AT THEIR VOICE, INVOICES ARE ISSUED!

‘Kayode Oyero

“As a norm in Wazobia, to collect, citizens firstly connect.” O.J.O

The Sun’s face tilted towards the west. Orange blur veiled the tired Sun after long hours of beating the earth with a flail of fire. Flapping wings and chirping of birds flood the air the way disco beats bathes the atmosphere of a night club. Their tweets echoed as they move in solidarity to their respective nests. It’s evening!

Mama Aduke’s hut is a meeting point for children. It serves as a brewing pot for wards of the noveau rich and the poor. Dark and light-complexioned; well-nourished and malnourished kids habitually cluster round her at moonlight for fascinating tales.

Seated almost immobile like a post on a wooden stool exuding the calmness of a pond, we thronged her the way toddlers encircle a Nanny at a daycare center picking crusts from our nose. Mama Aduke’s fame as a Story-teller is legendary. This is evident from the fact that Parents from all nooks and cranny of Wazobia fling their wards to her compound. This they do at moments when Uncle Sun goes off duty for Brother Moon to take over.

Often-time, we come with a token of gift from our parents in appreciation for her mastery at feeding we children the morsel of life issues. Memory floods my mind like waterfall as I focus on the past wanting certain unforgettable events to flow back to consciousness in an apt and chronological order.

Being the fondest of my Father (of blessed memory), I was not denied the opportunity of listening life-and-direct to this Gargantuan Teller of past happenings in Wazobia. That was at a time when the family vacated to my paternal soil for the forty-one days after-burial ceremony of my paternal mother.

This Wordmonger creature held my fancy in many ways. Though at the time, she resided in a rural village, but her sense of civilization and modernity is incontestable. Noticeable along the pathway that connects her gate made of bamboo tree to her thatched-roofed hut of pin-like windows are stones carefully painted in white and black, giving the aisle a cosmopolitan look.

Dad had earlier briefed me about her profile: A retired professional secretary who doubles as a childless widow. She was addressed Mama Aduke for this reason-Aduke being her first name not a name of a child. She had flown back to her ancestral soil after an official safari as a white collar salary earner (call it reversal of fortune. She damns not care!). Her migration to her home soil was after the tragic demise of her husband: A man whose love was the scent that perfumed her life. She had lost him to the terminator of all times in a ghastly motor accident two decades ago.

Presumably, her sterility had influenced her decision to taking into hobnobbing with innocent young minds. There by, allowing us the luxury to lap up affection from her as a kitten guzzles milk from mother cat.

The air around her was habitually wet with wisdom that crystallized from experience and reflection about local and universal truths and all other forms of knowledge. She was a historian per-excellence.  She was a wordsmith and a wordmonger who hypnotized ‘spirits’ and humans by her sheer power of eloquence. With her mouth she escavated past stories. To her, a people without a past are a people without memory. They have no knowledge of how to construct today and how to shape tomorrow. It’s no doubt that she’s the third and fourth eye of Wazobia: Memory and Imagination.

“As a woman in the flush of her youth when beauty is unmistakably natural with breast ripe enough to cushion a man’s head,” she paused silence reigned in our midst like solitude in a graveyard. Hundreds of pin-pickable eyes fed on her simultaneously casting gaze that had curiosity buried in it. Uncle moon was very helpful as he looked down at us from a majestic vantage with wide-opened eyelid. “I was all-woman: well-rounded, soft-bodied and a feast for all eyes! I had all the soothing features that appeal all eyes and titillated masculine heart.” She continued in a contrive tone that carries the sophistication of gifted Storytellers.

“I worked as a secretary to a bigwig Manager of a reputable business institution for a period that spanned through thirty uninterrupted years. In sum, judging by my experience in that office, I can’t but confess that in Wazobia, to collect, you need to connect! My Boss, a man in his fifties with spectacular matted moustache was not only a sexual pervert but also a dangerous and bossy creature once he ascends the throne in the miniature kingdom of his office. As a practice, sexual encounter with female staffers was a gateway for them to get effected their ‘deserving’ promotion to higher cadres. To female Job-seekers, romping with them on bed was a ticket for their initiation into employment. While dealing with female contractors, sexual gratification is also a facilitation to his award of the contract such a ‘corporate harlots’ vie for. Of note is the fact that there was an equilibrium sort of agreement between the two parties. While my Boss collected a taste of their waist in the form of spine-tingling sex, they on their part are connected having stylishly but gladly gone whorish to submit their naked self to him in bed. In sum, anyone who seals this pact with him, his hand scribbles as the recipient of the promotion and contract respectively.

