She is known simply as Sisi Keji. She has always been known as Sisi even now that she looks 70. Many say she can’t be more than 50 but she definitely looks a lot older. Not even the push-up bras could do anything for her breasts that have obviously seen better days and been through rough hands. The bleaching creams have done their worst. What is left of her skin is more like a dog’s hide ravaged by skin-rashes. The makeup she covers her face with day and night can no longer hide the hard life she had been through. It is the greenish varicose veins that criss-cross her arms and legs that made a lot of young residents of the community conclude that she’s an old woman.
Sisi Keji, her smile is still sweet but those who have known her for years said she was a lot sweeter as a young girl. Her now dry curves used to be voluptuous and inviting. Men drooled when she swayed and swung those hips. They said she had a tantalizing way of pushing her chest out even when she was in a sitting position. But hey, do not mistake Sisi Keji for a beauty queen. All she was was a prostitute, a retired tired prostitute. In nicer parlance, a commercial sex worker. Nobody in the community really knew her story in full. There are different versions of how she became what she became. Some said she was a heady child who thought she was smarter than her parents . Others said she was a victim of poverty. But one of the old men in the area said Sisi Keji took to selling her body when her parents threw her out because she got pregnant out of wedlock. The old man’s version seemed easier to believe because Bolu, Sisi Keji’s son is evidence of the old man’s story.
Boluwatife (as the Lord pleases) is Sisi Keji’s tall, handsome but frivolous useless son. The son she did not train (abiiko)or perhaps, the one that refused the training of her mother (akoogba). Bolu might have been what God wanted for his mother but he certainly didn’t turn out as either his mother or God wanted. With the kind of ‘wares’ his mother hawked, Bolu was never short of cash because Sisi Keji was never short of clients. They said she was ‘sweet, deep and kind’. So they kept coming back and the money tap kept flowing. Soon, it was easy for Bolu to become a spoilt child. He dropped out of school. He dropped out of vocational training. What did he need to work for? His mother provided food and shelter. He always had enough to buy data and airtime for his girlfriends. He even took them to suya and noodles joints regularly. As far as he could see, he was a rich boy. He was a local champ who lived large (in his estimation) without having to break a sweat. But all Bolu was was local, not champion, though he couldn’t see it. He could not see that his ‘designer shirts and trousers’ were from bend-down-select boutiques. He thought the world began and ended with second-hand sneakers and heavy-but-fake jewelry that he wore with the denims that he sagged.
For people who live like Bolu, there’s always a day of rude awakening waiting not far down the road. People who believe in easy life, free money usually end up on the hard lane. As Bolu soon found out, commercial sex workers have a retirement age. The age where breasts that once stood at attention become fallen heroes. Retirement can be a tough season for a retiree for many reasons but it is more devastating for the lazy, free-loading dependent son of a prostitute.
Bolu woke up penniless one day and no client came for his mother. Then the landlady (or is it Madam?) threw their properties in the rain because Sisi Keji had become a liability. Bolu could not imagine living in a poor house. His rich days were over but he couldn’t accept it. He raged. He protested. He called his mother names. He blamed everybody but himself. How could his mother have forgotten to save for the rainy day? What did she do with all that money she made over the years? The Madam was a witch, an opportunist , a user who heartlessly threw them out after using Sisi Keji.
As for Bolu, he had no blame. He had no sin. It was everybody’s fault that he didn’t learn a trade or finish secondary school. It was everybody’s fault that a fully grown-up adult opted to live off his mother instead of bailing his mother from the hard life of a prostitute.
How is Nigeria’s story different from Bolu’s story? How is our oil well different from Sisi Keji’s deep commercial well? How did our oil wealth become the basis for our oily poverty? Simple, we just couldn’t see beyond the easy life, the fake ‘chains’ and myopic enjoyment. What we called life has no life at all.
