**Men without ears

Tatalo Alamu

It is a consuming paradox that genocide is never far away from modern civilization. It has occurred everywhere: In the two Americas, first with the arrival of Hernan Cortes and the conquistadors and then the genocide of native Amerindians by the builders of modern America.

History bears uncanny witness to the industrial scale extermination of native Africans by King Leopold of Belgium in the egregiously named Free State of Congo, the attempt by the German imperial Command to obliterate the Herero people in modern day Namibia. Many of the survivors fled to what is now known as Botswana.

Africans have also exterminated other Africans in several wars of ethnic hegemony in the last two centuries, particularly in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Sudan and Nigeria. In Cambodia, a Marxist crackpot known as Pol Pot set about decimating his own people with cruel sangfroid. There was also the savage expropriation of the Australian Aborigines all in the name of a messianic civilizing order.

The bearers of modern Western civilization never felt any compunction about eliminating any human impedimenta to their notion of human and historical advancement. Based on this foundational prejudice, any laggard human species is summarily dealt with for standing in the way of the manifest destiny of humanity as reflected in occidental history.

For many who placed premium hopes on Nigeria as potential Black haven; a political, cultural and intellectual Mecca of the Black people, the country sucks and stinks to high heavens. To them Nigeria ought to have served as a countervailing rally for the Black race against the excesses of western civilization and its aggravating pretences as the sole bearer of modern civilization.

Many of the disappointed lovers point at the virtual implosion of the Nigerian post-colonial state in all the indices of state validation, the collapse of the nation’s security architecture as seen in the inability of the military to defend the nation’s territorial integrity against a religious insurgency that has lasted more than a decade. They also point at the display of cosmic buffoonery  by the political class all in the name of politics.

One can understand the current global disappointment with Nigeria. Yet there is also a lot of misplaced anger abroad. The current Nigeria may just be serving the purpose for which it was created by the colonial masters. African researchers trapped in the discursive formation of western intellectual history and formation may be searching for the wrong answers in the wrong place.

The recent slow-motion execution of George Floyd by a racist cop through a vicious knee-clamp and the global outrage this has elicited has brought in its wake a whole range of associative recalls and wild juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated events.

In its bid to arrive at a deeper understanding of contemporary events, the human mind often transports tropes from past events to bear on current developments in a way that stuns the common sense and conventional expectations.

Wounded Knee was the site of a horrific massacre of native Indians by the American army in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was a thoroughly one-sided encounter. Already serially humiliated in battle and subjected to brutal repression, the American Indians were looking for a last ditch solution to a colourful way of life which was crumbling all around them.

They thought they had found the solution in an old ritual dance known as The Ghost Dance which would revive ancient tribal honour and dignity as well as restore the pride of the American Indian nation.  The movement swept across the American plains, igniting native passion and nationalist nostalgia.

The American colonial authorities would have none of that. They saw in The Ghost Dance Movement a sure route back to native cultural nationalism and subsequently to the pride and ferocity with which the American Indians resisted the extermination of their person and culture by the invading White supremacists.

As with every other thing they found strange and threatening, the American bearers of western modernity went after the moving spirits behind the Ghost Dance with maximum force and severity resulting in needless bloodshed.

At the end of the armed confrontation, Big Foot, the veteran Indian American warrior who had not even taken an active part in the dispute, lay dying in the snow. The conquerors had not forgotten or forgiven the humiliation of General George Armstrong Custer less than fifteen years earlier. It was the last sigh of the American Indians.

A century and three decades later in 2020, the same combination of fear and fright of the threatening other as well ingrained prejudices against the American of African extraction has led a racist cop to snuff life out of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It has been a long ride from Wounded Knee to Wounding Knee.

After being physically subdued, what the giant African American asked for was some breathing space. But fear and fright of the other, particularly the threatening Black bulk they have held down for centuries, will not allow them to give their former slaves a breathing space. As the saying goes, you cannot pin somebody down without staying on the floor with them.

