Dancing with their babies

Read with Parental Guidance

Repartee is an art of conversation that is quick, witty, and usually humorous, to establish it effectively is to leave such nuggets of memory that cannot be forgotten even as in your retelling of it, you might lose the effect it had at the point of your original hearing.

It is not essentially truth or fact, it could be an intelligent or mocking play on words, the knowledge of geography or any other thing is not particular when it is ideas set alight in directions that cannot predetermined. As for innuendo, there might be plenty of it, you take your rib-cracking laughs and your jaw-aching cackles to confession at a much later time.

In a conversation that might have been overheard, who can say who was involved? Selby and Niko have these exchanges all the time with one accusing the other of leading the other astray, the saint is further away from the sinner even as the former presents innocence better.

And so…

Selby: I trust he had a great experience in Kenya, I’m sure he has very interesting stories to tell you all about.

Niko: I don’t want to hear his stories. The thought is shocking enough. He won’t be able to complete confession in the allotted time.

Selby: [Much later, recalling the tail end of that conversation] I laughed when I read your response.

Niko: He was most likely at the receiving end of some Masai Mara.

Selby: They are probably still jumping in him. [If this needs explaining, you do not need to know.]

[Niko is in shock and laughter at the same time, every corruptly shocking interpretation of whatever he meant paints the situation in too vivid detail for polite conversation. Our friend has a reputation that would make pages on which it is written red with embarrassment and the ends curl almost in revulsion and indescribable glee.]

[At which time, Selby is half-weeping and Niko is proverbially rolling on the floor, and Selby is not done yet, he rues his big mouth, but you'll love his free expression, almost naïve and truly deadpan, like Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls.]

Selby: Did he have the whole dancing troupe?

[At which point, Niko had a picture of a line of men of enviable renown, starved of it and ready to find the totally ecstatic excitement of lascivious relief at the sight of a starfish with the unmistakable groans of the earth moving violently. No fault was left untouched; the rift cracked open to its fullest extent. It is East Africa, after all.]

Niko: You’ll have to ask him. [The stories Niko didn’t want to hear had already been told by Selby either like a witness of the event, or because Selby has had some experiences in the African bush that he has hinted at but never really told. Farm boys hosing down fires like the fire brigade.]

Is that, you wonder, a ticket to Seren-get-him?

Nigeria: The Age of Irreverence Is Upon Us Like A Rash

Culture shocks

It took reading a rather long blog full of very interesting snippets of history titled the Culture of Disrespect for it to occur to me that a seismic shift in values and customs had happened in our society that many had not noticed.

Over the last few months, anyone caught in the amber of some bygone age of interaction between the powerful and the self-important erudite set has lamented the spate of uncomfortable feedback emanating from social media forums.

That time is going fast

Those used to riding rough shod over the masses who had never had to be accountable to anyone and could with impunity be criminal without consequence having never been questioned or withstood by those they term lesser in status and influence have run the gauntlet of abuse, ridicule, rudeness, discourtesy and disrespect – the mystique and mystery that once redounded unearned adulation by reason of sycophancy and fawning had been torn away.

The age-old niceties of deep courtesy and obsequiousness that allowed for patriarchal and sometimes feudal systems of control and subservience had been consigned to the bin of the unnecessary, ushering in what I would call the Age of Irreverence.

Not by default anymore

What the Age of Irreverence meant was that people no more earned respect by default by reason of status, age, wealth, connection or position but by reason of what you did to affect your community for the better.

Much more is demanded of leadership and even more is expected of them to perform with people ready to call out bluster, bombast and bull shit. The people, many though not all, quite well informed today and poised to pounce on any sign of weakness or hypocrisy, do not have the patience to be taken for a ride.

The expression of the angry young Nigerian

It appears leaders are in for a rude shock, they engage to their peril and disengage to even greater opprobrium and that is just what has become the times – only their paid sycophants have sold their consciences for a lie in the face of manifestly undeniable facts.

That is not to say courtesy, respect and reverence no more matters but leaders will just have to work harder for it and carry their audience honestly and truthfully with them to be offered such adulation.

Like another blog suggests, the young Nigerian is angry and social media offers the forum to vent their spleen and join cause with others in what might look like an onslaught or barrage of abuse. It will take more sophisticated skills of communication to placate the passionately angry and they are increasing in numbers in what might become a formidable movement.

Taking no prisoners

Those who portend to take themselves too seriously will be cut down to side, the haughty will be belittled and the proud are in for a crashing and catastrophic fall.

It is all coming together now and only the savvy will be able to withstand those they label the opposition or as one Presidential adviser put it in his risible and lamentable Jeremiad - the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria – have arrived to be the Kings and the Queens of the Age of Irreverence.

The art of the good insult

They will not suffer fools gladly and will use smarts, wit, abuse, insults, irony, sarcasm, satire and much else including data, facts or rumour in their arsenal to express their displeasure in ways that will make even the slightly old-fashioned like myself flinch – I hope for myself, I have not misread the signs of the times.

The sophisticated might well attempt to elevate the art and the finesse of a polite put-down, maybe a Shakespearean insult or even the subtlety of damning with praise – God knows, many are really deserving of what they see on Social Media and long may it continue until things are set to rights; for the highly fed and lowly taught need to experience a comeuppance that will clip their wings.

We have come upon by accident or by design the glowing Age of Irreverence and it will soon reach a street near you.

Nigeria will not tolerate rude airlines

Aviation in better hands, it seems

After all the aircraft accidents in Nigeria which lead to the redeployment of the oaf that was put in charge of overseeing that carnage, the replacement with Femi Fani-Kayode as Aviation Minister left many rather unimpressed, most especially myself.

It would however appear Mr Fani-Kayode is doing something useful in that position and this should be commended.

He has revoked licenses of some airlines, berated some of their activities and exacted policies to help improve safety and bolster confidence in a precarious aviation industry.

Now, he has set his sights on poor customer service on airlines that operate between Europe and Nigeria; their rude staff, as reported by the BBC.

Rude trolley dollies

I have heard of instances where passengers have been treated with utter contempt by trolley dollies (cabin crew) and it has required launching a formal complaint with the threat of involving race relations to obtain grudging apologies from these airlines.

What is really annoying is that these African routes are rarely bargains, there is good business and a profit being made from Nigerian travellers but the quality of service is despicable, sometimes to the extreme.

A grievance to be addressed

Mr Fani-Kayode said he “would not sit by and allow our people to be treated like animals by anybody or for any reason”

This is a valid grievance that needs to be addressed pronto by both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic and if this information has not percolated upwards that it has had Becky Livingstone of BA saying, “We take great pride in our customer service and have the same excellent standards for all our customers throughout the world”. They have now been given notice and they have to act.

If BA is very distressed, it is because they have rotten staff, visiting the Aviation Minister does not address his concerns if they do not improve the service and Virgin Atlantic is preparing a response to his valid and truthful accusations.

Asking that Nigerian passengers be treated with respect and decency is not too much to ask, especially as we also pay premium fares.