By BAMIDELE JOHNSON
What a pleasure it was to read about the Federal Capital Territory Minister’s plan to ban the sale of alcohol in gardens in his jurisdiction. Criticisms of Mohammed Bello’s agenda, wrong-headed as they come, plainly ignore the fact that limiting the density of alcohol retail outlets offers enormous benefits to the society.
Off the top of my head, I can list some. One, it will reduce the population of pot-bellied men in Abuja and environs as well as stop a sizable number of boys from growing to become paunch-ridden adults. Many of my friends who went to the FCT as slim men now have the equivalent of five bellies acquired, of course, from those drinking dens.
Too much, I believe, is being made of the abridgement of the inalienable right to drink and possibly get drunk till your shirt is buttoned crooked while slobbering like a Labrador as you struggle to walk a straight line. This is small beer, considering what the minister is trying to save the society from.
Bello, a lovable, public-spirited kinda chap, is aware that when blind drunk, we are notoriously incapable of urinating in a straight line, a state of affairs that leaves the toilet seats and floor splattered with fizzing piss and unfit for use by other drunks who, to be frank, do not care. Bello cares. A lot, too. Liberal booze consumption, the minister is perhaps also concerned, provokes too many impassioned political debates that may entail the scrutiny of his stewardship and that of the government he serves.
Too much, I believe, is being made of the abridgement of the inalienable right to drink and possibly get drunk till your shirt is buttoned crooked while slobbering like a Labrador as you struggle to walk a straight line.
Equally importantly, participants in booze-powered debates tend to wee a lot and when returning from the restroom, may be so self-unaware as to leave their trouser zippers ajar and their equipment hanging like a broken faucet. X-Rated, that. Bello’s agenda, as communicated, was informed by an act of criminality in one of those joints and he wishes to believe the act or similar will be reprised, perhaps on a daily basis, in each and every one of them if they are left standing.
These are things for which he should get help rather than hindrance in the shape of criticism and lawsuits challenging his power to do what he plans. What we must understand is that he is persuaded that he has a divine warrant to go against alcohol. Self-awarded piety, with which he is afflicted, is accompanied by pompous fascism. From my experience, pious and pompous go together, breeding a bizarre mindset that everyone in the world must want basically the same thing as you do.
There can be no prizes for guessing that the clown is driven by religion which, in many, induces a tendency to be sententious and breeds a sense that their belief is the constitution for humanity. It is, however, safe to say that not everyone will grieve when and if Bello’s plan kicks in. Vendors of marijuana, cocaine, mood-altering patent medicines and other dangerous substances must be licking their lips at the prospect of a big boom in sales when those unable to drink freely begin their search for alternatives. The grief will be felt by those whose jobs are directly or indirectly tied to those gardens and of course, tax authorities.
The FCT is not Kandahar or Kunduz.
