SSS Jailbreak: How Wendell Simlin Feeds Our Scepticism

It’s been 33 days since presidential aide Reno Omokri was exposed as Wendell Simlin, a pseudonym he tried using in linking suspended Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi with the spate of terror attacks in February. Reno Omokri got caught, so thankfully the conversation he sought to get started with his Wendell Simlin email never really started.

He instead helped start a conversation around the motive of the presidency with respect to the continued terror attacks in Nigeria. On that 26th day of February 2014, Reno Omokri showed what many had suspected, that the presidency uses the terrorist attacks as a political tool for its own gains. That Reno Omokri got caught helped prove this to a large extent because Reno Omokri works directly with Oronto Douglas, the man many consider as the brain of the Jonathan administration.

There are few strategic or tactical political moves made by the presidency that are not moves orchestrated by Oronto Douglas. This explains why the presidency has kept a loud mute since Wendell Simlin got unraveled as Reno Omokri. That silence will always come at a cost as long as it remains.

The Financial Times, the BBC, Thisday, Daily Trust and several other newspapers, magazines and columnists have written about the presidency and its silence on Wendell Simlin, yet that silence persists. This is one reason why the “attempted jailbreak” claimed by the State Security Service as the reason for the gun battle that ensued at its Head Quarters holds little water. Marilyn Ogar, the SSS spokesperson said, “At 07:15 hours, the Service suspect handler went to the detention facility within the Headquarters to feed the suspects.

“One of the suspects attempted to disarm him by hitting him at the back of his head with his handcuff. His attempt to escape drew the attention of other guards at the facility who fired some shots to warn and deter others.

“The gun shots attracted the attention of the military with which we have an understanding of mutual assistance in the event of any threat. The Army immediately deployed a team to reinforce our perimeter guards to forestall any external collaborators. The situation has since been brought under control.”

There are holes all over this statement. Were it a movie script, it would have been a poorly written one. The SSS is claiming a handcuffed man overpowered its own operative, shot same, and freed other inmates. Where did the other inmates get the guns and bullets they used in engaging the SSS in a prolonged gun battle? How did these inmates breach the SSS’s revered impenetrable security system?  And that attempted jailbreak has since left 22 inmates dead? Never to speak, never to reveal whatever they knew about Boko Haram and their sponsors? Surely, there is more to this jailbreak cover up.

The military needed RPGs and Armoured Personnel Carriers to quell the battle, yet the SSS wants us to believe this was just a jailbreak? A jailbreak that showed that, had the military not been in tow, the SSS would have been overpowered. So then, the escaping inmates suddenly possessed more weapons than operatives of the SSS?

You would notice several theories are already developing around what truly happened. Many have refused the cock and bull tale shared by Marilyn Ogar for obvious reasons; it just didn’t represent the truth, or at least the whole truth of what happened on Sunday morning, 30th March, 2014. Our government should be concerned about this sort of skepticism from the general public, a skepticism that continues to be fed by their insistence on playing pranks with national security.

Had the government for instance distanced itself from Reno Omokri’s Wendell Simlin email, and followed suit with a sacking and investigation of the incident in question, it would have laid down its own commitment towards the fight against terrorism and its insistence on ensuring that Nigeria’s fight against terrorism is not politicized.

It is too late now as the politics of terrorism in Nigeria had its ante raised by the Wendell-Reno-Omokri-Simlin email. When the President once said he had Boko Haram members in his cabinet, he made a statement that put members of his cabinet and his aides in a big box of suspicion. 

When former NSA, General Azazi blamed the PDP for the escalation in terror attacks, that box got even bigger. One would have expected that the presidency would take up the Wendell Simlin incident as a marker to show others that it would not condone the use of terrorism as a political tool.   

So then, the silence of the presidency on Wendell Simlin continues to read loud and the presidency would always be suspected when incidents like the supposed SSS jailbreak happen – or are made to happen. Now, how will a government fight and win the war against terrorism when it cannot be trusted with the fight?

Reno Omokri did not only shoot himself in the foot with his Wendell Simlin stunt, the silence of the presidency continues to fire repeated shots on the foot of the presidency with every decibel of sound that continues to be subjected to the shackles of silence.

