Our water bottle children are here

Today, let us briefly shift our attention from the damning stories emanating from the political and shuttle into the social. Unfortunately, we can hardly divorce ourselves from the political as it dictates the social; reason why we must constantly interrogate the political. That probably was why great Peter Tosh, at the One Love Peace Concert held on April 22, 1978, at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, was quoted as saying, “I am not a politician but I suffer its consequences.” The social is the manifestation of the political. Or vice versa.

In the week that just ended, some signposts of the fire which lies in wait to burn whatever bad or lack of home training, bad governance, ethnic mistrust and corruption will bequeath to heirs of the Nigerian state, reared their sulphuric heads. The signposts indicate that our society may soon explode right in our very before.
Curious about the Yoruba language-rendered high-tempoed hip-hop song of street boy musician, Temitope Adekunle, a.k.a. Small Doctor, entitled Penalty, this writer’s curiosity exploded when told that the fad among youth nowadays is to lace hard drugs in alcohol which they put in water bottles, clutched as youth identity at parties and social gatherings. Small Doctor, in the song, had sang of how the boys were “bringing water bottles into the dancehall” while the musician, who called himself Omo Iya Teacher, deploying beer parlour lingo, had enjoined the party crew to “yee ma sun, gba ko je!” (don’t be a dunce, so take it and swallow!)

A former Director General of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) had given a scary prognosis of the feeding bottle menace. Kano, Kaduna, Borno and lately, Niger, according to him, are states “with the highest cases of constant drug abuse in the country”. He didn’t stop there. “If you take an estimate of 10 boys, particularly in Kano, seven will be on drugs… you will see young boys and girls openly sniffing substances like fuel, and over-abusing drugs meant for other purposes, like Tramadol and Codeine and smoking marijuana in the streets without care or fear of being arrested.”

A 2015 annual report of the NDLEA was released during the week too. According to it, Northern Nigeria got the highest incidence of these water bottle-related offences for the year, with a total of 2,205 persons, beating the south-west which recorded 1,785 arrests. The narcotics prevalent in those places, said the NDLEA, were cocaine, heroin and cannabis. These are WHO-classified narcotic substances and psychotropic substances. Tablets like rohypnol, tramadol, diazepam and lexotan, are said to be a common line of drug abused by northern women. A former Commander of the NDLEA in Kano told a reporter who conducted the investigation that about three million bottles of codeine used as drug is consumed daily in Kano state alone.

Earlier, during the activities marking the World Teachers Day, some northern state governors also expressed fears at the increasing rate of the water bottle culture. “I was at a community recently during one of my inspections to schools in the state and one of the elders of the community told me that nine out of the 11 teachers in that school are drug addicts,” he said.

During the week too, the music world was hit by the thunderbolt of the death of musical associates of hip hop musician, David Adeleke, aka Davido. The water bottle culture was implicated in the deaths. The victims were, Olugbenga Abiodun, aka DJ Olu and Chime Amaechi. They were both found dead last Saturday inside a BMW car in a garage in Banana Island, Lagos. Three days earlier, another Davido’s friend, Umeike Tagbo, had reportedly died on his birthday at a drinking bar located in the Lekki area after an alleged consumption of 10 shots of Tequila drug. DJ Olu and Chime’s remains were said to be oozing out blood from their nostrils and mouths. The Lagos police command said preliminary physical examination suggested deaths from drug overdose. Substances suspected to be drugs were also recovered by the police from the victims.A rough survey carried out by this writer indicated that this water bottle culture has become so pervasive among our youths that we could be having a pandemic on our hands. While the list of drugs known to previous generations included cocaine, heroin, marijuana (cannabis) – the latter now with different variants and cognomens – a host of other variants have since erupted. Rohypnol, a strong sedative also known as date rape drug, codeine, a cough suppressant,

A rough survey carried out by this writer indicated that this water bottle culture has become so pervasive among our youths that we could be having a pandemic on our hands. While the list of drugs known to previous generations included cocaine, heroin, marijuana (cannabis) – the latter now with different variants and cognomens – a host of other variants have since erupted. Rohypnol, a strong sedative also known as date rape drug, codeine, a cough suppressant, mephenthamine, alcohol, topiramate, methane from soak-away, glue, petrol and such like narcotics are the drugs commonly consumed by our children, mostly on campuses. It is so bad that some students told this writer that universities would have to urgently comb their halls of residence to know the metastasis of this vice. Universities claimed to have been founded on religious foundations are said to be the most culpable of the water bottle culture. It is even said that drug consumption by female students on campuses has become so high that, fishing out a socially active girl who abstains from the habit is like seeking needle in a haystack.

Granted that drug consumption is not new among youths, its alarmingly high consumption should be a source of worry to us all. While some psychologists blame this pandemic water bottle culture on the hopelessness in the land (no job prospect, poverty and the like), some social scientists claim that laxity of home training and the drop in societal values are the major culprits.

