If you didn’t get a National Honour, you are on a long thing, apologies to Nigerian music sensation D’Banj. But honestly when awards are shared out like this and you fail to get one, perhaps you should check yourself again and find out what exactly it is you are doing wrongly.

I mean, it was like a bazaar. Like a cash and carry auction sale. The kind you witness in Jankara market. National Honours for sale. Buy one and get one for free. I feel particularly dismayed that I couldn’t help myself to one. I suggest you too should be ashamed you didn’t get one. When I was much younger, if I returned home with excuses of being less fortunate than the other kids in any task, my father would pull my ears and ask me if the other kids had two heads. Today I feel the same way and I am pulling at my ears myself. Do those people have two heads?

Perhaps they do. Yes. I think they do. How can I aspire to a National Honour when I have never stolen government money? I really must be going crazy. Was I thinking these Honours come easily? Its given for hard work and dedication to duty especially when the task involved includes helping yourself to the contents of the national treasury or having the blood of someone who has excelled in that assignment running in your veins.

Perhaps we shouldn’t feel so bad after all for not securing an Honour. Two heads don’t come naturally. It is a mutation. A misnomer. An aberration. A product of a system gone awry. A system where dedicated national service only earns you a space on the very long queue of pensioners, while common crooks are rewarded with Chieftaincy titles and juicy contracts. I don’t want to have those two heads. No I am happy with my one head. My simple one honest head.

We would have happily ignored them and their scary second heads. We would all have acted like we didn’t know they were dashing themselves extra medals for their extra necks and quietly busied ourselves with scraping out food for our single mouths. But they wouldn’t let us. No. They follow us about and mock us. They take out full colour pages of newspapers to congratulate themselves. Their wives, concubines and mistresses do the same. Political job-seekers and sycophants would not be outdone. They smile up at us from the pages of the papers and paint the pages with talks of gallantry and bravely and say how much the honour was deserved and even long over due.

That’s what hurts. To hear them claim gallantry for an award they got for free. An award Kongi and Achebe, two of our greatest wouldn’t touch with a pole. They make me wonder again what the meaning of gallantry is, if honour has now assumed a new meaning. If indeed honour still has a meaning. I am not so sure. I suspect you too are wondering. Perhaps we would continue to wonder until they gather again next year to share out more medals. Perhaps we can stop them. Yes. We can. Our Votes can.