This is why despite enviable strides of civilization and astounding progress in many departments of human endeavours, there remains many aspects of western society which are a throwback to Stone Age savagery and social cannibalism. Taken together in their brutality and offensive disregard for the sanctity of human life, they represent a frank window into the heart of darkness still entombed in all human beings irrespective of race, religion or civilization.

The question must now be asked why within the different strata and segments of human society, it is the western mind and imagination that seem most exacerbated and most exercised by the fear and fright of the other, bearing in mind the frightful savagery and homicidal frenzy this often provokes. The history of western modernity may tell part of the story, but not the entire story.

Of all the historical exegeses of human progress, western modernity is unique in projecting the illusion that it has no predecessors, competitors and possible successors. The usual myth is that it arrived on the world stage fully dressed and well-costumed for the historical task at hand. Yet its heirloom is so evidently freighted with massive indebtedness to other cultures that it is frankly absurd to argue the contrary.

The problem is that the myth of European Exceptionalism which propels western modernity and drove it to appropriate other people’s land from North and South America to Asia and Africa in the name of a new civilizing order does not give room within its narrative compass for any predecessors, competitors or successors. Before it, the world was a void. After it, everything came alive.

Yet it is obvious that before it gained unrivalled ascendancy over its competitors, western modernity was only one out of many countervailing modernity struggling for supremacy. These historical developments were obeying an internal logic of their own which depended on the objective state of the societies.

For example, but for the advent of colonization which violently disrupted their internal process there is nothing to suggest that certain African societies and people would not have intuited and second guessed their way towards some form of modernity. This is even more so in the case of India, the Latin America and China.

The problem with these ancient empires, expiring fiefdoms and superannuated kingdoms was that they were actually at the end of their historical tethers; politically and economically exhausted and lacking in fresh insights or initiatives.

By contrast, the emergent bourgeois masters of Britain, the hardy burghers of newly unified Germany, the radical homme libre of post-revolution France, the wealthy seafarers of Amsterdam and the strutting  and swaggering Americans  projected fresh energy and new vision.

The fact now speaks for itself and it is a damning indictment of western civilization. Having confiscated the intellectual property of earlier societies, having appropriated the historic insights of other cultures without acknowledging its indebtedness and having expropriated their land with aplomb, it is entirely understandable if western modernity views the other with fear and apprehension.

To nudge western civilization out of this historic conundrum the way forward for non-western societies is not to seek revenge or a settling of scores. The way forward is to develop counter-narratives and countervailing projects of modernity which will put western notions of a single narrative of human development and innate western superiority on the spot.

Western modernity contributed immensely to the advancement of human civilization as we now know it. It brought a sense of mission and manic urgency to radical innovation and technological overreach without which some of the startling achievements of humanity in the last five centuries would have been impossible.

But there was nothing inevitable or preordained about its ascendancy. Consequently, it cannot aspire to succeed itself. This will run contrary to the very logic of events that threw it up. Having smashed up its earlier competitors, it is normal for other societies to view its overwhelming superiority as natural and divinely ordained. But not forever as we are witnessing.

America’s nervous and frightful reaction to the rise of China is very instructive. Long accustomed to serial humiliation and racist scorn in the hands of western powers, China took it in the chin and never raised its voice while the balance of power was against it.

An ancient civilization that never lost its sense of self-worth and national pride despite the callous indignities visited on it by the western imperial powers, China understudied and stole what it could from the west until it was ready to face it down.  As inscrutable as ever, no one knows what ace China has up its sleeves.

To arrive at a global geopolitical equipoise, there can be no doubt that Africa needs a magnetic hub; an economic, political, cultural and intellectual epicentre that will project Black power and possibilities as a countervailing model of modernity and human development.

America’s imperial and imperious strutting on the global stage has been checkmated by the rise of a Chinese model of state capitalism which delivers faster services to its bigger populace and is far more serious about eliminating inequality and the concentration wealth in a few hands. There is also the minor problem of a Russia buoyed by hyper-Slavic nationalism which is bent on cocking a military snook at an exhausted America.

