The Degenerate Gamblers…

It is time to begin considering a movement to warn lenders, that we the CITIZENS shall be repudiating these loans, because the lenders cannot be unaware, that what they have presumed to lend to us, have merely been shared by their agents and representatives in Nigeria.

The human imagination is the seat of his intelligence, and I can also attest to the fact that the imagination is also the hatchery of his mischiefs. I was a highly precocious young man. I grew up way too fast, and the dissonance between my age, my experiences, and my imaginations, assured that I never ever seemed able to get out of trouble. Amongst several other vices, I was a degenerate gambler.

I would be walking the dusty street of PPL and Cassidy in Okokomaiko with other friends, and we would happen upon a pair of cockerels with the preening hens, and as the cocks would be dueling for mating rights to the brood of hens, we would take bets on the outcome. I was almost always the instigator. I would call bets on just about anything, and everything.

I would gamble on snooker/pool in the SUB, I would play gbangudu under the tree behind the Sport office, I was a VIP mugun of the Abegi Brigade, made up of awon agbaya bi broda Odlan, Alhaji Kotun, and others who can look forward to reading all about their roles in corrupting me in Okokomaiko. I will leave Lawrence and Emmanuel Babaoye and their terrible influence on my adolescent introduction to vices for now. I was a degenerate gambler.

Who is the degenerate gambler? The gambler that does not know when to fold. That is the degenerate gambler. When he has been busted, and has lost everything in his pocket, he is gripped by a fever. His capacity to reason is constricted. He is not a creature of reason, and he would do just about anything to remain in the game. The degenerate gambler would borrow money on incomprehensible terms. He would happily discount the value of family heirlooms, and is always as prey for the customary loan sharks that are almost always the “Onile”. The person that runs the gambling operations, usually the host of the game.

Our rulers are as degenerate gamblers. They have as a collective lost their capacities to reason. I am not suggesting that they have ever thought beyond their profane base appetites, but they have in recent years gone into a frenzy. In their feeding frenzy, one that is reminiscent of sharks feeding on baby seals, or of a pride of lions tearing apart an antelope, they have become oblivious to the abominably evil spectacle that they have become.

The creation of the APC was the beginning of the crystallizations of this insanity, but it did not take hold until the beginning of the second tenure of the ventriloquist’s doll in Arsehole Rock. The Nigerian ruling class stopped pretending to be divided in any way, and then the customary stealing and plundering went into overdrive. Pondei was fainting, and the House of Representatives was probing one ministry after the other. Akpabio that was once a prince of the PDP thieves, and now a chieftain of the APC saints, was busy being hushed in full glare of the cameras, even as Ngige was cackling about Mushin and Victoria Island.

The antediluvian locomotives purchased by the one that had advised that we acquired pebbles to pelt his like, have broken down before being used, and have now become second hand Tokunbo before we have even had a chance to commence repayment of the gbese, which had funded the acquisition of the gbegen. The agreements written in mandarin, the native language of the Ikwerre peoples of the oily state of the polluted rivers. Our rulers are the degenerate gamblers.

It is time to begin considering a movement to warn lenders, that we the CITIZENS shall be repudiating these loans, because the lenders cannot be unaware, that what they have presumed to lend to us, have merely been shared by their agents and representatives in Nigeria. Almost every Nigerian state, has taken World Bank and other loans, for the provision of critical infrastructures such as roads, water, dams, hospitals, electrical power infrastructure, satellites, railways, airports, name it, we’ve borrowed to build them. The loans are coming due, the infrastructures are unbuilt, and the existing, are either collapsed, or nonexistent. The walls are closing in.

I cannot now tell exactly how I walked away from gambling, but I did. I am however in awe of the destructive capacities of the degenerate gambler. I look at our rulers, and that’s all I see. Men in the grip of a demonic fever, incapable of seeing that the game is over. Unable to fold the losing hand, and borrowing against their very lives and posterity. Selah!

DF