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?