Dogberryism and Nigeria ‘sexy dogs’

By Busuyi Mekusi

Nigeria would compete with any queer night market, in terms of dangerous wares and absurdities in perfidy. This is as any unimaginable propensity would not only easily get expressed but attain commonality among the people that are merely pretentious about making progress in retrogression. Both private and public spaces in Nigeria are endemically solarised, so much that the basic societal worldviews through which various pre-westernised societies maintained equilibrium have been lost to cultural stigmatisation, brutalisation, digitalisation and annihilation. While modern religions have become stimulants to the abnegation of the enriching so-called unsophisticated past, contemporary civilisation has substantially reduced both traditional and modern religions to material profiteering, through social connectivity and scandalous depravity.

Amidst lack of accountability and social inquisition, sizeable numbers of young Nigerians have joined the greedy generation that accumulates material things at all cost, with insecurity-induced manifestations like kidnapping, internet scams, bureaucratic frauds, money rituals, gun running, crude thefts, illicit drugs peddling, land grabbing, etc., defining contemporary Nigeria. Both political leaders and followers are at a loss about what should be done to mitigate the growing recession in the socio-political lives of the nation and the people, just as bandits and terrorists have established republics within the Nigeria geographical space.

It is not unlikely that dissidents might either threaten the 2023 general elections or acquire power forcefully or through the ballots, considering the rising number of personnel of the Nigeria security agencies that are loyal to bandits and terrorists, as well as fight on their side against Nigeria that enlisted them to defend her territorial integrity. It is certain that insecurity was, and is, manufactured in Nigeria for profiteering. Little wonder the seemingly non-resolvability!

Just as the poisonous dusts of the Chrisland School students’ sexual escapades were settling down, another member of the deranged ‘pampers pampered’ generation, a Tik Toker identified as Veegodess, invaded the social media and assaulted our sensibilities by claiming that she had sex with a dog for N1.5million. She had claimed there was no big deal having sex with a dog, particularly for a huge sum of money, and that she was not infected doing that. Even though she later came out to recount her claim, stressing that she was just ‘catching cruise’, her supposed bestiality represents the blunder, absurdity or inappropriateness that is found in malapropism, for which we have adopted the word dogberryism, which is similarly a punning of a sort.

From traditional societies where totemism allowed animals to be venerated over humans, to the modern era where domesticated animals are veritable companions for those isolated in the world of individualisation gated communities, the dog counts as one of the few animals that enjoy human affinity, because of its characteristic affableness, loyalty, trainability, etc. This is not to sidestep the symbolic or mythological relevance given to the dog in some traditions.

Therefore, with hard-drug ravaged young people, single unmarried boys and girls, as well as ritualised adults, the dog could mean more than a pet to being a sexual companion that becomes handy, devoid of suspicion, when it becomes expedient to gratify their sexual urge. While some allow for or carry out insertion, some simply achieve sexual excitement by stroking or fondling animals; an act technically referred to as zoöphilia.

Videos have also been shared in the social media about herders who purportedly have sexual intercourse with their cows. Beyond this redundant attempt at pigeonholing, however, one would go deaf if told the stories of secret things that go on behind many ‘closed doors’ or gated minds.

The suspicion is that there is a rise in the cases of bestiality, given the commercialisation of relationships, human bodies, particularly the female body, etc. It is also arguable that some ladies would submit themselves to zoöerasty, which is a term given to intercourse between humans and animals by Krafft-Ebing, rather than limit themselves to prostitution. Female sex workers are increasingly finding their voices, with their road-shows in the past, and involvement in political engineering during which they promised free sex in support of particular candidates.

They have also recently assured Nigerians that they were undeterred by the risk posed to them by ritual killers, claiming they had up-scaled their act. Ladies are similarly going beyond the commercialisation of sex for material gains and socio-political survivals as we now have Yahoo-Yahoo Girls, who are apparently responding to the army of young boys without any known means of earning money that go around in big cars and hibernate in hotels. With this, they are no longer just ritualised objects but rituals’ beneficiaries.

Not minding whether it is done for pornography, rituals, or better still recreation, human sex with animals is sacrilegious, indecent, a crime against the Nigeria state and humanity, as well as a veritable source of health complications. With the palpable claims that some viral diseases like Ebola and HIV Aids were contracted by humans from animals, sex between humans and animals could lead to the transmission of viral diseases like rabies, echinococcosis, Leptospirosis, Anaphylaxis, etc.

This is more so as the reproductive organs of the animals could cause injuries for humans, as they are not made to fit into that of a woman or man. Apart from the environmental changes and outbursts, the transgression of known traditional sexual dealings has opened the floodgates to various health challenges. This is not to mention the debilitating effects of the various sex-enhancing substances consumed for maximum performance of sexual power.

As some Nigerians, most especially ladies, have literally reduced themselves to the animalistic level of a dog for the purpose of primitive accumulation of materiality, others are living to justify the flirtatious metaphoric characterisation of the dog. Rather than exhibit the loyalty a dog has for the owner to the Nigerian Army and Nigerians, Lance Corporal Jibrin, a specialist in arms control and an instructor with the Nigerian Army battalion in Geidam, Yobe State, was allegedly arrested for aiding terrorists to attack Geidam and Gashua towns in Yobe State recently.

The dexterity with which it was claimed he snatched the gun of one of the people escorting him, which he shot himself with, after his arrest, was a testimony to the fact that so many security personnel trained and salaried by the Nigerian government are involved in espionage and mercenary dealings with insurgents. The foregoing and the dethronement of two Emirs and a District Head by the Zamfara State government, representative of other compromised dealings by enemies within Nigeria security architecture, clearly show that insecurity has similarly been commercialised, just like that done of sex.

The Nigeria political space is also experiencing some shifts and haziness that are reminiscent of the flirtation of the dog. In a very sporadic manner, political cacophonies have dwarfed socio-political challenges in the horizon. Roads remain almost impassable in some places, but it would not stop them from scavenging for votes. ASUU remains on strike, and time ticks on for the affected students irreversibly, only for the attention of concerned ministers to shift to the shopping malls of APC, where they bought forms to reinforce their unpopularity.

People from south-eastern Nigeria are negotiating citizenship and the presidency, anchored on the imperative of political inclusion, as the north would want to have it some more. The issue of the zoning of the presidential slot has been made nebulous, as PMB, who stooped for Tinubu to conquer in 2015, is now receiving the latter, with his head bowed, behind ‘closed doors’, desperate to realise his life-long ambition.

As there is an urgent need to stop the younger generation from recklessly and dangerously sexualising the Nigerian space, the older generation must stop all inappropriate speeches, tame absurd behaviours and avoid tempestuous blunders that could precipitate a political mid-day blackout.

For want of established political theorising, one may argue that the crowded presidential aspirants of the ruling APC is a unique emblem for the 2023 election, with the 100 million naira paid by serious and pretending aspirants being a unique way of making donations to their party, for the purpose of consideration for political patronage in the next dispensation. In all these, the masses continue to groan in empty stomachs, having celebrated Workers’ Day without fists raised in victory! Hope you are not a ‘sexy dog’?

Source: The Hope