This is one of the occasions when the title did not come easy. I had considered 3 other titles and decided on: Cubanisation, Cubanisim, Cubanamania, Cubanaities and matters related thereto. (You see, I am not a lawyer but I have been surrounded by so many lawyers that I have become an ‘honorary lawyer’. This is for those who always look for my trouble.) However, early in the morning of 24/7/21, the Spirit reminded me of a song which gave rise to above title. I am not a beer-parlour patron but in my younger days, I used to ocassionally visit the beer-parlour for ‘uka-mgbede’ ( benediction)with my friends. And while they were quaffing countless units of ‘bottled poison, I would deal with chilled Cocacola, my best drink of all times. Unfortunately, I had to abandon it on the advice of these Medics who would always tell you to ‘run’ from what you like most. And while that was going and as men were overrun by the beerparlour spirit, the tempo would change and we would start singing with a mixture of sonorous and cracked voices supported with uncordinated ‘noise’ from the bottles, which had been converted into gongs with the help of spoons knives and whatever. One of the most popular songs then was eghu bute ite nya tiwaa… otego ite ji mebe isi eghu ihe! This simply means: The goat that gets hold of the claypot should break it without compunction because since ages, the pot had dealt mercilessily and ruthlessly with goat-heads. And you can be sure that plates of goat-head had just been served! Funny enough, from some videos and images flying all over the place, the goats have even gone beyond claypots to attack aluminium pots, including those ones on the fire where probaby goatheads are being boiled. Thus, the title was changed again.
It suddenly occurred to me that Cubana et al were dealing mercilessly with money because it has dealt with them and their ilk so treacherously in the past. They were in effect humiliating money and saying to it: ‘you are nothing’ as they indulged in reverse-humiliation of money, for having humiluated them wickedly in their earlier days and still humuliating some of their kins today. And then, the same Spirit reminded me of my ocassional practice when I was a bank manager in Kaduna, those good old days when bank-managers still had time to go for lunch-break and the closing time depended on whenever the cash ‘ballanced’. I would place a bundle of dirty Naira notes on the floor and turn it into an emergency football, kicking it around and advising my staff to treat the cash as nothing but an ordinary stock or else they would not survive the resulting temptations. As these thoughts were ‘running around my head’ and in the process of interrogating the science and art of Cubanisation, I remembered that one DOT-fellow had described the whole show at Oba as a ‘pass-over feast’. That was Ifeanyi Cletus who argued that ‘The lavishness and bastardisation of cash( an aspect of Cubanisation) has historical and spiritual connotation. After the worst economic strangulation and annihilation meted out on their parents in 1970(the obnoxious £20 policy), the children rose out of the ashes of that degradation and so, just as the Jews celebrate the feast of Passover every year to commemorate their emancipation from servitude, Nd’Igbo seize every opportunity to celebrate the £20 economic Passover by lavishing hard and soft currencies to commemorate economic survival’. No be me talk this one.
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People would even borrow a Lobito shopping bag and stuff it with ‘bend-down’ things, just to create the impression that they belonged!
