Letter Of Gratitude To Senator Iyiola Omisore By Pius Adesanmi

To the accompaniment of Fela’s “Look and Laugh”

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Dear Distinguished Senator Chief Otunba Iyiola Omisore (OFR, MON, NTA, JCCR):

Calvary greetings to you sir in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope this letter meets you in good condition of health, if so, doxology.

I am directed to write you this letter of gratitude on behalf of the long-suffering people of Nigeria. We want to thank you and your colleagues in the Senate for the enormous sacrifice you have made to ensure the democratization of laughter in Nigeria. By returning mirth to the streets of Nigeria, you have broken rank with members of Nigeria’s political leadership whose latest assault on the hapless people of Nigeria has been the exercise of a greedy capitalist monopoly on laughter.

Although some foreign researchers improved Nigeria’s international image by famously describing us as the happiest people on earth, as opposed to our stubbornly unrebrandable image as the yahoo-yahoo capital of the world, it would seem that members of Nigeria’s rulership were not happy with the extension of the new stereotype of happiness to every Nigerian. They don’t like to share even sunlight and oxygen with the ordinary Nigerian. This attitude stems from their wholesale subscription to the philosophy of David Bonaventure Alechenu Mark: laughter is not for the poor. In their esteemed opinion, laughter ought to be the exclusive property of the rich, mighty, and powerful in Nigeria.

The appropriation of laughter as elite property explains why only the insanely wealthy and politically powerful have been finding things funny in Nigeria of recent. The role call is impressive. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo recovered in time from the blows he received at the Lagos airport recently to make a transition from dey-ing kampe to laughing o. Not to be left out of elite laffomania, Atiku Abubakar found time to laugh too o. The elite merrymakers had female company as Dora Akunyili laughed her way from Naija to Nigeria but not before abusing those of us that she left behind in Naija. Trust Dimeji Bankole to carry his yeye Britico ‘fone’ into the theatre of elite laughter and mirth for he too jokingly remarked that lawmakers are educated.

Enter Aso Rock with Godsday Orubebe (is Elder part of his name or a reflection of the Naija big man’s disdain for Mr?) laughing and scoffing at the idea that Nigerians could believe that somebody at his level would attempt to bribe anyone with something as ridiculous as fifty thousand dollars on behalf of a whole President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. When we honour Barkin Zuwo’s memory by ensuring that there is always some government money in government house to be used as gift and transport fare for friends and foes who visit the president, do these Nigerians imagine that we are talking about ordinary fifty thousand dollars? That’s peanuts. We are talking of billions of petrodollars now firmly in the hands of the real owners of the petrol for God’s sake. Why should they squander it only in thousands? Orubebe hasn’t stopped laughing at how cheap Nigerians could be.

Distinguished Senator Omisore sir, this is the scenario that you and your fellow Distinguished colleagues in Nigeria’s Senate assessed and decided that it wasn’t fair for the people of Nigeria to be left out of this orgy of elite laughter and mirth. The monopolization of laughter by your fellow inhabitants of the planet of power and wealth grated your populist conscience. You were disturbed and you agonised about finding ways and means to reduce the suffering and hardship of the Nigerian people by making them laugh. You decided that laughter would become the exclusive property of Obasanjo, Atiku, Akunyili, Bankole, and Orubebe only over your dead body. You would fight for Nigerians and ensure that we gain access to our fair share of laughter and mirth. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi gave you the opportunity to come to our rescue.

Distinguished Senator Omisore sir, we have taken a sabbatical from our poverty and suffering, we have taken a break from fighting our never-ending pentecostal wars against dominions, powers, and principalities just to have a really good laugh since your altercation with that obstreperous Central Bank Governor began. Even the stone and trees in Nigeria have not been left out of this national comic relief. They too have been laughing sir.
The national festival of laughter began, sir, when Nigerians discovered, much to their pleasant surprise, that you and your colleagues in the Senate seriously believed that Sanusi had tarnished the good image of the National Assembly. The Nigerian people somehow missed the memo and therefore did not know that the National Assembly had any image that could be tarnished in the first place by anybody. That’s like Ibrahim Babangida complaining that his good name has been tarnished. That is why we laughed so hard sir.
It got better sir. We also learnt that you and your colleagues feared that Mr Sanusi might have incited the Nigerian people against the National Assembly. How do you incite the Nigerian people against what they consider the worst arm of a gangrened and irredeemably corrupt democracy? How do you incite the Nigerian people against the world’s most corrupt, most indolent, most immorally overpaid parliament? How do you incite a people against lawmakers who inspire only contempt and disgust? We thought that we were already permanently incited against the National Assembly and didn’t even realize that we needed Mr Sanusi’s help. You can see why we have been laughing so hard sir.

I don’t know how to say this sir. I will be as delicate as I can be. Bear in mind that I am only reporting the mood of the Nigerian people to you. It’s just that Nigerians laughed hard, so hard when it was eventually revealed that of all the people that the Senate could find to grill a mind like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, it had to be you, Senator Iyiola Omisore! Sanusi combines the best in Arabic scholarship with Western political discourse and philosophy. If you study his essayistic career before he became a public figure, you will see that he quotes everybody from Antonio Gramsci to Michel Foucault via Plato, Ovid, Richard Rorty, and Paul de Man. I won’t put it beyond the man to be reading Greek and Latin texts in the original.

A man of such impeccable intellectual depth was going to be grilled by a National Assembly populated almost exclusively by school certificate forgers, Oluwole customers, University dropouts, active and retired political assassins, and puny election riggers. And this inquisition by intellectual midgets was going to be led by you sir. We laughed so hard!
All good things, they say, must come to an end. Our week of laughter has now ended after your encounter with Sanusi went the way we knew it would go. We hear that your junior colleagues in the lower chamber have taken style to pipe down after seeing what Sanusi did to their seniors. Good for them. Dimeji Bankole sometimes accidentally demonstrates wisdom. He knows that when the horse leading the pack falls into a ditch, those following it must pause and proceed jejely.

On another note, it would help a lot, sir, if you paid an occasional visit to Nigeria to know what is going on there. You and your colleagues in the Senate fell into the fallacy of believing that the National Assembly had any image that could be tarnished because you seldom leave your planet of wealth and power in Abuja to check out what is going on in Nigeria. On the rare occasions that you visit Nigeria, the convoys, aides, girlfriends, and rifle-wielding soldiers keep Nigeria out of your range of vision. You can therefore be forgiven for not knowing what Nigerians think of the National Assembly.

Once again, thank you for bringing laughter to the streets of Naija this past week. Your work is greatly appreciated sir.
Yours sincerely,

Professor Elder Otunba Makojami Olugbala (JP)
 

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