed Nigerians who strive to succeed and fail all chant God Abeg!
Nigerians are characterized by their will to survive against all odds. From the Mai Gida who cultivates farms and rears cattle, to the young Aboki scavengers who scour garbage and refuse dumps from street to street, to the Nna who goes across regions to sell bales of clothes, to the unrelenting traders in Katangora and Alaba markets of Lagos, to Iya Risi who runs a small food Buka from dawn to dusk, to the hustlers who hawk in traffic and the brilliant innovators who are blazing the trails towards securing the future of Nigeria, one would be convinced that the country has enough energetic human resources that could change the economy of any nation. However, despite these attributes and the people’s honest toils, their situations do not reflect their diligence.
People like Alaba are living evidence that working and making efforts are not Nigeria’s problems, but whether those efforts can pay their bills. After spending donkey years in school with a high possibility of falling into the ambush of ASUU strikes or several of those years in the apprenticeship of a trade or vocation, one might come to a saddening realization that those time investments may be flushed down the drain by the country and its murderous systems. Dejected, the people go down rambling softly, God abeg!
The country has a terrific labour market capable of killing any charted career path. For those who have been able to acquire educational qualifications, job opportunities have become a luxury for the rich and connected. The National Bureau of Statistics currently puts the rate of unemployment in Nigeria at 33.3%, one of the highest in the world. The rate is quite worse among the youth; 42.5% of the youth, who form about 60% of the population, are unemployed.
It is one thing to be employed and another to be gainfully employed. About 22.8% of the Nigerian population are underemployed, which means that where there is work, there is a chance that they are below the qualification of job searchers. The World Bank stated that only 17% of Nigerians hold wage jobs. Juxtaposing the average salary and living wage of about N43,200 to the nation’s cost of living, the cost of living is 5.3 times higher. God Abeg!
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For those who have decided to have their start-ups, especially after seeing the saturated labour market, the country’s economy and the business atmosphere is suffocating enough to send them out of business. A study by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation’s Investment and Technology Promotion Office in 2017 revealed that only 40% of those who aspire to have a start-up eventually launch it, and only 20% of Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria survive in Nigeria. This is due to the spartan conditions of Nigeria’s commercial and business arenas and stringent economic austerity. An inflation rate of 20.52% and other societal factors are demons that torment these honest hustlers. After each failed effort, it seems they are not fighting against “principality and powers,” but against some forces that require the supernatural intervention of the Almighty, so they say, God Abeg!
Nigeria is in trouble, and its systems are cankerworms eating away at the people’s possible potential and hope. If there is no decisive developmental fumigation of those cankerworms, the nation may beckon to its damning mayday. When physical efforts fail to solve physical problems, it is only logical to seek metaphysical means, which explains the muttering of God Abeg for God to come through for one. But despite these prayers, has God forsaken Nigeria that even God Abeg is coming with similar possibilities of placing a bet? Nigeria is on edge, and the nation is the architect of its undoing, not God. God saves and punishes, but God is not punishing us; Nigerians are punishing themselves. Perhaps we might need to beg Nigerians, some factors, individuals, and institutions before saying the slow-soft God Abeg.
Today, the son of nobody is often nobody, with nepotism and favouritism beating him down the pecking order. Recruiters would rather hire based on familiarity and ethnic sentiments than expertise. A 2019 survey established that about 50% of positions in public institutions and sectors in Nigeria were secured either by bribery or nepotism, or both. Police officers recruit their sons to the police, just as professors recruit their wives and children to fill vacant positions on campus. This is also the situation in private sectors with unnecessary requirements like a camel that must go through the eye of the needle. Hence, one Akpan may waste his educational and training age to be rewarded with secured employment, while others finish with nothing to show. There are very few people who are saints from nepotism, and to say God Abeg without begging ourselves first is to fiddle around. God will not stop nepotism; only you and I can.
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After we have reserved a begging session to change the nepotism orientation among government officials and citizens, one must reserve another to end corrupt practices. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Nigeria ranked 154th least corrupt country out of 180 at the end of 2021. With the $2 billion Dasuki Gate scandal, million dollars Alison Madueke’s corruption allegations, General Abacha, our generous father in heaven who keeps sending money to us at intervals, and other colossal bribery and corruption cases, it is only reasonable that the economy and the society would be sapped of anything that would allow the citizens to flourish. Corruption has deeply penetrated all sectors and systems and stifled the nation’s progress. As the country’s major problem, it waters down any effort government and individuals make to turn the nation’s situation around. Hence, if we do not beg for a solution to corruption, God abeg may only be a psychological comfort without striving to make changes.
