The season of letters
Poor Tony Momoh, the epistolic Auchi prince had the unenviable task of decoding Baba na Dutse’s unending Morse code transition that he spent time writing his famously infamous Letter to My Countrymen. With many people not reading, Momoh decided to engage the government printer. Everybody agreed that that singular ingenuity saved the Gothenburg guys from […]
Poor Tony Momoh, the epistolic Auchi prince had the unenviable task of decoding Baba na Dutse’s unending Morse code transition that he spent time writing his famously infamous Letter to My Countrymen. With many people not reading, Momoh decided to engage the government printer. Everybody agreed that that singular ingenuity saved the Gothenburg guys from extinction. Except of course they were otherwise busy churning out convoluting presidential decrees.
Shortly after Momoh lost his passion or position, and the legendary post office letter writer was retired by GSM and hand-held devices, the Wizard of Ota has resuscitated a dying art. Well, not quite. The other Gulma (not the air force drone – silly) aka press boys opened the can of worms to President Jones. For a while, President Jones, whose Egbesu fathers appear to be working live and direct for the creation of confusion between father and daughter finally got his own Tony Momoh to respond to the Epistle from Ota. And today, thanks to the entrepreneurial Naija, letter writing has become the latest fad in our nation,
Just a few days ago, when it seems that President Jones would let the insult pass, he decided to borrow the acerbic and vitriolic pen of his loquacious spokesman to pen his own to his quondam godfather. And as they say in Yorubaland, if Baba has a head, he would need more than Panadol, not so much for the direct answers to his loaded questions but the innuendos contained therein. Long ago, we discovered that the president is incapable of responding to issues because, no matter how hard you try, you cannot give what you don’t have. And today, the street vendor is very likely to be smiling at his unusual customers as he is to the network-imperilled banks.
With this level of devotion to letter writing, both Apostle Paul and William Shakespeare must be rejoicing in heaven at the resurgence of a dying art. Expect an MBE from her majesty the Queer for this attempt at saving a dying nation’s art. JAMB must be happy to see our children wooed from scandal rag sheets and hand-held devices to writing English to make Yaba guys stop withholding results. Imagine the effect of this as those who qualify to go on that test of will between academicians and government finally make the cut-off mark to make the academic journey of potential no destination.
Imagine the effect on moribund Nipost which hitherto believes it would have to keep reinventing itself to stay relevant. As the unpaid special adviser to the President, I would even suggest they should divert the National Confusion Dialogue to my Societe Generale Bank account because we can solve all our national problems by writing letters. Doctors can save lives by writing get well letters to their patients. Mechanics can perform miracles by writing letters to tokunbo cars.
Husbands can save a lot of time by writing love letters to their wives, and maybe with time we, the unwashed masses can beg Nipost to help us deliver our letters to our deaf and dumb ruiners. I for one would like to write my own letter to the President to answer the questions he glossed over in his letter to the Wizard. Some people might want answers to how it takes more to fix national assets than a fraction of what it takes us to sell them. Why, after they are sold, they still fail to function. We would like to know for instance why government agencies fail to make money while private ones work.
In this season of letters, let the masses write to find out why it’s only prelude to elections that huge contracts are awarded but then reviewed after the winners have been announced. We would like to write letters and get answers instead of pesky little anecdotes displaying a mastery of jabs without punch. It’s the season of letters, but beyond letters, we pray that the writers would offer explanations – explanations for uncommon failure and for the sorry state in which, individually and collectively, today’s letter writers have contributed to the sorry state in which our nation has turned.
For in time past when letter writing was not just a hobby of bloated and deflated misanthropes, letters have content and sometimes, letters can explain the lacuna in the pact between the people to whom they were written. What more, those who write them expect action and not rhetoric, and except they are the old asoromagbesi (the one which talks but receives no answers), they also expect to get answers to the questions they raise. Letters.