Sun-tanning Suntai!

The news filtered in just as myself and my good friend Mr You-dont-need-to-know-his-name Phillips were sharing a bottle of Lager in a bar in downtown Lagos.
The long awaited and long prayed for Governor Suntai of Taraba State was back home.
Amid fanfare,hordes of flag waving school children,relieved party members and concerned citizens,the Governor strode down the aircraft,chin raised and proud like a goat who had just stumbled on his owner's yam stable.
Not really though. I(and I speak for meself only) had forgotten there was a man named Governor Suntai. To be honest,I had briefly,with all the troubles one has to face in Lagos daily,forgotten there was a state called Taraba!
In fact,while trying to jog our memories,my dear friend,Mr Philips,even insinuated that it could be the ex-Chinese Mayor,who's presently on trial for corruption who had fled to Nigeria for safe haven.
Mr Philips,good bless his kind soul,did confess that he was not sure what the Chinese gentleman's name was but he could swear by his last ironed shirt(and that's nothing to sniff at mind you,considering he had not had electricity for 2weeks and counting) that it sounded like Mayor Sun Tai.
Anyways,unless 'Mayor Sun Tai' had the nationality slapped off his face by his mother for being corrupt,we can safely assume the gentleman that made his way gingerly down the plane while being supported by his aides,was neither Chinese nor escaping from anything.

Mind you,that's the new Special Assistant to the Governor on State 'Support' Systems behind him.

For those who do not remember,Governor Suntai was the gentleman who crashed his/the state's private jet some months back,while flying it.
All by himself.
Yep!
Move on!
I was glad though.Even though the plane the dear Governor crashed while possibly fulfilling a childhood fantasy of his might be worth much more than the entire year's allocation to education in Taraba,the survival of a man from the clutches of death is always something to celebrate.
And celebrate we did!Myself and Mr Philip.A couple of bottles of cold lager and a few dead catfish can testify to the fact that we toasted to his health and wished him well in his convalescence period in the coming months.
So you can very well imagine the shock on my face when I heard the news of the governor dissolving his cabinet and sacking key staff barely a day after returning.
Infact,if you could extract the shock from my system,condense it into chocolate bars of 'common sense',there would have been enough to go round for the staff of the Benin Airport and maybe,just maybe,someone would have been alive to their responsibilities and seen the boy stow away on an Arik flight to the 'US'.

So many black people in the U.S!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyhoo,we've been on this road before with the former occupants of Aso-Rock and I can tell you with certainty,it ain't pretty.
The script seems eerily similar.A hastily arranged return.No personal statements made except through 'aides'. No visits allowed and a wife keen,as you would expect,to protect her husband's privacy.
I'm no expert at telling you a man's mental state from a few seconds of video,in truth,my friends will tell you that I'm no expert at anything really but the man Suntai did not look fit to do the 'skelewu' let alone run a state.
But then again as our dear Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA has said,'Who are we to Judge?' It is better we look and observe for now.
Abi,Pastor?
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Shekau my skelewu!(Check out my skelewu!)

The news making the rounds in the past two days points to the possible death of dreaded Boko Haram leader,Abubakar Shekau.
The JTF spokesman said and I quote "Mr Shekau was mortally wounded in the encounter and was sneaked into Amitchide,a border town with Cameroon and it is believed that he MIGHT have died between July 25th and August 3rd".
I ask with all sense of responsibility and humility(from my Apple MacPro and tortoise shell Ray-Ban),HOW CAN SOMEONE MAY HAVE DIED?!
I may be ugly.Yeah,I get that!
I may be broke.Like all the time!
Infact,I may or may not like my boss but I dare say that I may not say it openly.
But can someone as divisive and accountable to Nigerians as Mr Shekau 'May have died?'
Unacceptable!
It is true that intelligence reports at times may be difficult to back up with  evidentiary proof but strong words and decisive language always make up for photos or videos.
The American example readily springs to mind.
When announcing the death of low level Al-Qeada commandants,the words 'may' or 'probably' were often used but when announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden,I doubt if Barry 'Check out my beautiful family' Obama said "You know what folks,Osama was shot today.I know y'all are glad but hold on a second,just hold on,this ain't the time to go yanking your doodle.HE MAY HAVE DIED!"
No my dear fellow citizens of the country of 'He may have died',Obama's words were swift and decisive.
Even without photo or video evidence,we held it as truth.
AnD we haven't seen an Osama video since by the way!Unlike the damn scary video of Shekau that made the rounds on the Internet a couple of days ago which made reference to recent brutal attacks by the sect.Infact,the dude stopped short of congratulating the Super Eagles on winning the Mandela Challenge just a week ago.