Where one does not see the direct effects of nepotism and corruption that lead to the God-abeg-worthy situations, the lack of infrastructure and facilities are evidential problems that build garrisons against the efforts of Nigerians and their businesses. Lack of adequate infrastructure affects the production chain and threatens the longevity of any business. It also increases the cost of living, as the aggregate effects tell on the economy and the standard of living. As a result, society seems to be in tune with reviving Sapa rather than resolving it.
At this point, God Abeg has multi-dimensional applicability, and the people’s living condition is just one of them. However, the more frightening applicability is the face of terror that many Nigerians experience almost daily. When you live in a society where the people are tossed between terrorist attacks, herdsmen and farmers’ brutal confrontations, common banditry and kidnapping, dangerous separatist agitation, oil militancy, ritual killing, and other life-threatening situation, begging God for food will become less important to begging God to survive every day. Nigeria has lost hundreds of thousands of lives to these security challenges; unfortunately, there is no end. God abeg!
Before we beg God again, three entities must be begged to resolve the nation’s problems. First is the government, which is not doing enough to alleviate the conditions of the people, has been ineffective in its duty and refused to take decisive actions against corruption and insecurity that are ruining the nation every day. The government, our Satan, God abeg, accept my sacrifices on behalf of millions of Nigerians. I slaughter for you a live goat. I just remember that you eat dollars, not goat meat. God Abeg!
Second is the enemies of Nigeria’s progress who, through their perpetrations, embezzlement, nepotism, criminal tendencies, and negative discordancy, reduce the little the government does, suspend peace, and make lives harsh for their compatriots. Our agbako wahala, wahala agbako, I offer prayers. I forgot that you attend the Sinners’ Cathederal, and my prayers cannot reach you. God Abeg!
The third is the citizens who grow political dementia every four years to vote for those who have put them in their present condition, thereby restructuring the circle of anguish and refusing to uphold the tenets of citizenship and patriotism. Sons and daughters of magicians, remember that salvation is not for free. God Abeg!
There is a solution in sight, but Nigerians have refused to clear the path to explore and nurture it into fruition. In January 2012, Nigerians came together to say an emphatic NO to the increase in PMS pump price from N65 to N140, and the government was made to succumb to this demand. In October 2020, Nigerians again united in opposing police brutality and demanded the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which was alleged to cause the same havoc it was supposed to fight against, and the government bent on these demands. With these incidents and the obvious increasing agitations on social media and physical, one can say that society can collectively demand good governance when they are committed to doing so.
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Fortunately, there is an approaching opportunity for the nation to come together again to demand a better Nigeria where God thank you will be more than God abeg. The 2023 elections are approaching, and since leadership is paramount to the development and the first step towards resolving the country’s problems, Nigerians must Gbera the same way they did in 2012 and 2020 to redefine Nigeria through their votes. They must sing songs of the problems of Nigeria, so strong that those who have been hypnotized into forgetting their suffering will receive a rousing push to do the right thing. The citizens must resist vote buying, election violence, and electoral disorientations. The nation will be one step closer to its restoration if these are championed as a course with the same intensity as the #OccupyNigeria and #EndSARS agitations. The 2023 election is Nigerians’ next shot at the Nigerian dream. But not this kind of democracy, just to pre-warn you. As to this democracy, God Abeg!
Can the citizens begin to shout Government Abeg, Perpetrators Abeg, Nigerians Abeg? In that case, God will probably take a good look at the resources He has given to this green land and how we have been the architect of our undoing, and then HE will revert the pleadings, saying, “Man, Abegi!”
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By Toyin Falola
I
Death
Twilight-zone, Afterlife, What-Mays, and Whatnots;
Questions that transcend mortal thoughts.
Uncertainties plucked by the hands of certainty
pondering life beyond the galaxy.
Philosophies, religions, and sciences;
Ancient lenses to dissect and ponder.
