The Only Man Who Can Fix Nigeria is my Dad
What do you do when something is so fundamentally, hopelessly broken that there is literally no hope?
Sometime in the late 90s, somewhere between Sani Abacha and Olusegun Obasanjo, my little sister had a toy helicopter. I had a largely toy-free childhood because I was more of a book kid personally. My spectacularly pushy parents helped feed my obsession with knowing everything, buying me an assortment of encyclopedia, maps, books and magazines where boys my age had toy trucks and Power Rangers figures. I never knew I could get into toys until I laid my eyes on my sister’s toy chopper.
It didn’t actually fly, but you could wind it up or put in a pair of D batteries and watch it roll across the floor or counter, with its rotor blades moving at high speed. My sister did not like sharing the toy with me because I would play with it hours inside the pantry, repeatedly winding it up and watching it go. She was barely able to talk at the time, and she did not appreciate this agbaya older brother monopolizing her toy.
One fine afternoon, as little boys do, I convinced myself that if I could get the helicopter to roll off a raised surface with its rotors moving, it would remain airborne and I would have a bona fide miniature helicopter. I wound it up on a kitchen worktop and held my breath as it rolled off the edge…and promptly smashed to bits on the porcelain floor. The house was immediately filled with the horrible, piteous wails of a little child in distress as my sister contemplated the sight of her favourite toy lying in pieces on the kitchen floor.
The Fixer
Normally I was Mr. Fix-It, but this time around there was nothing to fix. They toy had disintegratedand there was just no way out. My sister kept on wailing, her tiny body heaving with waves of pure, undiluted grief until my dad came back that evening. Dad met his lastborn in her very own private universe of misery, and her sheepish older brother who wished he hadn’t had that brilliant idea.
Without telling us where we were going, dad put us in the car and drove to a local store selling toys. He asked my sister to point out the exact one that I broke earlier in the day, and he bought two. Now you have yours and she has hers. Leave her own alone.
And that was it. Problem solved. My sister got her favourite toy back and so did I…until I broke mine a few days later, but that is another story.
After this incident, I solidified an image in my head of David F. Hundeyin as the man who could do anything. Dad was my very own personal superhero — the man we needed and deserved who was as generous with solutions to my problems as he was indestructible. For almost as long as I knew him, he had diabetes and high blood pressure, but those were just words on paper. In real life, he was able to manage his conditions flawlessly, while leaving plenty of space for our after-school jaunts to Mr Biggs at Gbagada Phase II. Dad was never broke and if he was, I never knew it. Whatever problem there was — a new pair of spike shoes for running practise, school fees, new laptop, advice for dealing with bullies, information about masculine grooming as a greasy teenager — dad had everything constantly loaded and ready to go.
At the time when N50 was Nigeria’s highest currency denomination and the banking system was, shall we say, rudimentary compared to the present day, dad often had to hold tens of millions of his clients’ money in cash at home while brokering deals. I remember opening his wardrobe one day and seeing it lined literally ceiling to floor with naira bundles. Of course I did not understand then that maybe 1% of that fantastic pile actually belonged to him. I thought we were rich! Dad was a superhero who had the solutions to everybody’s problems and he was rich!
Even later on as a 20 year-old university student in 2010, when I did something veryfoolish indeed with about £4,000 of money that wasn’t really mine to spend, all it took was one tearful phone call spilling my guts to the man, and he made the problem go away. Like, instantly. Forever.
A few years later in 2015, when I was moving out into my first apartment in Lagos, I made it clear to him that I didn’t need his help and I had it under control. Still, I was not too surprised when my phone beeped at work a few days later and I saw a credit alert for N500,000 — my exact annual rent, which I had told him about in passing. He was just thatguy.
It’s Not Sick, It’s Broken
I really could have used his help on Sunday. On that day, I gained an insight into Nigeria that I now wish I hadn’t, because it showed me that Nigeria is not a solvable problem. Bad roads and government? Easily fixed. Fundamentally deformed and broken minds and cultural psyches? Not so much. It wasn’t the vehemence of the responses I got a tweet daring to criticize the demi-god who once claimed to have disrupted the internal combustion engine during a trip from Ore to Lagos. That was expected.
