Cocoa farmers protested against the government over pricing issues
Okechuku, a man whose pride rivaled the girth of the village yam harvest, strode confidently into Umuofia’s bustling market square. His pickup, a chariot of rusted glory boasting the ubiquitous “4×4” badge, was his faithful steed. He parked it with a practiced thump, a manoeuvre that seemed to shout, “Behold! Okechuku, man of importance, has arrived!”
His errand was brief: to acquire a bag of exceptionally pungent smoked fish, rumoured to possess the power to summon ancestral spirits (or at least clear out the in-laws). He returned, nostrils twitching with anticipation, only to be met with an atrocity. Some imp of the night, some mischievous sprite, had defiled his beloved vehicle. Scratched into the paint, with what appeared to be a rusty nail and gleeful abandon, was “=16”.
Okechuku, normally a man of gentle disposition, erupted like a volcano. His voice, usually reserved for bartering prices at the yam festival, boomed across the marketplace. “Who dares defile my pickup with these. . . these mathematical obscenities?!”
He returned home, a thundercloud of righteous indignation. His wife, Ifiok, a woman whose wisdom could rival a council of elders, listened patiently to his woes. She then, with a sigh that only a woman who had endured years of Okechuku’s pronouncements on yam quality could muster, offered a solution.
“Okechuku,” she said, stirring a pot of Ogbono soup that could calm even the angriest spirit, “instead of lamenting this. . . this mathematical assault, why not embrace it? Respray the area, incorporate ‘4×4=16’ into a new inscription. Preempt further vandalism with preemptive truth!”
Okechuku, initially stunned by the audacity of the idea, was slowly won over. It was, after all, a stroke of pure genius. He envisioned the vandal, thwarted by the blatant correctness of his vehicle, defeated by the sheer power of basic arithmetic.
A few days later, emboldened and freshly painted, Okechuku once again parked his pickup at the same spot. He even left a strategically placed mathematical textbook on the dashboard, just to send a message.
This time, the vandal struck again. But instead of adding another equation, he or she had, with a flourish of dripping red paint, added a single, devastating word: “CORRECT.” Underneath the 4×4=16.
Okechuku nearly fainted. The humiliation was unbearable. It was then, watching him rant about the audacity of the vandal, that it struck me that his little drama was in some way symbolic of Umuofia’s current woes.
Take, for instance, the Umuofia National Cocoa Farmers Association. They’ve distanced themselves from the recent protests against the government’s reduced cocoa price offering. Feigning ignorance faster than a politician caught with his hand in the development fund, Yaanom claim no involvement, echoing Okechuku’s vandal who probably swore he’d never touched a rusty nail in his life.
Could it be, I wondered, watching Okechuku’s face redden, that Yaanom, that shadowy cabal of power brokers, are orchestrating these protests, just like the vandal kept orchestrating the “correction” on Okechuku’s pickup. Yaanom, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to a ripe mango, claimed no involvement, yet whispers abound like mosquitoes during rainy season. It’s all suspiciously, horribly, correct.
Okechuku, still seething, vowed to catch the vandal. Just as surely as someone needs to get to the bottom of these artificial Cocoa Farmers Association-led protests.
And so, the saga of the vandalised pickup continues, a microcosm of Umuofia’s larger dramas. A tale of misplaced pride, questionable math skills, and the unsettling suspicion that, sometimes, things are exactly as messed up as they appear.
Source:
www.ghanaweb.com