Bush Baby!!

Years ago when we were in boarding house, there were many stories about bushbabies.
Those of us who were more inclined to research all things found the word in the dictionary. But it refers to the animal also known as galago!
“This animal is not enough to scare us in our hundreds!”
But we were still scared!
We were told the bush-baby is a boy-spirit that weeps and goes about with a rolled-up mat with which he could beat anyone to death! There was also the myth that if you could snatch the mat from him and sleep on it, you would become wealthy!
There were days when the idea of the bushbaby would hold the couple thousand students in my boarding school to ransom.
On one such days, the night prep was scattered, and everyone had fled to their beds in fear, the air thick with tension.
In dormitory D, Blue House, like everywhere else, everyone was fearfully asleep.
A boy had his mattress on the floor, while his friend was asleep on the lower bunk just a little above him.
In the middle of the night the boy on the lower bunk rolled off and fell on the one on the floor.
In the dark, they both woke up with a start, and simultaneously shouted
“Bushbaby!!!”
And they fled in opposite directions!
The whole dormitory woke up and hit the ground running, in all directions!
The boy on the floor thought the bushbaby fell on him. The boy on the bed thought he fell on the bushbaby.
And the whole blue and yellow house hostels were emptied in record time!
Over a period of 14 years that I have readily accessible history of my secondary “school on the hill”, no student ever actually saw a bushbaby, yet everyone fled from bushbabies at one time or the other.
Paints the picture of the African Debilitation.
What are we fleeing from?
What exactly is chasing us?
Why wont we think?
A Nigerian Professor became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Illinois about 2 weeks ago. We did not know when he was being considered / screened!
IF you recall when Rivers State University needed a new VC a few weeks ago, It was a high-level political tussle; Arguments and challenges via the electronic and print media!
Are there no set criteria and evaluation boards?
Why do we see good things (technology) and do not domesticate them (take them home) in our countries?
Even if only when we watch movies we conceive dreams of good communities and good quality lives, should we not have moved a few feet forward?
When we see surveillance cameras on TV, they are hidden as much as reasonably practicable, and raised as far above reach as possible.
In Abuja, the CCTV project was in the news and much heralded by corruption.
Each camera is at a conspicuous location, with 2 flags within reach, called solar panels. (as seen below, with two guys hiding from the sun under the solar panels) Yet there is no power supply in our homes. Shouldn’t we expect guys to be tempted to “domesticate” the solar panels in their own homes?
For how many days do we plan these CCTV systems to subsist?
But if we had just remembered to think, 10 hefty guys would have waited to challenge the bushbaby and rid the school of fear!
What can we do about national “processes” that are not sufficiently thought through?
How can we remove the bush-baby from our processes and projects?
How do we encourage our academia to put in place the good and humane processes they enjoy when they travel abroad?
How do we encourage our new breed politicians to follow through with their lofty ideas for which they were endeared to the electorate?
Of course, there are no bush-babies anywhere! Just a want for courageous (wo)men!
Maybe you could be that one!