“You should be crying now that you still have your head on your neck.”
By Tola Adeniyi
The Holy Creed of Mareism, the Book of the Faith I embrace, says there are two persons in everyone, the physical and the spiritual. Music living legend Chief Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye affirms the same position but figuratively calls the second person cohabiting, Ojiji. This could also be Conscience.
As I wrote this piece, a 2-in-one person was having a troubling session with the other side of self. And it happened right before our eyes, as rogues and charlatans were gathered here and there were scheming which pilots they wanted to present to Nigerians as the drivers of the country’s dilapidated vehicle. Some of these charlatans used to be decent and honourable human beings until their sheep became companions to dogs, and in answer to Yoruba aphorism, and started feeding on shit, while the dogs fed on their vomit.
X- and X+ were the two entities in one, same person but two personalities and he was one of the charlatans seeking office, or rather gambling for consideration for a position. X- symbolized every gambler in the field of play while X+, the alter ego, was also in attendance.
X+ threw the salvo to kick-off the battle, albeit jocularly: “You see your life outside?” apparently mimicking Otunba Doyin Ogungbe, a humour merchant, who in Yoruba language would say ‘Se o ri aye e l’ode?’ “You see the mess you have put yourself into?”
“Which mess?” queried X-.
“You mean you have been so blinded by greed and ambition that you cannot see how much down the drain you have thrown your esteem? Can’t you see? With all your education? With the upbringing our parents gave us? Look at you, sweating, panting, and grinning from ear to ear in apparent fake show…” X+ continued the bombardment.
“I am already in this contest. No retreat, no surrender. You know how much I have coughed up for this exercise. And I am here to win. I know the dividends that would flow into my bank once I am voted into office” X- continued to reassure self.
“Are you serious?” X+ asked. “Do you seriously believe this game is going anywhere…or that you are going anywhere with this gamble? Look at you being dribbled by a few members of your political association…your own equals messing you around like in a Russian game of roulette.”
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“What should I do now? I am far gone in this exercise which you call gamble. Should I pull back now? Should I quit? What if I am the Annointed?”
“Annointed?” X+ exclaimed. You must be a fool. I know now that you are lost. How many of you were annointed by the Annointer? Think. Think. I don’t think I should continue with this dialogue. You are on your own.” X+ submitted with a tone of finality.
“Should I really be in this mess? Do I belong in this crowd of self-seekers? Should I be found in this crowd of rogues, charlatans, and heartless people feeding fat on the ignorance of our people? Is this my mission on this earth? With all my education, my exposure, my pedigree, my family background and all the achievements God has blessed me with outside of politics, why should I be ranked with these barbarous multitudes?” X- was alone.
The venue for the primary process of selecting those to be given tickets to enter the Casino Sites was like a mad house. It was the largest collection of the worst specimens of humanity. These gambler-foxes in human attire were jumping from one pew to another. Their eyes were bloodshot. Most of them had not slept in the previous two nights. They were going from one hotel to another hotel holding nocturnal meetings with heavy bags and boxes stuffed to the brim with embezzled funds. They were the same faces that had polluted the landscape for three decades. Some of them had been in the bedroom of the national treasury for upwards of four decades. There were among these crooks some who had not done anything in their lives except to suck the national treasury.
Among this wicked lot of lottery stakers were doctors who had not practiced medicine since graduating from the Medical School. There were lawyers who no longer could locate where they deposited their wigs. There were engineers who could no longer define what engine means. All they have mastered in a country that lost its soul from inception was stealing, silly stealing.
There was heavy security all over the place because the gamblers were afraid of their own shadows. They had done so much to wreck the country whose treasury they were scheming to plunder to death. No one in the crowd could venture a kilometer in their villages/towns/cities in their local communities without a retinue of security details. They knew they had murdered sleep and would not have a molecule of peace for the rest of their lives.
These social outcasts deliberately refused to educate their younger citizens so that they would forever have a pool of thugs and vagabonds for their selfish use, deliberately ruined educational system so that the bulk of the youths eventually turned out to be half baked and not equipped for employment nationally or abroad, deliberately ruined health facilities so that people could die in their thousands, deliberately created divisions in the land so as to make national cohesion unobtainable, and deliberately ruined the sacred and valuable cultures of the people so that the land would be infested with deviants and soulless beasts.
X- was in a dilemma. He knew he would not be able to go back to his community. The city which housed the venue for the anticipated pool betting was too hot for him to live in. And in any case citizens all over the country were waiting for them to finish with their show of shame before they would descend on them massively and maximally. Some of them would be kidnapped along with entire family members. Some would be bludgeoned to death. Some would be roasted alive. It was just a matter of time. No set of people had treated their fellow human beings the way these gamblers had treated theirs without severe consequences.
X+ was monitoring the soliloquy of X- and was convinced that the day of reckoning was beckoning.
“Are you still there?” X+ teased X-. As things stand, you should be crying right now. You have given your soul to the devil; you and your fellow travellers in this Gambling Game should be counting your days.
Your days of enslaving others are over. You will not know peace or joy for the rest of your lives. If you are in doubt, ask the perpetrators of the French and Polish revolutions”. X+ ran through X-‘s mind.
“You should be crying” Yes, you should be crying now that you still have your head on your neck”.
