Let us break something in Nigeria!
By Prince Charles Dickson, PhD
SIR: When Houston energy worker Shawn Baker was laid off in 2015, she opened a new business that quickly became a “smash hit.” It’s a place for angry, stressed out, or anxiety-filled people to take out their frustrations on inanimate objects. Inside the building are four rooms lined with thick plywood, all stocked with old furniture, dishes, burned-out TVs and appliances, out-of-date electronics, and even feather pillows. Baker buys from junk dealers or used furniture shops. Customers get their choice of instrument—golf club, baseball bat, lead pipe, or sledge hammer. Then, after donning mandatory protective equipment, they close themselves in a room and smash everything in sight.
Baker named her business Tantrums, LLC
Customers pay $25 to $50 for five to fifteen minutes of demolition. After a session, the room looks like a war zone, filled with broken glass, feathers, ceramic shards, and electronic innards. People from all walks of life flock to Baker’s business—mothers, businessmen, doctors, teachers, oil and gas workers, and even some therapists.
Customers rave about how beneficial a session of smashing has been, enabling them to relieve stress in a controlled environment.
It’s easy to understand the impulse that drives customers to Shawn Baker’s business. Anxiety is one of the defining symptoms of our times. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders affect 40 million adults in the United States, or just over 18 percent of the population. It’s a major factor affecting our general health; people with anxiety disorders go to doctors three to five times more than the general population.
And here is where I introduce my beloved Nigeria into the mix. Nigerians are more than anxious, we are dead tired having suffered all forms of expectation fatigue and exhausted all known medications. Government at all layers and across platforms seems destined on the path that builds all forms of anxiety for citizenry.
A friend said to me, not having a High Blood Pressure these days was not normal; the pressure of being Nigerian is becoming unbearable. We all are putting on caps that have snakes underneath and wanting to pretend to be at peace.
We wake up to some confusion on banking charges and allied charges by telecommunication companies. In anxiety, the communication ministry suspends plan.
Have you seen the floods in Lagos, and other states? These rains come every year, yet wreak same amount of havoc. Imagine the anxiety, and no amount of smashing would change much, except maybe we are smashing the leaders responsible for all the mess.
Look at the anxiety of people in that part of Kano where the lion escaped and the reaction when it was caught; look at how families go through hell when someone is abducted, on one of those crazy roads of ours.
Are we ready to really smash the current trend of 2000 being sacked in Kaduna by bandits? Who wants to break the cycle of security agents that continue to parade criminals and not address crime? The misnomer of the army wanting to do policing and monitor responsible dressing and identification when we have not addressed the institutional issues around national identification?
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Who or when shall we address our constitutional vandalism and the lack of independence in the judiciary, so much that it is one law for the rich, another for the poor, one law for the ruling party, another for the opposition? A system that is arms up as judges are being kidnapped whether in Ondo or Edo states?
Fact is that some smashing has to be done or else we will remain stuck with all the illegal rehabs being discovered from Kaduna, to Katsina, Ilorin to Enugu with inmates abused sexually and psychologically because the system isn’t working.
Call it restructure, remake, rewrite or whatever, we need to smash, break the holds that are bent on destroying this beautiful country.
- Prince Charles Dickson, PhD,
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