By Abu Onyiani
Almost twenty years ago, while reading a book about the history of Africa, I memorized a phrase, “… the tsetse fly whose bite is death to all mammals except man and asses”. At that time I didn’t have the resources to research the veracity of the claim (not that I have today), I simply liked it because it spoke to me, because the bite of a mosquito almost always felt like death to me, a single bite could send me to a hospital, whereas every other person around me seemed to be immune to it, or at least had a higher tolerance level. For some weird reason, each time I was down with malaria, I recalled that phrase.
Like I have done all week.
For the past few days, I have been down with malaria. I know it sounds weird that I have to talk about being ill on my birthday, but it is exactly how I am on my birthday, so much so that I have not written more than a few sentences since Tuesday or so and have not even taken work or business calls in the past few days. I have been in bed, gazing at the empty lamp holder above me in my bedroom, evidence of the half job my electrician had done, even though he received full payments before he started. For a week he has been dribbling me with such intensity I have vowed to go to Paris to get him a Ballon d’Or as soon as I am back on my feet.
He wanted to redesign my lighting, but I insisted on going along with the same, like Adrian Monk, because well, humans do not generally like change. We can deny or argue with this, but facts are facts.
Perhaps he felt I was crazy, and maybe I am but he who pays the piper dictates the tune. I will get back to this shortly.
This morning, I took a walk, like I always do. I was wearing a pair of AirPods that connected and disconnected at will and pressing my phone, so I didn’t notice I was walking into an ambush, not of kidnappers or robbers, but of elderly Christians who seemed kind and hell-bent on converting me to their sect with alacrity, on the spot. They were on an evangelical mission and were sharing leaflets with others but stopped to share the gospel with me, maybe because I wore dreadlocks. The common illiterate belief in Nigeria is that you have to be a criminal, homosexual or an unbeliever to grow dreadlocks. This is wrong, especially from the religious angle, because even though many guys my age are bald,rshowingg signs of a seriously receding hairline, God in his infinite wisdom, gave me beautiful, thick black hair.
I remember begging them to just pass a tract to me (I always read them) and let me be on my way, but for reasons best known to them, they insisted on sharing John 3:16 with me, a verse I have familiarized with since I could read and write in my very poor handwriting.
At the end of around ten tortuous minutes (I was pressed and urgently needed to use a toilet, and explained so to them), the geriatric lady who held my hand with her arthritic hand invited me to worship with them tomorrow, I asked her if they would share rice, and not surprisingly, she said she would bring me home-cooked rice if that’s what it took to get me to church. I have always jokingly asked people who vigorously proselytized their religions to me to cover my logistical bills and, in some cases, even cater for my “stomach infrastructure” They have almost always said yes unhesitatingly. Gladly, I have never taken any of these offers because it would put me in the same class as the people I loathe – People who profit from peddling religion and religious activities.
“Remember to think about what your purpose in life” she declared as I was rushing home. I don’t remember if I responded, but I did think about it as soon as I had had breakfast, which these days is often a bottle of Coke and a slice or two of bread, usually a few minutes before noon.
This is what I think is a human’s purpose “CONTINUITY”.
We marry and reproduce because we are biologically programmed to reproduce, to ensure continuity. For this sole reason, we have philosophy, politics and religion.
People are often offended by homosexuality and asexuality because these guys are not going to procreate. That’s why our troglodyte ancestors and the foolish idiots today mock single unmarried people. That’s why men naturally fear a vasectomy, or women losing their wombs. The insurance of being able to have children is undefinable to most, but ignorance is bliss.
We have religion because we want to live forever. You can argue that the God of your religion, who happens to be the true God, appeared to selected prophets and gave them his word, but there are thousands of other religions that, in your eyes, are manmade, proving my theory that we want to live forever, so we invented religion. Even better, others see your religion the same way you see theirs. This is the gospel truth.
We invented incarnation, where a man could be born infinitely either as other humans or even as animals. I cannot imagine reincarnating as an earthworm. A serpent, yes, but imagine Abu Onyiani as an earthworm. O wrong nau.
When reincarnation went out of fashion, we can now only live on earth once after which we must go to heaven or hell for eternity. Even today, that is going out of fashion.
It is the same with politics. At a point, it was cool to be sexist or racist, but not anymore. Political landscapes are changing, like religion too. Thousands of years ago, men swore that the world was coming to an end because men had offended Lord Zeus and the other Olympians; today, we play a video game where Zeus’s bastard, Kratos, viciously beats Zeus before slaughtering him.
Before Zeus, people murdered others because they dared blaspheme against Loki Laufeyson, Thor Odinson, and Odin AllFather. Blasphemy, to me, is stupid because why should a God who sees and knows all be hurt by the words of men? And why should men feel anger and take action on behalf of an all-powerful deity? Can you imagine? Oh, we mostly are not allowed to think about religion; it is blasphemy, a crime that can get us murdered here before spending eternity in Hellfire, or so.
