NOW, WE ARE IN EXTRA TIME
Koko: I have decided to also run.
Kaka: Run to where?
Koko: Run for office. I will go and take my form on Monday. My supporters are ready to follow me in many cars and buses. We can't leave our polity in the hands of dirty politicians forever. This is our time. Nigeria need a saviour, a change, a…
Kaka: Pleeease, save your poem and speech for those who will believe you. We have heard it all before and we still have no roads. Go on blow your savings on posters and I promise you I will not protect your sorry ass when the debtors come calling. I hope you have rented the crowd that will follow you to the party secretariat?
Koko: They are called supporters, teeming fans, not rented crowd.
Kaka: I hope you also have a voters' card?
Koko: INEC's registration machines have not arrived.
Kaka: If you have as much sense as God gave a goose, you'd be worried about parties selling nomination forms to those Jega has not registered. We all should be worried about Jega.
Koko: What is the matter with Jega?
Kaka: He's about to merge both rain and harmattan semesters of our electoral calendar.
Koko: You mean rain will now fall during harmattan and there will be harmattan haze during the raining season? Is the world coming to an end?
Kaka: Ask Jega. He's the one who is asking for three months extra time . He now wants the election to hold in April and then we'd still have swearing-in on May 29.
Koko: Abomination. After all the money we gave him?
Kaka: He should have worked with what he had, the old register.
Koko: Nooo. That old register is a greater abomination. Even my dog, Jackie, was registered.
Kaka: I'm sure she voted.
Koko: That's why we can't use that register because Jackie voted in the last election!
Kaka: Now what is the guarantee that those who registered Jackie, your dog, won't register Gogo, my white goat? Plus your resident electoral commissioners like Mike Igini don't have offices and are even homeless.
Koko: Igini has home and office. His roofs are just leaking. That's all.
Kaka: What about all those broken-down vehicles we saw on television? When are you burning them?
Koko: Don't be ridiculous. We will refurbish all of them.
Kaka: Even roadside mechanics won't accept those scrappy contraptions. If you park them near a badly used 'tokunbo' vehicle, its engine would pack up.
Koko: Very funny. We'll shock you when you see those vehicles carrying ballot boxes on election day.
Kaka: Great. That means ballot box snatchers have their jobs cut for them. All they have to do is follow you from a safe distance and wait for your scrappy van to cough and sputter to a halt and then take the boxes nice and easy.
Koko: You'll see, Jega will shame all of you pessimists.
Kaka: That is what we all hope he will do so we can eat our words but the man is losing weight and we are losing faith.
Koko: You've never believed the man can do the job.
Kaka: Is that why he's shifting the goal post during the match? Is he trying to prove me right? If we hold elections in April and swear in the winners in May, when will we go to the tribunals and Appeal Court and then seek judicial interpretation of judgements? Where will we find time to accuse tribunal judges of taking bribe and all the accompanying drama? Each scene takes time. Maybe the whole idea is that there should be no inauguration on May 29. Tenure elongation through the back door?
Koko: The President has assured us that May 29 stands and I heard it is National assembly that fixes the time lines for election. No back door. Everything will waltz in through the front door.
Kaka: Koko, don't be so sure. I heard that October 1 is now the new inauguration day.
Koko: I'm sure you heard that in a beer parlour.
Kaka: Fine. Explain why for once all the political parties are in criminal agreement on the shift in poll date.
Koko: Let them at least agree on something for once. All the parties have applauded the planned time shift and PDP has postponed its primaries indefinitely.
Kaka: Could they all have known Jega would ask for more time?
Koko: I need to seek judicial interpretation of that question before I can answer it.
Kaka: Do you think Jega is deceiving us that all is well?
Koko: Please rephrase that question.
Kaka: Does everything happening mean the Prof didn't have a full grasp of the job he accepted?
Koko: I will need to ask my lawyer for clarification about that question too.
Kaka: If he truly understands the job, would he be asking for three months extra time?
Koko: I put it to you that that is an evil question.
Kaka: Well, I think Jega thinks he can give us credible elections but he can't because he needs credible human beings to do that. That he doesn't have and that worries me.
Koko: You are just an incurable cynic and pathological pessimist.
Kaka: But a former Vice Chancellor not sticking to time is worrisome.
Koko: That is the problem with Nigerians. This man is painstaking and you are stalking and stampeding him.
Kaka: We just don't want his painstaking process giving extra room to people we have given quit notice. Now, Iwu must be laughing his head off somewhere.
Koko: If you mention that name again, I will, I will…
Kaka: It's all right. There's no need to burst an artery over Jega and our many problems. Let's change the subject. Did you see the female minister who was shaking her 'Idibia' and 'Arsenal' during President Jonathan's declaration last Saturday?
Koko: Was it who I thought it was?
Kaka: Yes o, the very one who went to weep on the deplorable Benin - Ore road.
Koko: She is a good dancer.
Kaka: And a good crier.
Koko: Huh-huh, let's concentrate on her dance.
Kaka: And forget that the Benin - Ore road is still bad?
Koko: Yes, I prefer her as a dancer.
Kaka: Are you insinuating that she is better as a dancer than as a Minister?
Koko: I'm insinuating that we should go home before you put your foot in your mouth all the way up to the knee.
Runsewe's well deserved tenure renewal
I would have been surprised if Otunba Segun Runsewe had not got a tenure renewal. He'd promised at the beginning of his appointment as the Director-General of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation that he would deliver and he did. He hit the ground running. He changed the face of the corporation and worked his fingers to the bone proving that tourism is the alternative to oil. He did not just sit in his office treating files, he went into the field and did tourism. This is the way it should be. Let us all do our bit when we get the chance. Let us all put something back in the system.
Let someone bring the trains back. Let someone bring back the groundnut pyramids, the cocoa plantation. Let us develop the potentials God has given us more than He even gave America. Runsewe is the first DG of NTDC to get a tenure renewal in a long while and he has earned it. Thank God someone somewhere also saw it and did what is right.
So, congratulations Otunba, but may I quickly remind you that the reward of hard work is more work? Good, we are watching you.
The peeping Toms at MMIA
I read with dismay, then amusement that peeping toms are sizing up our breasts at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos , no thanks to the newly installed 3D full body scanners. Geez, I hope some idiots are not also doing other unthinkable things on tax payers' time.
They are must be having the time of their perverted lives.
The scanners simply strips a girl of her Body Magic, girdles and bra support are. It renders all veils, hijabs of no effect whatsoever. See what terrorists have done to us. I mean, this electronic gadget actually strips us of our G-strings and thongs while one guy leers and smack his lips. But we rest our case, consoled that the security guys can leer and smack from now till hell cools over, they can only look. They can't touch. It's like admiring diamond on display when you can't afford it. When the show is over, these peeping toms must still return home to their pillows or whatever they 'installed' there.