The unfolding global ascendancy of China,  the advent of the Asian Tigers, the rise of Arab capitalism as seen in UAE and some of the Gulf states and India’s bearish supremacy in aspects of technological revolution, all underscore the contemporary tragedy of Nigeria as the failed hub of Africa. As it was foreseen by some of the continent’s wisest rulers, the tragedy and under-achievement of Nigeria is a tragedy for the entire Black race.

But as we hinted at the beginning, we may all be barking the wrong tree here. Nigeria was never created by the colonial masters to serve the aspirations of the Black race. Nigeria was created as the biggest overseas retail outlet for colonial goods and largest concentration of raw materials, both human and non-human. The imperialist overlords were not in this business for sentimental reasons.

This is why since its creation, Nigeria has played host to waves after waves of armies of occupation, both colonial and native and both military and civilian for the sole purpose of extractive predation. Whenever we think we have seen the worst of them all, a worse specimen of humanity is just around the corner.

The country has fulfilled the aspirations of its original founders beyond their wildest imagination. Nigeria is the greatest Slave Bazaar that the world has seen. The fault is not in our greatest heroes and avatars. But they misread the historical cue. Anybody hoping to make Nigeria as currently constituted and configured to serve the aspirations of the Black race is living in a fools’ paradise.

Here are the drastic options. As the empire of his forefathers crumbled around him at the tail end of the First World War, a brave and brilliant army officer, Mustapha Kemal, rallied the troops to carve out an authentic Turkish nation from the collapsing Ottoman Turkish Empire. The eccentric colonel who is widely regarded as the founder of modern Turkey stood his military ground against the imperial armies. A modern Turkish nation rose from the ashes of the old empire.

At the tail end of the 90s and the last century, the Soviet behemoth that had held several European nationalities in Socialist thraldom began to crumble. Mikhail Gorbachev, the enlightened and visionary Soviet ruler, knew that he had only one realistic and pragmatic choice: to engineer a radical deconstruction of the monstrous albatross from within. And he did. The Soviet Empire crumbled giving way to a resurgent Russia.

Nigeria needs either a Kemal Ataturk to reinvent it or a Mikhail Gorbachev to put out of its endless miseries.

                  Men without ears

IN this column’s only public comment on the Oshiomhole- Obaseki imbroglio, we had admonished the two political gladiators to sheath their swords. As yours sincerely surmised then, the only possible logical outcome of the bitter feud is Mutually Assured Destruction. Having done our duty to nation and humanity, we decided to watch from the side lines as the two camps were egged on by a motley array of political hyenas, literary assassins and tribal principalities.

In the said piece, we urged Obaseki not to succumb to the snares of the famous Oedipus complex in which a son is driven to kill his father in order to marry his mother. Freud believed that all modern feuds between godsons and their godfathers are driven by this roiling psychological and political imperative.

But there are also godfathers who never wish their godsons well out of fear, anxiety and apprehension. It is not heart-warming to be surpassed and outflanked by one’s creation. It takes the most generous and wisest of men to acknowledge this and to live with it. This column drew Oshiomhole’s attention to the pitfalls of the master-builder syndrome.

Famously adopted from Henrik Ibsen’s play, The Master-Builder, it is a situation in which a renowned genius does not wish to be surpassed by his own students and creations. The world of politics and Literature is littered with such fratricidal contentions which only end in tragedy and mutual disgrace.

Since last Thursday after General Buhari wielded the big stick, all is now eerily quiet on the Mid-western front. There is no point belabouring the legality or wisdom of this sledgehammer treatment. You cannot expect a man with a military cast of temperament to stand aloof for long as party and nation descend into anarchy and judicial chaos.

The main combatants have since retreated to lick their wounds. Whether they survive to fight another day is a different matter entirely. Oshiomhole has been dramatically unhorsed with serious collateral damage to his political judgement, moral probity and ability to multi-task in a multi-ethnic coliseum.

