(ON)GOING CONCERNS: Look (back) - and laugh

On January 4, 2010, in a letter to President Umar Musa Yar'Adua I offered some advice for dealing with that class of troublemakers known as Nigerian journalists:

"Sir, the number one (revised) rule for fighting Nigerian journalists is this: don't gore, ignore! ... Nothing pains a journalist as much as when he is forced to become a spectator on his own turf. Send your speeches to the New York Times and the UK Guardian instead. Send photos of your convalescing self and of the budget-signing ceremony to Time Magazine to publish as a special exclusive spread. Invite CNN over to come and tour your Jeddah hospital. What's the worst that will happen? The predictable Nigerian media, wracked by jealousy, will quote the constitution, out of context, as always...." Barely a week later on January 12, 2010, the "president" "spoke" to the BBC.

I, in the most ambitious exercise of my imagination this year, would like to believe that the president read and followed my advice. Or, that in an attempt to ‘advise', I had actually made a prediction that turned out to be successful.

In January 2008 I made eleven "outrageous predictions" for the year ahead. I sent them out by email and months later posted it on Facebook. In 2009, more than a year after the predictions were made, two came to pass, one just as I had said: "Nigerian Stock Exchange undergoes the big bust; blue chip stocks in unprecedented free-fall". The other was a tad off the mark: "Five of Nigeria's Top 10 Banks undergo investigation for inflated revenue figures and balance sheets." It is now becoming clear to me that there might be a brighter future for me in my crystal ball than in my ballpoint pen. Therefore, at the moment, I am working on my predictions for Nigeria in 2010. But let me warn you in advance, I do not belong to that class of ‘prophets' who will tell you things like "six traditional rulers should pray hard to avert sudden death in 2010." Having said that, something tells me that Nigeria needs the gift of seeing into the past far more than it needs the gift of seeing the future.

At the moment there is more wisdom to be found in exploring our past, than in pretending to ‘vision', by presidential fiat, a so-called future. Our leaders,

the quack magicians that they mostly are, have however mastered the art of dazzling us with what I call the "abracadabra of the future", to wit: Babangida's All for All by the Year 2000, Abacha's Vision 2010, Yar'Adua's 20/2020.

To make sense of our future, I insist that we should turn our gaze to the past. Let us stop being a brain-damaged, memory-losing nation. Let us REMEMBER: that the self-succession Obasanjo tried in 2007, Abacha had written the manual for in 1997/8; that seventeen years before Justice Daniel Abutu, there was a certain Justice Bassey Ikpeme.

Let us realise that life in Nigeria is merely a ‘History Reloaded'. Therefore, if you want to know how 2010 will turn out for this country, don't look into a crystal ball; look instead at how 1998 turned out, under a Maximum Ruler who, despite ill-health, sought to hang on to power at all cost.

Having perfected our "backward vision", the next step is to hone our gift of laughter. Let us abandon ourselves to humour. Nigerian academic Ebenezer Obadare's must-read essay, "The Uses of Ridicule: Humour, ‘Infrapolitics' and Civil Society" in Nigeria says it best: "As post-military ‘democratic' regimes across Africa perpetuate norms and practices that were characteristic of the previous openly authoritarian era, humour and ridicule have emerged as a means through which ordinary people attempt to deconstruct and construct meaning out of a reality that is decidedly surreal." Let us laugh ,as we have always done, every tyrant into oblivion.

Already, the Internet is ablaze with fine examples of the subversive possibilities of a humour inspired by the events of the last few weeks. There's the song, "Don't Cry for Me, Nigeria", it's on YouTube, and has set Facebook afire: "Goodluck Jonathan, I'm sorry / The truth is I left in a hurry / So don't you worry / just run the country / I'll give directives / from my Blackberry." There's also the New Blackberry ad: "Run Your Country / Without any worry. / Even when you're weary, / Just use Blackberry." Over the weekend I paid a visit to one of Victoria Island's best-known nightclubs. It was my first time there, and so I had to scan the drinks menu before placing my order. What I found, or what found me, was a "shooter" (shot) named "Brain Damage". I couldn't resist the urge to order it.

I emptied it into a glass of pineapple juice, and sipped slowly, as all around me my country danced on the edge of a ‘Made-in-Saudi-Arabia' coma.