Beliefs, opinions, and standpoints in their multiplicities;
Scalpels that open the heart of certain death
Blazing free the skins of uncertainty.
Science, a nobility I revere,
But it stammers answering to the afterlife.
For science is knowledge and knowledge from experience
But the dead neither speak, nor take records.
Their journeys, ordeals, triumphs or woes?
No one bears witness.
But as dead, we must all be witnesses;
witnesses that testify not.
So, for now, we survive the knowledge of death.
II
On my Agbàlàgbà head lies my Ọ́kpụ́ Ágwụ́
With eagle feathers, rare and honorable
Adorning it for three scores, a decade, and some more days.
I had flipped my Kente given by the Gaa
And danced to crescendos from Gàngàn drums
I have been celebrated and celebrating
For the miracles, I have worked with pen, paper, keyboard, and brain
I have taken the tales we tell in my village square beyond the Atlantic
Changed the songs that disdain us into appraisals
I have called my brothers not to point to our fathers’ house with their left hands
I have honed Africa and beyond
To answer the calls of the people’s need
I have reached the thinkable and done the unthinkable
So, I danced and keep dancing.
Suddenly, I felt a touch on my host?
Electrifying my hand, leg, brain, and my whole
Telling me that my jur from the Dinka people awaits me.
That my hourglass tells of crossing the bar.
I thought I knew what it was like,
But my grasping convictions of approaching jur were perceptions
Just surviving the death of the knowledge of death
So, arms wide open ready to abound
What was there to fear?
No catacomb of secrets
No palm oil-drenched white garments
I have taken many to my gourmet
To feast and to see.
What was there not to fear?
With medicine men and women,
Syringes, lights, water, ECG, Oximeters, voices, and touches
Hovering around me like a sacred etutu
Making conversations with me and beyond
I was thrown into a pool of reminiscence
one leg and a part of me were already in the boat
It beckoned but I heard another.
A loud voice like my mother’s.
Who takes a journey without locking his home?
Who takes the jur with unpatched palm fronds on his hut?
While the thunder rages up the sky?
The walls are broken and Balogun journeys?
So, I left the sea to clear the cobwebs and light up the night lamb.
The past few weeks have opened new lights of understanding to me. I now see the world from different hills and have helped to reach new resolutions. I know I have written about “transitioning to nothingness,” but my emphasis was on the “nothingness” with lesser attention on “transitioning.” I think we need to continue to ask questions. Philosophies, religion, sociology, psychology, science, and other ramifications are mere perceptions and we are uncertain. The transitioning occurs when death becomes an angel to hug not a beast to fear. We do not know what it entails but one must always endeavor to go with clean hands.
My recovery from an illness may have offered me a fresh opportunity to shout some more, point to societal needs, and settle unfinished businesses. No, not those caused by my personal undoing, but rather those of the people who would be left unguided, and for matters untold about life, society, and individuals. I can say I have passed through the lessons of tantra transfiguration, to use an elegant phrase that I recently came across, to move from secular to sacred activism. No one survives death because of its finality, but when it seems that you did, it is a renewed quest, offering a new purpose.
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By Tony Afejuku
The debate has progressed well so far. Our professors, whose strokes have centred on their fellow professor’s manned INEC have tried as best as they could not to confine their impressions solely to the prism of subjectivity. Even when their impressions seem to be subjective, they still make allowance for contrary views, for opposing views. This obviously gives clarity, objectivity and logic to the subject at hand. Is the will of INEC of a professor minder and mincer of words’ control the will of the people or of the masses? On whose side are the Professors who are as concerned as almost everybody is with what is going – or with what has gone on – primarily about our Presidential 2023 elections? Our Professors who are debating the subject constitute the courageous and prophetic Nigerian voices of our day. Their authentic and responsible thoughts are not restricted to the local or regional. They are also not confined to electoral duties and responsibilities expected of the umpire and the will that belongs elsewhere. The truth about the quality of leadership about our country and elsewhere is also told in the debate of the literati.