In the case of Obaseki, he has survived somehow by carpet-crossing but in vastly diminished circumstances of moral impairment and integrity deficiency. Beyond his Benin moat perimeter, nobody in his right senses will give him any consideration when it comes to future national engagements. Oshiomhole has his faults, but in this particular matter Obaseki has behaved with execrable vileness and arrogant licentiousness.  This is not the finest hour for politics in post-military Nigeria.

Tatalo Alamu

IN this column’s only public comment on the Oshiomhole- Obaseki imbroglio, we had admonished the two political gladiators to sheath their swords. As yours sincerely surmised then, the only possible logical outcome of the bitter feud is Mutually Assured Destruction. Having done our duty to nation and humanity, we decided to watch from the side lines as the two camps were egged on by a motley array of political hyenas, literary assassins and tribal principalities.

In the said piece, we urged Obaseki not to succumb to the snares of the famous Oedipus complex in which a son is driven to kill his father in order to marry his mother. Freud believed that all modern feuds between godsons and their godfathers are driven by this roiling psychological and political imperative.

But there are also godfathers who never wish their godsons well out of fear, anxiety and apprehension. It is not heart-warming to be surpassed and outflanked by one’s creation. It takes the most generous and wisest of men to acknowledge this and to live with it. This column drew Oshiomhole’s attention to the pitfalls of the master-builder syndrome.

Famously adopted from Henrik Ibsen’s play, The Master-Builder, it is a situation in which a renowned genius does not wish to be surpassed by his own students and creations. The world of politics and Literature is littered with such fratricidal contentions which only end in tragedy and mutual disgrace.

Since last Thursday after General Buhari wielded the big stick, all is now eerily quiet on the Mid-western front. There is no point belabouring the legality or wisdom of this sledgehammer treatment. You cannot expect a man with a military cast of temperament to stand aloof for long as party and nation descend into anarchy and judicial chaos.

The main combatants have since retreated to lick their wounds. Whether they survive to fight another day is a different matter entirely. Oshiomhole has been dramatically unhorsed with serious collateral damage to his political judgement, moral probity and ability to multi-task in a multi-ethnic coliseum.

In the case of Obaseki, he has survived somehow by carpet-crossing but in vastly diminished circumstances of moral impairment and integrity deficiency. Beyond his Benin moat perimeter, nobody in his right senses will give him any consideration when it comes to future national engagements. Oshiomhole has his faults, but in this particular matter Obaseki has behaved with execrable vileness and arrogant licentiousness.  This is not the finest hour for politics in post-military Nigeria.

**Baba Lekki liberates Okon from Alatupa Station

Tatalo Alamu

Twenty two years after he died in tragic circumstances, Moshood Abiola has become a corner piece of Nigeria’s heroic folklore. For a man whose pockets bristled with pusillanimous proverbs of self-preservation, this is profoundly ironic. Nation-growing is like cultivating and nurturing to full stature a rare species of trees. It cannot be left to political horticulturists.

The life of a nation is like a journey without destination, full of strange twists and turns; replete with abrupt seizures and sudden bursts of energy. Sometimes, there is the odd decapitation by those seized by fury and impatience. But most of the time, many nations survive while a few perish or dramatically wilt away.

This last Friday, Nigerians celebrated the second anniversary of the canonization of June 12 as the nation’s official Democracy Day. Before then and for about eighteen years of post-military rule, it was 29th May. The military hierarchy and its civilian collaborators made sure it was this day in order to erase any lingering doubt in the populace about their determination to obliterate the June 12 1993 presidential election from the national consciousness.

It was a sudden and dramatic victory certainly against the run of play and a tribute to the steadfastness and sturdy refusal of the old Western states to succumb to official blackmail and the anti-democratic perversities of the residual military oligarchy and its ruling party. Before then, the glum, taciturn and totally inscrutable former military supremo from Daura had given no indication whatsoever about how his mind was working on the matter.

