NAIJA CLUBBING…

They sat, they drank, they bobbed heads in the smoky haze with the DJs best efforts booming in the background. Lagos’s finest all glamed up, ordered pricey drinks and played the club game.

What is this game you ask? It’s the one where everyone plays 'Who’s the best Baller?’, where we all act like outside isn’t real. As though in this wanna-be alternate universe, we can jointly pretend that everyone’s fine, the country isn’t a mess, poverty doesn’t exist and corruption isn’t rampant.

This world is so much fun! The DJ plays the mind numbing tunes that teleport us all to our own lala lands-of-best-escape. In this world we’re all heroes, mightier than Thor (or Sango), faster than The Flash, stronger than The Hulk, richer than Gates!

Where’s the proof you ask? But, but… we buy expensive drinks!! Can’t you see that affording premium poisons makes us princes? Drinking with no care, swaying with no breeze, flexing with practiced ease, as masters of our illusions? This place is like a dream, its magic! So who cares about invisible shadowy owners or that it adds no value to anything and simply celebrates excess? Who é ep??

Oh that this could last forever. Alas, the morning hour is nigh upon us. Forced to depart by the hated last hour twins of silence and security, we grudgingly exit this mass hallucination and strut to our homes like triumphant armies after battle to rest from our illusory toils.

Eventually we awaken, hungover stricken, to a world we’d rather forget. The poverty, the dodginess, the waste of human potential. And yet, seamlessly we blend in, to managing and smiling through gritted teeth, whinging and shrugging, bitterly complaining and yet doing nothing. Hope is simply counting down to our next escape, when we can immerse in our favorite delusions and call reality a liar.

But until then, here we are, ignoring the starkness of our collective existence, merely existing for the fleeting chance to dance in another man’s dream…