A LEXICAL ANALYSIS OF, EM, WHATCHAMACALIT
Being at a loss to find a name for the phenomenon that is the subject of this lexical excursion, I have settled for whatchamacalit, a colloquialism used as a substitute for a name not known or temporarily forgotten, and a synonym for the shorter but more esoteric “thingamajig”
For the convenience of the reader, I should perhaps have used the term ‘wetincall.” It serves the purpose just as well, and everyone in Nigeria who has not personally used it must have heard somebody else use it in a context that everyone understands. But I was reminded that, instead of merely serving as a substitute for a thing or name not known or forgotten, that word has been pressed into service as a substitute for something unmentionable in polite society, specifically, a certain element of the male anatomy.
Since this is a newspaper for the entire family, the kind that parents can confidently read and share with their children, I opted for a term that conveys the thought without eliciting the faintest whiff of lewdness.
The phenomenon at issue is of course what has lain at the heart of public course in Nigeria for more than 100 days. It began with the medical evacuation of President Umaru Yar’Adua to Saudi Arabia and moved, stage by secretive and duplicitous stage, to his precipitate return to his manor “like a thief in the night,” and then to the present phase in which his long shadow is conjured up at every opportunity by his proxies to terrorise the polity and cast a malignant pall on the governance of Nigeria.
The conflation of these developments is the phenomenon for which I have been struggling to find an appropriate name.
We are locked into a constitutional crisis, to be sure. But when has Nigeria not been engulfed in that kind of crisis? Admittedly, the on-going crisis is different. But in the end, it is just another constitutional crisis. And it is only a part of a much larger crisis. In any case, as a description of what Nigeria has been going through, the term “constitutional crisis” is not merely lacking in nuance, it is positively soulless.
We can call it a “debacle,” but we have had so many debacles on so many fronts that the term has become shopworn, as is “impasse.” A kindred term, “imbroglio,” captures the flavour and tenor of the phenomenon, but it seems rather contrived and is not easy on the tongue.
We can go back all the way to “Watergate,” take out the “gate” that has since become a suffix for scandal, for conduct most unbecoming, and for any act in the public sphere that carries more than a hint of criminal behaviour. “Etteh-gate” comes readily to mind as an illustrative local example.
So, how about “Saudi-gate,” which has the great merit of signalising where all the deception and concealment regarding President Yar’Adua’s health was conceived, perfected and executed with Byzantine intrigue until he was rushed back home some two weeks ago, there to resume the game?
The Saudi monarch and his subjects, I suspect, will regard this as a stab in he back and as an act of base ingratitude, despite the letter conveyed by no fewer than six ranking cabinet officers thanking the Saudi authorities for the care and solicitude they lavished on Yar’Adua during the two months that he was their patient-in-residence and guest.
That would not be good for Nigeria’s re-branding campaign. For if the managers of the campaign were to put out a line describing Nigeria as “Great Nation, Grateful People,” would the Saudis not dismiss it as coarse propaganda and undermine it in every conceivable way%