By Oluwakemi

Top Comedian, Ali Baba has a knack for waking sleeping dogs and he did so in his recent post on his instagram handle.

It was a thought provoking one and has been generating some comments.

Here’s what he said:

That was DUBAI in 1999 and in 2008… No need to spoil your evening with the picture of 2016… And all they had was oil. They did not even have a culture like us. They did not have land. They reclaimed from the sea. They did not have limestone, bitumen, granite, steel, rubber and so on. They did not even have people. They invited people to come build it. We had more than oil. They had only oil and the desert. They are not Christians. They don’t have Total Experienece, Holy Ghost Service, Shalom, Experience 4.0… Naddddaaaa! We dey here dey fool ourselves. Even the people saying I should not have said Jesus can’t save Nigeria now, go see their pages. They post nudity and use profanity some worship in churches where the pastor drives a bullet proof Range Rover, yet you have members of the congregation that can not afford JAMB forms or pay school fees! Na curse I go dey curse all of una like Jesus curse the fig tree. Awon alayi ni nkon Shey be calling Jesus’ name in vain! Taaaaaaaaarh!!

I met one of the guys, Parkinson, who went to Dubai to work on sounds in the new #DubaiOperaHouse… Here in London. And he said he has been in Dubai for the past 14 months… Working with a consortium on the acoustics of the halls. He showed me some pictures and told me he would be relocating to Dubai, from the Royal School of Music… And I thought to my self, we had the National theatre before they even started developing Dubai. Where is the national theater now? Soon, the Dubai Opera House will be drawing tourists, concerts, awards, and the likes to Dubai and we would still be depending on crude oil prices. The Opera House will soon be making annually, enough money to pay 4 states in the north for 3 years, without shaking. While the governors of those states are cancelling film villages and running to abuja to collect allocations that they will embezzle and chop… Yet be wondering what gave them cancer! Old as our national theater is, it has a futuristic design that just needs touch up to meet standards of the modern day. But no. Why invest in the arts when there is oil money? Mscheeeeew. Then out of the blues now, we will hear that there is a government sourced grant coming to resuscitate it from an international organization. The party Hawks and political vultures will swoop in and divert it, case closed. When we ask why and where the money is, cronies will say witch hunting. 3 years later we will hear that the #dubaioperahouse has contributed $450b to the Emirates funds. And our leaders will be driving pass our national theater. Last year when I said we did not need to sell the national theater some guys thought I was joking. There are cinema halls, banquet halls, offices, complete carpentry facilities, tailoring and costumery… Plus the main bowl of the National Theater. The place can even pay its own salaries and still contribute to the federal purse. But no. We are cursed with watching everything we own go to waste. Because there is oil money to share. Cocoa built Cocoa House. Point at something cocoa has built again. Point at anything that is built, across the country that is not because of oil. Except LAGOS… Abeg make I no go get headache