Is he dancing Skelewu somewhere as we speak?

All we ask for is finality and a decisive truth.
We have been too hurt to be 'MAYED'!
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Dem don port oh!

Anytime I hear the word deportation the first picture that comes to mind,my mind anyway,is that of our Edo sisters being shipped in their hundreds after being gathered from all corners of Italy and dispatched off like those annoying black beetles we used to find in boiled beans back in the days.

Errrmmmm....I doubt this is Italy?

By the way,those beetles have stopped showing up like a good Dbanj song,they must have peas-ed off someone important!
Apparently,sometime last week,a couple of poor,unprotected Nigerians were picked up on the streets of Lagos in the dead of the night and swiftly 'deported' to a corner of the country more renown for making fake and often times dangerous products than anything else.
Onitsha,that beautiful city east of the Niger where there is more illicit money being made than a Nigerian new-era church!
The story goeth thus,depending on whose account you choose to believe,in the dead of the night while good,law-abiding citizens were sleeping;that would be approximately 90% of the masses and 0.25% of the political class;the Lagos State government through its goons or as the government would  prefer to refer to them,state officials,picked up 72 or was it 14,innocent or wandering vagrants,depending on whose side of the coin appears brighter to you,hurriedly packed them into a waiting truck and ferried them off,at break neck speed,dodging pot-holes,avoiding check points and often times driving against traffic(OK,nobody said that ,I'm just adding my own twist) to their final destination.
Under the bridge at Upper Iweka,Onitsha!
To be honest,I'm surprised no one saw them dump these unfortunate fellows.
The movies coming out of Nollywood these days are so poor,I wouldn't be surprised if non-essential crew members sleep under bridges instead of hotels.
Anyhoo,as always with everything in our dear country,ethnic colourations and connotations have been adduced.
The noise coming out of the East has been louder than Chidi Lloyd's mace landing on his colleague's head.
And with elections coming up in Anambra,the governor,who's only remarkable  achievement is sharing a surname with a Nigerian soccer star,has chosen to make inflammatory and not very well thought out comments.

Peter???Peter???................St Peter?

The Igbos are Nigerians and they are free  like every one else to live in any part of the country they so choose;not like they needed reminding anyways.If I had a he-goat for every luxurious bus that berths at Jibowu park in Lagos every evening with new arrivals,I just might have enough goats to marry a ten year old Egyptian girl and then contest for a Senate seat.
Nobody can deport the Igbo from Lagos.
What will I do without my 'friend' at the viewing center who constantly tells me that 'Arsenal Wenger' is a failure?
They are free to live,do business,procreate and excel in Lagos as they are in Maiduguri.
Well...........................................................................maybe not so much in Maiduguri though!
The Lagos state government has one of the most open-arm policies of all state governments in the country.
With free tuition for students of all ethnicity in it's public schools.
With people of all ethnicity in it's State Civil Service.
With quality roads and public amenities in all corners of the state even in areas that can be conveniently conceived as conurbations that house mainly certain ethnic groups.
For Governor 'Whats his name' Obi to stand on a soap box and try to gain political capital from this,when his state and many in the East have a clear cut policy of paying school fees for only indigenes and employing only such in their civil service smacks greatly of political shenanigans and crinkum crankum(maximum respect Hon. Obahiagbon,respect!).
When hundreds of beggars are picked up and dumped up North,no one bats an eyelid.
When commercial motorcyclists,mainly young jobless boys from Northern Nigeria are being forced back to the grinding penury of home by the Okada ban,not a few of us applauded!
When struggling artisans and beggars were picked up and dumped in Oyo State,a while back,no one listened to Governor Alao Akala's remonstrations.Instead,we dubbed him 'The Bleached One'.

The knuckles bro!That's the first thing they teach in Bleach 101

As a respected social commentator succinctly put it,this is not  a case of ethnic discrimination.It is simply a case of social discrimination.
The poor are clearly not welcome in Lagos.
My advice to you my dear readers would be to always dress up in your Sunday best even if it's just to buy Indomie from the 'Mallam' across your house,make you no go find yourself for ya village the next morning!
In the immortal words of that store of infinite cultural wisdom,human philosophy and etiquette,American gangster rapper,2chainz,'I'll be fresh as hell if the Feds watching'.
P.S:This is for my friend Brume Bekibele as he gets married,God bless you bro!
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