Eyes on Australia
Australia is on my radar for obvious reasons. I have family and friends in the Back of Beyond. But most importantly, I am a professed Nigerian Christian who would never accept that the kind of fire consuming Australia is ordinary. It is either an angel rehearsing the prelude to the flames of Gehena, the consequence […]
Australia is on my radar for obvious reasons. I have family and friends in the Back of Beyond. But most importantly, I am a professed Nigerian Christian who would never accept that the kind of fire consuming Australia is ordinary. It is either an angel rehearsing the prelude to the flames of Gehena, the consequence for Climate change denial or the effects of foreigners expropriating aboriginal land.
As a Nigerian, one of my political leaders once attributed an outbreak of disease to divine punishment for the sins of his people. He made the prognosis from the safety of a foreign trip financed on state funds of course. You see the present crop of Australians wrestled the land from the aboriginals, named it after English towns and villages and have now banned wilful migrants from making the vast and beautiful country their haven of choice. If this is divine retribution, then the aboriginals would be spared its consequences; after all, this is their ancestral land and they understand the language of the gods and nature.
Modern Australians are spoilt people. I remember in 2002, when Nigeria’s democracy was just germinating after nearly 40 years of military domination. There was an explosion in the munitions depot of the Ikeja Cantonment. President Olusegun Obasanjo branched their on his way out of the country. When hapless victims started murmuring, he bluntly told them – I don’t have to be here! And that was it.
But in Australia, their 51-year old prime minister, Scott Morrison, was soaking in the sun on a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii when enemies set his nation on fire. Unlike hapless and helpless Ibadan fire fighters, Mr Morrison’s fire fighters are smoke-inoculated. They have fire trucks not just for display, they are adequately trained and they fight wild bush fires every freaking day of their volunteering lives. Mr Morrison, who studied economic geography, had no training in fire fighting. While on vacation, he left the job to the professionals but quickly returned home in case his cup of water was needed to extinguish the flames. There’s an epic clip of Nigerians fighting a mammoth flame with buckets of water and Omo and when a foreign journalist asked her countrymen to be grateful, she was hacked on Twitter. Critics should die!
Nigerians won’t understand these kinds of things. Our President never misses an opportunity to take a break even if the nation was literally burning as it does. One could imagine presidential spokesmen picking on critics (wailers) hyperventilating because the president was vacationing while the nation burnt.
Australian buggers wouldn’t let their boss be. So, a sorry Mr Morrison flew back home and quickly went to work visiting worst affected places. Unlike Nigerian patriots who would welcome back their leader at such times with traditional dances and Scottish bagpipes, he barely met his driver on the tarmac. Unlike our overpaid and underperforming governors who never forfeit their jumbo allowances but are full of excuses for not paying the recommended minimum wage, Mr. Morrison announced a 13th month bonus for the fire fighters.
You would expect them to hold a rally in celebration, but they didn’t. As Mr Morrison began to show up in areas worst hit by the inferno, you’d expect grateful placard-carrying patriots thanking their leader for his empathy, but no. Everywhere Mr Morrison went; bad language and protests welcomed him.
One of those fire fighters who just received his 13th month bonus alert had the impudence of refusing to shake the hands of his boss! Shameful isn’t it? The last man to show such impudence at the national level was my late friend Bamidele Aturu. In Naija, we don’t treat diligence, sorry I meant, insolence with kid’s gloves, ask Sowore.
One Australian woman called her prime minister an idiot to his face and went home to lunch or dinner with her sound bite going viral! Australia looks like the right country to banish Aisha Yesufu, Oby Ezekwesili and that Ugandan teacher/agitator Stella Nyanzi. When fire-spitting Amazons die they go to Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, Margaret Ekpo and Gambo Sawaba’s kind of heaven.
By the way, the fire fighter who refused to shake the hands of his prime minister did not get a query from the chief fire officer. As I shift my gaze towards Nigeria, I told myself not to go to Australia any time soon. The kind of virus that conscientizes an elected official into shame is bad for my health, not to talk of all that smoke to my asthma.
Nobody tells a Nigerian not to ‘insult’ the president, provided they know the cell keeper at Yellow House. But to insult the president to his face, that sacrilege is punishable with summary execution or disappearance. In Zaria, one intemperate Shia member blocked a general’s convoy – over 300 died for his impudence. The leader of the group who was perhaps observing his siesta is now in jail. His group is banned. Imagine the kind of charges Abubakar Malami could exhume from the statute books for someone insulting the president to his face!
If you have an Australian family friend, please give them a berth. If they’re on your social media timeline, block them. If they write a post don’t read or like it. If they send you mail, let it go to the junk folder and by Jove, let their calls go to voice mail. In this New Year, flee all appearances of subversion.