Cutting your nose, By Odi Ikpeazu

There is a stretch of road in Onitsha that I could hardly avoid, even if I wanted to. It leads to my nine year old granddaughter’s school. Unless I absolutely cannot, I endeavour to drive her to and from school. Those short journeys enable me spend some of the most precious moments of my life, chatting with her, bantering, reasoning, arguing, quareling, even being silent together. I believe – or at least hope – that she feels almost the same way too.

That stretch of road however had been almost impassable in my recent memory, marked with potholes and near-crevices, largely devoid of coal tar, thereby causing the perennial gridlock we call ‘go-slow’ with ironic fondness.

This Tuesday morning though (they no longer go to school on Mondays but Sit At Home, of course!), the road was so slick, the asphalt so quick, you might think it was getting readied as part of a Grand Prix circuit. All thanks to my kid sister, former international beauty queen and Member of the House of Representatives, Lynda Ikpeazu.

Her contribution to the road infrastructure of Onitsha is unprecedented, more so, I daresay, than successive executive Governors of the state, probably put together. Positively utilising her seniority in Congress, she consistently pulled rank and ensured that her constituency benefitted quite sufficiently out of the proverbial dividends of democracy.

Her interventions and contentions saw to the location of important facilities in Onitsha. These include a new Federal Medical Centre, a school of Maritime studies, an inland river cargo port for barges and so on. In addition to these, few representatives have facilitated the sheer volume and quality of skills, empowerment and medical programs that she has.

Seniority in Congress in the Presidential system, which we borrowed from the US, is a prized asset for Congresspeople. Among other things, it enables them get the first advantage when projects are distributed, in which case rookies might get comparatively little in the end. John Dingell Jr., of Michigan, served 59 years from 1955 to 2015, breezing through eight Presidents ranging from Eisenhower to Obama. Michigan was the winner as a result.

Currently, at least 13 US Congressmen have served 40 years or more, with a host of others at 30 years or more and so on. My sister was tied with Femi Gbajabiamila and a couple of others as the longest serving members in the our House of Representatives. As a result, their constituents had a great deal to show for it, since our legislators do undertake a fair amount of executive obligations.

Then along came the so called Labour revolution, whereby a disgruntled segment of the political bourgeois, cleverly took at full flood, a mish mash of separist, sectarian, anarchic and even some genuine angst, old wine in not-so-new skin, if you like. Without rational thought, inebriated by the intoxicant of imaginary insurrection, riding on the wave of emotive sentiment, the beneficiaries of my sister’s unprecedented representation in Onitsha, frittered away their enviable advantage by themselves, willingly losing a jewel of inestimable value.

Brow-beaten by the local Church mafia, labouring under the ecclesiastical blackmail of the neighbourhood clergy in concert with the nascent blackshirts, they squandered their constituency’s top ranking in the House of Representatives. They swapped a champion with a journerman and replaced a decorated veteran with a foetal amateur in a brazen experiment at cutting one’s nose to find out what would happen to the face.

Such childlike petulance, impulsive peevishness and self marginalisation, has unfortunately been the milestones of our sentimental journey down here and to a large extent unsurprisingly accounted for the arrested development of our sociopolitical personality.

-Ikpeazu is a lawyer and public affairs analyst