But is that true? We do not know what comes after death. That’s why we wake up just before we die in dreams. But in the days before social media, some scammers wrote books, recorded audiovisuals and told us they died, went to heaven and hell on excursions and came back to warn us about masturbation. Others claimed they saw that roads in heaven were made of gold, but they have not stopped taking our money in religious houses. What does a God who builds roads with gold (which is incorrect because gold is malleable and would lose shape if Dangote trucks supplied me cement) need my naira? Perhaps the deadliest criminals were those who claimed to raise those who died in their churches yet were mute when Mohbad was exhumed for autopsy.
I remember begging some of these religious heads, but their unthinking sheep, their lobotomized flocks, screamed we were mocking their God and attempted to cancel us, but their God stood for us and scattered their evil plans. These guys want to hold us to standards they dare not ask of their religious leaders, and dare not talk even when there is clear evidence of money laundering, rape, murder, deceit and fake miracles.
My cousin, who is a scammer, makes fake bulletproof charms for young, foolish cultists in Ososo, and these young men once tried to fight me when I told them their charms were false until I ran inside my grandfather’s house to grab a rifle so the argument could be won by one party once and for all. They fled, instead of confirming if they had Abido Shaker of Palenbo-Skendelebo. They want me to be perfect when they excuse the worst evidence of imperfection from their religious leaders. LOL, SMH.
Humans are physically perfect in my eyes, in terms of structure and brains. Imagine giraffes having our brains and sinking boreholes, flying planes, or serpents performing surgery on vipers with brain tumours. Impossible. This is why we will always dominate other animals. We have the structure and brains to match.
However, we are also interested in dominating ourselves. That’s why I have always told anyone who cares to listen that, money rules the world. Sexism, Racism, injustice and other discriminatory crimes can simply be cured by an improvement in the financial capacities of the target demography. True. I think I am back to discussing who pays the piper dictating the tune.
I attended a funeral in 2013 or 2014, I am not sure when, but I am sure that a man who had just come back from the US paid a few brigade band boys to beat drums and sing his praise. When they stopped after thirty minutes, he ordered his boys to seize their equipment and asked for a refund on the spot. The guys played nonstop for 4 hours. He had the money, thus influenced to command them to play their drums. Should I do the same thing, I might not be alive to write this, or I might have gotten a wide patch on my head where hair doesn’t grow. See?
Another example of this is that being anti-Semitic will get you cancelled faster than calling Ademola Lookman a Black Monkey, and it is because of the financial and military might of the Jews, even though they are less than 10% of the black race in terms of population. Money.
It is what it is. A financially equitable world would almost entirely destroy racism and sexism. Instead of quarrelling about who between a mother or wife should sit in front of your vehicle, the women can simply buy their own cars and sit wherever they like. Should we fix our continent as black people, those travelling abroad would be going as expatriates, not as immigrants looking to work for scraps in the first few years as they rise through the ladder.
It would also stop those at home from feeling inferior to those abroad. I noticed that something people abroad did was often to restrict access of people to them, and while I understand the feeling (billings can raise your blood pressure by a few points), I also feel the main problem is the erroneous belief that they are superior. They might not say this, but it is there in their heart, in their character, how they let things slip, etc. and they are not lying. Munchen is superior to Benin City. For example, the police there are courteous and kind, whereas the criminally depraved, mentally damaged, faded, black-on-black wearing, brain-dead morons in Sapele Road would hold you, accuse you of killing Abacha, Mandela and Sadam Hussein just to intimidate you enough to extort you. So yeah, they live in a superior society until we can fix ours.
But can we fix a nation when supposedly educated folks want to keep censoring us? We cannot talk about or fact-check Peter Obi; we cannot disagree with Oba Ewuare, who recently announced through his underlings that some Benin traditional wears are now reserved for royalty and we cannot blast Pastor Chris Oyakhilomhe for telling lies about 5G. Worse, educated folks who live in a society where every man can talk are supporting this censorship with censure. LMAO.
You live in a nation where churches report income to the authorities and announce it to members but you are shouting Abu Onyiani down for asking where is the sense in a pastor boasting that God has blessed him with another private jet. When there were starving people struggling with Kingdom billing, the jet was bought from church donations.
Brainless serfs are quick to attack you for speaking the truth, or at least your truth, because no matter their education or age and religion, they are one and the same, religious bigots and political extremists.
It is discouraging, but people like me are encouraged because the days of this narrow-mindedness are almost over. The grip religion and politics had on the necks of Nigerian masses is not as tight as before, and we are working really hard to ensure we have a society where every man is free to think, to dream, and to speak without fear of being physically and verbally abused, of being shut down by people who should know better, of being ostracized or disowned.
The purpose of humans is to live, dominate, procreate and die, but we do not want to die. Nicolas Flamel created a philosopher’s stone because he wanted eternal life, Tom Marvolo Riddle created Horcruxes and became Lord Voldemort because he never wanted to die, King Leonidas cursed Ephialthes with “May you live forever”, and while these characters may be fictional, there are extensively documented activities of humans looking for a goblet of eternity, fountain of youth, ambrosia of life or whatever it is they felt would grant them life eternal.
That’s the purpose of life. Living.
That’s why the only people I envy are little children in their innocence and youth. They are the ones who would be here long after we are gone, as would their children after them.
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