THE DRUNK GENERATIONS (Ponder and Wonder)

 It is not new that people drink more and get drunk when they succeed to fail. When people drink more they are trying by all means to succeed to get drunk and thus celebrating their drunken success. The result is drunken politics and politicians, drunken rulers, drunken riders, drunken sellers, drunken drivers, drunken lovers, drunken preachers, drunken birth to drunken children, drunken movements, drunken strikes, drunken uprising, drunken voting, drunken campaigning, drunken decisions, drunken policies, drunken debates, drunken news, drunken dancing of juju, drunken diplomacy, drunken freedom and drunken suppression becomes the only most easy tool to correct the drunk of all walks of life if ever he/she blinks his mind to questions why the drunken is treated as drunk.

I wonder and ponder the great role the brewery industry has been playing in the lives of these people for more than 30years. There is no special day succeeding to get drunk here, just every day after every business be it fake or real majority resorts in succeeding to get drunk as a sign of accomplishment. No one will be ready to listen to your cry if your stomach is empty but they are always ready to help you succeed to getting drunk like them. Beer after meals is the order to complete the diet and balance it. Palm wine and beer is the cement of every occasion and ceremony.

I wonder and ponder if actually in reality this country is being ruled by a dictator? Either the sleeping people habitually under the influence of alcohol are being ruled and governed by the Law of Drunkenness. Either one is drunk with fear like Peter the Rock or Drunk with beer. Each month brewery companies submit statistics of the total amount of consumption of beer to the dictator to help – he understand the level and degree of drunkenness of the governed in other to concoct his new strategy making sure he dishes it at the drunken time. Very soon the price of beer will be reduced by half because this is the best opium to further stupefied the drunken idiots and disarm their minds against a regime. But the best option could have been to close down brewery industries in the country. If this is done the situation will be more advantageous as those even with coins can afford sleeping cups, which will render them drunken death.

I wonder and ponder  the best strategy for the end of the beginning of failure as guys succeeded to get themselves drunk and were picked up in gutters and only realized themselves in the four walls of the pigsty cells the following evening. They all were given gallons same month and honored for their brilliance. When people succeed to get drunk by taking as much export as possible their brains and minds are exported to the abyss and they are just empty living vessels with no purpose and focus. But does our leaders fair better in the trade of drunkenness? Go to some State Houses around the country, what we have are arenas of so-called leaders that are also drunkards of deepest dye. This writer attended a church harvest programme of a popular church on the invitation of a friend recently. To my greatest surprise, even while the church programme was going on, I went out to answer a call, just behind the church are some members and their guests already soaked in all sorts of alcohols! The same happens during Christmas festival. Our Muslim brothers and sisters are same difference, if not worst! Ask a beer seller near you about the market situation whenever the Muslim Ramadan is going on. I conducted an investigation to that effect during the last Ramadan fasting and I was not surprised to be told in clear terms by some beer sellers that, it has been a usual trend for years back that during the period of Muslim fasting, they always experience low sales. But right from the day of celebrating “Eid El-Fitril, sales usually go skyrocketing! Our traditional religions even promotes drunkenness through the use of hot drinks, palm wines to appease gods and godesses!

Now we say we need peace, but how can we say we need peace if there was no war? I guess it the peace to continue succeeding in getting more drunk. What kind of peace that people die each and every minute more than any civil war in our times? Most of the graveyards in missions are full and there are plans to establish a system for family grave in one deep hole not less than 30feet because the amount of deaths recorded of the youths dying of misery is alarming. I wonder and ponder if living in misery is the type of peace we want to experience. How can people who have worked so hard to earn degrees and masters, some with doctorates yet the earth keeps embracing the sole of their feet as they go round in search of jobs for rat pays still they cannot find any? Today, Nigerian PhD holiders are now ‘chartered trailer and truck drivers’ , courtesy of Dangote Group! Why do we go to school spending between eight and ten years to earn a doctorate in the university after a secondary school education; when in actual fact, it is easy to learn how to drive trucks under six months or at most a year?

How will such a ‘Doctor of Driving’ not be frustrated and get drunk one day? Nigeria is drunken nation indeed!

 We have been waiting for change while succeeding to getting always drunk. How will you know it is the time to embrace change when you are drunk? Who will make the change when the only change you have worked for is the operation of the ‘Law of Drunkenness’? Now the opposition has won the type of peace that you needed in other to succeed in getting more drunk. They can now rest quietly in their limited royal palaces and wait for their own share of the booties after the war for peace to create a drunk atmosphere for the nation. AND THIS WAS THE CHANGE WE NEEDED, THE CHANGE WE HAVE WAITED FOR, THE CHANGE WE ARE PROMOTING NOW AND SURELY THE CHANGE WILL CONTINUE TILL THY KINGDOM COME. I WISH THE NATION WAS ALL DRUNK WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT, CHANGE WOULD HAVE BEEN INEVITABLE.

– Segun Fadipe