Close Encounter With A Nigerian Pilot

 Close Encounter With A Nigerian Pilot

Partners In Crime

We are one big happy family! I mean, the Police and the rest of us. We are happy to wallow in the mire with them. We are comfortable in each other’s bad company. In a sense, we are partners in crime!

Neither side gives a toss about the Code of Conduct. The Police lay down the law by which they engage with us and we meet them halfway. C’est la vie.

 

Instant Gratification ...02

We have become so used to being treated unfairly by authority figures that we have come to accept that we deserve to be so treated.

But in truth, the reverse is also the case. We treat authority figures, particularly the police, unfairly too. For instance, we treat them unfairly to a low living wage and then leave them to their own devices.   We fill them with the need to augment their income.

So, they ask for a bribe and we give it; we offer a bribe, they accept it. In exchange, they overlook our offences and allow us to get away with murder and avoid lengthy bureaucratic processes. Quid pro quo! 

In addition, they get to keep whatever else they solicit at the roadblock and at 101 other places and occasions. A farsighted officer will put a chunk of this away for the rainy day or as a pension pot, because little or none may be coming from official sources after retirement. Certainly, here is one willy officer who will not be protesting over poor or unpaid pension in retirement.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7372341013626904576/ 

Instant Gratification ..01

 We have become so used to being treated unfairly by authority figures that we have come to accept that we deserve to be so treated.

But in truth, the reverse is also the case. We treat authority figures, particularly the police, unfairly too. For instance, we treat them unfairly to a low living wage and then leave them to their own devices.   We fill them with the need to augment their income.

So, they ask for a bribe and we give it; we offer a bribe, they accept it. In exchange, they overlook our offences and allow us to get away with murder and avoid lengthy bureaucratic processes. Quid pro quo! 

In addition, they get to keep whatever else they solicit at the roadblock and at 101 other places and occasions. A farsighted officer will put a chunk of this away for the rainy day or as a pension pot, because little or none may be coming from official sources after retirement. Certainly, here is one willy officer who will not be protesting over poor or unpaid pension in retirement. 

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7372341013626904576/ 

In Life And In Death …04

 Glowing eulogies and tributes have been flowing in the direction of former President, Buhari who passed on Sunday, July 13, 2025. He was buried on Tuesday July 15. May his soul rest in peace!

A couple of days before his demise, I posted the last in a series of cartoons which I started 14 years ago. Conceived with the thought that “life imitates art”, the cartoons “In life and in death …1-3” were based on fictional characters – party leader, Chief Lathief and Mr Johnson.

Based on a real-life character, the cartoon below helps to corroborate the idea that life, indeed, imitates art, or is it “art imitates life”?

In Life And In Death …03

 Like I said in earlier posts, we feel obligated to speak well of the dead, whatever the devil they were in life and to spare no expense to give them a once-in-a-lifetime burial.

We have also found a way to take this convention to extremes. A sort of, “I come to praise Caesar; not to bury him.” We give glowing eulogies and tributes, either to conceal something or in anticipation of what we are hoping to get out of the tragedy.

In Life And In Death ...02

We buy into the social convention that obligates us to speak well of the dead, no matter how imperfect they were in life.

We even go beyond that, in our part of the world. We not only speak well of the dead, but we also spare no expense to give them a “befitting” burial, even when we’d starved them in life!

In Life And In Death ...01

We buy into the social convention that obligates us to speak well of the dead, no matter how imperfect they were in life.

We even go beyond that, in our part of the world. We not only speak well of the dead, but we also spare no expense to give them a “befitting” burial, even when we’d starved them in life!

It’s Always Someone Else’s Fault

 

The Democracy And Transformation They Mean

 Happy Democracy Day, Nigeria!

The people had known all along that June 12 is their preferred democracy day, but President Jonathan (6 May 2010 – 29 May 2015) and all the Presidents before him insisted on ramming May 29 down their throats.

 In this 2013 cartoon, the Secretary to the Federal Government is trying too hard to convince you and I (U & I) to accept May 29, but we aren’t having it.

And then President Buhari came along (29 May 2015 – 29 May 2023) to do our bidding. According to President Tinubu, it took the dauntless courage of President Buhari in 2018 to reach “back into history to rectify a national misdeed by making June 12 Democracy Day.”