If this is political opportunism at its most desperate, it is also a brilliant deployment of the element of swift surprise. On their mysterious journey to self-actualization or self-destruction as the case may be, nations are prone to strange and surreal drama. Historical actors may think that they are actually and consciously deploying their aces to advantage when in actual fact they are nothing but pawns and puppets in the hands of greater powers and principalities.

It may be useful to add that this sudden Pauline conversion on the road to Damascus could not have happened without the subsisting alliance between the dominant political tendency in the politically volatile and combustible Yoruba nation and the dominant conservative wing of the northern power establishment. At the last count, the strange alliance has suffered many reverses, blows, accusations of perfidy and treachery. But it is still standing.

It was therefore understandable why the national mood was sad and sombre last Friday as the nation celebrated one of the rare feats of national consensus in post-independence Nigeria. The background was uniformly depressing. There was the subsisting pandemic which had turned everybody’s life upside down.

There is the looming economic implosion which has set everybody on edge. There is the general breakdown of security which has set everybody in the panic mode. Above all, the unresolved National Question loomed precariously in the background, threatening to overwhelm both the nation and its hosting post-colonial state.

Despite some enviable strides in other areas of nation-growing, it is clear that twenty seven years after the annulment of the freest and fairest annulment in the history of the nation, Nigeria is not yet out of the emergency ward. If the June 12 crisis was the most severe symptom, it is also clear that the underlying ailments or comorbidities are equally life threatening.

With the power of hindsight and after the passage of time has cooled the ardour considerably, it is now possible to revisit what went wrong twenty seven years ago on that memorable day when even the elements seemed ready to give Nigeria a respite from traumatic nation-growing. It will be recalled that not an inch of rainfall was recorded anywhere in the country on that day. It was a metaphysical portent about the danger of toying with the destiny of the most vibrant Black nation.

After eight years of a tortuous transition programme which has been described as the most sustained exercise in political chicanery ever visited on a people, Nigerians can be forgiven if they were expecting to be rewarded with the glorious dawn of democracy. But it was not to be.

In retrospect, it appeared that the military had their own succession schedule which had absolutely nothing to do with the democratic aspirations of Nigerians but a lot to do with private loyalty and military power play. If they like, like them queue in the burning sun from daybreak till dawn. The electorate can elect but the selectorate will select for them.

Less than twenty military officers annulled the democratic dream and wishes of the fourteen million who actually voted on that fateful day. Some of the ranking military echelons claimed that they could not have the putative winner of the election as their Commander -in-chief.

One or two were known to have boasted that they would shoot the new president on the very day he was proclaimed as such. To show their total contempt for Nigerians, the release announcing the annulment was not even signed and was handed to a civilian subaltern to proclaim. It was a dark day for the Blackman and for Nigeria as a putative nation.

Looking back and with the power of objective analysis, it can now be seen that there was a bifurcation of political consciousness between the Nigerian people and the Nigerian Army or at least the dominant section of it. While the people thought they owned the army, the army believed it owned the nation.

It is a classic dichotomy dating back to the old Prussian military state which thought that without it, there was really no nation. This tense duel between the Nigerian army and the army of Nigerians played out for five subsequent years after the annulment until the annulists bowed to superior forces of history which decimated their ranks and destroyed their cohesion.

The military was forced to retreat to the barracks but not before leaving behind a template of democratised despotism which remains the bane of post-military Nigeria up till this moment. Twenty seven years after the June 12 phenomenon, elections are still brazenly and routinely rigged even as the will of the people is summarily annulled.

This anomaly is foundational and goes back to the constitution of the Nigerian nation as vast colonial garrison at the mercy of a foreign army of occupation. The colonial state founded the nation and to a large extent owned it. The putative Nigerian nation existed at the mercy of the occupying colonial force which abridged, amalgamated and annotated it at will without any input from the native constituents.

