Last week we xrayed the concepts of Cubanisation and Cubanamania and linked them to the goat, which always broke the pot any time it had the opportunity because the pot had dealt and continues to deal wickedly with goat heads over the years. Today, we continue our discourse on the Cubana phenomenon and we start with the definition of new Cubanistic terms. Cubanamania and Cunanaities refer to situations in which everybody and everything is possessed and overrun by the spirit of Cubana; these are situations of extreme Cubanaisim and Cubanistic tendencies. As for Cubanaities I hope you still remember Reggaemylitis! One of my students, Muideen, enriched the definition of terms by introducing ‘Cubanalisation’, a situation in which one feels that he owns the state.
A lot has been said about the Oba carnival including the desecration of the solemnity of burials and funerals; unnecessary showmanship and outlandish ostentatiousness, exhibisitionism and obscenity, abuse and misuse of the Naira ( which is already battered beyond recognition in the marketplace), ridiculous behaviours like presenting 46 live cows and boxes of money, throwing bundles of money at people, promoting wrong social values. ‘objectification of women as money and fun seeking sluts’( real BIG grammar) and turning the mothers burial into an ofala in the process of which the essence of her life and death was forgotten and unwittingly setting up another contest for the ‘funeral ceremony of the decade’
Read Also: Obi Cubana: Lessons in entrepreneurship, Africapitalism?
I think the whole thing was preplanned. This is evidenced by the noise, the enviable quantity and quality of attendees and everything around the Oba affair. Even though he claimed not to be a noisy person, I believe that he, the Chief Priest or one of his ‘boys’ hired a social-media consultant for the show and that is why the list of all donors of cow and cash was published realtime online. He had told one of his friends that after his mother’s burial, some people would be in a hurry to die. But what is the guarantee that such people would attract a Cubanistic funeral? He had even explained that the mother died while they were planning an 80th birthday celebration and thus her death before 80 was turned into a celebration. However, I also believe that some of the plans were not undertaken by the man himself and that certain things took lives of their own, beyond his wildest expectation.
As for spraying, it is in our character, but we all know where it started
I have always loathed ostentatious funeral ceremonies. One of my first interventions when I started ‘media-activism’ 32 years ago ( when I was at UI), was a diatribe against ostentatious funerals. My original views on this matter were influenced by the novellet we read in Class1 at Awka-Etiti High School. It was about Eze, who was withdrawn from school because his late father’s assets were frittered away so as to give the dead a befitting funeral. His greedy uncles who inflated the prices of everything (you see, it did not start today!) even accumulated some debts which they obviously left for the fatherless Eze to pay ‘whenable’( Eze Goes to School, Onuora Nzekwu). Unfortunately, when my father and later my mother were buried, we were a little bit guilty of the very act I had condemned. For my father, who died about 26 years ago, there were about 10 cows on parade while for my mother the services of the most exclusive undertaker was procured! So like madness; we are all Cubanistic but the degree of Cubanisation varies with individuals, place and circumstances. There is the old story of Mike Adenuga who gifted a cow to every street in Ijebu-Igbo during his mother’s funeral. You would remember the distinguished lady who ‘GLOed in glory’. There is even a young okoro man who just the other day buried his father with a fresh BMW worth more than N30m (some people swore that he would retrieve the car the following day but I was not there to confirm!)
As for spraying, it is in our character. But we all know where it started, those who are experts in it combined with Asoebi. If you don’t know, consult me privately. But we have been spraying, which was one of the reasons why the CBN rolled out a ‘decree’ on the abuse of the Naira. Unfortunately, they cannot or will not enforce the regulation ( I don’t think it is a Law) because the chief culprits are those who are too big to be held accountable. Some spray in Naira, some spray in Pounds and some spray in Euro. Just the other day, a ‘horrible’ member was spraying the thing like no man’s business from his balcony to his constituents somewhere in the north. Unfortunately, he could only spray N200 notes. Do you remember why Governor Ikpeazu suspended a top government functionary? Have you seen pastor Indaboski on duty? It is never complete without massive spraying. Have you not seen some followers spraying soft and hard currencies with purpose-built, gold-plated machines? These are the ones who did not like the stress of raising their hands up and down in the process of spraying and thus ordered gun-like machines to do the spraying for them!!!!
In ana-Igbo, the funeral is a communal event, involving the immediate family, the kindred, all their in-laws, the religious stakeholders and the ‘ikwunne’, especially when a woman is involved. However, in this case, the whole show was over-Cubanised. It was all about Obi- Cubana. Nobody even knows the name of the dead woman, who was and is just known as mama-Cubana. We did not hear about his siblings, his umunna or his ‘ikwunne’(mother’s relatives) especially the ‘umuada’ who always turned the funeral ceremony of every married woman into a warfront, where they would always exact a pound of flesh from the children who never came around or who did not take good care of the dead.
