The Nigeria We Knew gaga ekeh My earliest memories of Nigeria are in Kaduna. I cannot remember much from Kaduna except the mystic feeling of harmattan and the sense of the Sahel. My family soon moved to Ibadan and there my memories become very vivid--of Fela Anikulakpo Kuti and Obasanjo and Yaradua the first and FESTAC. I remember Zombie and goodie-goodie. In those days, the University of Ibadan Staff Club was an elite facility. There in the parking lot was a Victus Suya kiosk with to-die-for suya, laced with some nice onions and whatever that pepper is they use. Please forgive my nostalgia. I havent had true suya in two decades. There was also a comic shop from which we purchased the regular rags--Buster, Whizzer and Chips, Roy of the Rovers. We read quite a lot in those days. We read a huge amount of stuff from Britain, but it WAS accessible to us. Upon entrance into the club itself, one was greeted by a fountain, spinning round and round and churning swimming pool water, which in those days had a decent dose of chlorine, making the pool look almost blue-ish, but very clean. The kitchen at the Staff Club was supreme. My favorite was the Jamaican Patty, of which I have still not tasted a Jamaican equivalent yet. And trust me, I have searched. But then there was also the world-famous chicken-pie, both of which cost, in those days, fifty kobo. I recall the day the price of Fanta was raised from sixteen Kobo (Coke was fifteen kobo then) to forty kobo. I complained to the lifeguard, Wisdom, about the increase. He reminded me that Nigeria must grow, and so it began growing. It hasnt stopped since. When I hear today stories of Nigeria I marvel. Does no one recall the Nigeria we knew? I remember when people began telling that the cost of so-and-so was several hundred naira, I marvelled. Something that cost a few naira in the past, now costs several hundred naira? Amazing. This is what is called inflation. So what really happened? Why is the chicken pie at the UI Staff Club no longer world-famous? Why is the pool not functioning. Why no world-leading shish-kebabs that rumored their way, many a night, to Saudi Arabia? The root of inflation in Nigeria is easy to locate. In those days when we were enjoying the fruits of neo-colonialism, Nigeria was also a depot for assembling, not manufacturing, Peugeot cars. The idea, it seems, was for Nigeria to soon bring its steel industry online and then BEGIN manufacturing cars since assembly is not economical. Manufacturing decreases, by an order of sometimes one hundred, the costs involved in maintaining items such as the power grid, the water mains, etc. But a year passed and two then five then ten then twenty. Till today, Nigerias steel industry is offline, while most of Nigerias utilities rot. It is not about intelligence. If the quality of the cooking staff at the UI Staff Club said anything about the lecturers who consumed their wares, it was that a people who ate that well ought to think very well too. But no ventures have spawned from UI, creating cars or electronics or refridgerators, using the extent of our arts and sciences. This despite the food. No ventures have spawned from UI, creating trains, and computer chips and computers and musical instruments. This despite the world-famous shish-kebab. Why? Can we STILL suggest that the lack of steel is the reason? Or is there a problem more insiduous, a lack of creativity that is the product of a tradition of helplessness? I saw, at the college I attended in the foreign lands, people create things from the ground up: robots, machines, cars, and if the things were good enough some rich fellow would show up, theyd negotiate, and soon a venture from the university using its latest science in as ethical a fashion as the business climate would allow! And they have no chicken pie! One wonders, does one not? One truly wonders. What good is chicken pie, Professor, without, sir, ... chicken?
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 00:27:38 +0000
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