Bighead on TV

I have appeared on TV exactly…em…(scratches head)…em… once in my life. It was back in primary school; I think primary 5.

TV station: boring Delta TV.

Occasion: My school’s speech and prize-giving day.

Guess who was getting a prize… yes, it was me. I used to be a brilliant boy those days, you know.

At least 10 years had passed and no more TV appearances for me and a couple of weeks ago I would have gotten another.

TV Station: Can’t be sure but probably something government-owned like LTV

Occasion: Environmental Sanitation

Guess whose environment was dirty…

Here’s the full story:

I decided to spend that weekend at another aunt’s house instead of my regular uncle’s house. That morning she woke me and my cousin, her son up that it was environmental sanitation and we should go and keep their environment clean. We grumbled but obeyed. Like 30 minutes into the exercise, there was a little chaos. The mallams who had been conducting their usual mallam business (whatever that is) suddenly got up and doing, closed their shops and started cleaning.

The boys playing on the street hid their balls and disappeared into their homes to watch from the safety of their windows.

All pedestrian traffic vanished.

I have always been quite slow to react at times and my cousin is worse so we just hung around and paused our cleaning to watch.

It turned out the commissioner for environment or something like that was in the vicinity with a long procession of sycophants and government workers plus a few cameras. We thought they were just passing through but the drama was just starting.

The next thing we heard was, “Number 4, Obasanjo Street (Not the actual street name, of course), your environment is dirty”.

Wait a minute, the street name sounded familiar; I asked my cousin and he confirmed that what I just heard was our address. The procession stopped and the next thing I’m seeing all sorts of colourful uniforms jumping out of vehicles. It was like a carnival. There were like 3 shades of green, 2 shades of pink, black (Of course, we all know who that is... our dearest olopa), brown and purple (if you count trousers) and white. The vehicle with the mega phone kept repeating the same “Number 4, Obasanjo street, your environment is dirty” statement and added a few more. The uniforms started harassing the occupants of our compound (There are 6 flats there). They asked everyone including my elderly aunt to come down and clean gutters, promised to “seal the compound” and “arrest us all”. We were informed that we had “broken the law”. A crowd gathered. A shouting game started. That evolved into a blame game and ended as an who-go-do-pass-who game. Me, I just stood by, watching, laughing… and, with the corner of my eye, ensuring none of the cameras came around. Being a big head, if any did, some part of my head would be caught. And we won’t want that, would we? The next time this big head is going to appear on TV, it’ll be for my take-over of some big corporation (MTN, my eyes are on you). Jokes apart though, the whole episode raised some pertinent questions that I’m still hoping to get CONVINCING answers to:

*Is it appropriate for civil servants to have political affiliation? Because all the local government officials present that morning wore action congress t-shirts. Abi isn’t that enough proof of affiliation?

*The uniforms and co that were harassing us that day, didn’t they have their own environment to clean?

*What does the law say about environmental sanitation exactly? Do they have the right to arrest people and seal up compounds?

*Does it make economic sense to ask people whose time is worth a whole lot more to come out and clean gutters on the roads?

*Did the said commissioner and his cohorts visit highbrow areas like Lekki, VGC and Ikoyi and ask the “big men” there to come out and clean as well?

*What exactly constitutes your “environment”? Cos we were being harassed over a major gutter beside a government-maintained (coughs)…er… unmaintained road?

A whole lot of other questions popped up that day between myself, my cousin and the rest of his crib unfortunately I can’t remember most. What I kept on saying that day was that a lot of what we were blamed for was the responsibility of the “blamers” and we have taken rights as privileges for so long that no one’s really sure which is which anymore. This is not to say that we can’t act in the event that the government fails but not to the extent that they threaten to arrest us (and almost get bighead a second TV appearance) for not doing their job.