An Evening with Eugenia Abu

For its anniversary edition, Friendraiser Community, in collaboration with Vlisco, hosted Mrs. Eugenia Abu at the Silverbird Cinema last Friday. The event started an hour late, a delay for which Inimfon Etuk, the founder of Friendraiser, would apologise and explain it was a result of a clash in scheduling with the cinema. “There was a film showing,” she said, “so we couldn’t set up on time.”

At 7 pm, Ini, as she was called throughout the night, invited the special guest to sit on stage and when she had sat, a video about her life played on a projector. The first scenes of the video were blurred as the lights in the hall were inadvertently left on. The video detailed random facts about her career in broadcasting, writing, mentorship, and the process leading up to her selection as 'Vlisco Woman of the Year 2013'.

Eugenia Abu, discomfited by the effusive praise of her on screen, cast her face aside, smiling, as she does when there is a technical hitch on the NTA Network News at 9.

A panel made up of her friends, colleagues, a relative, and a Caucasian first-time visitor to Nigeria joined her on stage. With Ini as moderator, they attempted to deconstruct her. They praised her in her capacity as a friend, humanitarian. In an attempt to decode her, they probed every aspect of her life, both public and private. How was it possible, it was asked several times, to be as famous and as busy as she was and yet be married with six (well-behaved―according to popular opinion) children? She said she has had help from family, friends, and colleagues. The response was too simple to be satisfactory. There must be something extra she is not telling us, some secret.

The visitor, who was only a week old in Nigeria, expressed surprise at how gorgeously dressed everyone was before asking Aunty Eugenia―that was the preferred form of address for the evening― about the challenges she has encountered in life and how she managed to overcome them . Before responding to her question, Aunty Eugenia stood up, flaunted her gown with extra large, puffy short sleeves, and acknowledged her designer who was in the audience.

When the audience was given the chance to interact with her, more questions about broadcasting, about NTA followed. What advice would she give an aspiring broadcaster? How assertive should a woman be at the work place? Having been spotted reading the news just a day before, was she back to the Network News for real? Could she change the NTA Network News theme song, if she could? Does NTA feel threatened by AIT?

As almost everyone in the hall knew her personally their questions were preceded by flattering anecdotes. I, too, had stories to tell, only my source, childhood memories, was unreliable.

I remember we were neighbours at Assembly Quarters, Makurdi, around 1990. She was maybe married but living alone. Already working as a journalist with NTA or some radio station. Very busy. Never at home. This made her front-yard a convenient rendezvous for children in the neighbourhood. Besides there was the shade and fruit of a fruit tree. I remember the few times she was at home she would make us sweep her frontage. I thought she was mean. Children should play, adults should clean their mess.

First I need to check with older siblings if this episode I hold precious in my head is indeed reality. While the authenticity of that story is pending, I remember her much younger relatives accusing Aunty Eugenia, whose English is as impeccable as a non-native speaker’s can be, of preferring their more eloquent sister to the rest of them. But that should be a story for another evening.

By Ladi Opaluwa

“Why We Need to Do the Right Thing”

Mr. Mike Omeri, the head of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) spoke to Joshua Ocheja and Tomilola Amudipe about his signature programme and other issues

It is widely believed that the NOA operates more as the propaganda arm of government, rather than a re-orientation agency. What’s your take on that?

Well, if the NOA is described as the propaganda arm of government, what else do they want us to do? Be the enemy of Nigeria? But what I know and I insist is that and you can do a psychoanalysis of all that I have said since I came here and whether anything that I have said is contrary to what society wants and not. If you talk about railway, there are railways. If you talk about airports, go there and see first. If you talk about agriculture, go there and see what is happening. I challenge journalists who have interviewed such people who claimed that we have been compromised to do an analysis, to take steps to investigate and come out with a position.

I am an investigative journalist by training and if I see people doing investigation especially for information, I get excited. Yes we are compromised for good governance, we are compromised for Nigeria and we have no shame about it. We are compromised for patriotism and we love our country and we have no shame about that.  

“The Do the Right Thing” is your signature intervention. Why is such a campaign necessary?