Gender violence was just too prevalent a malaise in Wazobia!

And as for the male folks, my Boss went about the ‘collect-connect’ thing in a different dimension. ‘If you truly and really need this contract awarded to your establishment, you will have to join my clique.’ was the exact statement he belched to them on phone when they cold-call him on their ‘the-contract-must-be-mine’ quest.

To put clearly, Occultic induction into a secret confraternity of which he was a member was the passport for any Contractor to secure contract in his establishment. And should in case you want to ask me as to what they do there, ‘I don’t know!’ is all I can say. But, an exception to the above trend is nepotism. That was if the subject happened to belong to my Boss’ bloodline”. Mama Aduke said in a tone laced with awe and satire.

“Mama Aduke, what is the solution to this social migraine called connect-collect?” one of the girls, chinwe by name asked demurely exhibiting the problem-solving trait of a solution-provider.

“That’s a brilliant one young one” she professed. See, many a student of the school of spiritual wisdom oft-choose the path of supernatural warfare to control the connect-collect syndrome. They are wont to burying their heads in fervent prayers whilst not forgetting to fortify such intercession with white-fasting. These set of puritans receive unexplainable favours neither by submitting their body to people like my Boss nor by succumbing to occultic induction.” Mama Aduke explained.

Abruptly, an eastward wind blew hardly, blasting our fragile chest with its whirlwind. Nearby shrubs and grasses bow in obeisance to her terrific blizzard. “kkakakakaka” a nerve-racking Mister thunder announced the on-coming of Master rain. We dispersed from our point of convergence running helter-skelter to seek refuge under a nearby shed while we waited for the arrows of rain to hit the soil before we depart to our respective abode.

Like pus from a ripe boil, the sky urinated heavily on the earth!

“Rain, rain go away

Come again another night

Little children want to ..…”

(A labyrinth of the past)

…Kip da Optimism Alive!

A SCHOOL CALLED UNISELF

‘Kayode Oyero

à “You can't be loaded and not be needed.” – O. J. O

Tears flowed freely down his cheek like waters from a mountain fall. His eyes crimsoned like burning embers of fire. Though as human being we’ve got peculiar ways of expressing our grief. While women are naturally dispose to quick sobs, men by the programming of nature are often emotionally disengaged and resilient even when flogged by the most pathetic scourge of life.

But in an instance where by a full grown man wails hysterically like a stubborn kid hungered by a disciplinarian mother, then you know ‘water don pass Garri’ as its being used to describe situations that has gone out of hand in local parlance.

He’s a potential father whose wife is eight months pregnant. He has just lost his white collar job in a sought-after corporate firm located at a country’s economic nerve-center and business capital. He’s a victim of the numerous work force downsizing embarked upon by most organization in Wazobia. An extant aftermath of the presence of marauders in the land!

*****

Away from the pathetic episode above, I recall as if it occurred only yesterday seated amidst men of the pen fraternity sometimes last year during a monthly editorial training section when he cleared his throat with the force of a concrete mixer, then uttered with the persuasive mildness of an itinerant Evangelist who scouts for Converts. He said: ‘for you to be a man of relevancy and distinction,’ he paused allowing his words to percolate the minds of his addressees, ‘you need to be a man of constant learning. You need to be an eternal student at the University of Self.’ He submitted amongst other prudent admonishments.

Barely a year after, I recalled this bit amid countless others when I resigned to the closet of solitude making a roll-call of events that lately unfolded in my sojourn in this ‘vanity world’. And before long, legion of thoughts sprouted in my mind like cactus in a desert. Then I began to stew in the pot of unpalatable thoughts as to what the astute Managing Editor of the foremost Socio-political Weekly Magazine where I had undertaken my media attachment meant by being an ageless student at an institution he christened ‘University of Self’; UNISELF for short.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long when one of the warring thoughts ousted its contenders and thereby called to occupy the entire space in my heart. And as an aftermath, I ruminated in the direction of the ‘winner-thought’ like an exuberant young Lover whose heart is filled with the caressing thought of a beautiful countess.

To him, the ‘University of Self’ engenders constant self-capacity development through reading of information cum educational materials and listening to sagacious life coaches through value-adding audio materials, attending seminars and workshops.

“Quite haplessly”, he noted that to many, “reading is a time-wasting venture, consequently shoving truism to the common axiom: ‘If you want to hide something from a black man, detail it in a book.’