It is this colonial legacy that has played out in post-colonial Nigeria. It is a case of exchanging white monkeys for black baboons.  The indigenous military officer corps merely replaced their colonial military mentors in the engine room of controlling and dominating the native people.  When General Mohammadu Buhari, in his first coming, famously dismissed the Nigerian political class as a bastion of election riggers, little did he know that he was going to be ousted eventually by a band of election vaporizers.

With the dawn of independence the Nigerian people thought they had become citizens of a brand new country. But they were profoundly mistaken as subsequent developments will bear out. They merely exchanged their status as semi-citizens of a colonial state with that of full subjects of a post-colonial feudal autocracy. There can be no citizenship in the context of deferred nationhood. In any case, citizens are made of sterner stuff.

All the subsequent ills of that have hobbled Nigeria’s great promise such as corruption, discrimination, nepotism, mediocrity, incompetence as well as the culture of impunity and grand outlawry can be traced to this fundamental anomaly. It creates a system of disordered values in which there is one set of rules for the conquering class and another set for the conquered rabble.

Nothing dignifying or edifying can be achieved in Nigeria without a surgical excision of this foundational defect. Since this anomaly is replicated in virtually all African nations that have transited from colonial occupation to post-colonial nationhood, it raises the question of authentic citizenship in post-colonial Africa. Colonial enslavement has merely been exchanged for post-colonial servitude.

It is within this context of a continuous struggle for an organic nation and authentic citizenship that MKO Abiola emerges as the unrivalled hero of post-military Nigeria whatever his own unflattering antecedents as an anti-democratic kingpin and collaborator with the military oligarchy.

By laying down his life when it mattered most for the democratic aspirations of fellow Nigerians, Abiola has cultivated a cult of heroic example which will be hard to outshine in the history books of this era. By deliberately courting martyrdom rather than succumbing to humiliation and political self-abasement, the maverick billionaire has made sure that he will live forever in the affection of grateful Nigerians.

There is a grand play of irony about all this. Without having ruled Nigeria for one single second, Abiola will be better remembered than most of those who have ruled the country for his sterling contribution to the democratic rebirth of the nation. As we have noted at the beginning of this piece, the history of a nation is full of strange turns indeed.

Baba Lekki liberates Okon from Alatupa Station

To Alatupa station on the outskirts of Erinmido Forest where the feckless and heedless Okon is being held on a holding charge of grand larceny and conspiracy with unknown persons to defraud the government of revenues by passing off ladies’ undies as Antiseptic Face Masks. Unaware that the police, following a tip-off, had spread their dragnet around Opebi Market, the loony fellow had sauntered in early in the morning carrying a hefty bale of assorted ladies underwear.

He was promptly impounded by overzealous undercover agents who beat him to a pulp as his more intrepid accomplices escaped by scaling the fenced perimeter of the iconic market. Enraged and frustrated by the loss of revenues, the undercover police had torched the abandoned stalls of the suspects turning the whole place into a bonfire of exploding undies.

Please recall that exactly a week earlier, Mama Igosun had accused Okon of plucking off the high wire her iconic undies from colonial times and had threatened to have Shango, the god of Thunder,   deal with the crazy boy. Mid-afternoon into the fourth day, a thunderous rainfall erupted in the neighbourhood as the skies crackled with lightning and metaphysical fireworks. As the rains rumbled without cease, a clearly distraught Okon crashed into snooper’s bedroom.

“Oga, oga, I swear no be me steal dem mama him dross (drawers) oo , becos dis one as him dey mumble Yoruba witch-words and dem rain come dey fire machine gun like dem Black Scorpion man, make dem no come kill innocent people for Yoruba place”, the mad boy chanted breathlessly as he fell on snooper’s feet.

“Okon, there is nothing to be afraid of as long as you didn’t steal anything. Yoruba juju doesn’t work like that”, yours sincerely assured as he pushed the boy out of the room. Ten minutes after as the fiery thunder continued, the mad boy stole into the room again with fear and panic written all over him.