We conducted a baseline study and discovered that every Nigerian wants and desires the right thing. Every Nigerian dreams the right thing but Nigerians are not working for the right things. So we thought we should come up with a charge for Nigerians. It is not a slogan but a charge to remind Nigerians that these right things that we talk about and need are a collective task and it begins with the individuals. Therefore it’s a call to action because there are so many aspects of values that we have neglected that are right and that we want. We have decided that we take them one after the other. For instance, a Nigerian may think that not planting tree is the right thing to do or throwing dirt on the road is the right thing to do. And because we are so accustomed to doing what is wrong, we think that what is wrong is right. So this campaign is to wake us up to the reality to what is right.

Can you share with us the roadmap and the success of this campaign?

Part of what we intend to do is to rebrand. As a fact we have rebranded the then WAI Brigade into Community Support Brigade. The idea is to have this and other such platforms in the communities spread out there and supporting people to do the right thing, reminding people about what is right and doing it always. But aside from that, we are also the campaign to the government and to public servants. Every civil servant knows that there are rules of doing what is right and therefore if we remind them through our patriotism and ethics roundtable, through our various conferences and workshops which we have signed a collaboration with the office of the Head of Service of the Federation, it will give us a mileage towards achieving what we are doing.

We are also working in the schools through our campus focus programmes because these issues that need corrections are in all aspects of our lives. So every organised group and some unorganised ones are our platforms and therefore we approach them with the message of doing what is right relevant to their sector. We have been to the markets, we have been to road transport workers, government offices, we have had executive business roundtable involving some agencies of government and we intend to continue with that. So in that way we hope that the message will sink in. But importantly, the Patriotism and Ethics First platform of the NOA is a roundtable model that is created by the agency in the states and within agencies of government. Using that method, we have 5000 or more roundtables going on in this country and we expect that it will grow. We hope to get Nigerians talking and listening because at the moment we do a lot of talking but not listening. So through this roundtable method, we hope Nigerians will listen and share experiences and we see it reflected in the display of values that we crave for.

What impact do you think this campaign will make?

Imagine for you, a day that you wake up as an individual and decide to report to work and do the right things. Imagine how it will turn out to be and if all of us choose to do what is right in our homes, workplaces and other social spaces and in interactions with people. Imagine the difference it will make in our lives. So a community that is doing what is right will reap the benefits of productivity and organisation. But cast your minds back for those of us who have experienced the past of Nigeria when government was never there, when little of government was known, when government was heard of as a distant phenomenon, how were the people surviving? They were organised around values. Nobody wanted to steal anything because it’s not a good thing to do so. What we are simply saying is return to values. So it is dependent and incumbent on us now to be the Sardaunas, the Azikiwes, the Awolowos and the Macauleys of Nigeria.

Some believe the challenges are deep-rooted. How do you factor that into the campaign?

I just visited the Universal Basic Education office and I am about to visit the TETFUND and other similar agencies and the education resource centres. What we are doing is calling for the return of the teaching of history. At least Nigerian history and the introduction of patriotism and civic education in schools because within these are the values. There exist 40 basic proven principles of character. And if you observe any one such as integrity, honesty, love for your neighbour, etc., you will make positive impact in the society. So in essence, we are taking the campaign to the primary schools using our local government model because we are spread in all the local government areas and the states. Our staffs at that level are engaging with primary schools and such institutions.

We are also in the secondary schools, universities and other tertiary institutions. We just came back from Kebbi State University of Science and Technology where we had the campus focus programme geared towards bringing back values to that layer of the foundation of individual development.

The NOA under your watch has been very active. Would you like to share with us some of your other interventions since assumption of office?

We have been active as a result of enthusiasm and belief that the transformation agenda will work this time. Yes we have quite a number of interventions that we have introduced like the campaign on environmental sanitation which is a collaborative effort with other government agencies. We also have the joint collaborative initiative on disaster mitigation and awareness. We embarked on advocacy and community awareness and so people will know the dangers of abusing the environment and building within disaster-prone areas etc. We also have the theatre for development which we use to dramatize issues, using the same people in the communities to interpret messages of government and it has been quite effective especially when we implemented the freedom of information public sensitization campaign in some communities. We have also the community interactive and engagement platform. We have been working hard to get a radio station that will essentially be reflective of the character of the agency itself, speaking to the communities in their local languages and giving these communities a voice. We need community radio stations to fill in the gap that the social space has created. So we are working on that and so many other initiatives that we have introduced which I cannot easily enumerate but I can say that with very little logistics support we are able to provide some made in Nigeria vehicles to our state offices and head office for operational purposes.

