By Odoh Diego Okenyodo
We have all heard of 51 Iweka Road Onitsha. But very few of us know where it is located. I probably don’t also know where it is beyond the fact that they mention that busy trading hub called Onitsha. That address has become synonymous with Nollywood and is the most known street address coming out of Nigeria. Given its long association with Nollywood, I couldn’t help but think about the recent events in our country and why all of us should just move to 51 Iweka Road. (“Buy your copy. Now!”)
For the first time in our history, everything is so complicated that even the ruling party has its own presidential candidate accusing people at the commanding heights of the party or within the Presidency (probably the President himself) of trying to sabotage his ambition. The presidential candidate is very unapologetic about this fact or perception. Yet everywhere the candidate goes to canvass votes (slips and all) the President is the one who has to lift his arm as a worthy successor. I can imagine how many wrinkling of noses happen at these events.
Then we have an opposition party that used to be the ruling party, somehow smiling and supporting the policies of the ruling party they are supposed to be unseating. While everybody from every party appears to be involved in what they call anti-party activities as they openly declare support for candidates other than those they vow to support. We are all characters in a bizarrely conceived Nollywood movie.
Or else, how could you have a member of the G5 gang break away so openly while the leader of the gang is busy telling another candidate he is not campaigning for the candidate but only (supporting him by) condemning the policies of the candidate’s party in power? Why are we doing things like this at this time? It is because some mighty unseen hand apparently wants to show us how the same we are, how we look different but the snap of a finger could make us all the same.
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Take a look at the naira redesign and fuel queues saga. We all became one in a second with just one policy and a few actions that betray our self-centredness and sameness of motives and desires. In fact, one ingenious Nigerian found that the Nigerian alphabet had about 5 Qs: Fuel Q, ATM Q, New Naira Note Q, Old Naira Note Q, and PoS Q. We all were suffering various types of Qs, no matter which side we thought we belonged. The cost of transactions balloon as we spend time on long Qs: taxi drivers charge desperate commuters more for each ride that hasn’t grown longer in distance. People pay as much as 30% of their PoS withdrawals as charges, not adding the charges that the banks would fling at them later when the pain seems to be relieving. If you send someone to buy stuff, you add the charges and cost of transportation and money for a drink while they wait for hours in front of empty ATMs that were grateful not to have been vandalised.
Desperate people hold night vigils at any place that potentially holds prospects of cash. We were all suddenly rich, just that we could not access our monies. People who never admitted that they had a kobo now cry about some Nigerian Qs: Fuel Q, ATM Q, New Naira Note Q, Old Naira Note Q, and PoS Q. We know them now. We thought only a few had money, but now almost everyone does, especially when they do not want to pay debts (they say they have but blame it on the banks, the central one in particular). We are all just a mass of same people acting in a big comedy. We should be living together in Iweka Road, Onitsha.
And the spate of kidnappings has dropped. It seems kidnappers have been in need of ATMs paying them some “Urgent 2K”, so they believe no one has the ransom to pay them, and getting food and other supplies to sustain victims (who might or might not pay up) has become too precarious an enterprise. It appears the kidnappers have acquired point-of-sales machines and now need not use arms to harvest victims: just write “PoS Here” and they come willing to form a line shouting, “Take my ransom, and let me go.”
It sounds ridiculous, but can’t you see how the people who cause our problems come back and appear shocked by the direct effects of what they do? For example, we know it is wrong to take bribes in exchange for our votes, but on election day, something seems to snap and we do the thing we know is wrong. Or we even choose not to go there. Or we go there and vote for someone because they are from our ethnic or religious or regional group, though the person is incompetent. Then we will weep when the results show.
Now, 51 Iweka Road, as used here, might not be exactly be like a movie theatre or movie-making studio, but its relevance as a hub for marketing all shades of Nollywood movies means that it has a place for all of our eccentricities as Nigerians. The country where our thief is our thief and needs not be punished because you did not punish the thief from your enclave. A governor who embezzles all your money and owes workers for many months is our own and loves us dearly even if we see him or her glaringly fighting for their own stolen wealth and mandate. The people whose will the politician thwarted are the ones to stand in their defence.
So as I look around the various Qs in Nigeria, I see why we all need a convergence point, and we need to find that convergence point. Hopefully, that convergence is going to happen around the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is deploying, or the redesigned naira that the Central Bank is deploying, but some people are getting to hoard. These two promise to change the colour of Qs, in particular, one Q I never mentioned: Voter’s Q. With BVAS, this Q will most likely be shorter and more authentic, while in the absence of redesigned naira notes, the votes would be more authentic, capturing the true wishes of voters, not actors that appear every four years.