The Democracy and Transformation We Mean

 THISDAY 11 June 2013    By Anyim Pius Anyim

 It is now two weeks since we all celebrated Democracy Day.  Within the intervening period, Nigerians have had time to digest and react to the Mid-Term Review Report, through which the government of President Goodluck Jonathan gave us an update on policy and governance issues under the Transformation Agenda. We recall that on May 29, the president said: “Democracy is as much a result as it is a process and today’s event invites us to reflect on both the processes and results of our thriving democracy. There is evidence of stronger democratic institutions. There is even stronger evidence of an evolving culture of better consultation, better stakeholder input and better mass buy-in on all major issues of national development.”

https://allafrica.com/stories/201306110304.html

Escapism

History has it that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned. We’re told the great fire consumed 70% of the city, rendering over half of the inhabitants dispossessed.

Can you imagine what could have happened if the inhabitants had joined Nero in his frivolous preoccupation? Rome could have burned to a cinder!

That’s exactly where we are headed. Our own Emperor (government) is playing the fiddle while the country burns and we are providing backing, instead of booing. We are playing second fiddle to our government, so to speak! We are wallowing in frivolities while our country is enmeshed in crisis…. What a pity!

 

Reciprocal Disrespect

 The fact that I respect you doesn't mean you should disrespect me.

Janus-Faced Politicians And The Rest Of Us

 ‘Tis the season of cross carpeting, when politicians migrate from the opposition PDP party to the ruling APC party.

The average Nigerian politician is an embodiment of these two major political parties. He has long asserted his right to move freely between the two. Thus, he feels at home in either; and his motives are beyond reproach.

Which means, he could represent PDP to me and at the same time represent APC to you ‘behind my back’ with the eventuality of setting us on a collision course.

Obey-The-Wind-TV

 Obey-the-wind-TV

Those who grew up in Lagos in the 50s and 60s should remember a type of inferior fabric for trousers called “Obey the wind”  or “ota Marina “ (i.e, not Marina Quayside friendly).  As a young man, if you wore trousers that were not made of quality fabric like Terylene (Dacron) or pure 100% wool that could stand the test of time, you were challenged by your mates to show up in them in Marina Quayside “catwalk “. If your trousers billowed and fluttered excessively in the Marina breeze, then they were declared inferior and you along with it.

In the same 50s and 60s, you could count on the fingers of one hand how many families owned TV sets. In those days, the ceremony of sparking the TV to life every night is akin to igniting the Olympic torch several months before the event and relaying it over thousands of miles to hundreds of places around the world before ending up on the day of the ceremony at the cauldron where the final bearer uses the torch to start the flame in the arena. Yes, that was about how long you had to wait for the TV to warm up. That was the best technology could offer then.

Nowadays, with advanced technology, nobody has to go through that tortuous route to switch on the TV, …errr….except in Nigeria!  For instance, if you switch on the DSTV, you can go and make a cup of tea and come back and still wait a few minutes before the scanning comes to an end and you are allowed to watch TV. And if it rains or it is windy, you can go and do something else because DSTV is bound to hold services in abeyance until the rainstorm subsides. That’s what you get with obsolete technology. That’s what we are getting now. You make monthly payments for services that should be pay-as-you-go. Shame!

Sadly, eleven years after this cartoon, nothing has really changed. Oh, except the cost of your monthly subscription. The package you paid N4,800 for then, is N19,000 today!

Lost In Translation

 

Deconstructing Mr Bombastic At Easter

It all started with this innocuous Easter Message…

“As we join Christians in the celebration of Easter, may we truly reflect on the quintessential modus vivendi of Master Jesus; The Christ, who peregrinated this incarnation as an exempli gratia of self abnegation, puritanical excrescence, spartan discipline, mental magnitude, hierophantic candour and altruistic effusions, qualities which have become a desiderata for national resurgimento.

“Beyond the fugacious razzmatazz of the moment, I seriously call attention to the rutilanting and coruscating modus vivendi of Master Jesus the Christ and I dare pontificate that save and until we viscerally emblematize the virtues of self-immolation, quintessential abnegation, eulogizeable simplicity, Christ-like humility and immerse ourselves in a platonic emotionalism of agape love and communalistic service, we would have woefully failed in learning and imbibing the true meaning of EASTER.

We must elevate this moment from a proscenium of joie de vivre into one of meditative transcendentalism”. HAPPY EASTER.

- Patrick Obahiagbon

Trump Card

Thanks to the American example, endangered African dictators can now breathe easy.

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

Looking back at that day seven months ago when a guilt-ridden ex-governor went to knock on the door of an anti-corruption agency to induce his  own arrest…

As the agency wasn’t in the mood to be guilt-tripped into making an arrest it wasn’t ready to make, the August (actually, September) visitor’s request was politely declined and he was promptly sent on his way.

 

A Time To Wait And A Time To Swing Into Action

 

They Neatly Got Away With It

 

Who's To Blame?