Gbemisola Saraki's G-String- By Chukwuma Iwuanyanwu
Mike, a good friend of mine, a global thinker, widely travelled, an Anglo Saxon and a Professor of anthropology at one of the local private universities in Los Angeles, has been a friend of mine for the past ten years. He has been to Nigeria and he spent time in Abuja and Lagos ; he knows me more than I know myself. If I really want to feel good about myself, I would ring Mike and if he is not busy, he would pick my call and engage me in a useful discussion, and most of the times, our discussion centers on cultural imperatives. One day, in one of our series of discussions, he shocked me by saying that most Africans lose respect, especially Nigerians because we were confused lots; 'an average Nigerian does not know which culture to pick or to drop, but you guys have good culture, but the wind of western culture, especially from USA is steadily and gradually eroding the cherished Nigerian culture'. He continued, most cultures from the west are cesspools, dysfunctional and they have lost it all and they want to ruin the way of life of the other nations and Africans fall on the bait. I became more shocked and I told him to stop that I had had enough. I said Mike, thank you for making feel good and I would love bringing you to Nigeria , on one of the local television stations to educate my people, who think that behaving like Americans or a Briton is the best way of life in the expense of our local time-honored values and beliefs.
In 2008, I took a flight from Abuja to Lagos , after a week stay in Abuja from USA , and what I saw in front of me after I alighted from the aircraft bemused me. A beautiful girl, very much endowed on the chest and behind was without bra and underwear; she was dangling all that God gave her without any hue. I stopped and asked myself whether I was in the street of the notorious Figueroa in South Central Los Angeles, the home of prostitutes. It seems that Nigeria has lost it all culturally, for the past seventeen years I have been outside the country. We have lost shame, face and honor in a bid to grab the decayed lifestyles of the western culture. Single parenthood and divorce that have been the undoing of the western culture are now embraced by Nigeria in a fast lane.
Where are our decent women, parents and guardians? What is going on? If getting loose and opting for waywardness are the fad of the century, then the country will pay heavily for that choice of lifestyles. My professor told us in the class that we should not sometimes mind what we say in front of the kids, but we should mind what we do in front of them. What is happening in Nigeria that the country is no more in a hurry to maintain the culture we hold dear? In the last political elections, Gbemisola Saraki contested the governorship seat of Kwara State and at a point; the PDP was accusing the ACN for threatening to release the nude pictures of Gbemi Saraki. Many careless observers did not know that the PDP was afraid of the rotten lifestyle of their governorship candidate. Thank God for Jega and President Jonathan for giving us free and fair election, otherwise a loose character like Gbemi could have occupied the government house of Kwara State . What type of character would have she be beaming to the young women of kwara and the entire Nigerians? I believe the government house could have be a classy brothel where Dimeji Bankole would go and strip Gbemi's G-string down and have bouts of sex.
If the news by Pointblanknews.com is anything to go by, then Bankole should be cooling his head in prison for wasting the tax payers billions on Gbemi Saraki and Ini Edo, another whore from Nollywood. Our local parlance is that there is no smoke without fire, so the EFCC should carry a thorough job to investigate the activities of randy Bankole, the ending speaker of the House of Representatives. Nigeria is a country where civil servants can do anything and get away without it and I pray that since we have started on the path of responsible government, all these nonsenses will come to an end.
My understanding is that Gbemisola Ruqayyah Saraki is a divorcee, though it is her private life, but wouldn't it be rational and responsible to have worked on her marriage than flaunting open the little chunky meat in between her legs for Bankole and other interested clients. I also did read that Ini Edo turned herself to be a sloth for mundane quid pro quo of her roundish booty she left for Bankole before she got married. I remember in the early eighties when Dr. Chu Okongwo was a finance minister; she booted out Edith Ike Okongwo for shamelessly revealing that she slept with Yakubu Gowon. What one does know does not hurt, and I am not going to feel proud that my wife was a whore before I married her. Habit is difficult to go away and you can test and see. Nigeria has lost it all, and it is all about fame and money; the scenery in Hollywood California . I guess the husband of Ini Edo will not worry since his wife has a house in highbrow area in Abuja and Prado Jeep from the Solomon of our time, Dimeji Bankole.
The admonition in the bible is that old things are passed away, behold all things are made new, but you have to be a committed Christian to live by these words. The founder of Jehovah Witness said that he did not know any woman until he got married, because the human nature was that it is always difficult to get rid of prior experiences. How many marriages, relationships have been damaged by comparing prior experiences with the present partner? I fight this sometimes and I regret ever knowing another woman before my wife. A lady I met in ones of the African stores in Los Angeles told me that she was afraid to meet her ex-boyfriend because nothing would save her from having sex with him whenever he crosses her way. This lady is married with children and I will advocate till tomorrow against sex before marriage. No one will compare anything when you don't two for comparison, and a food you have not tasted before, you will not crave for it, but a lot of people will disagree with this; all is academic and has nothing to with practice.
We should not be ashamed to return to what makes us human being, our good culture and bad ones should be revealed, re-evaluated and discarded, especially the ones that impinge on self-actualization and freedom of choice; the hallmarks of creativity . Respect, disobedience and spiral decay of morality are the bane of our country. High corruption, armed robbery, prostitution, stealing and litany of other distasteful cultural mores are stark evidences of the collapse of the family system. Family is the foundation of a civil society and any rot in the family sends a seismic wave to the larger communities. Yorubas are known everywhere in Nigeria as a respectful nation, Igbos known for tight marriage system and Hausas known for honesty; all have been eroded and we are paying dearly for these slipshod attitudes.
If I am by any chance made minister of information and culture, the first thing I will do is to ban all those foreign films that have been destroying our culture, restore our old way of behaviors, because any nation that has lost her culture has lost it all. Can you imagine the type of music Sonny Okosun, Onyeka Onwuenu, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Ebenezer Obey, Osadebe, Bongos Ikwue and Oriental Brothers played in the good old days in contrast with the rubbish these Nigerian gangsters mimic nowadays? If you are not original, no person will respect you. Our education will start from our elementary schools. I think we can do better.
Chukwuma Iwuanyanwu is a doctoral student in Organizational Leadership at Argosy University , Los Angeles .