FAILURE TO PROVIDE NECESSARY

LINGUISTS no longer insist on prescribing how the English Language should be used. Focus has shifted to describing how it is manipulated to suit communication purposes with context in mind. So, please, consider ‘necessary’ to be a noun and not an adjective.

Seen in this light, ‘Failure to provide necessary’ is good English. So good and true it almost sent a family man to jail.

A very senior colleague has enough near death and hair-raising experiences to write an engaging memoir. Now that he is a desk Oga, he regales me with rib crackers. Oh yes! Comedy is tragedy plus time. Anyway, he told me of a secondary school girl that almost turned her father to a prisoner for failure to provide necessary. Her father had suddenly stopped paying her fees: “I no go train girl for another man to marry.” She arrested him. My senior colleague was asked to intervene as an elder and relative.

By the time he got to the station, father was behind bars, swollen with righteous anger. “What is this man’s offence?” my Oga asked. The officer-in-charge pointed at the charge board. Against the father’s name was: Failure to provide necessary. What kind of law is this, he wondered aloud.

Olokpa was provoked. “You claim to be educated and a journalist, yet you do not know the law?” On and on he ranted. The said law is so catchy that I resist the urge to go through my copy of the 1999 constitution. If it is not there, it will lose the magical taste. It might be in one of those many books of by-laws.

One thing is sure, Nigerian politicians are more educated than this my Oga at the top. They obey this law to the letter because to be an ex-convict can be damaging.

This must be why no close friends or neighbours of a politician suffer lack of basic amenities. Farm roads in the hometown of a former Aso Rock number two are tarred with good drainage. If in the middle of a Lagos suburb you suddenly run into good road network and “steady” power supply, a commissioner or legislature once lived there or still does.

When one pipe snakes out of a politician’s 10-foot high fence to meet a community’s daily water needs, that politician does not want to be charged with failure to provide necessary.

So you are not fortunate enough to have a Special Assistant to the Special Adviser on Road Navigation to a minister’s driver living in your area? How is that my business? I am coping. So you can. Just relocate or bear the meaning of being a Nigerian under leaders that suddenly discovered so many pairs of slippers at their disposal. Deciding which to wear for morning tea, wine sampling or cocktail now takes all their time.

Better still, just be patient. One of the multitudes of confusing elections will soon begin. That is when you realise our politicians are well-read and obey this particular law to the letter. They will locate you wherever you live to provide you necessary. Just be sure who you collect necessary from.

They are very closely-related. To narrow the margin of confusion, just mark them down by their owner’s names: Ovie’s Party, Otigbu’s Party, Oboh’s Party, and so on. It is important so that you do not collect necessary from same party twice. Remember, they are well read. Just that they lack ideologies. No big deal. Who needs any other ideology apart from Appropriation skills.

Now, what happened to that father that went against this law? My colleague ran around and was told the case would go to court in two days! He was told to advise the man not to say anything in court. “Just accept that you failed to provide necessary.” But trust prosecutors. Father was probed, needled, tickled and harangued until he lost it and started to question the rationale behind being told how to run his home.

The magistrate promptly sent him to two full weeks in detention. When he came out looking like capital letter ‘I’, the magistrate moved the court to his house. Yes! Clerk, prosecution and all in the man’s sitting room, where a half tuber of yam worsened the man’s case as one that was good at failing to provide necessary. How it ended? You will have to wait. I am still trying to convince this Oga about the memoir.

Meanwhile, whether you want to buy a plot of land, build or rent a house, look out for where a government official lives or is likely to move into. You will be surprised what necessary even a local government councillor can provide. What is your business if, until the last elections, he was a tout? You want good roads, water and security.

They are sure where he lives. Even the light that spills over his fence into your room through the window can make a lot of difference.

It is just my opinion.