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Stealing Our Own Piece Of Chicken By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Ugwu, a village boy taken to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to live with Odenigbo, a university professor, discovered meat- lots of meat. Until he came to Nsukka, he could not believe that anyone ate meat everyday. Upon seeing a whole chicken in the refrigerator, Ugwu grabbed some and placed them in his pocket as he went to bed, thinking about family members and friends he would save the pieces of chicken for.

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Ugwu, a village boy taken to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to live with Odenigbo, a university professor, discovered meat- lots of meat. Until he came to Nsukka, he could not believe that anyone ate meat everyday. Upon seeing a whole chicken in the refrigerator, Ugwu grabbed some and placed them in his pocket as he went to bed, thinking about family members and friends he would save the pieces of chicken for.

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Then his master, Odenigbo, came into his room and smelt chicken.
 
“There is a strong roasted-chicken smell here.”
 
“Sorry, sah,” Ugwu said.
 
“Where is the chicken?”
 
Ugwu fumbled in his shirt’s pockets and brought out the pieces of chicken.
 
“Do your people eat while they sleep?” Master asked.
 
The Nigerian political arena is like the home of Odenigbo. President, his Ministers, Governors and the whole tribe of Nigerian politicians are like the village boy, Ugwu. They could not believe what they have been seeing in the coffers of the people placed in their custody. They have been helping themselves with the chicken, stuffing their pockets.
 
Nobody is questioning the strong smell of roasted-chicken in their rooms. Nobody is asking the tribe of Nigerian politicians, “Do your people eat while they sleep?”
 
Oh, not only do they eat while they sleep, they also eat while they lie dead. That is why their greed is insatiable. They accumulate wealth that their children and their children’s children will never finish. They build big houses of which they do not know how many rooms are in there. They act as if they need the wealth to navigate their way in afterlife. Having bribed their way to influence, bought positions, and constantly paying to retain power, they prepare for afterlife the same way they lived this life. Angel Gabriel will be bribed to wipe their slates clean when they get to heaven. If that fails, Lucifer will be bribed to smuggle them to the good part of Hell.
 
“Winning” a governorship race is an automatic ticket to become a billionaire. You do not have to want it. If you just collect your security vote, an average of N200 million every month, in one year, you have a cool N2.4 billion i.e. over $12 million. In 4 years, you have N9.6 billion i.e. over $50 million dollars. In 8 years, you have N19.2 billion i.e. over $100 million dollars. No need adding salaries, allowances and other benefits.
 
It all comes to you by virtue of that “win”. And that is why they will buy the voters, the INEC officials, the Appeal Court Judges, and anyone in-between to keep the position.
 
During the military era, Governor Michael Akhigbe once complained that when Nigerians hear that millions of naira worth of contract had been signed they assumed that government officials had stolen money again. “It is not easy to steal money,” he said.
 
Really? It was easy then, and ridiculously easier now. We do not need the EFCC to announce billions of naira charges against them for us to know. We only need to look at the accounts they and their cronies own all over the world. The homes they live in and the ones they point at when they drive by. The cars they drive and the ones covered with tarpaulin. The schools their children attend at home and abroad. The clothes, shoes, and hair-ties their wives wear. The handbags their girlfriends carry. …and the lifestyle of their fronts.
 
The military governors in David Mark’s class sold hundreds of millions. The governors that came in from 1999 -2007 stole tens of billions. The ones that stayed till 2011 stole hundreds of billions. And by 2015, they will be stealing in trillions.
 
In some states in Nigeria, where there are no viable opposition, where the elite are docile, where there is no independent media, the governor is the ultimate Saraki. The governor keeps government money in government house to make it easy to “dash” government friends and cronies. In such a place, there may not even be a petition to the EFCC. (Not that the EFCC will do a thing with such a petition) In such places, governors eat chicken while they sleep.
 
The governor does not need to do anything to be wealthy. He just needs to offload the collection plates every now and then.
 
It is the same for all politicians in the executive arm of the government. Even local government chairmen now have ridiculous security votes. Ministers and commissioners on their part are not left out. Like the president and governors, all they need to be wealthy is to ‘perform.’ A minister who ‘performs’ is the one who awards contracts. Nothing needs to be done after the contract has been awarded. He creates an environment where activities are seen to be taking place. The thank you he or she gets from government contractors amounts to billions.
 
The legislators have also perfected their path to stupendous wealth. They cart their own millions home each month in salaries, allowances and constituency allocations. And when bills come to their committees, interest groups in support or against bring around Ghana Must Go bags. If they are as powerful as the speaker of the house, they buy their official residence for N45 million and turn around to rent it to the next speaker for N40 million a year.
 
And the people in the judiciary are engaged in their own pastime, selling judgment to the highest bidder.
 
For our tribe of kleptomaniacs, it is just about going to the refrigerator and stuffing their pockets, the pockets of their wives, girlfriends, children, and proxies with chicken.
 
That is the way it is. That is an upgrade to the way it has always been.
 
Our people have found creative ways to defend this tribe of politicians. We say that it is their turn to eat. We say that it is God who placed them there. We say that when we worship the king, kingship gets to us. We say that they are getting our own piece of the chicken by grabbing from the federal coffers what belongs to our geopolitical zone. We say that what they get will eventually tickle down to us.
 
Then we seal our eyes with a piece of dark cloth. We cover our mouth with duck tape. We stuff our ears with thick wools. We see no evil. We curse no evil. We hear no evil. We go on our knees. We stretch our hands to this tribe of village boys and girls with chicken in their pockets. We beg them to drop a piece on our palm. We shout down anyone who dared to ask them, “Do your people eat while they sleep?”
 
And so, they spend majority of their time in office not brainstorming on how to solve our numerous problems but plotting on how to get more chickens and figuring out new pockets where they will hide it.
 
And then we wonder why our roads remain unmaintained. We wonder why the governors cannot pay our brothers and sisters N18,000 naira minimum wage. We wonder why our students do not have a decent public library in over 2/3 of the local government areas in the country. And we wonder why there is no single dialysis center in most states to treat our parents who are dying from kidney disease. We wonder why nobody cares what chemicals are used in the food we eat, the drinks we sip, and the daily products we use. We wonder why breast and prostrate cancers are on the rise, eating up the bodies of our loved ones. We wonder why there is not a single cancer center in most states to treat our sick brethren.
 
For those who know but do not care; and those who care but do not know; that money being thrown around by these village boys and girls in government positions is our money – our own piece of chicken.
 
I am glad we cleared that up.
 
Now let us go back to our previously scheduled program- worshiping this tribe of village boys and girls.

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