Distressed Wives (DW): Yes, we are here to let you know how this recession is ruining our marriages.
FH: Is that also the fault of Buhari? That your husbands have become less of husbands is the fault of APC?
DW: Gbam! It is the fault of Buhari and APC. They promised change and their change has changed our homes. For the worse.
FH: Thank God marriage is for better for worse.
DW: Well, the better days seemed to be over. Our husbands are broke and because they don’t have money, everything is suffering.
FH: Everything? Including conjugal duties and activities?
DW: Gbam!
FH: Gbam ke? Your husbands are no longer able to shoot straight or cannot shoot at all?
DW: The shooting range is quiet sir. Their broke status is breaking things up.
FH: But it is not fair to accuse Mr President of everything including erectile dysfunction (ED). That is an ungodly accusation, don’t you think?
DW: We are not thinking o. We know what we know. Recession came with APC. Our husbands were sacked under APC. A broke man is a worried man. A worried man cannot cock a gun, least of all shoot it. Many of our husbands are suffering from ED. Some of them have not fired any shot in 100 days.
FH: You are counting the days?
DW: Yes o. If a man used to chase with his gun always cocked but now he is running away from you with his gun tucked out of sight, you do not need the Bureau of Statistics to do the numbers.
FH: Eh Ehn?
DW: You need to do something before those who are shooting half-cocked guns start firing blanks.
FH: (Mumbling) Maybe that will save us from population explosion.
DW: Did you say something?
FH: Me? I didn’t say something. I’ll pass on your message to the President. He will put together a task force of Professors of Medicine to figure out how to restore your husbands’ em, em, staffs of office.
DW: Nothing is really wrong with our husbands’ staffs of office.
FH: I’m confused.
DW: They are broke. They cannot pick their bills and are therefore depressed. It is the depression that is softening things instead of strengthening them.
FH: You mean you are sure that once they make some money, they will be back in active service?
DW: Gbam!
FH: Gbam. I will tell the President. But what is all that noise outside?
DW: It’s the people who are angry and hungry protesting bad policies that is making everybody miserable.
FH: They may be angry but hungry, no. Hungry people do not have energy to pound the streets and walk kilometres carrying placards and singing.
DW: So, they are pretending to be hungry
FH: Yes.
DW: Just like the government is pretending to be poor?
FH: This government is poor. It is not pretending. The previous government stole all the money and ran away…
DW: Oh please, tell us another story. When you marry a new wife, you do what a man needs to do not complain about your former wife or the heat. It’s either you can do the thing or you can’t.
FH: The government is trying, struggling to do…
DW: That’s the problem. A woman gets bruised when the man is struggling to…
FH: Ooook, can we go back to the point of protest? What do those noisemakers want?
DW: They want looters hands amputated.
FH: (laughs loud and long). Do they know the number of hands we will need to cut off? Does Nigeria have the equipment to amputate the number of hands they are talking about or we are going to resort to knives and cutlasses? And then what will we do with the pile of amputated hands, offer them as sacrifice or burnt offerings to the ancestors? These your labour leaders amaze me with their demands. Were they not the ones asking for increase in minimum wage when the government can’t even pay the current wage? Do they want to export amputated hands of Nigerian looters?
DW: That is one of their demands. They also want to know the whereabouts and health status of the President.
FH: Evil people, mischievous people.
DW: What is with the name calling?
FH: Why do these people want to see the President? Before he travelled, were they visiting him? The desperation suddenly to know Buhari’s health status reeks of witchcraft and wizardry.
DW: Ah aaahhh!
FH: Yes, these people are not dibias, they are not native doctors. They cannot even treat their own malaria. Why are they so interested in the health of the President? They all sound like blood-sucking spirits roaming around , seeking who to kill.
DW: In other words, they have no right to look for their president.
FH: If you have a neighbor you do not greet and suddenly you start going to his door to ask after his health just because you heard that he was down with malaria, shouldn’t the neighbor suspect you of witchcraft?
