where sa-tyres never go flat
where sa-tyres never go flat
We are still enjoying the transformer that you got for our street, although it eventually blew because people in this place don’t know how to manage light. We are also grateful for the borehole tank that you installed in our community. Even though it has been a month since it was completed and you have not come to inaugurate it due to your busy schedule, it has added to the beauty of our community.
“Soon things started to get downright weird. It started as a series of mere coincidences. The other day, thinking about how preposterous it would be to have government tone-deaf to the plight of citizens, I adapted the popular ‘Let them eat cake’ expression credited to Marie Antoinette into a satire for the Nigerian context. A few days later, our first lady told people to start frying akara.”
There’s no prestige in dying in Gwarimpa General Hospital. If you want a proper state burial, the type that pauses governance for 48 hours and halts businesses in the name of a public holiday, you must die abroad — ideally in London. That’s where the real state funerals begin. The mystery of flying out sick and returning only in a body bag allows the state to control the story.
In the beginning, there was earth. Then came the first Nigerian governor, who looked upon this earth and said, “Let there be road.” And behold, there was road. And it was good. For exactly seventeen days.
You hear fuel price is dropping by ₦10 and instead of relaxing, you rush to fill your tank and your two yellow jerrycans — because you know it’s only a matter of time before they “correct the mistake.” It’s not a celebration. It’s preparation.
If you’re the smooth talker, your job is simple: form alliances, overuse words like “representation” and “inclusivity,” and write long WhatsApp broadcasts nobody will read. If you’re the tyrant, be prepared to threaten, manipulate, and intimidate—yes, even your own campaign team. Either way, nothing must actually change on campus under your administration. That’s the golden rule.
“Guy, ask about me, I dey craze gan o,” the first man would assert. To which the second man would say, “Na where your madness stop, my own begin o!” That should have been my first clue that something was terribly wrong. How could sane people want to be mad so much?
My grandfather? A jolly old chap he is! But he forbids politics and all government-related palavers. Such things bother him a great deal. Only two things matter to him – pool betting and palm wine. He is simple like that. Anyhow, when I got home and my grandfather pulled me aside to lament how the hardship caused by some imbecile government policies had affected pool betting and the price of palm wine, I knew there was trouble.
The worker ants are those government workers commuting between anthills of metal and glass, wearing threadbare suits and those fancy puppy leashes they call ties. They weightlift crumbs of the national cake bigger than their own financial size to pay homage to the colonial masters before ultimately falling apart, appendage by appendage, to be sustained only by the trickle of nutrients we call pension.
“UP NEPA,” like Nigerians usually chorus when the light comes on after a week or more of blackout, shows the love and understanding between her citizens and electricity providers. If not for love, why would you hail them? There would’ve been light 24/7, but the love will fade over time and neither NEPA nor its customers will have reasons to visit each other as they do now. And the switcher who flicks the lights on and off will become bored of his job.
