Sam Omatseye, NNPC Contract Scandal and the Melodious Lie

NNPC Contract Award and Melodious Lie

I was thinking this morning..... about the many types of lie. No, I do not subscribe to lie in any shade and colour, but have seen people dress up 'lie' in different garbs. I am sure you must have heard of 'white lie,' which according to the dictionary is a lie with good intentions.

 

I was wondering why anyone with good intentions should tell a lie. If a lady asked 'how do I look in this dress?' and you tell her she looks good when she doesn't, it is a lie and there is nothing white about the lie. But wait a minute, if there is white lie, is there black lie? According to the Urban Dictionary, when a black person gets blamed for a white person's crime, it is called 'black lie.' Na wa for oyibo people, always giving the black man the short end of the stick. Never in our favour.

 

But why should I be spending my time thinking about lie? I never thought to do so until I read an article written by Sam Omatseye, Chairman Editorial Board of The Nation Newspaper. He had said concerning the alleged $25b contracts award at NNPC and Buhari's response, 'As far as this column is concerned, unless Buhari reviews and annuls the contracts, his war on corruption is melodious lie, an exercise in hypocritical grandstanding.'

 

While I am not interested in the politics of the assertion, the use of 'melodious lie' got me thinking. If a lie can be melodious, then a lie can be many things. Think about it. When a young man approaches a lady he has just met for the first time, telling her all the stories young men tell including how she is the sugar in his tea. Like we say in Warri, as as how na? It is a 'lovely lie.'

 

Imagine 'I go die,' the comedian, telling his audience that they were so poor back then that his dad will take out the clock battery when they are going to bed just to extend the battery life. His audience will laugh because it is a 'funny lie.'

 

As I dug deeper, I recalled the incident in Port-Harcourt months ago where a Uniport student killed his 8 years old niece and harvested her body parts before he was caught. His initial response was that he never meant to kill her. But how can you extract somebody's vital organs without first killing the person? That was a 'bloody lie.'

 

It is common to see a plus-sized lady making so much effort to lose weight. She eats vegetables in the morning and pounded yam in the evening. Two weeks later, she tells you she has lost weight, when in actual fact she has added. It is a 'fat lie.'

 

Melodious lie, white lie, funny lie, bloody lie or fat lie, the one common denominator is that it is a lie. The NIV translation of the Bible in John 8:44 speaking about the devil says, 'when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.' That means the devil tells 'native lies.' Though our leaders and politicians have perfected the art of telling native, diplomatic, executive and legislative lies, please do not join them to normalize this anomaly. Let your no be no and your yes be yes.

 

Happy Sunday.

 

.....Just the thoughts of a certain Wey Mey.