Fire on the mountain…The Global Connection

Well, not only the leaders; the followership too.  For one, have you ever wondered why as much as Nigeria’s music industry has become very vibrant and truly international, ALL we hear the boys sing about is girls, and the kind of things they want to do to girls.  I have picked up several albums of […]

Well, not only the leaders; the followership too.  For one, have you ever wondered why as much as Nigeria’s music industry has become very vibrant and truly international, ALL we hear the boys sing about is girls, and the kind of things they want to do to girls.  I have picked up several albums of these boys whom we give awards as role models and high-achievers today and noticed to my chagrin that all 15 or 16 tracks are about women’s breasts and ‘bakassi’.  Millions of tracks get written everyday about the same topic. At their most creative, they sing about smoking Ganja (Jogodo), and committing advance fee fraud (Yahoozee, Maga don pay etc).  It’s no wonder Nigeria is where it is today; and little wonder Black America, where we draw musical inspiration from, is still largely in the woods.  But perhaps our musical industry is better than ‘Nollywood’ (story for another day).

In my despair I came across the music of Asa (pronounced Asha), a modern-day Tracy Chapman with a little more African rhythm.  Talented Asa strums her guitar herself, and infuses some Yoruba and pidgin here and there, but she stands out in the crowd of shallow entertainers.  All her songs make a lot of sense to the discerning mind.  It’s possible to listen to a song that would make you reorder your life; a song that will make you take a crucial decision about something you have procrastinated.  Rhythm apart, the idea behind music is to gain access to places where mere rhetorics and high-sounding oratory wouldn’t enable. If you went to Eagle Square, Abuja today to preach an important topic about how the country has been damaged beyond repairs, the police will probably arrest you for sedition and require you come to them for license first, but if you sang the same topic in a song, you’ll probably be able to get the message across.

So Asa sang ‘Fire on the Mountain’.  It goes Like; “There is fire on the mountain, and nobody seems to be on the run…” Then she goes ahead to make important observations and admonitions about human society at large; from unnecessary wars carried out by powerful countries in which innocent blood of many children are shed across the world, to the ills of blood diamond and ostentation, to the fact that many parents leave their children to be raised by Television and the Internet, to paedophilia, to the quest for unnecessary wealth and corruption (our fate here in Nigeria).

The final line of the song, which is also known as a bridge, was quite shocking.  And it is a question that has been bogging my mind of late.  Some say I shouldn’t worry much about the fate of our country; that we are always lucky and will get away with anything.  But I think that even if we are the prodigal child of God, our luck may run out in time.  We have seen examples of this in many places in Africa.  Here in Nigeria, we have octogenarians like Jubril Aminu, ex Minister for Education, for Petroleum for this and that, Ex-VC and now serving Senator, insulting the intelligence of we the young ones in his AIT interview in which he dared to take on Obama, whom he called ‘our son’.  Whose son?  Having served in all those capacities, he is a major architect of the failure that Nigeria is.  He even mentioned Halliburton as being corrupt in the interview, ignoring the fact that if he and others who have been anecdotally indicted in the bribery scandals refuse to compromise their country, Halliburton, Siemens, Willbros and others will not have had a headway.

Then we have Mrs Akunyili, fire-brand Minister of Information announcing that they want to spend N8.2billion to ‘upgrade’ NTA.  In a country where students are at home due to teachers strikes, and people are being un-plugged from life-saving dialysis machines and so on at National Hospital and elsewhere in the country because doctors are on strike too.  In a country where 40million are certified unemployed and poverty is ravaging 70% of the populace, Nero fiddles while Rome burns…  No sense of urgency about the Nigerian situation.  In government circles, it’s all parties, and launchings, and money-sharing and political horse-trading.  No sense of direction; in fact no SENSE at all.

Then there was Mr Ojo Madueke who told of Obama promising him that he will visit Nigeria soon, only for the Embassy to deny any such visit.  Nigeria, the most wasteful country in the world, the model for misgovernance, will probably be graced by Hilary Clinton, a Secretary of State.  We could have been a world power, but for selfish interests, tribal interest and other brands of chronic myopia.  Before you could catch your breath, Ojo stated at Ohakim’s (another fallen angel), that many Nigerians were ‘intellectual hit-men’ who criticise government in newspapers but were too lazy to ‘struggle for power’.  My message to Ojo is that even lower animals in the wild, who struggle and fight for territory daily, sometimes show more dignity and refinement compared to what he and his party does in Nigeria today.  The ultimate strength and what sets apart great human beings, is the ability to struggle for power (as we do on these pages), not for your personal aggrandisement (as Ojo’s limited understanding permits), but for others to take the mantle for the betterment of society.

“One day the rivers will overflow… and there’ll be nowhere for us to go… and we would run, run, wishing we had put out the fire….  There is fire on the mountain, and nobody seems to be on the run….”   Strums Asa in the end.  I’m reminded of the disenchantment among Nigerian people, which bubbles over in incidences like what happened in Bauchi, Borno etc last week.  The people are angry, their so-called governments at every level couldn’t care less.  It’s not really about Religion, every Nigerian could be brought into one fold if government was proactive and inspiring.  What we hear daily is who is dumping his convictions to join the party that guarantees protection from corruption, rigging and so on.  May God help us in Nigeria.