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The common melon plant called egusi is cultivated
all over the country and soin pidgin, we say fo Naija, no ples we egusi
no de. In comparison with other meals, egusi soup is one of the most
popular in the country, which makes it easy to distinguish between a
well-prepared one from di wonwit wota wota (watery).

In pidgin, it is common to hear pipul de se, beta
sup na moni kil am; meaning any well-prepared soup costs a fortune. Bot
fo fud mata, na wetin pesin sabi; no bi hau mosh pesin spend; meaning
as far as the preparation of soup is concerned, one’s skill in cooking
is vital. Like soups, most human beings offer very unpleasant “flavours
” that contrast sharply with the huge efforts and resources expended in
raising them. Similarly, it can be very disappointing if after spending
so much on a particular project; one gets a displeasing result.

In Abuja where we have so many bai fos bachelos an
manshelos, most men patronise different restaurants daily to get the
best deal.

Every month, civil servants find it hard surviving twenti hongri; the brief period preceding the payment of salaries.

At this time, there is a huge decline in
after-work hang out sessions with friends. It’s also not the best of
times for guests planning to pay one a visit. And bikos e get as tins
de bi, (things could be really rough), a friend of mine in the bai fos
machelos club, once invited a “sista” to do him a nice egusi soup to
see him through the next week. For him, it was another way of saving to
ensure a smooth “roll on” to the end of the month. Hau pesin go de go
restorant evride? He asked rhetorically.

On this appointed day, the “sista” was on hand to
prepare the soup. It was a day to remember as yours truly was present
to partake in a special weekend lunch session. At the end, we all gave
kudos to the lady for her awesome cooking skills. It was proof of the
fact that no bi evri taim plenti moni de bring beta sup.

It was such a nice time that it reminded me of
those days when my mum would prepare very sumptuous meals wit smol smol
moni (little money). But unfortunately, on the following day, my friend
was “weeping ” as he informed me of what had befallen the soup. It lost
its original taste (di sup don sawa) due largely to his carelessness.

Why should such a thing should happen to us at a
critical time when wi de put tu an tu togeda to sovaiv, he lamented. E
bi laik se yu no wom am wel; I remarked (it looks like you didn’t warm
it properly before going to bed).

Thereafter, my friend had to put a call through to
the gracious ‘sista’ who had produced the “once upon a time” delicious
meal. According to him, he wanted her to set her eyes on the the soup
so as to fully appreciate the “niu kondishon”. As she arrived, she
walked straight to the kitchen and was amazed at the sorry sight. The
following discussion ensued between them:

Sista:Yu sho se yu wom di sup wel? (Are you sure you warmed the soup properly?)

Mai Frend: Yes

Sista: Ah neva si dis kain tin bifoNa wa! Egusi no
get shem (I have never experienced this before. Surprising! Egusi is
shameless).

Captivated by the lady’s comment, I was moved to
apply it to my own experiences. I have this strong belief that the
popularity of egusi soup inNigeria doesn’t make it the best of the wide
variety we have. A

well-prepared soup attracts compliments to the
chef, at any material time. As humans, we can’t be at our best all the
time, but striving to remain relevant at all times is very important.
Prompt attention to issues saves us from future embarrassments. The one
that prepared the egusi soup was well commended but the soup was not
well cared for after she left and things “fell apart”.

The sour part of us is demonstrated daily in the
display of sycophancy. Egusi fit no get shem, bot manpikin sopoz get
shem! (Human beings should command of respect and dignity).

Shikena!

If you haven’t
heard about it, talked about it, sang about, set up a focus group,
written about it – then you are what Fela called suegbe! To say you are
not aware is to say you don’t live in this our
forward-ever-backward-never country.

You probably think
I am talking about our able Generalissimo; the Inspector General of
Police who almost slapped an “overzealous” journalist in Abuja right
after the President honored him for the role he is playing to make our
lives safer. I think the journalist who asked Ogbonna Onovo if he
deserved to be honored at this time when the country is enjoying peace
and tranquility was clearly out of his or her elements.

What better time
than now to honor the man who through his commando moves just stamped
out all forms of unrest and kidnapping in our land?

