Clinging On

I needed to pick an article for Aurora of 30 March. Myriad of ideas was floating in my head. I wouldn’t want to be too political this week – not that there was a dearth of political topics from which to choose on local and international scenes. Like the genie let loose in the United States – that’s Donald Trump, presidential candidate of the Republican Party. When Prof. Niyi Coker Jr., the E. Desmond Lee distinguished Professor of Theatre and Media Studies at the University of Missouri, Saint Louis who was a guest at the recently held iREP2016, mentioned that Mr. Trump was endorsed by some black pastors, I held my head in my hands in disbelief and pain. And when the professor later said that many African-Americans believed in the presidential candidate, I thought I was having a bad dream. To each his own, abi? The Easter long break was spent at the Freedom Park where the four-day iRepresent International Documentary Film Festival was organised by Femi Odugbemi, Jahman Anikulapo, Theo Lawson and Makin Soyinka.

Unsure of which way to swing with my article, I decided to de-clutter the house of newspaper cutting that I’d been hoarding since God-knows-when. Do you sometimes look at a particular spot in the house and feel like reclaiming the place from whatever object that has built room and parlor there? That was the feeling that day when I looked through the huge pile of newspaper cuttings sitting at a corner in the house. I had kept the cuttings to use later on when the need arose. So the pile grew and got to a sight fit only for my eyes.

The original idea was to get rid of the pile taking up space in my space. I got to it and started leafing through – big mistake! The same reason for which I hoarded the pile of newspapers returned as soon as I saw the asterisked titles. I began to arrange those materials I needed for future writings on my left-hand side. By the time I finished – and that was more than an hour – the pile on the left-hand side was as huge as the original size. Disaster! I must go through the lot again. And I must be stricter with myself, I told myself. I found the advert of the Nigerian Army Officers’ Wives Association (NAOWA) through which their national president, UKT Buratai, felicitated Hajiya Aisha Buhari on her birthday on February 17, 2016. I asked myself what my beef was with the advert. Could it be the sunglasses shading the face of Umma-Kalsum Tukur Buratai or what? What was it I didn’t like about this birthday greeting to the wife of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? I put it aside with the hope of returning to it. I then picked up the Editorial on ‘Ego Trip’ of the state governors who wanted an airport in their state capitals. Underneath this I had written, ‘We use train, tram, bus when abroad. Must each state really own an airport when the budget can’t bear it?’. I had also kept some articles on the emergence of Modu Sheriff as the Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). On top of one of the articles I had written, ‘This Modu isn’t our Sheriff’ and ‘What a ‘Modu’ Operandi in the PDP’.

Sifting through these papers was tedious. I could feel a headache. Guess what I did next? I packed everything into a black bin liner and took out of the house. I must get my space back. I succeeded.

Does it happen to you – clinging unto old cloth even when the seam starts falling apart? Sentiments tie us to old pieces of furniture so we change the upholstery again and again but the frame is still the same. And it’s that frame that’s etched in our memory. Some of us can’t let go of these memories so we have junk all over the house. Each item is associated with a place, a sentiment and we cling on. We often forget that ‘freely, freely’ we have received, so ‘freely, freely’ we should give. The more one gives the more one gets. Giver never lacks, says that sticker on many cars in Lagos.

Rejoinder: For Better for Worse (For Better for Us)

Hello,
I was quite amazed to read your article when I saw the topic but sad that I
still didn’t get my missing edge at the end but, quiet amazing the
myth of Yoruba and Bini’s. Further on the historical, how is that the New Ooni sent his father to bring a wife from Bini to Ile Ife of recent without him personally appearing at his own marriage? Please, what can you deduce from that. And was it still a supremacy or inferiority battle?

Thank you
Wale adebajo….
Abuja

Answer: I believe Mr. Adebajo would find answers to his questions in Aurora 9 March 2016 – Here Comes the Bride