Monday Lines

Some powerful people in Lagos have announced they had found a decisive solution to the problem of strikes by medical doctors. The solution is very revolutionary. All doctors, 788 of them sacked. Dead men don’t bite. Sacked workers don’t down tools. The powerful can sack and dismiss anybody, especially when there is no media around to look these inventors of drastic anti-strike measures in the face. The old Lagos press would not beg the question. It would have bitten the wicked and scolded the unfeeling. “The time for fear has come!” The Agence France Presse (AFP) two Sundays ago quoted the head of Greece’s Golden Dawn party, Nikos Michaloliakos warning rivals that the time had come for them to entertain real fear now that his own party had secured entry in parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years. “The time for fear has come!,” he bellowed, flanked by fearsome guys whose presence drove home the point that fear is a legitimate weapon in political warfare. For us in Nigeria, we do not have a Golden Dawn Party that will issue such threats to people in power but we have enough fearsome gangs in politics everywhere ramming down nails into the heads of whoever dares them. The nails are to cure such people of their crazy activism.  So, what happens if the victims die?  So what, after all, death ends all troubles? It is the real ultimate solution.  That is why one governor would announce the summary sack of 788 doctors in one day and the almighty, all knowing men of knowledge will just sigh and shy away from committing themselves to a condemnation of an act of bestial crudity. That action, no matter how the ordinary man feels has got the endorsement of the progressive party in that state of excellence. Yes, a factory would stake everything to defend its best product. But it can also help a malfunctioning product to withdraw itself from the market. It may even deliberately encourage it to start manifesting irrationality like in this case. When a product becomes more popular than its manufacturers, the time to look forward to is its expiry date, the end of its shelf life. In Lagos, it appears time to do product withdrawal has come and the creators, the ACN, are doing it as if they are applying mercy killing to this their popular creation. So sad, but that is the way in politics, even the most sizzling romance in there has a separation point. The sweetest chocolate, they say, has an expiry date.  This is, indeed, time to fear real fear!
A friend asked where is the media in all these? And I answered that the best things, when corrupted, become the worst. The Ogodomigodo himself, Hon Patrick Obahiagbon for once came down from his high horse of obscurantist political talk during the past week, landing hard on the media through his twitter handle- “If terrorism is based on creating fear, then the greatest terrorist is the media,” he said. One read that and almost shouted that Obahiagbon was damn correct but for the fear that one would be accused of committing  class suicide.  When a dress is worn to dirt, you send it for cleaning. You know a disaster has come calling when the washer-man’s water is dirtier than the dress. Horace Greely believes the media is the strong, sword arm of justice but what strength lies in doing acts negating the essence of the powerful arm? The essential tap root  of the fourth estate is enthronement of justice and fairness. The media does this only by speaking truth to power, by pouring red-hot lava of scorn on what Soyinka called “dictatorial incontinence.” The media becomes terror when it joins the oppressor through criminal silence, embarrassing compromise and insensate inaction in the face of societal abuse. Is it fear or poor judgement or pure mischief that would make any media organ endorse an anti-people policy wholesale? What really is the problem?

Yes, doctors may not be right all the time they go on strike. In fact, should they be allowed to down tools at all? If they won’t down tools, shouldn’t the employers ensure all agreements are kept to ensure their excesses are exposed to the public? We have seen in Anambra State where a friend said doctors have been on strike for one whole year. I know of at least one other state where doctors shunned work for six months last year while their governor simply left them to wear themselves out. Is that in line with public interest and professional morality? One asks what those ones should expect if they were in Lagos?

So many things are happening at the same time. Fear and apprehension everywhere. As doctors get sacked in Lagos, news about their eviction from where they knew as home jarred the ears like sub-machine gun fires in peace time. Buhari promised a blood soaked 2015 (as if the soil of 2012 is not bloodied already). His political party, the CPC and its undefined ally, the ACN, have said he spoke well. The PDP has asked those calling for war to bring their own children out of opulent hiding and put them on the front line of the war they are calling. Leadership by example demands that a General stakes all he has in a war he instigates. He cannot employ puny tactics to escape responsibility and  desert the troops. And if you think the PDP holds any promise different from what these other two stand for, you should be shocked to hear that PDP’s Bamanga Tukur says terrorism is freedom fight! Was he misquoted or he was just saying in more direct words what Malam Lamido Sanusi said some months ago?  And in Osun State, a report said officials of the state ministry of Women Affairs have suspended 34 students of a secondary school for staging a protest. One is not bothered about the reason for (or the unreason of) the protest. One is simply alarmed to ask what business (and locus) a Women Affairs ministry had with the suspension of students of a secondary school! What is happening? Think about all the news you hear every day. Reflect on what you have been reading in the dailies –anything to cheer you up? It is either a company has swindled poor pensioners of over N4 billion or some forces are wrestling with the law to frustrate efforts geared at reclaiming Nigeria from forces of rape and abuse.

Think deep and look around you. Can you see any silver lining?