State ownership: People versus party.

Lagos is an APC ,All Progressives Congress, state. There's almost this certainty that whoever will be fielded as their gubernatorial candidate will automatically be the next governor.
There's the popular saying in Lagos 'Fashola is working...'. I do not dispute this statement. I voted for Fashola in the last election. I did not vote for the party, no matter the party he'd been in, I'll have voted for him. I guess in some sense that is naïve because I hear political analysts say sometimes that there's always a party agenda and the candidates do not deviate from them, however I think Fashola is not just a glorified head, I think he has a thinking mind of his own. Afterall, before APC was reborn it used to be AD, Alliance for Democracy, and then AC- Action congress. Fashola's Lagos is different from AD or AC's Lagos to me. I do not think Lagos is cosmopolitan yet but it shows potentials (Fashola's Lagos). Although agberoism is still purulent. I thought the reactivation of KAI(Kick against Indiscipline)which was established in 2003 by the previous administration was brilliant: lots of agberos were drafted. A subtle case of using a crook to catch a crook. And they were on fire the first two years of Fashola's tenure. Some of their memorable feats are the many arrests made of individuals(mostly Johnny Just come) at Ojota crossing the expressway, creating the road again at Oshodi after the market women had turned the expressway  to stalls, same thing at Akpongbon market... Sadly, I hardly see KAI anymore and the proliferation these days of agberos is unprecedented. As the government is no longer employing them, others are or is it still the government? Some days ago while leaving home in the morning I saw a wall of freshly pasted posters of Jimi Agbaje the ,PDP, Peoples Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate, when I got home in the evening all the posters were gone. Torn. Next day I saw some other posters of other candidates still under the PDP umbrella, when I got home, they too had been torn. My interest was piqued. Who was tearing them? This morning I got my answer. As I left earlier in order  to beat traffic, I saw two agbero looking young men who wore that neon lemon vest with LASMA(Lagos state Traffic Management authority)boldly written at the back resolutely removing the posters. Two things stood out; how do the posters constitute hindrance to free traffic movement? Traffic management is LASMA's jurisdiction afterall and finally, why did they skip the APC posters if posters are a risk to road users?
During the 2011 elections I went to Eket in Akwa Ibom, a PDP state. There seemed to be an unspoken law: "do not speak ill of the ruling government and definitely do not campaign for the opposing party ". The air was thick with palpable dread of breaking this law. I recall my friend telling me to keep my opinions to myself whenever we went outside. There were no posters of other parties just PDP. My question now is: does it mean that once a party has won a state, it forever owns that state? What if the next individual that the ruling party puts forward is inept and cannot deliver to the electorates? Are the people not free to make another choice? Why should the options be so limited?

To Package or not? A race of the Haves and the haves not.

 "Dress as you wish to be addressed" you ever heard that? Well that has metamorphosed into a new term called packaging. Packaging is a term used in the Nigerian parlance to mean presenting what is not there. Sometimes 'branding' maybe used interchangeably. I give an example: you see a girl in the university who lives off campus in a well furnished house with all the trappings of wealth in school, designer clothes and blings . Flat screen television, Air conditioner sometimes split unit, big generator not the normal 'I pass my neighbour' o , huge two door refrigerator, thick rug and a big mattress that's definitely pro sleep and anti reading. All this in one room that students tend to call a house which actually looks more like a prison specifically designed by the state to make a claustrophobic inmate commit suicide. This same student outside of school lives in an obscure 'hood' where the parents luxuriate in a meal a day but when she comes out, she claims she doesn't eat swallow(garri, foofoo, pounded Yam etc) only fruits and fastfoods. Image is everything. Packaging can be found in an individual who has never crossed the border but speaks 'phone' like his life depends on it and some even master it so well they are willing to compete with the English person for the English language. My friend that works in a popular radio station in Lagos recently told me they were walking around on thin ice in the office because their management was firing anyone without a foreign accent. So maybe life does depend on it. How about borrowing money to rent a house in Lekki because that's the 'it place' now? Buying cars on loan, or borrowing different ones from people, living off friends and well wishers on fabricated excuses: "my mother needs urgent surgery", some their father is forever been buried or dying. I spoke with a beautiful forensic auditor some time ago in Lekki. I asked her about life in Lekki and she in turn asked me if i've watched the web series "Lekki Wives" I told her yes. She said "my sister that's the life here o in Lekki" forming and fronting. Networking is everything so you have to be in the right place to meet the right crowd. Curriculum Vitae(CV) experts say you should elaborate on supposed skills and ingenuity to give your CV that omph factor which to some means you should tell white lies just to make your CV stand out. Alas employment is not done on just CV basis alone. All these done in a bid to be taken seriously in the desperate jet set as those that have will be given more and those that don't, the little they have will be taken away. No one wants to be in the later group. A race of the haves and the haves not. Question is in all these packaging where is the real? What is real? Is the real so repugnant we can't bear to see it?