We live in very controversial and interesting times, and in the age of malevolent obsequies. Three and a half years ago as the toll from the Covid-19 incubus threatened to overwhelm humanity, this column published a piece titled, The Death of Obituary. At that point, the casualty list from the dreaded pandemic was becoming prohibitive.
Such was the avalanche of the fallen that yours sincerely decided that announcing the exit of luminaries was no longer a viable preoccupation. The art of obituary was itself mortally imperiled. It had become a punitive act of self-flagellation. Let the dead herald the death of the dead.
Nobody would have thought that within such a short period, obituary would face an equally grave threat from a different direction. But in Nigeria, the implausible is only a short step away from the imponderable. Last week, the ubiquitous and highly toxic fake news industry in Nigeria grossed another distinguished scalp. It added General General Yakubu Gowon to its malignant menu.
Site after site in the capillary network of malice and mischief began breaking the news that Nigeria’s war time leader and one of the most refined and humane officers to ever don the uniform of the Nigerian military was no more. The gentle warrior with the mien of an unflappable and imperturbable missionary had journeyed across the void of human existence.
There was an element of plausibility to the story. Although the robust and stocky general is not known to suffer any major ailment or affliction, he has been blessed with a long life and at the ripe old age of eighty nine, it would be stretching luck too far not to expect a sudden eventuality in that direction.
Moreover, despite national accolades and international plaudits, Gowon has led an intensely private life, shielding himself and family from hostile public scrutiny, particularly after his ouster in 1975 by junior colleagues who felt he had exhausted his possibility and was leading the country in the wrong direction.
Read Also: Wike approves Yakubu Gowon Stadium for APC presidential rally
While still trying to make sense of the breaking story, dusk had descended fast and to reinforce the pervading sense of siege an awful darkness descended on the place in the absence of electricity. In the meantime, a chat group of respected elders that one belongs to also joined the funereal orchestration. It was looking as if Good Old Jack might be gone for good.
In the event, one was left with no alternative than to start composing an obituary for General Yakubu Gowon in the frightening stillness of lightlessness while waiting for daybreak to rejoin the march of civilization. Luckily, the mind still availed us the grist of a decade and a half year old tribute the columnist wrote in honour of the remarkable soldier.
Titled Jack is not the Ripper, the essay argued that whatever General Gowon’s inherent failings and weaknesses, he could not be counted among the predators, civilian and military alike, who brought Nigeria to its knees. In the absence of new evidence to the contrary, that opinion still stands.
The habit of secretly penning obituaries ahead of the passing of great and exceptional individuals is consistent with the best practice in the profession. When it actually comes to pass, all the obituarist needs to do is to cross out and add a few paragraphs while dotting the “i” and crossing the “t” here and there. But it is fraught with its own unique perils.
A major London newspaper is a past master of this surreal sub-genre often enlisting several ghost obituarists to shadow and monitor the progress of pilgrims towards their terminal terminus. The snag is when the obituaree manages to survive his obtuarist. A shuffling of the cards—and the cads, is mandatory. Snooper knows of at least three African leaders who have survived several prospective obituarists and still counting.
At the last count, none of the literary necromancers headhunted for the job took up the offer. They might have concluded that it may well be the equivalent of a death sentence. The autumn of the African patriarch remains the autumn of the African patriarch never to be forejudged or forecast by literary dabblers and sundry dilettantes.
It is alleged by those who should know that some African potentates actually fake their own death as a bizarre ritual of longevity. Announcing their death becomes a double jeopardy; a talisman for abridged and abbreviated existence.
On a scale of national perplexity nothing perhaps could surpass the infamous obituary of the great Owelle on prime time television while the old man himself was watching in blissful calm with Uche, his wife. At the tail end, Zik was said to have cottoned in on the announcer wishing him eternal repose and peaceful transition to the abode of his ancestors.
It was that said that the old man became so distraught that he needed repeated assurances from his wife that all was well and that he was still very much alive. Zik, an intensely cerebral fellow, would have thought that all the assurances from his wife were in vain and within the realistic realm of posthumous gallivanting.
The situation was hardly helped when one of Zik’s jaded disciples was dredged up on national television to confirm the great man’s incontrovertible departure. To boot, the man insisted that before the Owelle breathed his last, he had passed on the mantle of Igbo leadership to him asking him to lead his people to the Promised Land.
But the former prize fighter and celebrated pugilist of magnificent physical endowment rallied. All those who were part of the plot to sentence him to premature extinction predeceased him by a healthy distance.
By last Tuesday morning, the purported death of General Yakubu Gowon had turned out to be a damp squib. No newspaper carried the story. No major site pursued the trail. The furious winds of modern communication that blow the virus of fake news also carry in their womb the benign germs of retrieval and rectification.
A selfie of Gowon, in customary good health and puckish humour, appeared as he watched his grandson playing football somewhere in England. Later in the day, the general himself issued a statement that he was alive and in very good health.
Due diligence and customary commonsense would have helped to avert the damning howler. It turned out that the person who actually passed on was a much younger but no less distinguished professor whose first name coincided with the surname of the general. No retraction or self-rectification ever came from the malignant sites. As far as the putrid purveyors are concerned, they are in a state of war against their fatherland and General Gowon can kick the bucket if he likes.
This is the state of siege in which the nation has found itself with enemy nationals on the rise. The fake news phenomenon is merely a symptom of something more radically fundamental; a short-hand for an all-encompassing crisis of the postcolonial state; a malignant fabrication and deadly repudiation of the repugnant reality as they see it before them. The status quo will not go away merely because of their fabrications. But neither will they before they tip all of us into a state of anarchy.
The current status quo may not be perfect or ideal. But it provides us with the best opportunity for a re-imagining of the nation. People do not cherish what they have until they have lost it through their own egregious foolhardiness. Under livable peace, humans seek unlivable strife until the horrors force them to seek a return to livable peace. It is the way of desperate humanity. And we have been here before. General Gowon can testify to that. It is not yet his obituary; neither is it the obituary of the nation.