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When on 15/7/21, I started reading about the eye-popping events at Oba, I believed that the Oba-Man was just looking for what to do with money and my first reaction was to send my shopping list. I simply asked those who knew him to inform him that my car needed replacement ASAP, that my Church was looking for money to complete its building project and that the road to my abode could do with some ‘refurbishing’. I wanted to leave it at that but I noticed that I could not and thus, I gave some time to the coordinated ‘madness’ that engulfed Oba and indeed, the social media world for a few days. I confess that as of last month, (July 2021), I did not actually know what or who Cubana was. I have heard about the High Priest and I believed that Cubana was a shrine for high profile fellas. Even now, with a benefit of hindsight, the shrine analogy still holds because from what I have seen, heard and read, the Cubana hangouts are exclusive shrines, where those with deep pockets ( both saints and sinners)worship. How can somebody drag 46 cows, ‘live’ to a funeral? How cam somebody throw bundles of hard-to-find fresh notes at people (the beginning of the end for our good old spraying)? How can some people showcase upfront, the raw cash they would donate or throw as the case might be? And how did this soft-speaking and sense-full young man attract such an assortment of guests including DCP Kyari Indaboski Odumeje and Davido. How come that the UGM went on leave during that period? How can someone pay fromN500,000 to NIm. for a bottle of wine sold for less than N5000 about 100 meters away just because he has been consumed by the spirit of Cubanaism? One Emma Awazie experienced first-hand how well-dressed men were bribing bouncers so as to gain access into Cubana Club Owerri to spend their own money as well as the shock he and his friends experienced when they received their bill at the club ‘The bill sat on our table like an orphan for 1 hour. Nobody said a word. The music was like noise to my ears and the AC was blowing heat to my forehead. I kept asking myself ‘wetin carry me enter Cubana…VIP section for that matter…please just enter any Cubana club in your city and buy only 50cl of water; just water.(Online, 18/7/21) . That is what I call ‘The Lobito effect’. Lobito was a first-class boutique at Enugu in the Early 80s and you did not belong if you had not shopped at Lobito. People would even borrow a Lobito shopping bag and stuff it with ‘bend-down’ things, just to create the impression that they belonged!
And funny enough, 3 days after Cubanisation, the contradiction of the Nigerian society became manifest when somebody in one of our platforms died and there was a need to raise money for a ‘befitting funeral’. The first 10 donors raised 13,000 ( the highest was N2000!), an amount not enough to buy the ropes with which the cows of the High Priest were tethered. That is our reality!
Back to business, I wish to start with an operational definition of terms. Cubanisation and cubanising is the art of being Cubanaistic: spending money as if it were going out of fashion,good networking, doing good, wild and cash-guzzling partying, revelry and riotous mix of this and that, ‘opendential’ reportage of everything( cost of casket, pendant, cows and cash donated, crates of money to be stoned, and people scrambling for roasted stand-up cow) . Cubanaism is the philosophy, principles, theory and practice of Cubanisation. When you have got used to these terms, others shall be added onto you.
Now that we are through with the background to the study, including operational definition of terms, I wish to touch briefly on the jocular aspects of the whole show. Comedic things appeal to me because in the good old days, I was a small-time humour merchant, being a pro-bono MC here and there. So, with the eyes of a retired comedian, I first saw the Oba carnival and its aftermath from a different perspective. Some people mimicked the Catholic Church by constructing a prayer to St Mama Cubana or Holy Mama Cubana, asking her to ‘pray for us’ or to ask his son to send us some cash! Some said that PMB had brainstormed with PYO (That is the VP) and that the government, which borrows recklessly should go to borrow from Cubana and the funniest part of it was that the Great Lai responded to it,’ swearing’ that the FG never thought of borrowing from the Oba-man. While China, after seeing the absurd opulence at Oba, beleived that Nigeria was just pretending to be poor and gave PMB 3 months to liquidate all its indeptedness. Victor Osuagwu reported that his dead money has be appearing to him in dreams insisting on a repeat-funeral while one miserable fellow suddenly remembered that he was from Oba because his mother appeared to him in a dream to inform him that her husband was not his husband; that his real father was an ‘away-match’ man from Oba. There was this man who cursed his son for asking him if he would bury his mother like Cubana, reminding him that he is from Ugwuoba, not from Oba. Some one even showed PMB watching the Oba show on Dot TV! And before long, posters emerged of Cubana for Presidenty of a country ( United Towns of Anambra State)where the currency is, you guessed right, Cubana. Some people have given Mama-Cubana the Ghost of the year award and the ceremony its self, funeral of the year award. And of course, at Oba, the practice of stoning people with wraps and bundles of fresh notes debutted. This is the first time people were being stoned and they were enjoying it!
