This is not a treatise about Lagbaja the musician and any reference to him is merely in his relevance to the Lagbaja, Tamedu, Lamorin, Lakasegbe enigma.Since the days of Frank Olize as anchor of the Sunday night programme Newsline on NTA network service where he started the search for the elusive common man, the search has been on to unmask the enigma and what value he brings to the course and cause of national development. Because of what it represents as earlier mentioned, Lagbaja is a metaphor, an allegorical embodiment and representation of the mass of what is commonly referred to as the common man, a faceless but no less potent force in national economic and socio-political reckoning.So who is Lagbaja Is he masculine or is she feminine Since we cannot pin a face to the name, it would help to use the generic gender of male as a representation for everyone, male or female, boy or girl, who falls into that category. Is he as amorphous or as innocuous as we sometimes make him Is he any different from his co-travellers Tamedu, Lakasegbe and Lamorin or are they the same wine in different bottlesIn this discourse, I want to attempt to put a face to Lagbaja and his cohorts as vibrant, pulsating and core dimensions of our national existence. Mind what I said; it is just an attempt! By looking at what Lagbaja and co. are involved in, we may be able to decode who they are.When ballot boxes disappear during elections, thus disenfranchising millions of registered voters, and the thieves are neither identified nor apprehended even if contrived figures are released as results.Lagbaja has been at work. Various governments claim to have spent colossal sums of money on equipping hospitals with infrastructure and medication. Yet when you go there, you have to buy everything from cotton wool to injection needles if you ever want to get well. Why Lakasegbe has been on the rampage, vandalising the equipment and plundering the medical store while turning round to lambast the government for poor health services when he or his kin have need to use the same public hospital he plundered earlier! Of course, being the enigma that he is, he is never apprehended. Who will catch the windTamedu is firmly seated in the civil service where he contrives curious memos to help a political office holder embezzle more funds. Of course his share is guaranteed. Most politicians know next to nothing about how to steal money from the treasury until they are guided by Tamedu who simply recedes to the background when the deed is done. In the event of a backlash, the naive politician carries the can! Tamedu continues to occupy his chair, waiting for the next initiate! At other times, he is there to ensure that files routinely disappear only to reappear when he has been settled.Lamorin is strategically positioned in uniform at the ports and land borders as an agent of government in Customs, NDLEA, NAFDAC, Police, making legitimate business transactions an impossibility through the imposition of unofficial levies that are sometimes double the value of the imported goods. Failure on the part of the importer to comply means a conspiratorial delay in clearing of his goods that eventually sees the goods incurring demurrage!Lagbaja parades the streets every day in his black uniform under the guise of checkpoints and stop-andsearch operations only with the sole aim of extorting money from his namesakes! In many cases, his greed has caused accidents that have recorded high fatalities. He simply disappears from the scene only to resurface later as a sympathiser and officer of the law to clear the human casualty debris from the accident scene.Lamorin will complain vehemently about the bad state of roads but has no qualms digging a ditch right across a newly constructed road to get a pipe or a wire to his house. Tamedu waits for the cover of night to remove in bits and pieces the very street lights he was awarded a multi-million naira contract to install. He bribes PHCN officials in order to avoid paying his electricity bill, but is the most strident in condemning endemic power failure. Because he wants ease of passage for his okada, Lakasegbe will tactically dismantle the demarcations on the road and turn round to lament the many accidents caused by inconsiderate and careless motorists! When there is a hold-up on a single lane road, the Lagbaja caucus wastes no time in creating additional lanes that ensure that those coming from the opposite direction are blocked...continued.FootnoteThe voter registration exercise is still on. If you have not registered, please go and do so. Tell your barber, your mechanic, your tailor, your shoemaker that you will need to see their voter registration card before you give them the next business. If you are a pastor, check the voters card of your members on Sunday!Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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