Professor (Mrs.) Razinatu Mohamed in her submission, in her salvo-cum-explosion actually, drew attention to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s explosive explosion in the presidency. If Professor Osinbajo had provided the right vice-presidential leadership there would not have been the need for him to explode as he did as per a viral video Professor Razinatu Mohamed referred her fellow debaters to. “What has he been doing in the eight years of their administration? Irritated my foot; he is complicit.” Not done, Professor Razinatu drew attention to the kind of leaders that Nigeria and Africa need: “Leaders that understand the rudiments of modern socio-economic development and systems; Leaders that understand the crux of requirements for economic growth. Leaders that could demonstrate to the rest of the world that just as the world needs Africa, African countries need the world in a symbiotic relationship and partnership context where assistance becomes a dual role…..”
Razinata’s concern is clear. Nothing in Nigeria will climb out of its hollow hole. In fact, the will of the people will remain hollow so long as a hollow mincer and minder is in charge of its electoral affairs.
Professor Da Sylva perhaps responds better to Professor Razinatu Mohamed’s algebraic stroke. “Unfortunately, Nigeria’s democracy is trapped in its primordial self-made ethnic and religious sentiments and so, standards, merit, competence and pedigrees are measured by their curious divides of religion and ethnic inclinations. Until we all come to realize that heavens help those who help themselves, Nigeria ain’t going no-where – meeen!”
But below is Professor Da Sylva’s sledge hammer response to Professor Razinatu Mohamed’s Osinbajo hammer blow:
“Prof Osinbajo’s office demands he does what he did. Besides, it shows maturity and spirit of sportsmanship on his part. Every loser in a game “healthily” contested, is naturally expected to do the same. The only difference which again shows Osinbajo’s magnanimity is that in this context, the contest under reference was neither healthy nor just. The umpire seemed compromised and merely worked to a prepared answer. Yet the gentleman did the needful. I guess, brothers and sisters, that we should put all that behind us, and work for our common good, and the wellbeing of the country, provided the mythical Aso cabal will let the President-elect be, and let the masses be, and as such, they should not create any cause for us to think otherwise, lest they provoke our sense of patriotism to take appropriate action! I guess that those were the reading or feelings of the dirty-minded Aso Villa cabal. People that kill with sword never wish that any folk should pass a sword over their heads, a wise saying goes in Yoruba. The human principalities simply suspected that should they allow PMB to give the VP the intended latitude, they might not be able to control him. I remember on his return from London, he commended the efforts of his VP while he was away. He said he would still continue acting while he would still have some more rest at home. The following day everything changed, PMB decided to take charge as the President. I suspected some back door politics was playing out. My co-debaters, quite naturally, you’ll agree with me that, it is not over-ambition or sheer opportunism as you might insinuate for any deputy in an office to aspire to the next higher office, in a legitimate manner, there is nothing really unusual about it, and it would amount to killing a mosquito with a sledge hammer, should Oshinbajo be crucified for that, if at all. And as for his wishing Buhari’s non-recovery, I think that, again, like my Sister R, is a little unkind and not fair to the gentleman who I know to be a servant of God. He knows as much as I do, by our true Christian orientation and Biblical injunctions that, should he ever wish Buhari’s death or wish him any form of misfortune in those trying periods of the President, God Almighty who we serve would deal mercilessly and ruthlessly with him. That is what Psalm 41:1-13 is all about. So rule that out, because it is not, and could never be in his character. I can vouch for him. Rather, I saw him in those times that he acted for his principal, as someone zealous and appreciative of the trust his principal invested in him, and as such he tried to do his very best to merit the trust and the opportunity! I know and I am also sure that this is what an IBK, or a Razinat, would have done too had they found themselves in a similar situation! It does not amount to wishing one’s principal any evil, not at all. Not everyone can be like Chief Obafemi Awolowo who resigned his position under Gowon when the regime became financially reckless shortly after the civil war. Awolowo also gave very profound argumentation to justify convincingly his actions. He also turned down some other appointments including the “49 Wise Men of the Constitution Drafting Committee.” Oshinbajo couldn’t have resigned, normally, and naturally his principal, PMB should have supported him as a capable successor, but again, the President’s ethnic and religious bigotry took the better part of the President. Besides, PMB’s mind was long poisoned against his VP, a clean job by the Aso Villa cabal. IBK, Lady R, until the faceless cabal is permanently silenced the wheel of Nigeria might continue to go round in a circle, and to nowhere in particular”.