I am glad that Cubana himself is educated; he is a Lion (Graduate of UNN)! However, I also agree with those who argue that the extreme Cubanism and riotous ostentatiousness displayed at Oba will adversely affect peoples’ desire for education and the urge to go Cubanistic, and even set a new standard that would beat that of Cubana, without real hard work. These are people who would ask ‘Ichie Ik Muo, always reading, writing and speaking big grammar, what has he to show for it? The post-war group of Igbo youths did not go to school because survival was the key issue and as such there was no time and no money for schooling. The other set were those who did not go school because they were misled by the ostentatious display of wealth by those who had made money from trading. By 1980 when I was ‘corpering’ at Azare, Bauchi State, my erstwhile classmates at St Anthony’s Osumenyi, who stopped at Elementary 6 in 1970: had Peugeot 404 pickups ( the traders’ favourite then), houses at home and in the cities, wives and children and had started ‘chairmanning’ occasions were donations would be publicly announced. And yet, I was earning monthly N200, EXACTLY N2400 for the year because there was no ‘kola culture’ then. Thus, even though Cubana did not intend so, a group of young men would make greater unholy efforts to make it and even those who are already on would plan to create another benchmark.
Obi Cubana has money and his taste has been shaped by his money-reality. So, a pendant of $50000 and a coffin of N30m might well be petty cash for him. About 20 years ago, I was travelling to IgboUkwu with my small-boy and I paid for a full seat for him in the luxurious bus. Some people told me to my face that I was wasting money since I should have lapped the boy at no cost or secured an ‘attachment’ for him for half the cost. In 1982 when I started work at CCB, Enugu, I rented a 3-Bedroom flat and furnished it with everything that could please a young man. The beds (for all the rooms), chairs, centre and side tables, curtain box, dining table cost a princely N1000. The double-door fridge, the biggest in town, was N400; the gas cooker was N250 and the ceiling fan was N35. My maternal uncle, with whom I stayed in his one room, a coal -camp came visiting one day and flatly condemned my extravagance. That was before I bought my good old 504 for N8800. So, extravagance and ostentatiousness depends on the material reality of the person in question.
Our people say that he who has people is greater than he who has money, that the way the wooden gong would hail somebody is a function of the kind of person he is; that what matters is not one’s physical size but what the person does and that a king whose booth is filled up when he went a-visiting to another town is due to reciprocication by those he had also filled their booths previously. As somebody said, the crowd at Oba was not rented, it was bought with many years of friendship. I have not met Cubana before but I believe that he is a good and generous fellow who sacrificially loves his fellow human beings. The story of how he has helped several people, including those who had become billionaires through his intervention is a testimony. That is why they call him Okpata-ozuoha; the one whose wealth spreads to all. That is why I tend to agree with E Ochonu who sees Cubana as an embodiment of associative entrepreneurship
My mother Celina Erico-Umuagbala Ezeamaluchi Muo died in 2013. She was an accomplished entrepreneur; a forerunner in all sorts of businesses that have today become the vogue: rentals (before 1980) supermarket (as long as I can remember) fast food (chin-chin, chop-one, etc), produce(oil, kola-nuts) since 1990 and fashion designing since the 1960s. She was an entrepreneur that changed with the times, probably in tune with the advice of Anthony Robbins that: If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten. Dunu who preached at the vigil Mass 21/3/12, declared that all we did in life was just show [vanity, shakara, treating things that were not as if they are). I do not know where he is now but I do not know what he would have said if he had seen what happened at Oba
Cubana has buried his mother but he continues to Cubanise. He has Cubanised Oba youths, Cubanised Anambra State Police Command and just the other day, Cubanised UNN while his friends still drop publicly displayed boxes of cash for him. Why can’t they give him cheques or do cash transfers? Maybe one of the principles of Cubanism is boxed-cash donations. Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics should hurriedly measure the Cubana Effect: The impact of the Oba show on the local economy ( Oba & Anambra State), on the Events Industry ( planning, rentals, ambiance, item7, security), Telecoms, especially data and other related matters. They should also compare the Cubana Extravagance with that of Buhari, taking into cognisance that Buhari’s son is an unemployed graduate and that his father is our chief servant, who did not have enough money to buy his nomination form.. just the other day. Yes now!
Meanwhile, I hope to see Cubana one of these days.