What I did not expect was the left-field turn the responses would take.
Some immediately dispensed any pretension of intellectual discourse and went straight for the time-tested Nigerian ad-hominem attack strategy: the ethno-tribal insult. This particular train is of course, never late and was expected.
Lots of people for some reason, were convinced that my being somebody’s ex-husband denies me the right to express an opinion about a completely separate and unrelated issue.
The constant line of argument went something along the lines of “Young man, you ate suya yesterday and now you want to buy an iPhone. People who eat suya have no business buying iPhones…”
If you find that confusing and you think it makes no sense whatsoever, then join the club. What on earth was he on about?
This guy then provided me with the earth-shattering insight that if “truly left”with “a female,”I could “fail,” whatever TF that means. Presumably, not trying to sleep with a “female” one has a professional relationship with is a constant struggle at which one can “fail.” One would hope this fellow has no female relatives around him, because they most certainly are not safe.
Then there was some more of the Suya-iPhone fallacy (I got A LOT of this).
Then a gentleman informed me that through his apparent telepathic ability, he had determined that the only reason I did not attempt to sleep with a professional colleague was that she was apparently “not fine.” One hopes that this fellow has some very ugly colleagues, sisters and nieces because once said human beings have a vagina and are “fine,” they are prey to be stalked by this hungry bush lion.
This other dude simply couldn’t believe that normal human beings don’t walk around raping people. I man who can blame him? After all according to his version of the faith he professes, a paraphrased version of a popular saying says “Let he without a rape under his belt post the first tweet. For all have raped and fall short of not-raping,”
All of this however, paled into insignificance compared to this guy’s comment. I could scarcely believe the number of ‘likes’ he got for posting this stunning, incredible, eye-wateringly rapey comment. It was at this point that I realised what I was looking at.
I was not merely looking at a bunch of idiots defending their religious cult od Daddy G.O. This was something deeper and more sinister. I was looking at a bona fide, real life group of rapists pushing a pro-rape narrative in the open.
Terrible as this was, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next.
A woman. Said. That.
She said “God bless you!”
She said “God bless you!”
She said “God bless you!”
The knowledge of my true situation knifed its way into my head instantly. Nigerians are not ignorant people. Nigerians are not victims. Nigerians are not 2-dimensional Africans who don’t know any better. Nigerians know exactly what they are doing. Nigerians do not want social change, good governance, light, better infrastructure, any of that stuff. Nigerians want to be horrible people and get away with it. That is their entire raison d’etre. Apparently I was the fool for ever giving them a chance.
Of course they would defend rape and rapists.
Of course a bunch of women who have not read ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ would join the cheerleading effort.
Of course their Daddy G.O. would never dare to open his mouth and condemn rape or a prominent rapist, even in the most general, non-controversial terms like:
[Bojack photo]
Of course he would derail the conversation into a stupid cul-de-sac consisting of arguments about female PA’s, “temptation” and “what if she accuses you…”
Of course this is all a setup by Nigerians who want to behave badly and get away with it.
I was suddenly seized with a powerful urge to pick up the phone and call dad. At one point, I may have actually dialed his number — 017756693, but of course he couldn’t answer.
You see, Nigeria already got to my dad two years ago. He’s not in a position to fix anything for me or anyone anymore. At this point, I don’t know where this leaves me. I can think of nothing else to do that will fix this sort of problem.
“Call dad” was my nuclear button when I did not have the range to deal with a situation, and now it no longer exists.
I’m sure if I could talk to him right now and tell him “Hi dad, I’ve just realised that the country I live in is the Federal Republic of Rapists and Rape Sympathizers, please do something about the way people think,” he might actually do something.But he is lying in a small plot at Vaults & Gardens, unable to talk to me or listen to my problems anymore.
What do you do when something is so fundamentally, hopelessly broken that there is literally no hope?
I went to his resting place to ask him.
I’m still waiting for a response.
