The Abuja Tales – Seeking ‘Shade’ from the Sun

Abstract

Nigeria is truly a paradox: a country of immense resource wealth, entrepreneurship and innovation, and simultaneous poverty, political conflict, mismanagement, corruption and violence. The “Abuja tales” presented in this paper obviously has emerged from two different fields of “realities” and ‘life-worlds’, but in essence the difference between the ones that wait at the Transcorp Hilton and the ones that wait under the party tent outside the National Assembly is not that large. They are all elements of the Nigerian paradox, connected by a combination of chance, fate and opportunity. Yes, the Hilton crowd is better connected and have more funds and opportunities available, but most of them are also purely disposables in this system of Big Men, clients and patronage, struggling each and every day to maintain their position, and just like the people under shade of the party tent, they also have to wait, often in vain, for someone that is never on time as the very management and control of time (yours and others) is the very hallmark of power in this Nigeria of paradoxical proportions.