DEMONSTRATION OF CRAZE

I'm mad! There is no doubt about that. I know you believe that I'm mad and I cannot say otherwise, because you are very accurate in your judgment of my madness. I had argued in the past that I'm not, but I refute that same argument today. I have come to the realisation that my madness is at the extreme. There is no doubt about that. I give in to madness due to where we all are. I mean where we find ourselves today.

Maybe you will agree with me that the environment shapes people's psychology. This could be why I'm mad. I don't really know. Maybe it's not totally out of place to be insane in an insane environment. Then I ask: do you blame me for choosing madness as a way of life in order to get crazy things of life done? It is important we all join in this demonstration of craze. Even if you are not ready to join in this demonstration, I guess you will agree with these immutable words: 'in every same man, there is an element of insanity.'

I write this in relation to what you have all along tagged madness, yet full of achievements, hence putting yourself in perpetual madness and confusion, like me. Is there any connect between my preamble and the subject of craze? Maybe I'm overstretching your brain and you cannot grab with ease. In plain language, do you appreciate now and understand why I should be consciously mad in a crazy environment, like ours? At times I laugh at my choice of words and the oxymoron that runs through my discourse. Of course, I'm consciously mad, as you can even attest. When a man is mad and acknowledges that fact, it then implies that he is consciously mad and confused. Do you now know that I'm aware of my madness; the super imposed madness that I carved out from nowhere just for your sake? Yes, I can't really specify where I inherited this madness. Well, you can simply help me out since I believe you know so much about the nature of my madness. Are there any traces of madness even in my lineage that could have led to this?  Thank God, you know my parents and even my extended homes.

I'm mad, I admit; I'm crazy! I reiterate; I have gone 'banana. There is no doubt about that. I can be compared to that naked man in the street picking waste and leftovers as his Passover meals. I carry crazy hairstyle, bringing to the fore the madness in me. I have all sorts of images scattered all over my house, depicting real madness. I deliberately pierced the ears, the mouth and the nose, with jewellery all over my body; simply the sign of the bizarre, eerie, and weird. I sing and even dance on the road to no beat and without a particular rhythm. There is no transition in crazy dance. If there is a sound that I try to produce in my dance, then it must be a crazy one.  I think crazy, talk crazy and work crazy. I even love crazy and fight crazy. Can you grab any sense in this? Simply put, I do things with just the dictate of my conscience and not yours; and that is why I'm an extremist of mass emancipation in a crazy way.

Do you blame me now that I'm mad and crazy, just for your sake and others? Just like the saying goes, violence begets violence. My madness is only a defense mechanism against other mad people, like me. The question that normally runs through my mind's eye is, can we evaluate these two kinds of madness by looking at its positives and juxtaposing it with some negatives? When I paused, while evaluating my madness, I could only identify one of the above manifesting through the lives of many successful Nigerians, like Alli Baba, Helen Sosu, Gloria Alozie, Alarm Blow and the host of others. It then means that my madness has been able to save lives and made life even more abundant, enriching and fulfilling. But on the other hand, their madness has not only sent the signal of death and destruction across to us, but has contributed greatly to national disaster. Then I wonder if it is the same madness that is applicable to me.

Their madness has even made you mad and you watch them kill you while you smile with a bitter face.

Despite your predicament, you have incredibly refused to seek answers or think about your dilemma. You loose yourself in escape instead of asking questions. Your condition ought to impel you to discover whether there is a solution to your problem. Instead, you engage yourself and your thought with trivialities and distractions in order to escape momentarily from despair, boredom and anxiety. Why is it I wonder - that those of us with the zeal and the zest to frustrate these mad people are most of the time dehumanized, and they compel you to believe that our behaviour is always irrational or crazy. The question is, who are the irrational ones?  Those who see hospitals without doctors as crazy or the so-called normal people that see it as some sort of administrative issue.  I understand you have not really got the point I'm trying to make yet. Who is more irrational? The mad man who sees that there is a problem in a hospital without doctors or the rational man who sees the same situation as part of life?  Your answer is very important, so we could make progress in this piece of work.

I strongly reason from another angle, which you could still regard irrational. It is due to your misery and pain that I'm mad and great today. Your misery spurred me into action, which, in turn, made me a great mad man. You don't need an interpreter to perfectly grab this. It is simple and straight. On the one hand, your misery, I mean our misery, is due principally, to our uncertainty and insignificance. This is because the real mad people that scandalise our name have put us in perpetual fear aside being insignificant. Then, we become so uncertain about our purpose in life. In particular, reason and nature do not seem to furnish decisive evidence as to whether I'm the real mad person or they are. We can only know who is really mad if we look out around us. I mean where we live and all we see is darkness and obscurity.

You can take a stand in this debate on madness once you realise that you are an infinitesimal speck lost in the immensity of time and space as perpetrator by those mad people you have chosen to steer your affairs or the affairs of the state.  You can simply and clearly identify these mad people when you realise that you are lost in your country in the immeasurable infinity of space created to deprive you of your God and constitutional given rights, and you find yourself suspended, as it is, between the infinite microcosms and the infinite macrocosm. Uncertain and undaunted, you flounder in your efforts to lead a meaningful and happy life; yet the shadow of their madness still chases you around that you get so confused by calling those who are on your side mad men while clapping for them in order to stamp their mad feet on the floor. Your condition is further complicated and characterised by fickleness, boredom; then those in charge of our schools, the people in charge of our health system don't seem to see the absurdity of having a hospital without enough doctors to run one of its most basic functions or having a school without teachers. I mean competent ones, and the hope of our children are thrown to the mud; you could as well say- our children are unlucky and you tell them day after day 'during our time, it wasn't like this, I started writing constructive and former letter while in elementary two;' then they wonder at your ancient computer brain.

What an irony, children of technology and computer age appreciating the old brain more than what they have got. A future destroyed by some mad people who see perfect academic standard as the force against their continuous superiority.  All I can do is laugh - I should be angry I suppose, but it just seems so ridiculous to me that laughter is the only response I can come up with. We then begin to see the irony of situation as mad people begin to refer to sane people as the mad people. I guess you got that?

At other times, random thoughts will strike me as I listen and watch them say, 'we have tried.' I cannot help myself finding them hilarious.  They continue to say things that appear normal or mildly amusing and I will be overcome with laughter or giggling because for some unknown reason it appears to be extremely funny, or an absurd contradiction. For instance, when a group of people say that there is nothing wrong with the wide gap created by the comprador elite and they smile from Asokoro and Maitama while some people grind their teeth in Ajegunle, Dawaki, Ohafia, just name them; it's their way. Isn't it hilarious that we could have such an extensive gap in the same environment? Isn't it excruciating that a man opens his door and dreams unending dream of becoming like his next-door neighbour?

Do you really think that God never wish for him those good things; that pool of good life you swim in? I watch a news story about a car accident right outside a large local hospital and the victims are taken by ambulance and helicopter to the largest hospital in the city, some 40 kilometers away, but the same accident occur involving different people, but this time taken to a nearby local hospital and I wept as some people die in the midst of poverty. They puff the last air of want, hopelessness and lack, and in response, they say, it's normal. Isn't that a demonstration of craze?