Our police are
first class, highly rated among the best trained and most efficient in
combating both local and international crime. Before Onovo came to be
IG, the southeastern part of Nigeria was a no-go area but now everyday
is a new yam festival.

Last Christmas
indigenes went home in droves to celebrate in an open carnival-like
atmosphere. There was no better time for the President to honour the
chief of police, congratulations chief, nothing do you!

So it is not about
the IG that I want to tell you. And neither am I talking about the
latest ear splitting droning noise of ZONING! The debates about
geo-political zoning have raged so much in the last few months that I
am completely zoned out of my brains.

Some of our
politicians have become like a mad woman tying and untying her wrapper
in a market square. Party chairmen would say that the zoning system is
dead today and wake up the next day to say it is alive, biblical
miracles are happening all over the country because of zoning. Recently
nineteen Northern governors were so zoned out in Kaduna that they
couldn’t really come to a consensus on the zoning formula. No one wants
to be zoned out of the big dance come 2011.

So I am not talking
about geo-political zoning of untrustworthy politicians. But be aware
(not warned) that there is a new mafia in town. Don’t panic please;
they are purely harmless in their tactical operations. You know I will
be the last person to hide anything from my fellow Nigerians. And I
will be shocked if you say you have no inclination of what I am inkling
at.

This new mafia is
not like the Sicilian thoroughbred or the Chicago mob or even the movie
version like the The Godfather or the hit TV show, The Sopranos.

GSG as they are
known are completely non-violent, they are the vegetarian mafia whose
choice of weapon is PF2011, (PF stands for Political Finagling). Though
the GSG Cosa Nostra is friendly their tactic is quite effective. This
group is made up of well meaning Nigerians of voting age, with no known
Capone. They service one client and one client only and their primary
assignment is to benevolently crack the 2011 palm kernel for him, even
if they have to do so on the shaven heads of resistant Nigerians.

If they are
harmless and not violent, why do I call them mafia? Well let’s see what
one of the top Mafioso in the GSG Cosa Nostra confessed to a certain
daily newspaper this week: “Most northern states pretend to be with
Professor (real name withheld here for security reasons please) but
they are not really with him. We will now carry battle to the doorsteps
of the North.”

Please, before you
start bringing out your Uzis and AK47s to protect yourselves, remember
I said that these guys are not the violent type, they are just mere
finaglers and they made it clear that the battle they are talking about
is a “campaign battle”. And we all know how peaceful those campaign
battles can be.

They also promise
to shape up and straighten certain PDP governors who are playing a cat
and mouse game with their client – “we know the state we are having
problems with “, they revealed.

They have been
expressly mandated by their client, Professor, to start taking the
pulse of Nigerian citizens of voting age to see how they feel about
him, before he decides to run for office next year. So if somebody
walks up to you, grabs your hand and tries to feel your pulse like a
nurse in a general hospital, please don’t struggle or argue. All they
are looking for is just a 60 percent positive pulse rate for Professor.

If they come to me
to take my pulse I won’t run, because I know Professor will run if GSG
Cosa Nostra goes to him with enough good pulse rates. Oh I almost
forgot to mention what I meant to tell you this week: there is a
political pressure group known as Goodluck Support Group, aka GSG. They
don’t joke.

The country is on a spending spree; everywhere
one turns yet another ridiculous budget is to be encountered.

The latest of these budgetary excesses is the
listing of N90 million by the Niger Delta Development Commission in their
annual budget to cater for marriages and funeral donations for staff. This
particular commission has long been associated with budgetary atrocities of
unimaginable magnitude.

The commission, set up in 2000 by the former
president, Olusegun Obasanjo “with the mission of facilitating the rapid, even
and sustainable development of the Niger Delta into a region that is
economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative and
politically peaceful” sadly cannot be said to have achieved a discernable
success rate in carrying out any of these duties. Yet, billions of naira continues
to be pumped into coffers annually.

While the commission has clearly turned into a
cash cow for a few, the entire region is still the most volatile environment in
our country and a large part of it is still very much underdeveloped.