For the Davido gang in the musical and showbiz world, it is almost an anathema not to be involved in the water bottle culture. And it has proven to be the graveyard of many in this category. This writer remembers the tragedy of the life of Brenda Fassie, a highly talented South African singer, so talented that the great Nelson Mandela was fascinated with her song and danced with her on the dancehall. Born November 3, 1964 in Langa, Cape Town, Brenda was a wonder to watch.Her album, Memeza (Shout) which was released in 1997, is rated as the apogee of her musical success. It went platinum on the first day of its release. After Yvonne Chaka Chaka, arguably no musician from that country possessed her waltz and voice. She also made a huge contribution to Miriam Makeba’sSangoma, as well as Harry Belafonte’s anti-apartheid song, Paradise in Gazankulu.Madiba and million others, including this writer, were her fans. She was once voted 17th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.Unfortunately, Brenda was a suicidal drug addict and addictively wedged to lesbianism.Brenda was talented and possessed the tantrums of divas, so much that the

Brenda was talented and possessed the tantrums of divas, so much that the Time Magazine dubbed her the Madonna of the Townships. The world however began to notice the hiccups in her life when her weird passion spilled into limelight in 1995. Brenda was found in a hotel room with the remains of her lesbian partner, who passed on during their orgy of lesbianism sauced with drug usage. She had died of apparent overdose. Brenda herself must have gone in and out of a rehab for about 30 times and on one occasion, sure she had overcome drugs, screamed, “I’m going to become the Pope next year. Nothing is impossible!” A few years after, Brenda reportedly collapsed in her brother’s arms, flung her last cocaine straw on the kitchen floor of her home in Buccleuch, fell into a coma and died after suffering from a brain damage. She passed on, on May 9, 2004, with post mortem report even claiming that she was HIV-positive.

The collapse of governance and the death of values in the home have pushed the water bottle culture to the upswing. Take this as a sampler: While being interviewed, one of the fathers of the late friends of Davido, in the thick of denying that his son was embroiled in drug usage, however didn’t see anything wrong in him dropping out of school at age 19 as a result of living a ‘good life.’ “When I advised him as a father to go back to school, he told me that people that graduated are not making the type of money he was (making) so what’s the point?’ he had told an interviewer.The 23-year old reportedly lived in Banana Island, with “flowing money”, celebrity status and even secured contracts with a South West state government. So, why should his father care about him going to school? If you disaggregate the parental disposition and contribution to the death of this boy, you would find out that he died first in the hands of his parents and merely died physically afterwards.

It grieves the heart and rears one up that society and government are throwing their hands in the air, in seeming helplessness at the menace of the water bottle culture. If the trend continues, we can predict where Nigeria would be in 20 years’ time. Gradually, we are being welcomed into the world of Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, Colombian drug czar and narco-terrorist, whose drug cartel was said to have supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States while he loomed large at the zenith of his drug career. Let’s welcome Nigeria to the future/yesterday world of Pablo Escobar!

IMF and Buhari

There have been exchanges of diatribes between the office of the Nigerian President and critics over the revelation by the IMF President that Muhammadu Buhari specifically asked the Fund to concentrate its interventionist efforts on Northern Nigeria. The office of the President has lashed out at those whom it said slanted the president’s request so as to achieve ulterior ends, stating that Buhari merely asked that the North East, which has suffered colossal damage as a result of Boko Haram insurgency, be given preferential treatment.

On its surface, this is a sensible request from a concerned president. But when considered that Buhari has an ethnicist leadership pedigree, once storming Oyo State to upbraid late Governor Lam Adesina over Fulani herdsmen’s alleged killing in northern part of the state, that “your people are killing my people,” his palpable silence on the killings by maniacal herdsmen, his skewed appointments and pre-presidential attack on the Jonathan government for “hurting the North” by killing Boko Haram insurgents, pedigree doesn’t avail Buhari’s alleged good intention in this circumstance. In any case, how come Buhari didn’t ask IMF to cater for Niger Delta, a land where his people get their illicit wealth, but which is defaced by degradation and squalor?

Logic on sabbatical

If this writer were old enough to father former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, she will get good spanking of cudgels as our dear Patience indeed deserves it. She has constituted enough nuisances on account of the gushing spillages from her everyday exchanges with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). To worsen matters, her outbursts are so illogical that they confirm the years of her residency at the Villa as years of spousal drawbacks for the Jonathan administration.

Take for instance the Diaris Godexponent’s loose defence that one of the account which the EFCC froze was her late mother’s wherein billions were lodged and her puerile reply to the allegation that she used her foundation to launder stolen funds. She had said that she spent N3.5bn on sick children. The first question to ask is, where did an over-promoted Permanent Secretary like her get the billions spent on the children and what job did her mother do that earned her such billions of Naira lodgments?

Stephen Paddock and us

The massacre of 58 persons in Las Vegas by Stephen Paddock about two weeks ago must, by now, have impressed it upon those who believe that there is a racial connotation in savagery that the genetic instinct to go the way of animals is racial blind. The Paddock murder, which occurred at the Route 91 country music event near the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, is reputed to be the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. What gives that statistical appraisal a tinge of reality is that the death through Paddock surpasses the 49 that were killed at a nightclub in Orlando in June, 2016. Paddock, 64-year old white, had killed himself after the massacre and the American law will not rest on its oars until it finds out what went amiss.
It is our responsibility as citizens of the world to see violence as our latent and residual inclination carried over from our pre-historical forebears, rather than as a racial heritage. This perhaps would teach President Donald Trump some measure of lessons in racial relationship. As an aside, the American law would disaggregate the Paddock riddle presently. Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris’ crowd would wait patiently to allow the dust settle, flaunting fake efficiency. Shortly after, everything will return to status quo and everyone will live happily thereafter, as the village griot epilogues his stories.