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By Frank Meke.
In every nation, a time comes for a solem assembly. A time for deep reflection, to reaccess and possibly reform the society.
A solemn assembly can also be brutish and bloody, such as was done by Jehu against the worshippers of Baal. It was bloody, very bloody.
It does also mean that a solemn assembly can wipe out corruption, deception, greed, avarice, and ranting liars in the system. Depending upon the call of the charge and change mantra, a solemn assembly can also hound down profiteers and rocketeers of discord and disharmony in the system.
Now that Efcc is looking for the white lion of kogi, it is wise and should do good to the lions of thievery, accusers of the brethren, profiteers from discord(s), selfcrooners of midnight witchdoom, premium noise makers, aggregators of industry history and pathfinders of divide and rule in our sector to watch out for trap to which may consume them soon.
The new deal in town , in our tourism, is to hogwash madam tourism minister. She was led like a lamb to Ekiti to cut tape to a hill party, sorry, hike, to which She never climbed or hiked, rather She retired to the comfort of Ikogosi resort to rest.
Unknown to Padi Odesins in the system( fools) , apology to King Sunny Ade, the crooners of her sudden visibility and emergence in tourism do not know that the minister was carefully dodging bullets from fearless kidnappers that have terrorised rural communities in Ekiti state in recent times.
After the razzmatazz, they flew her into the city of excellence, lagos, her state, and she went off her prepared cue and expressed disappointment with the disorganised environment of Epe, a local community in lagos famed for its tilapia fishes and historical Monuments. Her hired and self-appointed public affairs officers got offended with tourism journalists who boldly reported her ” exuberant confessions” and upbraided them. Wonders shall never end!
To draw curtains on their dramatic tourism episode, they arranged an award for her as the most performing and proactive tourism minister Nigeria ever had. It was a Fuji House of Commotion stuff, and you can see from video clips of the tourism award flick that the woman was embarrassed by such an odious award.
Like fela kuti crooned in his hit album, zombie, them never finish. They curated her to the biggest industry, “deduction” ceremony, where all you need for certification is to pose for cameras and for a ” wash” fee. Trust our venerable minister, She posed for the cameras and numbled anything just be seen as being tourism correct and arranged free lunch for the audience.
And like infamous sea pirates of Somalia, they shipped the minister back to Abuja and showing off her fast learning curve as a tourism mentee, the minister ran into the murky waters of nigerian tourism policy review.
Sleep walking, she anointed and announced the committee to go find a document she probably had not read .Even her team of “experts,” non of them ever, could swear to have seen such document or the cover of the policy except those who hid it from being implemented all these years.
I won’t talk about any Dorothy to avoid being accused of making the infamous, famous. I was at the villa years back when obasanjo held court, the type of tourism solemn assembly which am canvassing today and where he ( obasanjo) dressed down the first copy of the policy as euro centric and threw it back to Adejuwon to rework.
Down the line, it was never implemented. It never saw light the day, and the money, our money went down the drain. In tourism, it has been one step forward, twenty missed steps backwards. A cursed motionless picture.
Please let us not talk about lia Mohammed except we want to invite him to explain to us plenty of tourism issues that went wrong during his time. Though there were insiders collaborators and saboteurs in the ministry who part took in the faild surgical operation of tourism, and they as usual head the new charade simulation of tourism and it’s sad. It won’t be a bad idea to call them out to participate in solemn assembly and give them the Jehu treatment.
I hear too that the minister wants to be taken seriously” serious” and we can glean that her benefactors weekly arranged for a special appearance for her before television cameras, dressed in Batik materials to show she is working very hard to ” turn around the fortunes of Nigerian tourism.
I won’t argue with those who trade on her ” newness” to the sector as a plea bargain to force her ” arrest, imprisonment and kidnap” by a hired team tourism frontier experts., one thing is certain though and that is we have another lai Mohammed on the tourism seat.
We have a lot of funny people and tourism feitish priests in Nigeria. They speak from both sides of the mouth, and usually eye ntda and nihotour positions cleverly mingled as ideas of may. The month of May, this year is a special month, and I expect you to know.
If you are in this industry and are awake, you will notice that some fifth columnists are trying hard to redraw the Nigerian tourism map. Out of 36 states and Abuja, they have made the minister, a tourism badge bearer, for two states only. She has been certified as an expert by her new mentors, and she can speak to us from her hallowed chamber. That’s the end of the story.
Soon, lola Ade John will be minister of tourism for a few, galvanised for a few and answerable for a few. And the beats go on. They have provided her an office and a car and assured her of media protection, and the pollution goes on and on!
And for all of us including ftan as’ padi odesins” ( fools), when their charms clears away from her eyes and she regains her strides, that’s if she is not asked to go back home to make dinner for her for hired sycophants, then the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria, will call us to come pick up the broken pieces of the sector.
Some hours ago, we , both the tourism and aviation media, gathered into the wee hours of the night to witness the bearing of Nigeria biggest travel industry players, the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies. Trust us, we took to clinical interrogation of the country tourism future and arrived at an agreement that our place holders in the co twined sectors and including culture are just wasting our time. One minister was carefully named garrulous, another, learners badge bearer and the third one, a confused Youth Corper.
If you can interpret our scenario very well, there
is no doubt we have been handed over to new task masters, slave merchants to eat us raw and reduce us to skeletons. We are going back again to the trenchies. We go gree?