Already our House of Representatives has allowed
the budget with this questionable amount to pass through a second reading.
Though some members of the House have raised eyebrows at the amount of
N90million for a marriage and funeral allowance for staff, it is obvious some
do not see anything wrong with spending such a sum for such purpose in a region
where it is almost impossible to openly have an elaborate wedding due to fears
about security.

Hitting the nail on the head was Sa’adatu Sani, a
member from Kaduna State asked: “How can we have N90m for marriage alone, when
the problems of Niger Delta have not been solved?” But the cruel irony of this
is lost on the deputy speaker of the House. He rallied support for the allocation
on marriage stating on Tuesday that the budget should be granted on the ground that
the provision was not only for marriage but “bereavement, condolence purse and
transportation”.

Abraham Agbodo, an aide to the NDDC chairman, has
an interesting perspective on the matter: “Budget is about anticipation and
here we deal with human beings. In every organisation, there should be
emotional intelligence, where the subordinates are made provision for in the
event of anything. These are put in a basket from which such funds are
withdrawn when needed,” he explained. Mr. Agbodo’s view of how a parastatal
should function is worthy of further analysis. It says a lot about how the NDDC
views the funds committed to its care for the development of a despoiled delta.

A quick look at the commissions’ recurrent budget
will supply even more evidence. The office of the commission’s managing
director budgets N178.7m for its personnel costs and N350.6m for overhead
costs. The two executive directors for Finance and Project receive allocations
of N264.8m and N256.9m respectively as the total for their personnel and
overhead costs. Add these together, and what do you get: more than a billion of
the Commission’s funds for this year will go into maintaining its senior
executives.

With a recurrent budget like this, it is obvious
that instead of developing Niger Delta, the managers and staff of NDDC are
apparently developing themselves.

These public officials need to be urgently
reminded that the commission was not set up to finance marriages and
funerals.Those billions are meant to save the living, not join them in
matrimony, or inter their corpses.

It is indeed our hope this was a “typographical error”
like the Nigerian Communications Commission’s budget where N800m mysteriously
ballooned into N13 billion.

When there is no accountability, there is bound
to be budgetary padding, fictitious projects and creative manipulation of the
system to defraud the country. The Niger Delta is central to the development
and peace of our country; every kobo that goes to the commission set up to look
after the region should be accounted for. Whoever is found guilty of defrauding
the commission or using it to siphon money to private pockets should not only
be sacked, but also prosecuted, and jailed.

The word Akara is
so soft yet so seductively broken on the back of that letter ‘k’ that
as it is spoken, you can visualise and hear the squish and subtle chew;
the compression of air through the pores of warm, crisp, freshly fried
bean fritters.

I have been
fascinated with Akara ever since I was told that infamous, cruel,
outrageous “Ajapa” story about Akara and honey as a child. The story is
in fact so disgusting that I cannot repeat the details in a food
column. Suffice it to say that Ajapa, the wily tortoise understood
keenly that any artillery of wickedness and deception is not complete
without knowing how to cook at least one dish to evil distraction.

His forte, Akara and honey, the very idea of it, has made my mouth water like mad for close to forty years.

With it he
conquered two adversaries; a vain swaggering elephant, and an inflated
ambitious chimpanzee. In reality, there is nothing like Akara and
honey, nothing like Akara which behaves in the way that a jam doughnut
does; a fried ball of dough that oozes some sweet suspension hidden
inside.

Honeyed Akara is a
magical ideal, not only one that appeals to children in the way that
sweet things in children’s books or stories uncompromisingly do; like
that swelling bonbon in Enid Blyton’s land on the faraway tree that
eventually explodes in the mouth releasing an elixir sweet and warm.
Akara and honey is our cultural pregnant bonbon because there is no
Nigerian child that cannot relate to fried Akara and honey. It is a
challenge that well made Akara should be as sweet as honey. Not
literally, but the type of sweetness that the Yoruba for example use to
define/symbolise everything from existence to painful childbirth.