You mentioned the made-in-Nigeria vehicles. Do you want to shed more light on it?

We have been leading the campaign for the patronage of made in Nigeria products. We were the first to acquire made-in-Nigeria vehicles for official and operational use that are made in Nigeria because after ours, a lot of other agencies are beginning to patronise. The Federal Government has made it a policy to patronise a made-in-Nigeria vehicle and with the coming of the National Automotive Act, you can see that what we started as a little campaign, what the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment is pursuing as a campaign, what the transformation agenda has introduced is beginning to get the attention of Nigerians and everybody is involved in the process. Don’t forget that we just had a Made- in- Aba Fair in Abuja. It was fantastic and you needed to see what was on display.

What is the Neighbourhood Development Ambassadors Scheme about?

We have actually changed the name since then to Citizens Responsibility Volunteer Scheme. This is supposed to be a volunteer-based scheme to be located in the communities: people helping communities organise themselves, supplying energy, talent and education. It is a holding platform in the vision of the agency for those who are yet to be engaged or acquired any formal employment to be productively and positively engaged within communities and neighbourhoods so that they can add value and through that eventually discover that they can empower themselves from their talents within the community. So instead of sitting down and doing nothing, the scheme can be a worthy alternative and we intend that in the long run we would get the MDG Office and ITF and other agencies involved so that certain projects that can be implemented in communities can attract the labour of the Citizens Responsibility Volunteers. In that way you trap income within the community, you get multiple benefits because people will now respect, protect and use what they perceived to be their own creation in the communities. Our hope is that it will eventually lead to creating a people who will end up cooperating to build their communities.

How has the response been?

Well, we have not implemented any major programme yet because we are still at the training and advocacy stage. So people need to know exactly what it is and to be able to key into it. At the community level I have discussed with the young people and they are willing to be a part of it because they have signed up.

Shame

Cairo reminds you of everything that is wrong with Abuja. It hits you how much of a fraud many government projects are- more expensive than anywhere else but of less quality. 

You think of the Abuja airport and the billions that have already gone into the remodelling. The airport is not a place you want to spend any time. It is unwelcoming and basic and all you need to do to drive you to anger is look beyond the new tiles and newly painted walls. The airport in Abuja teaches you not to expect anything, reminds you that you are in transit, warns you not to get comfortable. 

 

In Cairo, free WiFi welcomes you as you make your way from the plane to your transit gate. Your ticket says you will be here for more than three hours before your Harare flight. After an initial feeling of gratitude, you feel ashamed. You should not be so grateful. In your country, dozens of billions of dollars go missing without consequence every other year. There is no reason the Abuja airport cannot be one of the best in the world. Shame is in order as you send emails and tweet in an open Italian restaurant. 

A few days after, in the Vumba countryside of Zimbabwe you are taking long walks through game reserves and old castles. Abuja is a distant memory. You are now an oil-rich Nigerian whenever people ask where you are from. You do not tell them that the plains and landscapes you are seeing are more beautiful than anything you have ever seen in Nigeria.

Someone is taking you up the hill to a quiet scenic small holding where a famous baker called Tony performs culinary wonders. At Tony’s you choose chocolate whisky cake. You look at people’s faces and you realise you are not the only one reacting this way to Tony’s cakes. The word to describe the feeling exists only in Hausa. You explain to your friend that there is no English equivalent for Santi. You can only explain with a story about sugarcane. Sugarcane you say, is meant to be enjoyed in moments of calm and reflection. And for you, such enjoyment can only happen with at least two sticks of sugarcane. The first one to cool you down, to lubricate your throat, prepare you for the real journey. The second piece is the journey, to the sacred land of santi- a Hausa concept symbolising extreme sensory excitement from food. You define the word: “Santi is a hausa term with no known English equivalent describing intense sensory, and at its peak, near orgasmic reaction to good food.” 

Back at the hotel, an old white man walks up to you and ask if you are the writers he has heard of. 