Like the son of the prostitute, Nigeria has lived like there is no tomorrow. Like Bolu, we decided that breaking a sweat was for nations that have no natural resources. Now the prostitute is old, haggard and no longer bringing home the dough. Like the clients of Sisi Keji are no longer loving and holding her sagging breasts, the world is moving on to firmer mounds, breaking new grounds. Maybe our oil is special and will never run dry but does it still have the value it used to have? Can the proceeds of our easy life carry our national burden? We can rage, protest till we foam in the mouth. We can blame the current governors and the President, it is what it is. We fell a long time ago as a nation and we have remained on our lazy belly either praying for manna, too ashamed to crawl our way back up or simply preferred our docile state of foolhardiness.
In our lazy national mind, we expect the dough to knead itself. We expect the crude oil to refine and export itself. When that magic didn’t happen, we resorted to flaring gas that we should be exporting and started exporting crude that we ought to be refining. But we are still oil-rich, we kept telling ourselves. The more we recite that line, the poorer we got over the years.
Even God is wondering why he didn’t give all the oil he gave us to Saudi Arabia or United States of America.
According to Worldometer, Nigeria is number 10 on the list of countries with oil reserves and Ethiopia is at the bottom as number 98. Below our 10th position and at number 11 is America. Also there on the list are Qatar, China, Mexico, Brazil, India, Oman, Egypt, Malaysia, Gabon, Italy, Turkey etc. Why did I bring up the list? Is there any of these other countries that Nigerians are not queuing to relocate to? Go to any of their visa sections in Nigeria, see the desperation on the faces of Nigerians looking for visas to these countries. What are other oil-rich nations doing right that we are doing wrong? Oh, and don’t think it is just because we have a mono-product economy. We are just bad managers of good fortunes. We just expect our work to do itself. Nigeria is perhaps the only country that sits on her billions, preferring to talk about it instead of rolling up her sleeves and digging the money out. We’d rather sit on our gold than wear it. We are that crude.
Let’s just export the crude because it’s easier. Let’s get expatriate companies to do the exploration. They can just pay us rent. That was how smart dudes, like Sisi Keji’s customers, came, explored, dug, sucked and exported our fortunes and we convinced our lazy thoughtless selves to import what we exported.
Saudi Arabia, whose oil accounts for 40 percent of its GDP knows better than to refuse to do anything about its crude. Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of petroleum in the world. Yet, way back in 2016, the government of that county launched its vision 2030 targeted at reducing its dependency on oil. But here, what does Nigeria plan to diversify into when both followers and leaders profited over the years from refineries that did not work? Unlike Nigeria that went on a sugar-daddy-spending spree and vulgar wealth display, Saudi channeled its boom of the 70s and 80s into development projects that turned a once under-developed country into a modern state.
Saudi put together series of five-year plans (1970-1975 and 1976-1980) and did everything to tie down their oil wealth by increasing food production, improving education, vocational trainings, health services, transportation, among others.
In Nigeria, like Bolu, we had elders who taught us that wealth is a visitor. If you do not offer it a chair, it will move somewhere else. Yet we found ways to spend on ephemeral things such as brand new convoy of cars every four years. We saw nothing wrong in admiring the wealth of other thinking nations instead of attracting admiration. Now, we have moved from being brilliant and blessed to exporting our first class graduates to clean the butts of others, all in the name of a nemesis called Japa.
Like Sisi Keji’s spoilt kid living on easy wealth, Nigeria thinks and behaves like this easy money will always be there. Somehow, those who have led us did zilch to diversify the economy. Pray, what did they think would happen? That signing bilateral agreements and attending every international event will make us rich? They should ask Sisi Keji and her breasts that are now looking at her toes. They should ask Bolu the real definition of fake life. People who pretend to be busy doing nothing will end up with nothing to show for their fake business. Let us keep attending all global events. Let us keep pretending that this oil will carry our budget. The poverty that is waiting for us all at the end of 2025 is doing press-ups. A nation that has only fossil fuel, cannot stop oil theft, cannot farm or set up food processing factories is like Sisi Keji. An unthinking, unplanning nation who make daily money and quickly spend it like Agbero will soon find out the hard way that old prostitutes are of no use to themselves or their lazy children.
I remember now the words of Alhaji Aliko Dangote in April 2013 at a breakfast meeting. ‘The consequences of our continued dependence on oil is going to be worse than Boko Haram.’ That was 12 years ago, right? Ask yourself, what do we complain about more these days, hunger or Boko Haram?
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