Little wonder why your contemporaries climb the pedestal of promotion to top seats at the workplace while you are still there reeling with a portfolio for donkey years like an untroubled germ-infested solution in a gully during dry season? The rationale is not far-fetched.

Entrepreneurial wisdom demands Proprietors of organizations to value through remuneration and promotion staffers who add value to their organization via productivity.

To be a man of value is to be a Caterpillar that devours the leaves of books because embedded in it is the ideas that you need to be a solution-provider at the Workplace. Ideas rule the world! This necessitates that you must be an Idea-generator to remain relevant at the workplace. Reading avails one the opportunity to cruise in the ship of unending ideas that serious-minded wealth creator needs to escape the rat-race of eternal subservience. It makes for exclusivity. Remember the golden rule that he who has the gold makes the rule,” he tendered.

 *****

Again, just like a meandering river, my mind drifted during my nolstagia tour to the story of a partially literate but active and affable Salesman who sells five-times put together of what his marketing colleagues sell in a week in a day. Though of a junior rank, but he’s no doubt a man of uncommon strategy and marketing wits! Then, after months of consistent fattening of the barn of the organization’s profit, his day came (your day will come). His issue was raised in consideration for promotion at the board meeting of the firm where he works.

Just as I had asserted in my recent work: Attaining the top is not free, it costs a fee that swimming through enmity-infested Ocean is one that is inevitable for aspirer of enviable positions, antagonistic ‘ogas at the top’ among the board members raised  opposition to his potential elevation saying the vocabulary power of the debated-to-be-promoted man is sub-standard. “His sentences are so incoherent. I wonder how he wins over the heart of clients who presently are our cornerstone patrons.” One of his antagonists expressed in a laudatory but mockery tone. So goes on and on in the air of the air-conditioned state-of-the-earth boardroom rebellious voices rising into the sky the way steams of vapour escapes a closed-lid pot on fire into the atmosphere.

And tired of their sentimental and nonsensical din and in a bid to insulate the poor but result-yielding man whose promotion is being debated from the sting of the scorpion tongue of ‘ogas at the top’, the Board chairman who has kept mute all through the heated argument of rebellion said in a pre-emptory tone: ‘WE ARE HERE TO SELL AND NOT TO SPELL.’ So was his promotion effected with immediate alacrity (A prayer to all those who are not found wanting in the area of value-adding in their respective firms but yet denied the reward of promotion by the so called ‘ogas at the top’ who indulge in what I call ‘I’ll occupy till my children graduate’, don’t go dismay. Soon shall you break from the one hundred Lilliputian nails that impale you to an official status for donkey Years).

Aside metaphysical undertones, one would discover on a tacit watch of the issue on the front burner that complacency is the cause of all official stagnancy. Just like a self-satisfied and over-confident brilliant student who does not bury his head in studious vigils swallows the bitter pie of failure so also do many White-collar-so-called individuals who are okay with their information level suffer demotion, to sound mildly, official stagnation.

Let me sound a caveat before I’m being misquoted. Exploring one’s potentials is a fantastic thing to do (like in the case of the hardworking junior staffer heralded above.). But, the business of credentials acquisition is also one that must not be allowed to suffer. Don’t forget that ours is a dispensation that glorifies the ‘certificate mentality’. This is unarguably an era of certificate conscious business landscape. Again, this reminds me of another story of two good jolly friends who worked in the same business establishment with a National Diploma Certificate as their educational qualification.

While friend B reeled in self-satisfaction of the stipends he called salary, friend A was cognizance of the ‘obtainables’ that are obtainable at his turf of operation: the opportunities that may abound in his extant firm in the yet-to-come but fast-approaching future if he bags a senior qualification.

Pro-actively, friend A enrolled to be under the tutelage of a reputable professional institution and thus bagged a ‘senior qualification’ after the spelt number of years. Luckily, an opening in the form of an internally-advertized vacancy with the educational requisite of what friend A just bagged was announced afterwards. I need not complete the story. But a deductive point is that friend A’s intellectual capacity is not one to be equated with friend B’s poised and diminishing brain power. Their viewing lens of the world is far wide apart!

In actual fact, people who are not informed are deformed. If you're not updated, you're outdated. Those who know are always in the flow while those who don't know lie down in the low. The boardroom is not a bedroom. The boardroom is a place for busy brains not for sleeping brains.

Dare to be a man of value!

Dare to be indispensable!

Dare to be peculiar and spectacular!

Dare to be the last man standing!

…Kip da Optimism Alive