BLACK COCKTALE

TODAY, February 14, Feast of St. Valentine, or now simply called Valentine Day has become a global celebration of love and romance. From the United States to Australia and New Zealand, and from Canada to France and Great Britain; and now with the increasing phenomenon of globalisation, non-Western nations like Turkey, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa, and Nigeria are caught up in the celebration of Valentine Day, which is marked by the exchange of millions of material gifts, flowers, post cards, text messages and electronic mails.

Among young people who have become the most engaged in this celebration, social networks are bombarded with texts, sounds and images of love and romance. And as usual with modern day celebrations, there is widespread commercialisation of the event, as shops, hotels, banks, telephone companies and the entertainment industry are agog with flashy decorations, and they advertise ever newer products and services to mark the day. A recent research revealed that these days no less than 150 million Valentine Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine Day the second most popular card-sending feast after Christmas. And with increasing use of social network platforms, hundreds of millions of people across the globe are likely to connect with one another today in celebration of love. But who is this mysterious person whose name Valentine has become synonymous with love and romance? What is the origin of the Valentine’s Day celebration?

What we know today regarding the origin of Valentine’s Day and the story of Valentine, its patron saint, is part history and part legend. Much of it is shrouded in mystery. However, February 14 has in the Western tradition long been observed as a day to celebrate love and affection. There are legends that link the Valentine Day celebration to an ancient pagan fertility cult which was celebrated in the middle of the month of February, and was Christianised when Rome became a Christian empire. A more popular tradition, however, traces the celebration to a 3rd Century AD Catholic priest named Valentine who was martyred by Emperor Claudius around the year 270 AD on account of his commitment to (chaste) marital love. Emperor Claudius had outlawed marriage for young men, so they could serve in the army without any family encumbrances and distractions. For him, single men made better soldiers, so he forbade marriage for young soldiers upon the pain of death.

The priest Valentine, found such law unjust and oppressive. So he continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When however his actions were discovered, he was arrested, thrown into jail and eventually put to death. It is alleged that while in prison, the daughter of either the emperor or the chief gaoler often visited him and they regularly exchanged affectionate notes. On the day of his execution, Valentine sent the young lady a note signed “from your Valentine.”  The priest died as a champion of chaste love and marital commitment, but he had won the hearts of young lovers around the Roman Empire, and as time went by his fame spread through the then known world as the hero of love.

 One of the extant traditions says that in the 5th Century AD Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day, and Valentine quickly became a household name and a lovers’ delight all over Europe. The feast was marked annually with the exchange of gifts and cards with rich poems and reflections on love and romance.

from the guardian editorial.

I AM often shocked by the expressions: sex worker, commercial sex worker, sex trade worker, call girl, street-walker, etc that describe the practice of prostitution. All these terms conceal the gravity of the activity while bestowing on it a positive tone. We should call a spade a spade and remove all nuances. Prostitution is an act that disrespects a person’s body. Practised by a male or female, it should be condemned. It operates on the principle of objectifying the human body, while disregarding his/her personality.

Women are particularly vulnerable since they are the ones who practise prostitution more. Prostitution contributes to the male-centred objectification of women, increases sexual violence, undermines the objective of sexual equality and it is a form of male domination. It is instrumental to numerous psychological problems. There is no doubt there are neurological defects that could be treated with medication, nevertheless, personal choices are mainly implicated in one’s sexual orientation, prostitute, heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual.

Hindsight should make us question if the woman could have done something else apart from prostituting her sex organ. In the first instant anthropologists make us believe that the patriarchal culture around the world kept the woman in subjection to a degree that she could not have decided on her own to sell her body. The male figure in her life appropriated her body to such an extent that only the man should have the privilege of attaining orgasm. Thus, various traditions were put in place to control her sexuality: genital mutilations of various degrees like excision, circumcision and infibulations. These have been devices to subordinate her sexual desires to the man’s.

However, the woman goes through the excruciating pain of having the orifice opened with a razor to make penetration possible. Awa Thiam, a Guinean female writer, identified these errant cultural groups in her book La parole aux Négresses (The Views of Black Women). This obviously is a preamble to emphasise the lopsidedness in gender relations. In my opinion, this disparity in sexual relations has been responsible for the attitude of some men towards women.

The pimps or madams, who engage in sexual slavery by trafficking young girls abroad, hoodwink them with the pretext of fixing them up in well paying jobs. They actually perpetrate the culture that holds out that women should just be sexual objects servicing men. It does not seem that these girls knew the fate that awaited them. May be some knew and made independent decision to engage in the commercialisation of their bodies. Many have defended this venture as caused by extreme poverty, lack of opportunity, or psychological causes of past trauma due to child abuse, drug addiction etc. If it appeared an easy job, the attendant dangers should actually teach our young girls lifelong lessons on self-preservation.

