Drought of inspiration and content is the occasional affliction of every writer. Every newspaper columnist, creative writer or content provider experiences that moment of drought when you can think of nothing in particular to dwell on. You do not feel like writing or creating anything.
It is either that the reality around you has become so overwhelming that you feel a powerlessness in words or ideas. It might be that the reality of the society unfolding before your eyes is so commonplace that you risk repeating yourself on issues of common concern.
At such moments, the creative energy of those who have gone before evaporates into the futility of words when only transformative action will do. Why waste our time with words? Maybe, the recourse to words is the fall back of the weak, those who have surrendered to the crushing weight of a reality they cannot change. Talkatives are perhaps the most despicable of cowards.
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In times of emptiness and creative drought, the reality of experience evaporates into a nagging anger with the self. Yet there are many out there who derive daily energy and awakening from the few words that we striing together once a week. Our power derives from that sporadic inspiration which we lend to the many who have come to see us as spokespersons of history in motion.
Over time, people crown us in inflated titles: ‘renowned writer’, ‘leading columnist’. And we begin to see ourselves as bearers of power and partakers in a realm of power. In reality, we do little for anyone other than our ego. We may even be deceiving ourselves with the illusion that anyone out there is listening to us. In reality, we may be a squad of nattering nuissance. Ayi Kwei Armah calls us “communicators doomed to silence”.
Nigeria can kill creativity. It can drain life out of creative energy. Our land can drain the spirit of even the most fecund imagination. Nigeria can also be fertilizer for arid minds. Its negativity can feed you content. The same things keep happening over and over. People assume high office with Oluwole certificates. Empty people assume positions of incredible power and authority and dress themselves in fancy titles and accolades.
A less than mediocre person who insists on being called “Your Excellency”! They actually get sworn in by a judge with either a Bible or a Koran. They invite guests including officiating clergy to eulogize them and say flowery prayers about their ascendancy to Mount Zion. ‘And the ubiquitous traditional rulers are in attendance always. They invoke the spirit of illustrious ancestors to bear witness to a drama of emptiness, fraud and falsehood.
No one knows exactly how much their royal eminences are paid as consultancy fees. But believe me, they are paid transport fare, return business class air ticket, two nights accommodation in a five star hotel, rented limousine for ground transportation. No one knows what else accompanies the generosity of such ancestral hospitality. Those who act on behalf of ancestors must speak in whispers.
This is not exactly about traditional rulers and ambassadors of our ancestors. It is about a nation consumed by the fetish of power and superstition. It is also about a writer lost in the maze of finding meaning in a wilderness when the days are empty when the muse takes flight and you feel like phoning the Editor to fill the page with something else. I call them hungry days.
On such days, I have devised two means of filling my column and finding readers who, like me, are thinking of nothing in particular. It is either I reflect on the state of the nation in my periodic “How Country?” pieces or I head for the Barber’s shop at the street junction in Ikeja. In the Barber’s shop, you never run out of content. Forget the anachronism of a seventy something year old man without much hair left heading into the Barber’s shop all the time.
He is either out to mock himself or the Barber! Either way, the Barber gets paid for his “services”. The Barber’s shop down the road is strategically located at the junction that leads nowhere and everywhere. You get your direction to wherever you want from the shop. It leads to the market, the garage, the airport, the jail house, the police station, the army cantonment from where they used to truck innocent men to the Bar Beach to be executed for doing exactly what they cannot remember.
Most importantly, the Barber’shop is everything. It is a parliament of the unelected, a library of illiterate walking encyclopaedia, a Wikipedia with 24-hour on duty staffers, human mines of extant information. Most times, a good half of the occupants do not need a barber. I understand they pay for their “seats” to spend the day as information warehouses.
Some of these men have travelled all over the world in pursuit of careers as diverse as you know what: stewards on ships from Burma to Gold Coast, soldiers in the West African Frontier force, ex cooks for colonial officers, valets for politicians, laundry men for the underpants of politicians’ whores. There were men here who had worked on boats that travelled regularly from Liverpool to Bombay. There were soldiers and sea farers, policemen retired because they had become useless at the checkpoint because the tolls they collected were no longer enough to make returns to their bosses. Just people. One man used to be armed with a week old newspaper under his armpit from which he reeled off stories that mixed fiction with rumour and speculation.
At the Barber’s shop, you listen with your ears to the ground. The current stories are mixed with anecdotes from long ago. One minister has just been asked to resign his lucrative post for presenting the President with university degree certificates that he bought at Oluwole in Lagos and paid with counterfeit dollars! Someone interjected that the matter of bad certificates is not strange in these parts and times. Someone once showed up here to ask if the Big Man himself has shown us his certificates. No one even knows the schools he attended. All the schools he is said to have attended have all denied him. He even flew in a ‘former class mate whom he introduced with fanfare. One crackhead proved with figures that the classmate was a fraud. No one knows how the man left town and never showed up again.
Another minister was sacked for not even having the decency of dignifying the government with any credentials. When the time comes, we shall all line up for a certificate pageant! After all, one big man swore to an affidavit that his old NEPA bill was a school certificate issued by a Sunday school even though the big man himself was a devout Muslim. What fake certificates will do in Nigeria is wearing a fez cap!
Once upon a time, one fine woman became a minister in this land. No certificate. No referrals. No work experience. She was escorted into the Senate chambers for hearings. “What is the first line of the National Anthem?”: ‘Arise O Computerite; Nigeria we hail thee…” They asked her to take a bow and be seated! She was “Minister for End of Poverty.” Three months later, news broke that the poverty she alleviated was only hers! She paid all the money meant for the poor into her friend’s private account. They asked her to go quietly after a courtesy call at the EFCC !
We live in exciting times. It is the age of anonymity. The President is a ghost. No one knows or has seen a photograph of his father. The woman he calls ‘mother’ is not around to tell her own story. No one knows his school mates, class mates, university mates…
In this age, ignorance is bliss and peace of mind. If you seek knowledge, go to court!
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When I arrived the Barber’s shop, there was excitement. Some new gist must follow. In times of excitement, the Barber’s shop graduated into an emergency beer parlour. Booze for all !!! was my way of announcing my return after a long absence.