TheCable

In Nigeria, we live in a fairytale land. There is no story we will not and cannot  hear. Most of the stories shared here are very disturbing and mental health induced. Many Nigerians suffer mental health related diseases. Not by choice. Our government and its officials daily supply the drama and enough inducement which trigger the disease. Ours is a country where the special python we have can swallow Millions of Naira while our eyes are wide open. Interestingly we normally do not raise an alarm until audit is conducted.

I have heard many foreigners coming to Nigeria say, there is too much tension in the land. They say Nigerian faces right from  the Airport are very strong. They claim Nigerians at home do not smile. Nigeria is a country with high number of mental health patients. The challenge is  many never go for test while majority use fun to reduce the level of the ailment. No wonder the stand up comedy industry is growing.

Pythons, depending on the their size have capacity to swallow living organism. But when Nigeria’s pythons target money there is no amount they cannot swallow. Nigeria’s pythons are highly gifted and choosy. They are one of a kind.

A news making round since two days ago in Nigeria is the case of a python which ‘spiritually ate’ One Hundred and two  thousand United States Dollars ( equivalent to a whooping thirty six Million Naira) from the vault of a sale clerk of Joint admission and matriculation board (JAMB). JAMB is an organ of government responsible for conducting  entrance examination into Nigerian Universities, Polytechnics and colleges of educations.

Checking the history of government created python, many living in the eastern part of Nigeria will not forget ‘Operations Python dance’ in an hurry.  When that python started dancing, it was very provocative, abusive and tension soaked. For the period that python danced in the east, there were noted cases  of assault and human rights abuses packaged in a national defence language mandate.

One good achievement of that python despite the abuse was the eradication and promulgation of indigenous movement of the Biafran  code named IPOB as a terrorist organization.

But when it comes to Nigerian  python  capacity of eating money,  that in Millions,  many of us have  heard   of the huge sum  spent on a prisoner per day. That amount is calculated to be fourteen Thousand Naira. Yet when you see the picture of an average prisoner in Nigeria,  one cannot but shakes his head.

Rumour has it the prisoners eat ‘pademi ni igboron’ kind of beans. This special beans is cooked with 80 percent water and 20 percent beans content.  The pythons within Nigeria  Government Agencies are of a special kind. Check Nigeria Customs and immigration before, what  about Nigeria Police, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporations and recently within Nigeria University system. What about billions of Naira spent on generating power in the  past 18 years?

Someone once advised if you see a Nigerian python and you succeed in killing it, be very gentle with the killing process otherwise you will destroy the vault inside. If a clerk can declare python had eaten 36 Millions in her own vault , how much can we imagine a director’s python could have swallowed? We know directors are more clever because the system had ‘groomed’ them to be technocrats.  They are more connected with the right people higher up.

Now coming to mental health issues, how can we live in this kind of a nation filled with such fairytale without a level of mental health? Remember an average person here lives   under ten US dollar per day. Remember also millions of graduates are unemployed with no source of livelihood? Remember hundreds of thousands of civil servants have not been  ‘privileged’ to receive their monthly salaries for months.  What kind of signal are we transmitting?

No wonder average Nigerian want to enjoy  ‘breakthrough’ as soon as possible. The same goes with desperation to travel out of the country by all means. This is because of the perceived impression  they will live in a ‘saner’ country where there is a level of decency to the  kind impunity one sees or reads in the pages of Newspaper.

Time to kill these Nigerian pythons is now. Otherwise the inflow of Nigerian returnees from Libya will be a child play. We will soon have to hire planes to bring Nigerians from Israel, United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana,  Malaysia, Benin Republic, Ivory Coast, Ghana etc.

On a lighter mood, what the lady said could be true as I have heard of  people  who  used their eye balls to cart away hundreds of thousand of Naira from their owners. There is also ‘Agba ina’. In Yoruba land where I came from. ‘Agba ina’ is a charm that made it impossible for money  to stay in a person’s hand irrespective of the amount.