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This was meant to
be my 2011 inaugural piece, but urgent presidential matters took
precedence last week. I must apologize. But wait before I go on to the
gist of today, I must confess that I am in a state of confusion. And it
is my friend that has thrown me into this conundrum, which if I am not
careful can lead this column to calumny.

You all know I love
writing about Dr. Jonathan Ebele Goodluck, but now I don’t know how to
reference him in the next four months. I can’t really call him
presidential aspirant, he is already my president. And if I keep
calling him Mr. President, other candidates would say it is unfair
because I am creating an unequal playing field. And why is it that it
is only Goodluck that throws me this rope?

Last year when I
called him Acting President, Yar’Adua’s boys kept referring to him as
Vice President until God came to his rescue. By the way, where are
those cabal guys? Those that thought they had the knife and the yam and
could just wake up and call a gentle man vice president when he was
already declared acting president? Anyway, soja go soja come.

Actually one of my
New Year resolutions is to be very apolitical this year. Since I am
politically challenged and I can never catch up with what our
politicians are up to. Just as you think you have a grasp of what is
happening in Abuja, things get muddled up if not blown up and you can’t
even tell when the earth under your feet was shifted.

The rate at which
some of the old senators failed in their primaries reminds one of
recent WAEC and JAMB results. What they did not know was that failure
can be infectious; when they did not do anything to make sure that our
secondary school students pass their exams, they should not expect to
pass their primaries too. There is a saying in my village, ‘who say I
nor go pass my secondary, im too nor go pass im primary’. That is a
warning to in-coming politicians, who managed to pass the very
expensive and difficult primaries.

Ok, I need to
actually respect and stick to my new resolution to stay out of
politics. Let’s move to other more important things in Nigeria. Before
I left for my village for Christmas, the current administration
launched what it called Bring Back The Book. I was very excited about
the whole programme, and with exuberance I decided to do everything
within my power to help make it a success. So when I got to the
village, where most of my primary, secondary and university books are
kept, I went to work.

I opened all the
old boxes that contained my books and started dusting them. It was a
pleasure to reconnect with my books again and each one of them held
special memories for me: my Queen Primer, Brighter Grammar all the way
to Lexis and Structure. I reconnected with authors like SMO Aka, Olu
Tomori, Senanu and Vincent. The books written by Stone and Cozen were
as new as the day my father bought them at Uromi because I never liked
those guys.

I moved on to the
ones that made me sniff a little bit in my class one, like Eze Goes To
School, Chike and the River, An African Night Entertainment, The
Passport of Mallam Ilia and The Drummer Boy. I set those aside and
leafed through more advanced ones like Mission to Kala, Poor Christ of
Bomba, Burning Grass, Zambia Shall Be Free, Jagua Nana, Arrow of God,
No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People and got to the almighty iroko of
them all, Things Fall Apart in its orange glory and the beautiful
illustrations I used to copy in my drawing book.

I moved on to Weep
Not Child, The River Between and remembered how The Beautiful Ones are
Not Yet Born portrayed the politicians of the 60s and started wracking
my brain to see if African politicians have changed in our day and age.
When things started getting heavy, I moved to light weights like
Veronica My Daughter, Evbu My Love and these also brought too much
misty memories.

I opened another
box and it was filled with James Hadley Chase and Robert Ludlum, I
closed that because those are not the books the president wants to
bring back for now. After going through all the boxes and realizing how
much reading I did in the village, I began to wonder where things
started falling apart. I shook my head and said truly, the president
must bring back the books and I must help him.

So I loaded all the boxes of books into my boot and zoomed off
happily to Lagos. My intention was to donate them to primary schools
and secondary schools around Lagos (where else will I get press
coverage for such political mileage), only to be told that schools have
been closed because of politicians. What does one have to do in this
country to help? Sigh. My people I brought back the books o, but where
do I take them, I have no storage o!