‘Yes,’ you say.

‘All local?’

‘From Ghana and Nigeria’

‘Oh Ghana is alright. But Nigeria, not so much.’

You all laugh. But he is not joking. 

‘I sent someone up there once to start a brewery. My people said, the people want to drink our beer but they just can’t do business there.’

You are not sure how to respond to this. It is possible to defend Nigeria and say that corruption is everywhere and all but you will not. Not with things like 20 billion dollars going missing with no consequence. There are better ways to use your time. Like enjoy the beauty of Zimbabwe. And the santi from Tony’s cakes.

That Other Allure of Football

Football, I think, is great for what it provides the viewer: the artistry of legs, televised, performing great tricks my hands can’t do and in a surrounding not much different from the Coliseum and often no less bloodthirsty. It is, I think, also great for what it takes away from the viewer: a troubled existence.

Supporting Arsenal, if it doesn’t lead you first to needing life support, is particularly effective for this latter art. Troubled thoughts about your life, career, kids, are substituted by the woe on television, by the dearth of goals, by the failure of football to present that televised artistry implicit in the agreement you signed with the sport.

 

So a football match becomes a 90-minute spree free of personal struggle. Feelings of inadequacy by an accountant with irreconcilable accounts are replaced by the torture of watching another ineffectual Olivier Giroud run. Tracking a medication error eludes the pharmacist, but for an hour and half, the plight of a so-called top flight team supersedes his confusion. The waywardness of a through pass overwhelms a welder’s woe. For the novelist, worry over the team’s lack of defensive integrity may, for the period, come to replace the anguish of lifeless characters. Football is distraction. Supporting an unpredictably bad team is the new religion; and that religion is the opium of the new people.

 

Many fans of course are oblivious to these subconscious workings of football’s magic. They believe beauty is what they are after when they pay thirty, fifty, hundred bucks or buy a brew they do not want, a drink they do not need for access to a pub’s screen—although one has to admit that alcohol of a certain strain and strength has utility in these matters as well. Mostly, it isn’t beauty the football fan has paid for; he has instead paid for an excuse to personally inexcusable circumstances. The fee is for freedom to worry about a number of athletic men and their failings.

 

No one learns anything from success. And a team’s success can overthrow a fan’s own joy. I can imagine, in ’99, a Manchester United fan perhaps acquiring a PhD, a car or a rich husband and then finding that by the end of the same season, his team, her team has won all of the major tournaments.

 

You will think her joy, his joy should quadruple; and you will be wrong. Joy is finite. And a component of joy has to reduce so the sum of all of a person’s capacity is unsurpassed. Besides, how much glee till apoplexy?

 

What I’d bet is that whatever personal accomplishment a Manchester United fan had in ’99 pales in comparison to the cups won by his team. He is likely to forget the year of his PhD but his club’s treble? Never.

 

How many teams does it take to reach Peak Happiness? 1, I belive. Yet the team was winning every trophy it could.

 

By contrast, this year, with The Club Formerly Known As Champions of England floundering and desperate to find teams to which it can lose, the acquisition of a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a pot, a pan, a pillowcase may seem pretty remarkable at season end.

 

Mind you, watching Arsenal, the club I am partial to, is only slightly different. You think, “Surely, I cannot be that bad”. Actually, you may be worse, but for those 90minutes, you are not on trial. Some avatar of failure has been placed on television to be reviled and insulted. Your own inadequacy is deferred while Giroud’s is urgent, imminent. And as his shots are as weak as most of your arguments, you will not forgive him. This is football as respite.

 

For those 90 minutes, a fan’s misery is narrowed, consisting of just how Oxlade-Chamberlain would get another run at the Bavarian defence; how that ball may find a route into Chelsea’s net; how Manchester United could help Arsenal with an own goal; how Suarez and Sturridge should contemplate suicide to stop Liverpool’s onslaught.

 

Football is the opium of the fan. And it offers an advantage religion cannot: Barring someone dying for you, in religion, perhaps in life, you will be punished for your sins, for your choosing of the venal over the virtuous; but at the end of every football match, you are absolved. Your sins are limited to hurling abuse at the screen and at the end, those sins are washed away in time for next weekend’s round of matches.