Anyone in my
generation can recall the suspense in the words “Tortoise went home to
prepare some akara into which he added some fresh honey…he placed it
just outside [the lion’s] door and left to hide behind a tree. The
Akara was warm and its aroma hung in the air …[lion] picked one ball
of Akara and ate it and this Akara was sweeter than any Akara he had
ever eaten before. He ate another one, and then another one until all
the Akara was gone.” Back to reality where Saturday morning Akara
always falls short because it is too predictable, because it is
relegated to being simply accompaniment to something, to ogi or Quaker
oats, or moin moin, because there is no flamboyant engineering of
Umami, no twist, no possibility of a daring collision of savoury and
opinionated sweetness, …like Mama Rose’s sweet puff puffs defiantly
eaten with stewed red kidney beans… When I think of tortoise’s
Akara’s, I think, well why not?

Why must it always be the same peeled beans blended with water, same chopped onions, salt, pepper; basic, savoury, flat?

So, last Saturday morning, I put my peeled beans in a blender,

along with two
small leeks, because the smell of leeks always remind me of cooking
beans, and because leeks are my favourite vegetables for adding full
rounded flavours to food. I added some garlic and ginger and sea salt,
hot chillies and some coconut cream. In the past, I had successfully
added a large tablespoon of Tahini, sesame seed paste to my blended
beans. But last Saturday, all I had was some almond butter, so a
tablespoon of that went in instead. Then two egg yolks and some dried
Cameroonian pepper. Everything was blended with water until I had a
thick pouring consistency that coated my spoon. If I had had some
coconut oil, it would have been fried in that, but all I had was some
dull vegetable oil. And so, the shallow frying began; the therapeutic
ladling of imperfect circles into hot oil. The Akara is a strange
creature, and I hope someday someone with a scientific mind will
explain why it guzzles so much oil, and then does something to the oil
left in the pan that makes it lazy. After the first two to three sets
of Akara, my oil lost its elasticity, and the Akara spread sideways
into pancakes instead of rising into plump bellies. I was compelled to
add more and more fresh oil, all the time dreading where it would all
go, congealing and layering in the human anatomy.

As my frying, progressed, I began to wish I had some shrimp to attempt a tempura with my blended beans.

What would an Akara concealing a whole shrimp taste like? Would it work?

Is the mixture too laid-back to work?

I altered the
batches, because my palate always becomes bored after eating a few
Akara that taste the same, better if some of them blow your head off,
and some are gentle, and some are slightly more garlicky, and some have
hidden green peppers, and some are fried in palm oil and some in plain, and some eaten dipped in mayonnaise and some in pure unadulterated, tested with fire honey.

The waterfall of leaks on Afghanistan underlines the awful truth: We’re not in control.

Not since Theseus fought the Minotaur in his maze has a fight been so confounding.

The more we try to
do for our foreign protectorates, the more angry they get about what we
try to do. As Congress passed $59 billion in additional war funding on
Tuesday, not only are our wards not grateful, they’re disdainful.

Washington gave the
Wall Street banks billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the
back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost
wrecked our economy.

Washington gave the
Pakistanis billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back,
pledging to fight the militants even as they secretly help the
militants.

We keep getting played by people who are playing both sides.

Robert Gibbs
recalled that President Barack Obama said last year that “we will not
and cannot provide a blank check” to Pakistan.

But only last week,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan to hand over a
juicy check: $500 million in aid to the country that’s been getting a
billion a year for most of this decade and in 2009 was pledged another
$7.5 billion for the next five. She vowed to banish the “legacy of
suspicion” and show that “there is so much we can accomplish together
as partners joined in common cause.” Gibbs argued that the deluge of
depressing war documents from the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks,
reported by The New York Times and others, was old. But it reflected
one chilling fact: The Taliban has been getting better and better every
year of the insurgency. So why will 30,000 more troops help?

We invaded two
countries, and allied with a third – all renowned as masters at
double-dealing. And, now lured into their mazes, we still don’t have
the foggiest idea, shrouded in the fog of wars, how these cultures
work. Before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, both places were famous
for warrior cultures.

And, indeed, their insurgents are world class.

But whenever
America tries to train security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so that
we can leave behind a somewhat stable country, it’s positively
Sisyphean. It takes eons longer than our officials predict. The forces
we train turn against us or go over to the other side or cut and run.
If we give them a maximum security prison, as we recently did in Iraq,
making a big show of handing over the key, the imprisoned al-Qaida
militants are suddenly allowed to escape.

