Praaaaise the Nod, Brothers and Sisters in Crisis! Hallelujah? Mallam Aminu Bello Masari, the governor of Katsina State, has revealed what it will take to beat or defeat Buhari in the 2019 presidential election. Requirement: you will need to come from either the moon or the ground, he said, in a newspaper interview.

So? Let those who want to stay here and be killed or clobbered to death by political thugs or jobbers stay; I am headed to the moon. Pronto! Or, better still, I may decide to go underground (disappear into the grave or cemetery?). As a matter of fact, I want to ask all those who intend to contest in the forthcoming presidential election to join me in taking a trip to the moon. Of course, we will need to register as citizens of the place or procure false travel documents to the galaxy, otherwise how are we going to come down to terra firma to enter the presidential race?

In fact, somebody just whispered into my ear that a guy called Richard Branson, the English business magnate, investor and philanthropist, ranked the eighth among wealthiest British billionaires, is seriously planning to fly people who wish, into the space via Virgin Galactic, his space tourism company devoted to that purpose. So? Who among the presidential candidates is ready to give the idea a trial, with the man who said: “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and by falling over”? Anybody?

If you are happy, say Branson. If you are happy and you really want to show that you are really happy, say Branson. The only problem is, I learnt the man may not be too keen in taking Nigerians to the moon because he is afraid that they may get there and start corrupting the inhabitants like they did the Ghanaians, Ivoriens, Americans, Britons, Germans and are still doing to anybody who come from a culture or civilization where corruption is seen as an unpardonable sin. Before you know what is happening, you will see one smart alec demanding from us “owo maintenance” (maintenance money), to buy 3 billion watts (“mobile energy”), monthly, to supply the sun so that it can continue to shine on the moon before we can see our way at night.

But in the event of the plan not working out, the Igbo people have a saying that he who is on his way to Onitsha and is able to get to as far as Onuocha’s place, is already in Onitsha. I think the Yoruba also have a similar saying: that if, at the end of the day, you are able to find what you are looking for in Sokoto, in your shokoto (trousers), then it is to be assumed that you made a fair trial.

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My question is: why waste your time and resources trying to reach or come from the moon, said to be about 238,900 miles (384, 400 km) away from the earth, when you can cut the long distance journey short by joining the Moonies (members of Unification Church, founded in 1954, by a North Korean citizen called Sun Myung Moon)? I can assure you that if you will sign up today, this church which once wedded 2,075 couples at a go, in what is seen as the world’s largest mass wedding that ever took place in history, is ready to support you all the way to victory. Even as I write this I can hear some voices saying: “come unto us all ye that labour to clone voters through rigging and we will give you the rest.” So? What else do you need to win an election in 2019?

Brothers and Sisters in Crisis, I have taken time to check out the names of candidates being touted as possible replacement for President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB): Atiku Abubakar, Sule Lamido, Senator Muhammadu Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, Peter Ayo Fayose, Kingsley Moghalu and Omoyele Sowore. None of them, as far as I know, comes from either the moon or the ground. Or, does anybody know something about them that the rest of us do not know?

So? If they love themselves they should join the Moonies or, else, come out from the ground if they had been hiding inside it all this while. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, there is this case of the nine egwugwus, (masquerades) which are seen as ancestral spirits, coming out from the ground. At least, so it was believed by the people of Umuofia. That belief in ancestral spirits operating through the masquerades still exists today in many parts of Igboland: Enugu, Abakaliki (Ebonyi State), Afikpo, Arondizuogu, Anambra State, Umuahia, Owerri, etc.

For those of you who yearn to be initiated because of the 2019 presidential election, all you need to do is contact Chinedu Izuchukwu Okoli (better known as Flavour), Nigeria’s popular musician and winner of MTV Africa Music Award for Best Live Act, to sign you on, on his Ijele, the Traveller, Ijele being the biggest and most powerful masquerade in Igbo land. So, at this juncture, I will like to say to Atiku Abubakar, Sule Lamido, Senator Muhammadu Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, Peter Ayo Fayose, Kingsley Moghalu, Omoyele Sowore and any other person speculation will want to put on the list, Aru oyim de de de dei!

For those who might have forgotten the story line, those are the words that the Chief Egwugwu, the one they call Evil Forest, but which calls itself Dry-meat-that fills-the-mouth, the Fire-that-burns-without-faggots, used in greeting Uzowulu and others who had gathered for judgement on the misunderstanding between the man and his in-law, Odukwe, concerning the decision by Mgbafo, Uzowulu’s wife, to leave him over alleged wife-battering. So, I say again to those who we are expecting to come from the moon or the ground to beat Buhari: aru oyim de de de dei. End of discussion.