 

And the thought never escapes a football fan that whatever has happened may possibly have happened anyway. On occasion, I have deluded myself into believing that if I cheered Arsenal louder, arrive in front of the television on time, then my efforts would translate into glory for the club. But this conscious delusion is more superstition than super-fandom. It is punctuality as amulet, cheering as rabbit foot. Beneath everything, every fan knows that an emotional investment is not the same thing as financial or physical investment. You shouldn’t care, but you do. And neither your care nor your juju is enough.

 

Real life is different. And even if you are convinced that nothing in your life will change if you do nothing, there is always someone, the parent, the girlfriend, the boss, the wife, the straightforward friend, who earnestly believes your action or inaction is to blame.

With football you can blame someone else; you may hurl abuses at a coach used to hurling water bottles.

 

And if Arsenal loses, it is the team and coach and club owner’s fault, and maybe even the janitor’s fault; not yours. You may be depressed as is possible if you receive a sack or a divorce. Yet, depression as experienced by football fans, is brought by other people’s mediocrity, or in some cases other people’s superiority—for the uber-frustrating Arsenal players, their own mediocrity and the superiority of the opponent manage to show up at the same time and ever so frequent as to provoke alarm. But that gives Arsenal fans a rare chance to experience the transcendence of failure very often.

 

A team like Arsenal, accustomed to loss of all kinds—near-wins, unexpected draws, dismissive defeats and outright crushing—and with sporadic flashes of televised artistry, gives the fan more distraction for every loss of points; and more joy for every win. It is win-win and ought to be good for the heart, a cheap regimen for these obsessed-with-success times: It is 90 minutes of deflective therapy at the minimal cost of television concentration and, perhaps, a bottle of beer.

Diary of an Abuja Billionaire: Week 23

Jamal is an Abuja-based billionaire bachelor and businessman who works hard and parties hard. Welcome to his world.

Week 23

Monday

Last night was a thrill, and I don’t regret it. Nnenna knows it was a one-off, she enjoyed it and so did I. We’re both engaged, will soon be married and will move on; Zainab never needs to know. Ishaya started work in Kaduna today, but he knows I’m watching him. Finally secured the Kenyan Construction company, and the five Tom Ford suits and range of silk, hand-embroidered kaftans I ordered arrived today, along with other stock for my men’s designer boutique.

Tuesday

I don’t know how, but my therapist Dr Ferral, who I talk to once a week, could tell that some extra-curricular sexual activity occurred with me over the weekend, but I denied it. Thankfully Zainab did not suspect a thing, and that’s all that mattered. We were planning a trip to Canada this weekend, and she was nervous about meeting my mother. I flew to Nairobi to smooth over the takeover deal, and tonight at my hotel, I dreamt of Nnenna.

Wednesday

Had meetings all day at my new company’s offices and visited some of the sites; a lot of operational changes, firings and hirings will need to be made. The new Nairobi MD was adequate, but I’ll be watching him closely. The private investigator I hired to watch Ishaya’s mother reported that she was checked into the hospice I booked for her and by all indications, really did have cancer. My mum was wrong. But the Investigator also confirmed that Ishaya had been to rehab for cocaine addiction, so she was right about that.

Thursday

After another morning of talks and meetings, I flew back to Abuja and straight to a candle-lit dinner arranged by Zainab and my chef Daniel, under the gazebo in my garden, with champagne, an Italian three-course meal, soft music playing in the background and my peacocks walking around. “I know you will always have secrets Jamal, but it’s OK, I have secrets too,” Zainab said. I looked at her, her long hair cascaded unto her bare shoulders, her blue strapless, Alaia summer dress billowing down to her Miu Miu wedges. Anger flared my nostrils but I calmed down. “That’s OK” I said.

Friday

Zainab and I flew to Canada this afternoon, after collecting some gifts for my mother from Zainab’s family and procuring a heap of the dawada my mother specifically asked for. We checked in at the Four Seasons in Toronto, then a chauffeur-driven executive car took us to my mother’s bungalow. I hadn’t seen my mother in nearly 10 years and I was shocked by how shrivelled she looked. Her thick hair was thin and grey and her eyes were teary. But she had lost none of her hot temper or sharp tongue, and barely hid her distaste for Zainab, who remained respectful. We took her to dinner and I pretended not to see her hand shaking every time she lifted her fork to her mouth.