The British Empire
prided itself on discovering warrior races in places it conquered –
Gurkhas, Sikhs, Pathans, as the Brits called Pashtuns. But why are they
warrior cultures only until we need them to be warriors on our side?
Then they’re untrainably lame, even when we spend $25 billion on
building up the Afghan military and the National Police Force, dubbed
“the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” by Newsweek.

Maybe we just can’t train them to fight against each other.

But why can’t
countries that produce fierce insurgencies produce good-standing armies
in a reasonable amount of time? Is it just that insurgencies can be
more indiscriminate?

Things are so bad
that Robert Blackwill, who was on W.’s national security team, wrote in
Politico that the Obama administration should just admit failure and
turn over the Pashtun South to the Taliban since it will inevitably
control it anyway. He said that the administration doesn’t appreciate
the extent to which this is a Pashtun nationalist uprising.

We keep hearing
that the last decade of war, where we pour in gazillions to build up
Iraq and Afghanistan even as our own economy sputters, has weakened
al-Qaida.

But at his
confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Gen. James Mattis, who is slated to replace Gen.

David Petraus, warned that al-Qaida and its demon spawn represent a stark danger all over the Middle East and Central Asia.

While we’re
anchored in Afghanistan, the al-Qaida network could roil Yemen “to the
breaking point,” as Mattis put it in written testimony.

Pakistan’s tribal
areas “remain the greatest danger as these are strategic footholds for
al-Qaida and its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman
al-Zawahiri,” the blunt four-star general wrote, adding that they
“remain key to extremists’ efforts to rally Muslim resistance
worldwide.” Mattis told John McCain that we’re not leaving Afghanistan;
we’re starting “a process of transition to the Afghan forces.” But that
process never seems to get past the starting point.

During the debate
over war funds Tuesday, Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., warned that we
are in a monstrous maze without the ball of string to find our way out.

“All of the puzzle
has been put together, and it is not a pretty picture,” he told The
Times’ Carl Hulse. “Things are really ugly over there.”

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Five years ago
policemen killed six young Nigerians in the Gimbiya Street area of
Abuja. Up until today, no one has been jailed for their murder.

Shortly before the
start of the World Cup, five staffers at this newspaper left the office
late in the night and were on their way to their places of abode in the
same car. At Ikeja they were stopped by some men of the Nigeria Police
and asked the usual questions. “Who are you?” “Where are you coming
from?” “Where are you going?” “Let us see your papers.” While all their
papers were in order, and their explanations checked out, the policemen
insisted on having them get out of the vehicle, and doing a thorough
search of the car for contraband. Despite not finding anything, the
policemen insisted on going further, and were at that point politely
reminded that they had reached the limits of their jurisdiction. There
and then they became threatening and actually accused one of the
journalists of public disorder for daring to remind them that he has
rights. For some reason (maybe because they were dealing with people
who can make some noise), the journalists were let go.

Imagine if this had happened with an ordinary citizen, at that time of night.

Two days ago, a
policeman killed someone in the Egbeda area of Lagos; over N50 ($0.33)!
You see, the late Kareem like the NEXT journalists from over a month
ago was fed up with routine harassment by the police, and decided not
to give heed to their daily extortion. He died for his impertinence.
People responded and there was a riot. The murderous policeman was
beaten up by the crowd and eventually rescued by his mates who somehow
found 200 of their number to deploy to protect a murderer! Where were
the 200 policemen when Bayo Ohu was murdered close to that area not too
long ago?

You see, one of the big problems we have around these parts is in the very structure of the police- over-centralization.

How does a police
force gather the intel and general community knowledge it requires to
do actual detective work and preempt problems if it is by default seen
as an outside force, and its members are “strangers” to the community,
often not even speaking the local languages. It is very wrong-headed
from the point of results. Of course it looks pretty on paper,

from a “federal character-oriented” and “detribalised Nigeria” point of view.

