My Agric teacher in "Form 2" was a scar faced, middle aged man who seemed to walk by break dancing. His brand of motion was so funny and uncommon; most of my classmates acted it out on our sandy playground. Till this day, several years after, an old friend has become so accustomed to strutting that way.
My Agric teacher in "Form 2" was a scar faced, middle aged man who seemed to walk by break dancing. His brand of motion was so funny and uncommon; most of my classmates acted it out on our sandy playground. Till this day, several years after, an old friend has become so accustomed to strutting that way.
My Agric teacher was nicknamed Mr DFRRI; an acronym that stands for Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure. It was a sobriquet the student population back then at the only secondary school in my community bequeathed on him because he would hardly complete a lecture without referring to then Head of State; General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida’s(IBB) pet project at the time. DFRRI stuck on my Agric teacher so much so that as I write this, I am scratching my head to recall his real name. Mr DFRRI was what we called him behind his back, and you would be dead meat if you called him that within earshot!
Mr DFRRI also probably re-invented the word ‘Fool’. Once, as he heard a student call him Mr DFRRI, he pulled him by the shorts until the worn out fabric from which the short was made, gave way from behind the boy’s buttocks right before eight hundred watching students and teachers on the chapel ground! Mr DFRRI then glared at his prey and called him a ‘Fool’ in a manner that spelt doom for the boy, before letting him go in a heap. Another student mid way into an Agric class sought to know why the writing sheet ‘Foolscap’ was so named. It was an innocuous question, but she should have known better. Mr DFRRI pronounced the word ‘Fool’ on her several times until she burst into tears and needed consolation from a few friends at break time. I also recall mistakenly cutting off the sprout of a flower Mr DFRRI had planted; during labour time, mistaking same for a blade of weed, just as he ambled close by.
He took me by the ear and pronounced the equivalent of a death sentence on me as my eyes all but fled their sockets; “ You FOOL; you have such big eyes but you cannot see”. As he let me land on the grass beneath me, my classmates ridiculed me so badly I hated myself. To be called a Fool by Mr DFRRI was akin to receiving a ‘fatwa’. No one liked to be called a Fool by DFRRI. We tried as much as we could to avoid being so tongue lashed.
But not Babangida and Obasanjo, it appears—two men who between them held the leadership reins of our country for close to two decades. Hear Obasanjo last week in a no holds barred ‘Fools’ attack on IBB in response to comments the latter had made on his person and stewardship: “ It is a bit unlike Babangida( to have made those comments). But if Babangida had decided on becoming a septuagenarian Fool, I think one should probably do what the Bible says in Proverbs Chapter 26, Verse 4, that don’t answer a Fool because you may also become like him. When you go to the same Proverbs in Chapter 26, Verse 5, it says answer a Fool, so that he would not think he is a wise man. So I am now torn between which of the two verses I should follow in this respect……..a Fool at 40 is a Fool for ever, and a regret at 70 is a regret too late……”
Mr DFRRI would have been proud. Nothing makes his day more than the four letter word. And in referring to Obasanjo as “ a man who can not tell his true age” and referring to the Ota farmer’s outbursts as “the effusions of a witless comedian trying effortlessly to impress his select audience”, Mr DFRRI would have proceeded to the poultry farm we kept at his behest in a corner of the school and fed the birds like he had never done.
Except that, in this war of words between two elders who should know better, the Agric teacher would have been torn on whose side to take: the side of the man who brought the failure that was DFRRI or on the side of the man who runs a big farm and among them a poultry farm( Mr DFRRI’s favourite pastime)?
As I read the statements from our past leaders however, one thing seems very clear: we have had the misfortune of being ruled by Fools( that’s what they call themselves today). It is a misfortune we have brought on ourselves. How many more fools who have kept watch over our country at all levels of government would come out in the next few days to tar themselves with Mr DFRRI’s brush? Is there any wonder our country is where it is today? Which ‘Fool’ knows the worth of providing infrastructure for its people, or improving the economy? Which ‘Fool’ worth the ‘Foolscap’ would give a ‘weed’s blade’ hoot about Education, Employment or a better living standard for its citizenry? Which ‘Fool’ upon return to the country’s shores from saner societies where things work, would care about replicating the system in his country? Haven’t we all been living in some ‘Fool’s’ paradise, electing Mr DFRRI’s nemeses as our leaders?
To cure one from a snake bite, we would need the very venom from the snake. Let’s admit it: We have been a country of FOOLS for fifty years and counting!!!! For aiding and abetting leadership of the foolish, Mr DFFRI, would have looked us straight in the eye and sentenced us to tomFOOLery! To come out of our foolish state, we would need another political party. Not the PDP, nor the ACN, nor any of the other parties populated by the ‘Fools’ we have always known, piloting their affairs.
To move forward, we would need the Fools’ Party of Nigeria (FPN). It is the party of the future. If we all aggregate our foolishness, we would become an unstoppable force as a people, and could become the wiser for it. Even Mr DFRRI would be left with little choice but to look for some other meaning for the word ‘Fool’ as we have come to know it.
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