WORDS on the MARBLE. By Sam Omatseye, The Nation. The one is a dame of power, rides a private jet, looks silky and satiny, has bold and imperious eyes, defies the National Assembly, presides over the nation’s pot, speaks in public with bored and superior look, craves accolades and pooh-poohs the critic, rose steeply from a mocked minister to an Amazon of influence. Some despise her, some others fear her, some others adore her, but most admire her without liking her. Recently, she became a president and popped champagne. The other has rural air. She is not a dame but she wields a Dane gun. She hunts rabbits and antelopes. She is charming without the effluvia of glamour. She cannot speak good English. She knows no fear, is indifferent to her influence, owns neither car nor jet, craves no air-conditioners or the glitz of accolades. She probably does not pop champagne, which might be a bibulous appetite and impious. But she pops guns. Recently, she – and her peers – shot Boko Haram out of town. The one is our Oil Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who recently gained world attention as the first female President of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries known as OPEC. The other gives her name simply as Ladi, and she was one of the few female hunters who wove a heroic skein when they shot Boko Haram out of some northeastern towns. The routed Islamists had turned the places, including Mubi, into redoubts. Both are women, both are doing significant things, but one is heroic and the other is living a life of dubious glamour. Few Nigerians are paying great attention to the stories of the young women like Ladi who are fighting for the survival of this country. Rather the front-page stories are bedecking the exploits of an oil minister who becomes a president and the first female one at that. She deserves the post not from personal distinction but from the accidental distinction that Nigeria is a major oil-producing country. Never mind that her ways are turning Nigeria gradually into a beggar nation and straightened agonies.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 10:28:29 +0000
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