The solution to the
problems of policing in Nigeria (of many of our problems actually) can
only be solved by community policing. Bringing someone who has lived
all his life in Agbara to suddenly come and start solving crimes in
Ojoto will not make crimes disappear there. Hell, it would probably
cause an increase because he would only be able to use high-handed
methods to enforce law and order. An added advantage of sectional
policing is that a policeman who lives on the street next to you is not
going to kill your children. You know where his are, and if he gets
away with murder.

As regards the
murderers walking our streets in uniform, the level of entrants into
the police force seriously needs to be looked at. You can’t have
someone who makes up laws as he goes along in uniform. That is wrong.

May the souls of Augustina Arebum, Ekene Isaac, Chinedu Meniru,

Tony Nwokike, Paul Ogbonna, Ifeanyi Ozor, Kareem and other victims
of unpunished police violence rest in peace. And more importantly, may
they get justice. Amen.

Sceptics are often likened to stopped clocks;
mostly wrong but occasionally right. They have mostly agreed on the
wrong-headed approach to the upcoming 50th anniversary of Nigeria –
especially on the billions of naira, which the federal government has
budgeted for this event.

To be sure, the arguments against the celebration
are multi-fold. There are some who said since we have collectively
managed to make a mess of the independence we snatched from the British
in 1960, there is precious little to celebrate this year. Others,
though not so dismissive of the nation’s achievements in the past 50
years, expressed worry that the sum of money budgeted for the
festivities is way too high – especially as the country is presently
facing several challenges that some of the money might well alleviate.

The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) described the
budget as ‘wasteful’ and ‘insensitive.’ Others complained that the
budget was another elite slap on the faces of ordinary Nigerians.

The howl of protest against the initial N10
billion budget for the programme was so intense that virtually all
levels of government took time to distance themselves from it. The
National Assembly loudly denounced the estimates as wasteful while even
officials of the presidency, responsible for putting the budget
together, resorted to blaming their predecessor for the suddenly
strange figure. No matter. For a while, there is a sense that
moderation has leapt from the pages of the dictionary to inspire action
on the part of our national leaders.

This was backed by the decision of President
Goodluck Jonathan to slash the budget by almost seven billion to
N9billion, which he then represented to the Senate for approval. This
was speedily done. But it then emerged that the amount approved by the
Senate for the celebration is itself way above what the president asked
for. In fact, at N17b, it is markedly higher than the initial sum that
generated so much joint national outcry. The amount approved by the
Senate is thus higher than the amount requested by the president by an
excess of about N7.715 billion. The jump in the approved figure,
according to NEXT analysis, comes from huge increases in the allocation
to certain agencies of government, including the Federal Capital
Territory and the Ministry of Aviation. The Senate added N2.83 billion
to the amount requested for the FCT, while it also fattened the
approved budget for the Aviation ministry by an excess of N4.885
billion. It was all done quietly, of course. Unlike the original
proposal sent to the National Assembly by the executive, which had
detailed explanation for each allocation, the budget approved by the
lawmakers had no details and was arranged in lump sums for subheads
only. It gets curiouser. Most of the assembly officials questioned
about this denied knowledge of the breakdown of the new budget. This
does no good to the image of the Senate as the more sober of the two
chambers of the National Assembly. It does not matter that the Senate
had earlier condemned the first budget as excessive; after all there is
nothing bad about changing one’s mind. It is possible that the Senators
have sufficient grounds to increase the budget for the celebration, but
they would do well to share these reasons with Nigerians who still
remain unconvinced that such a huge sum of money should be spent to
mark their nation’s 50th anniversary. The finance minister took a stab
at offering an explanation when he said some of this money would go on
capital projects – including the construction of roads and buildings.
Maybe so. But we wonder what the N4.6 trillion recently passed by the
National Assembly was meant for, if we have to depend on another
supplementary budget for the execution of capital projects. It is all
so untidy. Our sceptics might also be forgiven in their assertion that
so much of this money will just go to ‘waste’ or into the ever-gaping
pockets of some officials.

The idea behind the celebration is to uplift the minds of Nigerians
and strengthen their belief in their country. The manner in which
funding for the event is being allocated is anything but uplifting. In
fact, it is acutely depressing. It also makes us wonder if the skeptics
aren’t right after all.