OPINION: …As AA Weds Kwara on Wednesday

By Ibraheem Abdullateef.

By and large, Kwara will begin another chapter in the face of history in the next few days. The State – like an awestriken bride grateful for a second chance to remarry will change her old, unattractive garments, adorn new silks and robes to cut a near perfect figure of beautitude.

Friends, acquaintances and well-wishers will sing changed tunes and make instant songs befitting of the present scenario. The same people who had been singers of woes and perfidy of the states since the last sixteen years would come about with new album of hope, trust, and faith for peace and progress in a “a new Kwara; a Kwara of our dream”.

They are politicians. This is what the game is all about, or scratch that, this is how we play the game here.

The lucky groom – maybe favoured and chosen sounded more like it – would be a vintage Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazak- a proven businessman and wealthy aristocrat.

While he is supposed to be happy getting into marriage with the Love of his life, Kwara ( He had come about 3 times earlier), presumably, would be somewhere torn in between enthusiasm, hope, fears and anxiety.

I presume so because it needs no soothsaying for any rational mind to see the underlying troubles and travails awaiting this marriage after the wedding noises and parties later at the Ahmadu Bello Way House Of Fate.

His would- be bride for the next few years – Kwara – comes with traumatic and haunting experiences from previous partners as exemplified by her last called Maigida.

That one in particular is obviously one with sugar-coated mouth but leprous hands who can’t seem to get anything done to hold the home, talk less of satisfying his precocious wife. And his Godfather, with age and exposure on his side, turned out to be a passionate advocate of avarice and a living legend of mischief.

He’s ever ready to put Maigida and his wife Kwara up against each other as long as his personal pride is not at stake. It’s in the olden days that a troubled marriage in a family dents the pride of the elders, not in his case. In fact, the unwritten dogma seem to be anything-for-sacrifice- but-not-my-name.

However, it must be a legendary ignorance on Grandpa’s part or a very strong and empowering effect of supernatural spell called *asasi* that could have made Baba to forget that a kinsman’s disgrace is family’s.

I am sure he understands better now. But the attending disgrace of failure would teach more severe lessons later on to Grandpa.

Luckily, AA would have no Baba somewhere calling shots and make him the fool or so we believed. But whatever turns out to be fact, his traumatized wife, Kwara, would be really impatient and hard to please.

As is expected of a newbie, regardless of how many advances he ever made, Oko Iyawo AA cannot avoid the feeling of awe, shock and disbelief upon the resumption of proper family way.

The near lack of income and bleak means of proven source is bound to rattle him. Remember, he just married an experienced wife who’s had taste of various men at one point or the other and naturally, would ever be ready to compare notes.

She would be coming with children who have been badly managed and maintained. They include Education, Security, Infrastructure, Health amongst other ones I can’t recollect their names. And AA is expected to birth more to prove his virility as a man and worth as a brilliant successor to the last Maigida who had just been divorced with his entire household.

AA would call for friends to attend a feast without knowing that the bond between them is symbolic of that moment of feasting, no substance.

They would drink palm wine and regale their souls with old memories and sprouting dreams but they are hoping his never come to fruition. They would flash him sparkling teeth while barely holding the poison in their bellies.

AbdulRahman AbdulRazak’s kinsmen from the beginning of their generation sixteen years ago, right from the time of Late Rear- Admiral Alabi Lawal and his own children and friends and friends of friends and children of other suitors and husbands of his new wife would also become his responsibility.

They would beckon on him days and nights for rites, rituals, and on few occasions, rights. He would be inheriting in his new home large retinue of kinsmen starring the liked, loved, hated, immoral, greedy, ambitious, liar, malicious, friends, fiends, associates and elders who he’s become by virtues of his new status, their Baale and Baale.

They would look to him for favours while hoping he fails and falls. Kwara, as unlucky as it ever was, would never lack suitors and spouses. She would ever remain a coveted piece of flesh for avaricious, libidinous and lascivious men.

Such is the mystery of the marriage between AA and his heart trob, Kwara. She’s bruised, traumatized, mistreated, ill-fated and molested.

Yet, she’s a strong fertile woman ready to bear good fruits when accorded devotion and commitment. But she had come with baggages of worries and challenges namely education, security, health, water amongst others as the offsprings from her previous marital engagements.

By Allah, these and AA’s retinue of attaches and hanger-on from his clan of 16 year-old, complete the other side of the puzzle.

It’s a marriage of inconvenience. Engagement of an inexperienced herdsman against a troublesome old cow – you can imagine the struggle.

However, with tact, boundless energy, patience, determination and focus, maybe our new groom could manage to build this home. Just maybe.

It’s AbdulRahman AbdulRazak and Kwara’s marriage on Wednesday, send them beautiful wishes and colourful prayers.

Ibraheem Abdullateef writes from Ilorin. He can be reached on ibraheemabdullateef09@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed on our opinion page are those of the writer and do not represent the position of INSIDER or any of its reporters/editors.