The health danger of HIV/AIDS and STDs is high on the list of issues that prostitutes face. Call-girls have been murdered by their clients in hotel rooms and elsewhere. Countless numbers are killed leaving no identity that can be traced to possible relations. In Nigeria, people are killed for the flimsiest reasons, like a couple who vengefully killed their neighbour’s toddler in a scuffle. Ritual killers are permanently on the prowl. The craze for fortune has reached alarming dimensions as kidnappers defy the traditions of respecting old age by holding octogenarians to ransom. Fundamental to prostitution is the unbridled desire for money.

Lack of money has been responsible for avoidable disasters. Whole families have been wiped out because they sold petrol in tanks and jerry cans in order to make ends meet. It is even very pathetic that children are turned into the streets by parents who cannot afford to feed them. Children hawkers have been crushed by trailers. The accumulation of social problems that have become so much a part of us has left most of us insensitive. It is as if we are comfortable living with them and we make little effort to address them. Can our girls refrain from prostituting their bodies?

Our  social values seem to place premium on sex. Hence trading in it does not raise questions about its moral significance. Our newspapers and media organisations project pictures of half naked girls, who have become models for the upcoming ones. They highlight the sexiness of the supposedly successful artistes and individuals, who have no intention to enhance morality in the society. It cannot be underestimated that the mode of dressing of the younger generation arouses men who cannot dominate their sexual desires.

The cases of gang rapes that are often reported may not be unconnected with this. I am not advocating that women go about in drab clothes; however, it is quite imperative to consider the reason for clothing as being for covering one’s nakedness. When this purpose is discarded, we have nothing short of pornography, an industry which is complicit in sexual violence like rape and sexual harassment. It eroticises the humiliation and coercion of women and reinforces cultural attitudes that objectify women and enhance sexism and inequality. This misdemeanour is further compounded by youthful fantasy whetted by foreign films and cultural practices, which have become the norm and actually determine social acceptability. In a quest to satisfy this desire, our young girls opt for prostitution in order to have the required money. The high rates of unemployment and prevalent poverty have not helped matters.

Did this state of moral decadence dropped on us from nowhere?  No. Parents, guardians and significant persons in the lives of our youths have been responsible for the leeway that has created this socio-cultural disorder. Permissiveness quietly crept into the fabric of our moral lives and is getting out of hand. This tendency is not only reflected in the issue of prostitution, but in every area of our lives. We should return to the basics and ask ourselves what we want to achieve as a nation and work out modalities for accomplishing it. Our understanding of democracy has made everything permissible. A cultural reorientation may make us better predisposed to respecting human rights, helping one another, allowing the rule of law and making a personal choice to do what is good. Not to sound a religious nut would mean repudiating the position of majority of Nigerians who are adherents of the most crowd-pulling religions of the world, Christianity and Islam.

If we truly believe God, let His love determine all we do, even the prostitute will not destroy society, lives and homes, including himself or herself, if we all practise this kind of selfless love.

In addition, we will not turn a blind eye to the poor, needy and helpless. Our utmost desire will be to preserve humanity and solve human problems.

• Siwoku-Awi (Mrs.) is a lecturer at the Nigeria French Language Village, Badagry.

ONE character of the Nigerian political leadership that has become entrenched and which has not been in the overall interest of the country since independence in 1960 is the penchant of the leaders to always brush serious national issues with the wave of hand. The reason is because Nigeria has passed through several critical challenges or call it turbulent times and has managed to survive but not without serious and enduring wounds. This attitude of the leaders has more or less postponed the evil day and keeps postponing it while the country remains in limbo. I want to say unequivocally that 100 years is more than enough for Nigeria to manifest whatever potential she has in every ramification. But that hasn’t happened because the country is not working.

I have anchored the failure of the Nigerian leadership to address fundamental national questions to the period from independence in 1960 because that was when Nigerians themselves took full control of the affairs of the country. But it is important to reiterate that Nigeria did not start in 1960. Nigeria started in 1914 with the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates into one entity called Nigeria. The grafting of the hitherto two separate colonies into one was accomplished by the British colonial overlord, Lord Lugard, the first Governor General of what was reconstituted as the colony of Nigeria. Why and how he did it including the resistance of people in the south, particularly in Lagos, where it was opposed by the political class and the media were well recorded in history.

The amalgamation marked an important watershed in Nigeria’s history. In one consideration, the British did it, maybe, out of the love they have for Nigeria. Maybe they wanted to create a sub-regional power; for there is no other country that is big and potentially powerful in the West Africa sub-region like Nigeria. But I don’t know what love would make a colonial power to weld different nationalities into one powerful state that could challenge its authority. It would be foolhardy to do that. And, if that were the case, the creation of one Nigeria (they were two before 1914), could have been for something other than love. But I won’t call it hate because the amalgamation of Nigeria has its inherent advantages, which I think is actually what the British wanted to explore. It didn’t work out as expected between 1914 and 1960, a period of 46 years before the British relinquished power to Nigerians.

