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By Godwin Etakibuebu
For every profession, trade, business or in any type of human endeavours, there are specializations. Sometimes, and for reasons of success, entrants create something new to attract special attention and such creations become the specialization to increase patronage.
This type of drive holds true in the Undertaking business too. Not that l knew of it before until the emergence of these two gentlemen; Lawan and Gbajabiamila, into this specialized and noble profession of Undertaking.
I will like to give one example of an Undertaker who traversed the Lagos metropolis as an octopus and left his footprint in the sands of history. He was; I want to believe, the first professional Undertaker Nigeria made. He did not even decide that he was creating a “trade” in the beginning, but somehow along the line of duty, he just saw himself drifting into it until he solidly made the name. Even at that, the name Undertaker was never ascribed to him until he passed on to the great beyond. He was only known as “Gboku-Gboku”, and his name was known simply as Sunday.
That was how “Sunday-gboku-gboku” started a profession [Undertaker] that was to expand into a very lucrative and money-spinning industry. Sunday-gboku-gboku was more popular than any other medical doctor or any hospital personnel in the Lagos General Hospital during his time. Tourists came to the place to have a glimpse of this unusual “professional”, who could mixed with the dead very comfortably. He practiced his trade with honour, dignity and respect. Like every other pathfinder into any new field of discovery, Sunday-gboku-gboku did not make money from his exploits. He was reverenced, though his honour was limited to Lagos metropolis only, to the exclusion of other parts of the country. This was in the Sixties and Seventies.
Let us point out the traditional characteristic of an Undertaker while prying his [I am limiting it to the male gender because l have not seen females in the conspicuous business] profession. Undertaker comes operational or get employed after, and only after, the demise of somebody somewhere. Though l have been informed most reliably that the modern day Undertaker lobbies the family of the ‘rich and ageing’ in advance or ahead of the likely day of departure, through a “developed solid contact”.
Even, having established the link of patronage well in advance of the day of “eventuality”, the Undertaker remains underground until “it happened”. They, the undertakers, don’t help preparing people to die in anticipation of boosting their trade; they come alive, with alacrity, to their trade, from the point of death, through the funerals, to the place of befitting burials.
However Senator Ahmad Lawan and Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila are bringing an angle of specialization into the Undertaking profession, maybe it is for the size of the client, which is Nigeria – the Giant of Africa. The dimension of specialization these two gentlemen lawmakers have introduced is in quickening the demise; I mean death, of this client before embarking on the other side of the profession – the side of taking command of the funeral to the burial. It is not that I even have the assurance that after “professionally putting this client to death”, these two lawmakers might be participating in the funeral and burial. This might be for the reason that the two men may not be there to compose the burial song or sing the Nunc Dimittis.
How did these two privileged Nigerians arrive the point of assigning themselves this most perfidious responsibility? It is good we take a short voyage of discovery to the beginning.
It all started on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, when the National Assembly was inaugurated. Senator Lawan and Honourable Gbajabiamila were the two contraptions Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu prepared for the seats of the Senate Presidency and Speakership of the House of Representative respectively – a contraption that was acceptable to the leadership of the All Progressives Congress, and was to be forced through the throat of the National Assembly members.
The venture failed by some miscalculations, in addition to a conspiracy from the most unlikely quarter – from the Villa; which readers may find difficult to believe [we shall give the details at a future date, by the grace of God]. That failure brought in Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as Speaker – House of Representative. That 8th National Assembly’s leadership emerged independently of both the Executive and the Ruling Political Party, thereby bringing to fruition an Assembly that was fully prepared to carry out its duty on two dimensions.
One, it carried out its duty of checks and balances over all other organs of government, including the Executive. Two, it exercised its liberty as one of the three essentials arms of government, and as such was never a rubber-stamp Legislature. It became one of those few National Assemblies of this Republic that represented the people – voters or electorate, adequately, to a larger extent.
By an intervention of political manipulation and permutation, the discarded contraptions of Bola Tinubu in 2015 were exhumed and planted at the place of leadership for the 9th National Assembly, by the Executive, using the instrumentality of the Ruling Party leadership. The two men so planted were taking through a very rigorous pre-installation rudiment. For example, one of them, who was supposed to be a stout Christian was suddenly seen in Mecca performing Hajj and was later seen praying with President Buhari at the Muslim praying ground in Abuja on one Friday.
It was really a very rigorous induction both men were taken through, before they were sworn-in as Numbers Three and Four highest political office holders in Nigeria in order of hierarchy. That became the making of the 9th rubber-stamp National Assembly.
Of course, both men have confessed publicly at different occasions that they would do whatever the Executive Branch of Government asked them to do. And they have been doing exactly what they said they would do. What this mean is that we have a National Assembly; an assemblage of elected 360 members in the House and 109 in the Senate, individually elected by millions of Nigerians, surrendering the loyalty they owe to the Nigerian people; who elected them into office, to the Executive – the President, through the compromising instrument of two sellouts – Senator Ahmad Lawan and Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila.
In interpretation, what the Nigerian people want in this political dispensation may not come to them but what the President of the Federal Republic wants – courtesy of the last two Undertakers for the Nigerian Nation State.
Adieu Nigeria!
Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.
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You can also listen to this author [Godwin Etakibuebu] every Monday; 9:30 – 11am on Lagos Talk 91.3 FM live, in a weekly review of topical issues, presented by The News Guru [TNG].