Nigeria is the playboy of the western world.
Back in time, Nigeria followed Britain like a zombie to practise the parliamentary system of democracy that crashed like Humpty-Dumpty.
Then the country turned full circle to ape the presidential system of government of good old USA. A crash helmet is missing in the mix!
There’s no escaping the lowdown that every Nigerian wants to escape to the western world.
Every Ebun wants to fly away and stay put in London, England. All Nnamdis are dying to land in the USA and die there. Musa wants the good life in Canada. The Odions, Etims, Oweis and Onojas are scattered all over Europe.
When Buhari came first as military strongman, the anthem on every mouth was “checking out like Andrew”, a skit amply dramatized by the late acting great Enebeli Elebuwa. Now in Buhari’s second coming as a civilian sovereign, the cry is “emigration by all means”.
I’m deeply afraid that I may end up as the only one left behind in this godforsaken place, abandoned like the pirate Benn Gunn in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. If care is not taken, there may soon be more Nigerians living in Canada than Canadians!
Many Nigerians will stop at nothing to win the love of good old America. The old scramble for the visa lottery is example enough.
The zany aspects of the hunger of many Nigerians for the western world reminds me of the play, The Playboy Of The Western World written by the Irish playwright John Millington (JM) Synge.
It is as though Nigerians are dead ready to kill their fathers in the hard romance with the land of the Yankees.
In JM Synge’s The Playboy Of The Western World, one never-do-well called Christy Mahon staggers into the beer Flaherty’s parlour, feeling high that he had killed his own father!
The pub owner, Flaherty, applauds Christy for his courage.
Promptly the barmaid, to wit, Flaherty’s daughter, Pegeen, dumps her betrothed, Shawn Keogh, and falls in love with the celebrity father-killer Christy.
This way, Christy becomes the local champion, the hero of the land. All the women are dying to have him, especially the Widow Quin who vainly struggles to seduce him.
While Christy rides on the crest of his popularity, his father who had only been wounded appears in the pub.
Christy instantly loses his popularity and his beloved Pegeen as he is now seen as a coward and a liar.
In a bid to win back the love of Pegeen and the respect of the town, Christy batters his father, leaving the old man for dead for a second time.
The latest action does not win any praises for Christy as Pegeen and the people of the town tie him up to avoid being implicated as accessories to his crime.
He is only saved when his battered father crawls back into the pub, not having died. Eventually, father and son leave the pub to wander the world, with Pegeen lamenting thusly: “I’ve lost the only playboy of the western world.”
Nigeria is the playboy of the western world, and the white world cannot have enough of promoting the larger-than-life antics of Nigerians in the manner of Christy Mahon of The Playboy Of The Western World.
Nigerians have killed their fatherland and they are raving about it out there all over the capitals and suburbs of the western world.
The rage all over the country now is how former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu was embarrassed in faraway Nuremberg, Germany by outraged members of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).
The German police watched the antics of the playboys of the western world with so much glee.
Nothing could beat the irony of the re-enactment of the Nigeria-Biafra war in Germany.
We should not forget in a hurry that Senator Ekweremadu acted much like a father in securing bail for the then detained IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu.
Now the IPOB activists are revving up in glee upon killing their father. But the father has refused to die as was the case in JM Synge’s classic play The Playboy Of The Western World.
Meantime, the world waits with bated breath for the modern day re-enactment of the Nuremberg trials over the Ekweremadu matter.
There is no stopping the zany antics of the lunatic fringe of Nigerians as the playboys of the western world.
