WHO WASHED THIS POT?

MOVEMENT ONE           

(Light falls on Chuks and Iyke reading in a hostel . Chuks is lying on a pile of mattresses while Iyke is sitting before a table. Above the table is a small book shelf, beside it are three kerosene stoves and pots. Chuks yawns).

IYKE: Guy, na wa for you oh! A beg no swallow me.

CHUKS: Nna eh, I dey hech die

IYKE: Why you dey tell me, I carry you come this School?

CHUKS:You fit?

IYKE: Why then are you telling me that you are hungry?

In the days of old, women are never to be found where there is a gathering of men, or it would be termed as an abomination. If there was an urgent meeting in the whole village, it requires the attention of the king, his advisers and the chief elders, but a woman never partakes in it. Women were never allowed to make laws for the whole community. Women were considered to be pure weak vessels. They were taken as properties to be acquired, they were purely home-keepers, cooks, “bed-warmers” and, most of all to assert womanhood, they were the manufacturers of babies. Any woman who was barren was a disgrace to the community. The opinion of a woman was never sought for.

When Eedris Abdulkareem sang “Nigeria jagga-jagga” during a presidential outing and OBJ rebuked him by saying, “Your mama and your papa na jagga-jagga,” that was somewhat the beginning of the end of Eedris’ musical career. When Yar’Adua took over the utmost mantel of leadership, I quietly said to myself that I’ll give him till this December 2008 to see or feel the effect of his leadership. But as usual, a perennially hot syndicate of persons with no face infest the peaceful polity, taking strong root at the helms of affairs in each state of the federation and spreading like an unstoppable, incurable virus. They are the descendants of faceless political vampires of old, and they have spent billions of ill-gotten naira to create a powerful and transparent cloak of pretentious, waterless goodness to cover their collective evil. They make sure they shake the entire Nigerian nation. These creatures are faceless because there is no concrete evidence of the suffocating evil they forever do. They are clever and smart to permanently conceal their evil. Their biological children never grew up in Nigeria, not even in Africa or some parts of Asia. The members of this secret, “vampiric”, deathly and ever-growing syndicate are manifold, but compared to the size of the ordinary masses of this nation, they are far less than a handful, even lower than a fingerful.

Ann was a young, vibrant and intelligent girl with a bright future and big dreams, she always topped her peers and she always she always took part in task that tested intelligence.