And Professor IBK takes the floor: “Prof. DAO, yours is a powerfully convincing submission, at least in a large measure. Now I am willing to hold a slightly different opinion about Osinbajo. Yet, I cannot fathom why he chose to run against Tinubu, days or weeks after the latter had begun his campaign in the party primaries. There’s much we don’t know about why OSBJ decided to run against BAT. Nothing is wrong with that politically but a little problematic from an Ethical or, at least Moral, point of view. Osinbajo did a poor job of it and came out a distant 4th in the primaries. I think he didn’t read the situation correctly and was probably misled by some cabal of sorts. Either way Osinbajo made a politically fatal error in this regard. Perhaps he must have sensed, or was told, that BAT was not the anointed candidate, or that BAT would be crippled by some ill-health or a medical condition. I remember the party’s screening committee publicly recommending that only younger contestants would be recommended to the NWC or such. Clearly there was an attempt to sideline BAT. Whatever the explanation, Osinbajo make the error in his campaign of promising to be more Buhari than Buhari. A man despised by whole sections of the northern population, a man whose reputation for laziness and incompetence was on the ascendant. Anyway, all is now history and Osinbajo has not given a good account of himself in this particular case. Prof DAO, I think your concept of the Trickster should account for Osinbajo’s situation here. FULL DISCLOSURE: a very close family member of mine was drafted to head Osinbajo’s campaign effort in Kano. We discussed extensively about Osinbajo’s pledge to carry on with Buhari’s policies. There was bewilderment and shock within the members. A week later half of the membership resigned on account of Osinbajo’s increasing identification with Buhari’s policies. Many mistakenly thought that Osinbajo was Buhari’s anointed one! I could go on…”
Interestingly interesting and intriguingly intriguing, dear, dearly dear readers: this debate.
To be terminated by the columnist-terminator and terminator-columnist next week after Professor Olu Obafemi’s summation of the debate he presided over.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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By Ijeoma Fynecountry
The 21st of March of every year is international day for the celebration of persons living with down syndrome. The advocacy and push for communal and political recognition of the basic fundamental rights for persons living with various types of disabilities, particularly intellectual disability, just as enjoyed by their peers who do not have any form of challenge – physical or intellectual has recorded a substantial success around the globe, especially in more developed climes.
While the same cannot be said of the situation in Africa and Nigeria in particular, scanty breakthroughs have also been seen over the years, with the consistent and dogged efforts by some specialized organizations such as Down syndrome Foundation, Nigeria (DSFN).
The theme for this year’s celebration is “With us, Not for us”. This theme is apt particularly in the current era where the push for inclusion has taken a center stage in the campaign worldwide. While it is comforting to know that people, government and communities alike are now becoming more empathetic to the plight of persons living with disability, it is also necessary and most important that their rights as human beings deserving of not just empathy but actual concrete benefits accruable to other citizens without disability, is massively taken into consideration and actually provided for.
Therefore, it is not enough for the government to map out and create as in Lagos state and few other states, sections in the public schools to admit children or persons with intellectual disability, it is necessary to adequately equip these special schools with the needed “specialized” manpower, infrastructural and educational aids to attain the targeted educational goals for these persons. Likewise in the provision of better healthcare, economic, social needs of persons with disability etc.
Persons with intellectual disability do not just need to be specifically educated in accordance with his or her type of disability, but MUST also necessarily be able to aspire to or expect to be employed according to his or her learned ability. That way, a full right, befitting of a person, be him a person with disability or not, is assured. For what is the need of going through a learning process, acquiring a specialized knowledge about a craft or handiwork and eventually still not being given the opportunity of gaining employment as supposed, not due to lack of knowledge but for having a disability? No human being should be subjected to such. Our government should do better. The society at large should do better.
The theme for this year is enjoining all stakeholders – the government, communities, corporate organizations, religious bodies/organizations, individuals to open up their hearts, and recognize the very urgent and important need to help in the actualization of these basic human needs, rights of persons living with intellectual disability as we are all human. No human rights or needs should be prioritized over the other no matter the state of their health, mental and physical capacity. Stand with us by taking actual intentional steps towards uplifting and elevating the humanness of persons living with disability. It is not enough to say that you are for persons living with disability, your specific, intentional, targeted actions toward ensuring the practical applicability of these rights matters.
Fynecontryis a Lagos-based legal practitioner and the legal resource person for the Down Syndrome Foundation Nigeria.
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