A dose of attitudinal adjustment

TUNDE ASAJU
Who says President Jones is clueless? The man’s brain works as hard as the legendary Alajo Somolu, the Somolu Esusu collector whose foresight made him sell his car and purchase a bicycle. For long people have used his sagacity as the yardstick for measuring moroseness, but in Fashola’s Lagos, Okada or commercial motorcycles have been banned to let in bicycles.
We know better, corruption is not the problem of Naija; attitude is! This is one of the values a nation gets for liberating itself from clingy and power hungry northerners in favour of a president with PhD.  Where others would have groped and fumbled, this professor president nailed the subject of many research on the head, saving the nation time and the resources it would have wasted on needless research and paying pollsters.
The Wizard of Ota took us all on a jolly ride for eight years, creating EFCC and ICPC and dancing to the rap of Nuhu Ribadu; depleting his circle of friends while chasing a non-existent malaise. He sacked a friendly police boss and sent him to Amenity Ward for attitude adjustment. He dispatched party stalwart, Boy George to Kirikiri and pursued the generalissimo of the Ijaw nation, the great Alams paving the way for the discovery of this genius. For all his complaining outside government, the Wizard needs a new dose of attitude adjustment.
People with bad attitude had at different times accused members of the president’s cabinet of corruption, yet none has been suspended, sacked, investigated or prosecuted.  Maladjusted people want to ruin the Jones presidency. They complain that potholes have turned to gullies; that plane crashes should be blamed on rambling ministers; that governors with terminal illnesses should not be treated outside the hospitals they neglected. People in need of attitude adjustment complain about darkness when they can buy candles to light their way through.
People with bad attitude complain that universities are a shadow of their past glory; that hospitals cannot even prepare ruiners for their final journey as if it is their father’s money that the rich use to fly out for proper undertaking. People with bad attitude complain about the new banqueting hall befitting the status of a sleeping giant; that the vice president should have no befitting mansion. A government is generous enough to let people own cars but they turn around to whine over fuel scarcity – pure bad attitude. Governments in other lands reserve cars for themselves leaving the citizenry with bicycles, camels and donkeys.
People with bad attitude would have forced the president to lock horns with all the state governors. Most of them are accused of heading state chapters of the cesspit of corruption. But see, none has been investigated, hunted or jailed.
Where else on earth do victims of political rape complain that their assailants are wicked instead of lying down there with good attitude enjoying the fun? People with bad attitude would be jubilant over the sickness of their governors or their death or accident. They would not join the ruining party’s muezzin in observing prayers for preservation of their oppressors.
People with bad attitude need a dose of John Cena’s attitude adjustment. Bad attitude reeks like a burst sewage tank, but in Mushin, Fuji crooners rebrand it in their lyrics, they call it swag. People with bad attitude complain that a president should not release naval helicopters for kabukabu as if they produce the oil that fuels government’s own bad attitude. A son of the shoil has inalienable rights to dispose of the wealth from his oil as he deems fit. It is bad attitude for others to complain.
Attitude is the cancer devouring the sleeping giant. Sinators with bad attitude complain of being run off the streets by their governors’ convoys. Other convoys have been known to kill disposable and stubborn citizens who take siren immunity for granted. I must personally report the bad attitude of the navy. Not only are its choppers dropping like overripe pawpaw and causing grief, its ratings, sent to guard extinguished sinators are being disgraced, disarmed and beaten by ordinary police escorts – where is military pride? Even Boko Haram scouts would have done better.
We must not conclude without mentioning the sad fact that bad attitude has crept into the clergy. Priests now have the temerity to erect wailing walls around presidential events. Recall that one nearly forced the president to expend a whole year’s ration of ‘amen’ for a single prayer. If loyal protocol officers had not averted trouble, where would the president get the ‘amen’ needed to receive pastoral blessings at the Redemption Camp? Imagine another priest with a bad attitude seizing a solemn funeral homily to complain about corruption as if he is the employ of KPMG.
In this New Year, anybody exhibiting bad attitude should be sent to the villa protocol desk for a large dose of attitude adjustment. John Cena, the popular wrestler uses attitude adjustment to send his opponents to momentary stupor to win them. Attitude adjustment will pave bad roads, fix hospitals, keep schools open all year round, put food on the table, cure bad governance and resolve all our ills.
Who knows, it might make governors less prone to accidents and terminal illnesses thereby reducing the need for state to borrow the doctrine of necessity. Attitude adjustment makes people sing when their house is on fire! Where else can you get it but the presidential villa?
NigeriaIntel