The British colonial masters did not treat Northern and Southern Nigeria on equal terms. For instance, in the South, the money needed for development projects like railways, habours and hospitals was raised from taxation on imported goods. But that same taxation was absent in Northern Nigeria, which accounted for the low development situation in that region. That trend has remained till today – more development in the south than in the north. For Lugard, the taxation was a form of punishment whereas the northerners were spared. Consequently, the north was bequeathed with the wrong development philosophy, which appears to persist till today. The reverse is the case in the south where the people were made to work hard and drive development. The difference between the two regions is glaring.

Even though, the country has managed to survive for nearly 100-years (that would be by 2014), the events of the past 50 years since the British colonial masters relinquished power show that a re-examination of the entire Nigerian structure as conceived by the colonists (not Nigerians) is needed. That seems to be the only way this entity called Nigeria would make headway. After all these decades, Nigeria ought to have become a black super power but she has sadly failed woefully.

I must not fail to say that the British, to a large extent, laid a buildable foundation that would have provided the springboard for Nigeria to shine like the Asian Tigers but all those have been dismantled in the wake of post-independence ethnic rivalry and mistrust. The people do not seem to agree with the British and the post-colonial Nigerian leaders that the grafting of two autonomous entities into one by Lord Lugard was the right thing to do. The two regions had laid strong economic foundation for development before they were merged in 1914. It would have been superb if this experiment had worked. Nigeria’s diversity could have been her greatest asset; but it has turned out to be her greatest undoing.

That Nigeria fought a fratricidal war shortly after independence from 1967 to 1970, which was preceded by brutal uprising and killings in different parts of the country, showed that there was pent-up anger throughout the period of British colonial rule that was suppressed but which was let out following independence. Ever since then, peace and unity have eluded Nigeria, which shows the futility of the amalgamation experiment.
What would have been the situation if there was no amalgamation? The worst is that both Northern and Southern Nigeria would have been like Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Benin Republic, their neighbours. Though, these countries haven’t recorded tremendous progress but they have relative peace. On the contrary, both Northern and Southern Nigeria could have recorded more tremendous progress given the abundant agricultural and natural resources endowments, which most of the neigbours lack.
All the crises the country had faced and is still facing today are direct fallouts of the failure to address fundamental national questions of Nigeria’s cooperate existence. Maybe, the time has come for the leadership to buckle up and rise to the challenge of dealing with the hydra-headed problem, which is at the root of Nigeria’s misfortune. This is better than running helter-skelter in futile effort to fight the consequences of inaction. The time to do the inevitable is now since no one knows the illness that will kill the sick man.

The fifty or so years of Nigeria’s existence as an independent state have been bedeviled with troubles that have often brought her to the precipice. Today the country is on the brink, tomorrow she manages to wriggle out. Tomorrow again, the country is at the precipice, again she manages to come off it. The next day, it’s the same story. It is more like one day one trouble. These troubles, which are entirely human, are responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the country. You cannot develop a country without a workable structure. National development is something that is premised on a functional framework. So long as the framework or foundation is weak, there’s nothing anybody can do. Trouble today, trouble tomorrow, how much longer shall we remain in this unsteady state?

The fact that the country has always managed to survive the troubles is no indication that she would always survive. In fact, it is an indication that all is not well. A person who relapses into bouts of sickness every now and then cannot be said to be healthy even though on each occasion he manages to survive. Such a person can never be sure of his health condition until a comprehensive medical examination is carried out to establish the cause of the frequent ill health. Except that is done, if the person believes, erroneously, that he or she would always get treated when the sickness comes, he risks unexpected death from what may seem to be a normal ailment.

We have got to a point where ethnic nationalities are no longer merely agitating for justice and equity. They have gone to extent of having armed militias that are ready to fight and defend territorial enclaves. And, the Federal Government appears not to take it serious! That government knows that there are ethnic “armies” in different places but can no longer stop it is ominous.
At this juncture, the question is who are the lovers and haters of Nigeria? There are two groups. One is those calling for the renegotiation of Nigeria in order to ensure equity, justice and fairness and two, those resisting such a discussion out of unfounded fear of the unknown. Interestingly, all the ethnic nationalities are speaking with one voice in calling for a conference to discuss Nigeria. For me, they are the lovers of Nigeria.
On the other hand the Federal Government is unwilling and afraid to convene such conference. One elderly compatriot explained that the leaders are carrying Nigeria like an egg; no leader wants the egg to break in his hand and that is where the fear comes from. I think this group is the haters of Nigeria. As the saying goes, whatever will be will be.

If Lord Lugard who had little or nothing to gain could be bold to graft Nigeria together, it is ironic that our leaders who have everything to gain or lose are shying away from their historical responsibility. The Federal Government should think through this matter once again in the interest of Nigeria.

By Luke Onyekakeyah