Few things excite many a countryman these days like scandals. Otherwise, there is a general lethargy, some kind of grudging withdrawal from the Nigerian reality. Those who want to retain some sort of sanity mentally try to keep away from the frustration that the country extracts and exports millions of barrels of carbon fuels but is still waiting for Dangote, after more than 60 years of political independence, to set up a functional petrochemical refining plant.
Many others want to avoid anything politics like a contagion. It leaves plenty of bile and salty taste in the guts. Happenings in government and around political circles deprive even the most incurable optimist of hope in tomorrow. Who did this to us? is an angry rhetorical question heard more frequently these days among folks who think aloud.
It is in this sardonic environment of struggling to isolate one’s self from avoidable shocks that more shocks occur. In between, the void is filled by comedy merchants. They swam us, mining our spare data with videos, audios and comedy skits. We seem not to mind losing the data because we ‘catch’ the fun.
There are ample materials to draw from and fabricate comic strips on the go. And no less from the absurdity of our politics. This is how we, the happiest people of this world, roll. Laughing off our misfortunes and ignoring the tragedy of a nation so blessed with talent and resources, yet so poor in leadership and attitude.
Subconsciously, we yearn for the next salacious political, religious or sex scandal. Whether it comes from the soap box or the pulpit or the brothel, we reinvent, exaggerate, remodel, repackage and repurpose it, enjoy a good laugh, then wait for the next…and the next!
And so it was a comic bash – for free – that came to everyone all the way from Anambra State on Thursday the 17th of March.
By Friday, top ranking searches for Nigerian news online contained one word: “slap”. All a reader needed was to type in slap as a search and a flurry of news and semi news stories flooded the page. On Google trends, searches for “Bianca Slap” story peaked at 100 thousand on Friday the 18th of March by 9am.
The initial story which gained traction and thawed at everyone’s doubt was substantially different in element and conjecture. It fitted so well into the character of the dramatis persona, that it was generally accepted ab initio, that the victim was the villain.
Until some dust settled, the story that came out of the inauguration of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo as governor of Anambra State, was that the wife of the outgoing governor, Mrs. Ebele Obiano had dished out a valedictory slap to no less a person than the widow of the very godfather of Igboland and founder of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), late Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. It turned out later that Ebele had actually been a recipient, and not the dispenser of the dirty slap from the otherwise clean hands of Nigeria’s former ambassador to Spain, Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu.
Unlike many slap stories, this one is peculiar in that the victim of aggression has gotten less public sympathy in the commentary space than the aggressor. Nearly everyone, perhaps with the exception of Willie Obiano, seems to agree that it served Mrs. Obiano right to get a designer slap from the dainty hand of a beauty queen! She did acquire a taste for designer stuff after all.
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Stories from the grapevine are indicative of Mrs. Obiano being one of those “first ladies” with a sense of entitlement rooted in a privilege and superiority complex and that she flaunts this sense of power with aggression.
Many a Nigerian first lady – from the local governments to states and the presidency, lose sight of the fact that there is no constitutional role, and that the reference to an office of a first lady is legally and constitutionally an aberration. There is no better qualification for the office than its description by Prof. Wole Soyinka as “a mere domestic appendage of power”.
Soyinka’s fitting riposte came in July 2013, about the time Mrs. Patience Jonathan felt cool and powerful enough as first lady, to harass and undermine the office of the Rotimi Amaechi who was then the elected governor of Rivers State. Her movements were enough to shut down traffic in some cities and her aura exuded arrogance, presumption and nonchalance.
The melodrama by Mrs. Jonathan following the abduction of school girls from Government Girls Secondary School Chibok, is difficult to forget. It was discretion taken too far that the first lady could summon the service chiefs to appear before her; or frog-march the traumatized parents, principal and school teachers from Borno State to Aso Rock and sit in judgement over them.
This domestic appendage has often constituted a national embarrassment in the exercise of extra constitutional powers appropriated by it – like the ugly incident of presidential guards the first lady’s security details having a dangerous stand-off. And Soyinka was too taken aback as to warn that spouses of people in power need to be trained as to what their roles should be or “be cut to size” where they refuse to learn.
During military regimes and even civilian ones, we have witnessed the ridiculous situations of cabinet ministers – who are officials of state, representing first ladies – who are private citizens at state or other functions. The first ladies just learn to wield power which they easily consolidate with the soft underbelly of sycophancy and groveling merchants in the corridors of state houses. They become sheer influence peddlers from the other room.
Very frequently they get so power drunk that they forget they are neither on a joint ticket with their spouses; nor that they have any legitimate claim beyond privilege and opportunism to the resources of state which they appropriate. But back to our dirty slap!
Incidentally, it happens that some of Mrs. Obiano’s excesses already began to manifest before Mrs. Jonathan’s tenure as first lady came to an abrupt end. She is reported to have been quite generous with slaps and where she couldn’t part with one – perhaps for fear of retribution – inflicted other forms of womanly indignities including verbal assaults on her victims.
Even though in the aftermath, she gives the impression of approaching a friend in rapprochement and goodwill, it is generally believed that Ebele Obiano was on her way to giving out a final dirty slap when she got one from another quick hand.
Or perhaps, we can give the benefit of the doubt that, perhaps, Bianca might just have been trying to kill a mosquito on her friend’s face. After all, what are friends for?
Now who remembers Soludo’s agenda for Anambra State? What were the highlights and takeaways from his inauguration speech? Truly, I don’t know! I just remember “dirty slap” and Ebele Obiano, then to a lesser degree, Bianca Ojukwu. Period!