Saturday

I was in meetings all day with businessmen, prospective colleagues and ambassadorial staff so Zainab spent the day with my mother and accompanied her to the hospital as she refused to stay in hospice. That evening, I told her that Ishaya’s mother was really sick, just as she was, and she kissed her teeth in disdain. Whilst Zainab was in the kitchen, I asked her what she thought of my fiancée. She grunted her reply and looked away. “I feel so sorry for your mother Jamal,” Zainab told me in our suite that night. “She needs family looking after her. All her toughness is an act.” 

Sunday

Zainab and I took a helicopter ride over Niagra Falls, but my mother refused to come. The truth was her body was very weak, and her loneliness was sad to see, but she refused to have anyone come and stay with her except a nurse and cleaner who visited regularly. Throughout my stay we never mentioned my father or Uncle Gumbo. “I can arrange a jet to fly you to Rome for our wedding,” I told her. "I don't want to come to your wedding," she said. I grabbed my suitcase and walked out of the house. I knew I would never see my mother alive again.

Truth is Hard to Find Here

Weeks ago at the Abuja Literary Society (ALS) critique session, a dark-skinned young man of average height agreed to be the first from a list of about nine to read to the audience from his work. He came up stage and read from an iPad a piece he said he had yet to figure which genre it belonged. It was not a short story, neither was it a play, and clearly not a poem. The essay, so to say, had characters wielding canes, thrashing a hapless individual, slapping, dispensing pain and injury, angry and euphoric at the same time. It is the known story of the mob and a victim who may be innocent or not. In his story, as expected, the mob is the devil in multiple incarnate. 

 

The piece had moments both low and high. Brief moments of delight that make you want to sit up and listen and moments of despair when you slouch back in your seat and mute the voice of the reader. However, in the end, there was applause. When the host sought the audience’s opinion on the words just heard, the hall at Transcorp Hilton became quiet.

Then a voice from behind said it was a beautiful piece of writing. I understood his predicament. The icebreaker needed to be mild and polite, just wetting the ground to be tilled. I expected the following speaker to hit the mark, but perhaps, it was impolite to contradict the first opinion, so he perpetuates the praise, and there was more praise. The consensus, despite the appeal of the host for critical engagement, was that it was indeed a beautiful piece.

This was only the beginning. Next there was a poet, another poet, and a performance poet, all men, expressing their love for their particular woman. There would be more presentations in different genres and all would get the applause and praise they deserve or desire. Meanwhile, the candid opinion about their work was being whispered between neighbours or sent as text messages among friends, eliciting chuckles. And these writers will be ignorant of the truth about their work or talent.

The closest to a candid public comment would be to highlight a sentence or paragraph as a cliché, as though that was the only unworthy aspect of the particular work, implying that besides that everything else is perfect and that the work isn’t the absolute trash that it is? This won’t be the first place writers are misled about their abilities. I have been in similar gatherings where every piece read without exception was, you guessed it, beautiful. The audience at writers’ rendezvous are too polite.

It is easier to sit behind a laptop and leave nasty comments on the trail of a short story online. Criticism is hard to give and take face to face. It is akin to performing a surgery without anaesthesia, perhaps more painful, capable of killing a writer’s ambition.

This may not be an entirely pathetic situation. I imagine people who peddle their work before live audiences come little expecting a candid review. They come, I suppose, with their best works, the piece in which they are most pleased, most confident, soliciting praise, seeking assurance not tutoring.

And supposing they are willing to be truthfully edited, it is too much to ask me to listen, enjoy, and take critical notes that can never be as thorough as sitting back home and putting red marks on sections and advising, if need be, that the entire manuscript be deleted, and as a friend would further suggest, and the recycle bin be emptied.

ALS was fun ― it’s okay to admit that was all it was meant to be, no need to couch it with nobler intentions ― an unwinding session, a time to straighten fingers made crooked from scribbling. For a trade as isolating as writing, readings are the literary equivalence of Friday night at Cubana; the reward of seven hours of solitude, time spent building word count, filling blank pages with imagination.