DW: Is it malaria that the President has?
FH: What is your own, descendant of Sisi Amebo?
DW: I am just worried and this case is not like that of a sick neighbor o. Buhari is our president. We need to know…
FH: I put it to you that you people have sinister motives.
DW: Make the people happy and the protest will stop.
FH: The protests have already stopped and you people have seen that the president is not on life support machine. He is receiving visitors, on his feet too!
DW: He needs to come home o. The country is in a bad shape.
FH: The economic team has released several blue prints on the economy.
DW: Well, the blueprints are not working. Maybe you should change the colour. Try white prints, for instance.
FH: You think this is a joke? This government is trying, working very hard. The hen is sweating, it is the feathers that are preventing you from seeing it.
DW: Do you think these proverbs will make us feel better? I said people are hungry. Things are moving from bad to worse. Men are losing their manhood. Women are losing their womanhood…
FH: Eeeehh, you didn’t tell me women were losing their womanhood o. Who is taking their womanhood?
DW: Poverty now. Women are now breadwinners and where they can’t win the bread they are stealing it. They are joining crime gangs. Worse still, they are selling their womanhood to feed their families.
FH: And that is the problem of this government?
DW: You see why we want the President to quickly come back?
FH: To rescue the men’s manhood and stop the women from hawking their womanhood? This meeting is getting dangerous. If a man can’t keep his woman satisfied and a woman feels like ‘cutting shows’, you cannot blame somebody in Abuja for that.
Youth leader steps up
YL: And we went to school, worked very hard to acquire degrees and we cannot find job, yet we are supposed to be leaders of tomorrow. How can we lead when we are still living with our parents at 30?
FH: Hmmm, you have a point but the days of finding jobs right out of school are over, long gone. You have to find ways of employing yourself.
YL: Employ myself doing what, doing yahoo yahoo, kidnapping or armed robbery? The banks are no help. Our parents are being owed salaries. The ones that have retired are being owed pensions. They are dying. They need support but we can neither help them nor ourselves.
DW: So you see, Baba Family Head, we are all in distress. The economy is on life support. The future looks bleak. You need to let the people we elected know that dogon turenci , graphs and percentages delivered via power point presentations won’t help and are not helping. We need solution, realistic urgent solution.
FH: That is why a task force was set up to deal with the rising price of food items.
DW: Eh eh eh, task force on food items? Baba, you really don’t want us to go there, do you? All this using drugs meant for ring worm to cure leprosy won’t work. You need to tell them the truth, the whole truth.
Credit: Funke Egbemode, Sunday Sun
Even progressively greater delving into Nigeria’s chaotic economic strategies.I always find meanings in Funke’s write-up, in whatever script it is presented.Do we get to know a preliminary briefing about how past and current recovered ‘loots’ will be disbursed? Almost unbelievable; Yes,it may be said that these are the gains from criminal conducts or, grand misappropriation, and should be so processed but Nigeria cannot afford to archive the monies for any length of time: The courts and central banking system are unreliable; the politicians are in ‘re-steal’mode; the masses are hungry and will ‘partner’ with any small or large ‘sub-culture’ with a potential to alleviate their present stagnation. And, history has always been known to repeat itself. As a matter of importance, and urgency is the need for central and state departments to prioritise payments of arrears – salaries, pensions, annuities, gratuities, living/minimum wages across board. This will go elementary in many ways such as listing,numbering, vetting and validating eligible recipients/beneficiaries in such transparent approach to render traceable audit in the here and then. Then the Change factor starts to given shape and template, which transcends any political or procedural schematics applicable to legal implications for such financial recoveries. It goes without saying that previous and current recovered ‘loots’ are so substantial to reform many of Nigeria’s immediate needs beyond superficiality: some roads, education sector, health provision, SME agro-industrial projects and of prominence, any innovation to curb/cull insecurity.