Trial of Brother Ike

The Trials of Brother Jero is a Wole Soyinka play, which protagonist is a roguish but likable C&S prophet living on his wits; like other white-garment hustlers of his era, in his Lagos Bar Beach redoubt.

But the Trial of Brother Ike is no fiction.  Indeed, it’s ultra-real setting is Nuremberg, the pre-World War II (1939-1945) city of intense Nazi hate, in Bavaria, Germany.

With post-World War II trials, however, that same Nuremberg played judicial nemesis to the rump of Adolf Hitler’s hate-spewing thugs, after the global debacle that consumed thousands, if not, millions of lives.

Besides, this scary, non-fiction badgering had the social media, as its global stage — from which it went viral, practically a few seconds after the macabre assault and battery played out.

It was the odyssey of Ike Ekweremadu, former deputy president (DSP) of the 7th and 8th Senates; and current sitting senator of the Federal Republic, in the hands of IPOB fanatics, out there in Germany.

The video of Ekweremadu’s mugging was simply unnerving.  Mugged by a mob, clothes torn; pushed-and-pulled, a virtual ping-pong in the hands of a hateful mob; poor Ekweremadu wouldn’t gain his get-away car until one of the mob let fly a king-size tuber of yam!

Lodavemesi!

Those who wish to gloat have earned their democratic right, to enjoy selves, at Ekweremadu’s expense.

Truth be told, the Nuremberg show of shame is nothing but crass internationalization of the sewers of South East politics, particularly in relations to other ethnics.

In that lunatic, combustible cave, it’s an elite goading to free-wheeling hate.  After all, going by the French Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 No Exit play, “Hell is other people”!

But at Nuremberg, the city of Nazi hate, hell suddenly became own people!  That’s Ekweremadu’s personal tragedy.

Still, those who have been gloating would do well to remember that scriptural caution: beware of throwing the first stone.

In this high season of hate, you never know where the children of hate would spring from.  That is with particular reference to South West folks.  But more on that presently.

Back to Ekweremadu; and an IPOB romance gone awry.

When Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) were spewing hate, across the Niger north and west, it was mum from Ekweremadu and co.

For one, it was the first time the mainstream South East elite would play themselves into opposition, in any democratic experiment, pre- or post-Civil War (1967-1970).

For an elite that loves to blame others for own failings, some bile from the misguided mass would do just fine — hell is other people!

Besides, it was the summit of Ekweremadu’s sweetheart deal with Bukola Saraki.

Saraki had sold off his party to gain the Senate presidency.  En route, he had sold Ekweremadu the carcass of DSP, even if the beneficiary was a minority senator.  It was carcass and carrion so sweet!

But the mission was clear: with Saraki, gang up to thwart the new order; turn triumph into defeat; and four years hence, from that base platform, rocket back to power!

With that temper, Nnamdi Kanu’s bail was the umpteenth politics to cement that not-so-hidden rogue agenda.  Besides, don’t they say the enemy of my enemy is my darling friend?

So, Ekweremadu played the folk hero, and Kanu got his bail — applause, applause!  Until Kanu, with his ceaseless stream of hate, turned himself into a fugitive from the law, it was, to echo that pidgin street lingo, notin’ spoil!

Then came Nuremberg — and the hunter becomes the hunted (and haunted); things fall apart; the falcon can no longer hear the falconer; and mere anarchy is loosed upon the Igbo world: right out there in Nuremberg, the old city of Nazi hate!

Why, IPOB, though proscribed, is even threatening more thunder and brimstone, against South East governors and other high-ranking politicos, that venture outside Nigeria’s shores!

How internationalizing senseless bile and crass hooliganism would boost Biafra’s cause is left to anyone to figure out.

In fairness to Ekweremadu, he just fitted pat into an extant elite agenda; the same way Ohanaeze’s combative temper in inter-ethnic matters does, as ferreted from the often bulldog stance of John Nwodo, its president; even if elderly restraint would do.

You could even trace, on a grander cultured level, the current South East distemper to Chinua Achebe’s swan song, There Was A Country, his Civil War memoirs of prose and poetry, which not a few think is a tad one-sided.

Even if you could excuse that criticism with the saying that he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches, bile has never solved any problem.  All it does is block clear thinking, sorely needed to clear the fog and improve the situation.

Still, for South West denizens that love to gloat at the Ekweremadu debacle, they had better watch current happenings in  own home region; with elders at the departure lounge (to echo Obasanjo’s  metaphor) vomiting enough bile, to ensure inter-ethnic ancestral feuds continue, long after they are gone.

True, former President Olusegun Obasanjo continues to blow hot and cold, as befits his rather unstable political temper, with wild swings between joy and angst, as final judgment dawns on his legacy.  But Obasanjo is not the danger here.

The danger, rather, is the progressive mainstream now split, with the losing bloc digging deep into bile, as bitter as gall.

That explains why a faction of Afenifere, which hitherto had served the Yoruba rather well in earlier battles in a federal Nigeria, would now seem to champion a rather noxious strain of Yoruba ultranationalism, complete with ethnic slurs, particularly against the Fulani.

Now, that would appear a potent two-in-one whiplash: to drub the rival victors at the polls, turning into ash their legit win; and to inveigh against the Fulani who, by present hysteria, are folks others love to hate.

Even better: in blind bitterness, cast the victorious bloc as bastards, come to drag the once proud Yoruba into Fulani peonage — applause, applause, from a fast increasing bigoted mass!

But when comes the Yoruba Nuremberg, when a Yoruba Ekweremadu would play out, in shameful technicolor, in full view of the globe?

When would that be?  After the grandees pushing the present hate are dead and buried; and the young Turks in the current bile ensemble become the new Ekweremadu, flailing under own home missiles, to universal derision?

So, let folks nationwide gloat less and think more.

Let the Ekweremadu pill be the turning point, jerking everyone back to reality. Hate or bile exalts no nation.

Nigeria may be at a crossroads.  But so have many countries too, at separate times in their history.

Yet, many of these not only weathered their storms, not a few even morphed from countries into nations, integrated in love, justice and mutual respect.