‘Jolly Boy,’ Death Of A Lazy Man, By Yusuf Ozi-Usman

Way back in 1991, I remember writing in my weekly column in the rested Newsfirst magazine, published by me in Kano, an article titled: “This Noisy Nigeria.” In it, I said that from the day Nigeria came into being as a single entity, up to the time of the battle for independence, through the first set of the leaders, it had been noises all through. In short, the underlining behavioural pattern of Nigerians is noise.
That is why one with such knowledge of history and belief is not surprised at the noises that have been dogging the Muhammadu Buhari’s government and which are trying to deafen the people in the neighbourhood. The noises were also not strange to the previous governments, including that of Goodluck Jonathan, depending on which part of the country the noises were coming from.
However, the one involving one Chief Ekanem Edet, alias Jolly Boy, who committed suicide in far away Mbiabong Itam in Itu Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, a PDP-controlled state, and was said to have left a suicide note blaming President Buhari for his action was more like a fiction than real.
The Jolly Boy, 50, was said to have blamed his decision to commit suicide on the prevailing hardship which had taken a toll on his life since the nation leader came to power on May 29, 2015.
Information has it that a few days before his death, the father of two who was selling Ogogoro (local gin), cigarettes and other stimulants, was complaining of the current economic crunch which had impacted on the living standard of the masses.
Newsmen who caused the story to be published in their newspapers confirmed that they did not see the suicide note, but that some relatives said that Jolly Boy, a former village secretary, blamed the President (Buhari) for inflicting unbearable pains and hardship on the people.
A local Pastor, Bassey Asuquo was quoted as saying that the deceased used to complain that his petty business was no longer fetching him enough money to take care of his basic needs such as food and clothing for his family as well as pay his children’s school fees.
“He was always blaming Buhari for his economic policies that do not allow the common people to afford basic commodities like garri, bread, yam, rice, beans, oil and kerosene and other essential goods.”
Though, President Buhari has obviously blocked his ears to such impossible noises that have been defining his government, especially, from the South East and South South, as he focuses on how to steer the country from doom, this one, of a person willingly killing himself, probably after taken a heavy dose of Ogogoro, is laughable and foolish.
Of course, it has become fashionable, and indeed, an established norm for people to make noise, and even engage in pure lie to make the noise sweet to the ears of the gullible.
Like the recent one in which some liars said that a bag of rice was being sold in Umuahia at N9,000 whereas the same was being sold at N22,000 in the North. According to the noise makers cum liar, President Buhari, who they wanted to vilify for alleged anti-people economic policies, is deliberately killing his own people in the North. The lie was invented also just to elicit hatred for the government of Buhari.
The trend in the noisy situation has been that the noises often swing, depending on where the leader comes from at a particular time: the noises would come from parts of the North if the President is from the South and vice versa. This is to some extent.
One thing about the noise makers and their ‘victims’’ is that many leaders ignore them so as to have quality time to plan how to develop the country.
However, it is painful and funny to think that the noise making has boiled down to a situation where a full grown up adult, with family: a wife and two sons, would take his life noisily!
This is an unnecessary dimension to the Nigerian factor, which the Buhari Change mantra may address.
Jolly Boy must have been a very lazy man, and ignorant not to know that the era Nigeria is being made to go into by the Buhari regime is that of self-worth and self-sustaining for all the citizens, through agriculture, which he (Jolly Boy) could have done quietly at the back of his house, and lived happily ever after.

Who knows, maybe, his customers; those who used to throng his ogogoro drinking joint to get drunk and misbehaved have joined the Change train and returned to farm, leaving him with no one to patronize him, resulting in his frustration. Bringing President Buhari into his fate, if it was true his death note indicated something of sort, was ridiculous. Just like other noises around Buhari government are.
Late Jolly Boy, to say the least, died of pure laziness.

He must have been a very lazy man indeed! [myad]