THE air conditioning was no match for the crush in the store. The store was crowded, but the atmosphere did not have the exhilaration of a sale. These were not bargain hunters. They were in two or three undisciplined queues, their sweaty faces raised in mute anxiety.

‘But I bought this drug for N80 two weeks ago,’ a man at the head of one of the queues protested. ‘Now you say it is N140.’

He must have been a forceful person as a young man, with a jaw that jutted pugnaciously. The fading outline of a thrusting jaw could still be seen. He appeared to be in his late 40s, but he may have been younger. The melancholic wanness of his face told the story of many lost battles.

The salesgirl ignored the complaining customer, but the owner of the pharmacy suddenly materialised and affected a voice of clucking sympathy. He was about 35 years old and his face glowed with the good health made possible by easy access to creature comforts. Pharmaceuticals may now bring in more money than illicit drugs. Owners of pharmacies, not to mention major shareholders in drug manufacturing companies, are making a lot of money in Nigeria. Nigeria has a large sick population and many of them need regular medication.

The owner of the pharmacy told the unhappy customer that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was to blame for the frequent jump in the prices of imported drugs. The forbidding visage of the Governor of the CBN, Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has not frightened the dollar and it continues to dominate the naira.

The naira was further weakened by Mr Sanusi on Monday. Indeed, the naira was officially devalued. A single dollar is now worth between N155 and N160. Mr Sanusi explained the devaluation in pompous jargon. He talked about ‘symmetric band’ and ‘mid-point’. This will not make sense to those who will have to pay more for drugs because of Mr Sanusi’s failings. Mr Sanusi’s air of cool and consummate mastery of monetary affairs appears to be a con. He has made the naira very sick.
Some travellers on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway do not have to buy drugs. They are killed instantly. It is now a cruel misnomer to call it an expressway. It was an expressway when it was constructed in the 1970’s, but it is now an affront to civilisation.

Eight people were killed on the so-called expressway on Sunday. They were returning to Lagos after attending a wedding in Ondo State. The victims may have been related. A pothole was said to have flipped the bus over and eight of the passengers were killed instantly. Six others were seriously injured. The road is dotted with potholes. An eyewitness claimed the driver was speeding, a virtual impossibility. The road is an obstacle course.

The road kills travellers and destroys vehicles, but Mr Dipo Kehinde, spokesman for Bi-Courtney Highway Services Limited, which won the contract to reconstruct and manage the road for 25 years, talks political nonsense. He is something of a Wada Nas, a concoctor of plots and an espouser of fossilised conservatism.  Bi-Courtney won the contract in 2009 but has not constructed even a metre of road two years after. Cronyism is alive and well in Nigeria.

On July 23, the Minister of Works, Mr Mike Onolememen, ordered Bi-Courtney to repair the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway within 60 days. In late August, Mr Kehinde issued a statement in which he claimed   that Bi-Courtney had made great progress and would complete the repair of the road before the 60-day deadline given by the minister.

The minister’s deadline expired more than two months ago, but the road remains in a sorry, deadly state. It killed eight people on Sunday and there may have been other fatalities since then.

The minister of works did not visit the expressway to see whether his order was carried out or not. Dozy inattention by high office holders is one of the very serious illnesses Nigeria has been afflicted with. Top government officials see themselves as deities.

Mr Onolememen’s cadaveric repose, his disinclination to stir from Abuja, is perhaps not surprising. Mr Onolememen is a protégé of Chief Tony Anenih who was a disastrous minister of works. Dozens of people were burned to death in an accident caused by unsupervised road expansion, but Chief Anenih did not budge from Abuja. He did not regret the avoidable death of the victims and did not sympathise with their relations.  Chief Anenih was reportedly given N300 billion to fix the roads, but nobody could see what he did with the money.

Unchecked violent crime is a sign of a country in great mental and physical distress. Banks on the campus of Olabisi Onabanjo University were robbed on November 10. Policemen guarding the banks fled even before the robbers fired the first shot and they fired several indiscriminate shots. Ten students were reportedly killed, a massacre, but the robbers remain free to kill again. The country has moved on—a national honours award ceremony, a presidential birthday party, etc—and the victims, young people whose lives stretched out ahead of them, with perhaps a few bends, have been forgotten.

Kidnappers were allowed a second wind and they have struck fear deep into the hearts of the residents of some cities. Victims are seized almost daily in one city and the kidnappers make no distinction between the rich and the poor. Five landlords on a short street were kidnapped at different times and the sixth was murdered even after the payment of a ransom.

Odunayo Awonusi was killed in Port Harcourt in 2009 while trying to stop kidnappers from taking her brother away. The children were on their way to school. Odunayo was 11 years old, a heroine eminently deserving of a high national honour, but the government did not even issue a statement on her murder, which was a national tragedy, and the police did not make any serious effort to arrest her killers.

A Boko Haram member of some importance has been captured, confessed and has been convicted, but the sect does not appear to be in danger of imminent extinction. The Boko Haram cannot win, of course, but a prolonged engagement may encourage other fringe groups to engage in capricious nastiness.

Corruption is Nigeria’s deadliest disease, the source of its other diseases and the cause of its invalidity. Corruption is the reason why many young people cannot find work. It is responsible for the poor health of many Nigerians, whose whammy has been doubled by the high cost of drugs. Corruption is responsible for the wasting illness of the naira.

The Ottoman Empire was called the sick man of Europe when its decline gathered pace during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II. Nigeria, whose occasional advance is a blind rush, teeters on the edge of a void of nothingness.

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The 1986 World Cup final was between Argentina and West Germany, not Italy.
- Fabio

*** Yes sir! It was the 1982 World Cup, the Paolo Rossi World Cup, hosted by Spain that I wrote about. The final was between Italy and West Germany, with the Italians winning by three goals to one, a scoreline accurately predicted by the sportswriter who demanded to be rewarded. I scored an own goal.

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