CONTRAINDICATIONS OSIFO ATAGA: The parable of _bekun- bekun_

Sometimes I  feel so blessed for my more than average understanding of the Yoruba language. To tweak Chinua Achebe, language is the palm oil with which we savour life and living. And for the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria, the Yoruba language is the heart of his being. Of course all native languages are rich in their original essence but Yoruba language which is deeply segued into her lores are truly rich, fluid, malleable and witty.

As the drug, sex and murder saga of the Ataga affair seized the Nigerian news sphere these couple of weeks this Yoruba proverb wouldn’t stop ringing in my subconscious: eni ti o yo tan ti o ni ki won fun oun  ni 

bekun.

Roughly rendered, it speaks about one who after a full stomach, demands for gut- buster for dessert.

This proverb speaks to the vices of incontinence, greed, lack of discipline, poor judgement, poor value orientation, among others. 

It must be stated upfront that loss of life here is most unfortunate and that our heartfelt condolences go to all who directly suffer deep grief from the incident.

We must also state that this is by no means a value judgement of those involved in this affair for it may have happened to the best of us. Further, the jury is still abroad as to what really transpired in that AirBnB apartment in Lekki on the 13th of June. Law officials are still at work.

But in a public affair of this magnitude, we must always look out for the takeaways for the improvement and betterment of our society. This basically, is what this piece seeks to do.

Now the story in a nutshell:

One Mr Osifo Ataga, 50-year old was in an amour with a 21-year old undergraduate, Chidinma Ojukwu.

He is, in today’s parlance, a big boy, who lives in perhaps the choicest speck of the land known as Banana Island. You most likely have to be worth a couple of billion naira to own a property on this Lagos waterside haven.

Well, Osifo is said to be an entrepreneur who owns an Internet television outfit. He is a father of two children from an estranged wife who is an oil industry magnate. She reportedly lives away from him in faraway Abuja with the children while he’s here in Lagos.

As told by the prime suspect in this murder saga, Chidinma, she had dated Osifo for about five months but on this fateful day, after a feast of food and drink and drugs and sex; Osifo had demanded for even more sex. As her story goes, she had declined, and in the ensuing scuffle, she had to stab her several times until he expired in the roil of his blood.

Chidinma had managed to escape the scene and fled, not to the police but to her father’s abode. Not in tearful and baleful remorse but to plot the pillage of the dead man’s bank account.

While the body of Osifo suffered rigor mortis, Chidinma, the self-confessed grim reaper, was rigorously foraging the dead man’s bank account. But the innocent looking material girl was only able to siphon N350,000.

There she was, ensconced in her father’s nest, finagling with her sim cards to cover her tracks when law officers knocked her door.

As we were to learn, poor Mr Ojukwu, Chidinma father wouldn’t hear of it; not his little baby and in any case, not on his life that his little gal would be marched out of his house and into oblivion. He had to be overpowered and carried along with his baby girl. He probably watched his daughter sing like a bird at the police station.

This is encapsulates Nigeria’s most sizzling story of the day.

As stated above, we have only Chidinma’s confessional to work with. But out there in internet land, there are about a dozen twists in the Ataga tale as well as salacious conspiracy theories. But we are here to draw some lessons from this less than salubrious saga.

Lesson One: THE BEKUN BEKUN PARABLE. When a man’s belly is full, and he is sated, and he has no worries in life, he is at his most vulnerable. He is bereft of grace.

It is at moments like these that a man challenges his Chi to a wrestling contest. He is engrossed in all manner of excesses.

At a moment like this a man would indulge in sexual tryst with his child’s age mate.

Unbeknownst to him, he would order for bekun bekun when he revels in an orgy of drinking, drugging and sexual romping. He would have no worries in the world; the excruciating pains and penury in the land that daily travail majority of his countrymen are all but fairytales to him.

Lesson Two: REVISITING JABEZ. Bible records this fellow in just two short verses (1Chronicles 4:9-10), but Jabez remains among the most notable figures in the holy scriptures for his short but powerful prayer. Paraphrased, Jabez asks God to bless him and expand his coast but he sneaks in an important caveat which many readers miss. Jabez also asks God to keep him from evil that it (the wealth) might not bring him grief.

Not many know that wealth comes with peculiar grief and without sufficient grace and feet planted firmly on the ground, wealth ruins a man faster than lack.

Lesson Three: VACUITY OF UNEARNED LUCRE. There’s wealth, there’s affluence, there’s riches and there’s Lucre. While it takes some time and toil to build wealth and attain affluence, the quest for Lucre, especially the filthy type, has taken ascendancy today.

In the days of yore, it takes decades of sweat and toiling to accumulate wealth in billions. In today’s generation, they want to ‘blow’, they want to ‘hammer’, they seek ‘ego mbute’ (that’s Igbo for hefting quantum cash as against counted cash).

This explains why a 21-year old would kill in cold blood instead of facing the drudgery of work and bean-counting. That is why youth of today do yahoo, yahoo; that is why they would rather kidnap; that is why we have treasury looting of the heinous kind: government officials stealing public funds in billions…

But the other side of the coin is that such ill-gotten Lucre is bound to ruin the the grabber. Imagine that Chidinma managed to escape with a billion of Osifo’s money undetected, your guess would be as good as mine how her life would turn out. She’s more likely to come to grief as Jabez feared. 

Lesson four: PARENTING: THE PROPHET ELI SYNDROME. Back to the bible, Prophet Eli was God’s elect, a model of godliness. But he was not exemplary in parenting. Before his eyes, his children became an abomination unto heaven. While he worshipped God fervently,  he forgot to instil some godliness in his children.

What father would have his child out of school for about a year; what father would watch his undergraduate child roam the wilds of the city like a stray canine? Essential fees at UNILAG for instance, are so negligible that no child who has a father should be out of school on that account. Not when the child is in 300 level. A man would beg and borrow to see his child through at this stage.

Finally, as much as possible, couples must make a degree of sacrifice for the sake of their children.

Consider the fact that both super-affluent Osifo and penny-counting Ojukwu have impaired marriages as we are told.

Shall we then conclude that a damaged family is a fertile ground for all manner of individual and social havoc?