IN continuation of promoting the spirit of the festive season, I have decided this week to dip into my ARCHIVAL Wallet to unload recorded humourous talk of the outgoing year 2014. we need humour as a therapy in this season of great stress. All I intend to do is to rehash the humour that 2014 gave us in from January to December.
Rush Hour Joke
On January 23, 2014 Sydney Shocker was handling the PUSH Hour PROGRAMME of Independent Radio, Benin. To spice up the programme, he told this joke. His cousin in primary school was assigned homework in which he was asked to give the opposites of ten words, including original. His cousin gave the right answers to nine of the words. But when he got to the word original, he wrote Taiwan as its opposite instead of fake. All attempt to convince him that this last answer was wrong failed.
A member of the RUSH HOUR crew called STAND-UP LOOK chipped in another joke. He narrated that a primary school pupil was asked to name the states of the federation. The pupil listed 37 states. Obviously, the teacher was taken aback by his pupil’s answer. So, he requested the pupil to name the 37th state. The pupil cleared his throat and said: “Excuse me, sir. The 37th state is STATE of INSECURITY created by Boko Haram.”
Search of Richest Person
I overheard this argument at a bar in Benin City. Four drunkards were debating who was the richest person on earth with poisoned alcoholic brain. One of them said Father Xmas should be given the crown. Afterall, he always has an inexhaustible bag of gifts for children.
The second drunkard explained that the crown should be worn by tuke-tuke bus conductors. Why? Because their hands are always full of money. Enter the third drunkard: For me, Mr. Clock is the richest person on earth. Not even our own Dangote who has donated a whopping N30 billion between 2012 and 2014.
Afterall, Dangote can count his money. But Mr. Clock never finishes counting his own money. Each time you hear and see him counting his money tick, tuck, tick. Morning, afternoon, evening and night. The cycle of counting his money never ends.. Abeg-o, Mr. Clock you carry first”.
The fourth drunkard smiled. He declared that all the other drunkards missed the point. He canvassed that Mr. Graveyard is the richest person on earth. His reason? All the big and small people of this world donate to him daily. He went on: “That is why his middle name is DONATUS. He is always receiving gifts but never gives anything back.
Goof of our first Lady
In May 2014 our first lady Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan- aka Mama peace-decided to intervene in the Chibok girls’ abduction saga. She called a meeting of Governors’ wives and other stakeholders at Abuja. As the meeting was set to begin, she looked in the direction of a female official from Borno State where the girls were abducted.
Then, she erupted in a mixed grill of anger, emotion and gallow humour: “Na only you waka come? Those bloods that are sharing in Borno. There is God ooo. There is God ooo”
After her address, there was dead silence in the hall. Everybody there maintained a straight, nondescript face confused whether to laugh, smile or cry. Later in the Vanguard, of May 10, 2014, a colymnist Chioma Gabriel tried to do damage control work for our first lady’s grammatical blunder rendered with the rattee-tat machine gun fire of emotions. Don’t ask me whether Nigerians listened to Chioma Gabriel. However, all I can tell you is that in 2014, Nigerians latched on our first lady’s goof for comic relief. Whenever, you offend the average Nigerian he doesn’t fail to end his or her outbursts with: REMEMBER, THERE IS GOD OOOO!!
Misappropriated logic
Nigerians are good at humour. This is why they spice their communication with creative talk awashed sometimes with logical misappropriations. For instance in 2014, Obasanjo in his published letter to Jonathan noted “anyone whose head is used to break a coconut won’t be alive to partake in the coconut meal.”
Again, there is this troublesome friend of mine who is good at rib-cracking riddles, fun and jokes. This year as we sat in a relaxation spot in GRA, Benin he saw an albino walking past. Immediately, he got a rare opportunity to launch a viral attack on a streetwise girl in the restaurant who had bleached her skin into a fantacokastic, blotchy coloration soon after her repatriation from Italy.
He announced. “Thank God for albino. Dem no need bleach. God don helep dem bleach their skin for heaven.”
Everyone laughed except the bleaching girl in the restaurant. Old women are always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb, wrote Africa’s greatest novelist Chinua Achebe.
Now, do you think Ayo Fayose, the Governor of Ekiti State is funny when he recently appointed a special adviser for stomach infrastructure into his cabinet without permission from Comrade-Governor Adams Aliu Oshiomhole who coined the term stomach Infrastructure in July 2014? How about this? I have overheard a lady thinking of changing the sign post of her buka to.
HOME OF STOMACH INFRASTRUCTURE
….Akpu, Eba, rice, Noddles, Boli, Yam, Beans, Assorted meat, ETC available here Come. One, Come All.
Already, she is gradually losing her old nickname Mama Put Special. This is because her close friends are now calling Mama Stomach infrastructure even before she has changed her buka’s name.
Tale of suffixes
These days people are not only interested in prefixes before their names like Dr. Engineer, Pharmacist, Pastor and what have you. Also, they have taken delight in suffixes as addition to their names. For instance, if you have bagged the highest honour in Nigeria you are addressed as Chief Money Kampe Palaver (GCON). Taking a cue from this line of thinking, someone at Auchi in Etsako West Local Government Area has suggested the following suffixes VMP for decamping politicians; NYM for single ladies; ID for nursing mothers and GCA for the devil.
His explanations. VMP stands for very mobile politician…. NYM for not yet married…JD for just delivered; and GCA stands for God’s Chief antagonist. Well, thank you Auchi man. You have a point in our pointless society.
