The king of Paiko kingdom was rich, very rich and so were his eight chiefs. The land was blessed with every good thing their neighbouring empires craved. The princes lived large. The chiefs lived like there was no tomorrow. White horses were hard to come by in those days, but all the Paiko chiefs had two or more each.
The princes even rode on men. Oh yes, there were slaves at their beck and call to do every bidding, from handing them the sponge for their bath to scrubbing their backs. The king wore beaded crown and the princes wore beaded shoes. Each time you saw the ruling class folks, you saw wealth, royalty and the good life all rolled into one. But the Paiko people were poor. They were also hard-working. So, it didn’t add up, not to the people or their neighbours. How could the land be so blessed and the people so poor? But that was the way it was and the people were used to it.
Because it was a blessed kingdom, the people engaged in various occupations and vocations. There were hunters, farmers, palm wine tappers, fishermen and traders in all they produce and what they brought and bought from neighbouring communities. Not that their sweat made any difference to their poverty, but the people kept faith. Why? Their rulers told them to save for the raining day. So, even when they were drenched to the skin and shivering in the present rain, season in, season out, they were forced to save a chunk of their earnings in the palace.
The king of Paiko and his chiefs spoke glowingly about the advantages of saving for the future when the farmers would no longer be able to till the ground. So, the farmers ‘saved’ their yams, maize and cassava in the palace. The fishermen were convinced to save their fishes in a central place where they would be smoked for the days when the fishermen would be too weak to haul in their nets from the river. Even the palm wine tappers were made to save.
The palace accountants worked out a percentage for the traders and the cowries just went to the chiefs. The people worked their fingers to the bone and wen t hungry most days, but were never allowed not to save. They walked kilometres to their farms barefoot while the Paiko chiefs rode on white horses to meetings on how to ‘save’ the peoples’ savings. The princes slept all day and only strolled round the kingdom in the evenings to exercise their rich muscles. The people continued working and the rulers continued saving on their behalf.
Then the working populace gradually started ageing. The eyes of the fishermen dimmed, arthritis slowed down both the palm wine tappers and the farmers. The traders were no longer able to make the long trips to the neighbouring markets. Finally, it was time to go and collect their savings at the palace. The old workers chose 12 elders to go to the palace to collect their savings. But lo and behold, the palace had nothing to give them.
After telling them to ‘come today, come tomorrow’, the 12 elders realised that all the years the king of Paiko and his chiefs and the royal sons were taking their produce, they were sharing them, not saving anything. The old folks finally realised that it was their sweat that bought the white horses, beads and gold. While they broke their backs on the farm, the princes lived it up. And so there was nothing for the rainy day. And it was pouring.
The old men wept in front of the palace. But the ruling class felt affronted and insulted by the public display of emotions and ordered the old men to be taken to the evil forest, far away from the comfort of their homes and families. At the border between Paiko and the evil forest, the palace warders retrieved the 12 walking sticks of the 12 elders and pushed them into the dark forest. Bewildered, hungry, thirsty and weak, the 12 elders joined their left hands, placed their right hands on their grey and/or bald heads and placed a curse on the ruling class of Paiko, the men who stole the sweat of their youth and still took away the walking sticks of their old age. As they died of hunger, cold and snake bites, they continued to mutter curses…
Years later, the saved curses of 12 dying old men arrived at the palace and the homes of the greedy chiefs and the princes. The princesses were barren. The princes, even when they married from outside the kingdom could not impregnate their wives. The white horses died one after the other. The wealth of the palace waned until it became history. Diseases that must not be mentioned in royal households plagued the palace. Native doctors were brought in from everywhere. Sacrifices were made at dawn and dusk, but the king of Paiko didn’t get better. He had leprosy. He was eventually escorted out of the town into the evil forest where he died biting what remained of his fingers.
Somehow, the many plagues that visited Paiko stayed within the homes of the rulers and the people who shared with them when they pretended to be saving on behalf of the poor working men of the kingdom. While the children of the dead 12 old men celebrated marriages and birth of twins, the royal households gnashed their teeth in lack. The curse of the swindled and betrayed reigned in the homes of the wicked…
Three years ago, it was the pension scam season. N195 billion pension fund went missing. The nation woke up to a rude reality that some people had become wealthy because they stole the walking sticks of civil servants. They had homes scattered all over the world and slept in comfort while 80-year-old pensioners died on pension queues or on their way there. They pretended to be saving on behalf of Nigerian workers when they were indeed sharing the savings of millions of Nigerians.
Today, it is about salaries, unpaid salaries in many states even after some of the governors had taken ‘delivery of hefty bailouts’. Hmmm. Is it about special economics or arithmetic that some of us don’t understand? Wasn’t the bailout money, money meant for suffering workers? Wages for work already done? Why is it difficult to pay money that is available to those labourers whose sweat have already dried on their backs and foreheads?
But I admit, I don’t understand the pie-charts and complicated numbers but I know it is painful to watch your children hungry and out of school.
Will those who have stolen from the poor go unpunished? No, they won’t. It doesn’t matter how many churches and mosques they build in their communities, pay they must, and in pain they will pay. Now the old, the sick, the hungry are being treated badly because a few men feel so powerful and think they can build castles and mansions on the sweat of millions of civil servants. How can we rid this land of evil when old men die cursing the land? How can our land continue to yield its fruits when young men drive cars bought with sweats of others?
If you are a governor hoarding bailout, you have taken away the walking stick of the old and if they die while waiting for what is rightfully theirs, you will pay in pain. If you hire the most brilliant lawyers to stall your prosecution here on earth; who will defend you before God? Who will deliver you from the law of harvest and the law of karma? Who?
Credits: Funke Egbemode, The Sun.