“Oga, what if I no steal dem mama dross but I sabi who steal am? Se thunder go still kill me?” the crazy boy whispered.

“Okon, please leave me out of this nonsense. Both the thief and the person who sells are liable to death”, snooper screamed at the crazy boy and pushed him out of the room with great force. One was later to learn that the crazy boy stole out of the house in the dead of the night during a lull in the rainfall.

Having survived the scary storm in an abandoned colonial hangar near the domestic airport, Okon was on his way to the market very early the next morning when he was apprehended by undercover police as he approached the landscaped precincts.

The atmosphere at Alatupa Police Station this early morning was like a riotous carnival of state disorder. As usual it was impossible to distinguish between the law and the lawless. The whole place looked like an abandoned hospital full of arrested Covid-19 patients, absconding paramedics who had been caught pilfering test kits, trans-border trespassers of no fixed address, police informers, state enforcers and the odd charge and bail lawyer with white shirt caked in grime and soot.

The presiding Desk Sergeant was a bright but overzealous cop with a reputation for efficiency and eccentricity. Having passed his Part 11 Private Correspondence Law examination, he was fond of signing off as Lawrence Izamoh, Inter-LL.B, and was adept at quoting the great names of the English legal system, going off at a tangent and at short notice.

Behind his back, his colleagues who had attempted O Level examinations by private tutorials with him called him Oversyla, an abbreviation for over syllabus because of his ability to roam in the field without any anchor or regard for specific course content.

After slamming the charges of grand larceny and conspiracy to defraud the state on Okon, the rogue sergeant had patted himself on the back for a job well done. If the mad boy was found guilty on the first count alone, the loony cop surmised, that would be enough for him to spend the rest of his adult life in prison.

“If he likes let him go and bring Dingle Foot”, Sergeant Izamoh exulted as he eyed snooper with brash disdain. He had been sifting through the application for bail brought by yours sincerely while helping himself to a generous dose of local snuff.

“And oga who be Dingle Foot sef ?”, the desk corporal inquired with reverence.

“No be dem Awolowo lawyer for treasonable felony be dat?” Over Syllabus replied.

“Ha, dis oyinbo people sef. He get one lawyer like dat dem dey call Jingle Bell”, the beefy corporal croaked as Over Syllabus chuckled to himself in superior scorn. It was at this point that he motioned to snooper to come over.

“Oga this boy is a confirmed criminal, you know that?” the crazy sergeant asked snooper in a rather patronising manner.

“Well, you can’t call him that if he has not been convicted “, snooper responded calmly and without being ruffled.

“Politicians are never convicted, but everybody knows they are criminals”, the desk sergeant snorted as he eyed snooper with wary respect.

“I am not here for that. Just release the boy”, snooper snapped sensing a trap. At this point there was a distinct sound of approaching commotion. A sense of panic and apprehension overtook the entire premises.

“I no be thief. Na becos I get dem Colonial Titus dem arrest me”, one man whined from inside the cell.

“Shut up or I will call Sergeant Pepper to give you your medicine,” the desk sergeant, losing his cynical composure for once, screamed. Then he switched his attention to yours sincerely again.

“You know I interrogated the mad Okon boy and I ask him why he was stealing corsets, bra and allied stuff and he asked me whether I didn’t know that this was a feeding bottle democracy”. At this point, the source of the commotion became clearer. It was Baba Lekki, accompanied by heavily armed people, waving an order of mandamus and asking everybody detained to be released. The whole place erupted in jubilation and singing.

Tatalo Alamu

To Alatupa station on the outskirts of Erinmido Forest where the feckless and heedless Okon is being held on a holding charge of grand larceny and conspiracy with unknown persons to defraud the government of revenues by passing off ladies’ undies as Antiseptic Face Masks. Unaware that the police, following a tip-off, had spread their dragnet around Opebi Market, the loony fellow had sauntered in early in the morning carrying a hefty bale of assorted ladies underwear.

He was promptly impounded by overzealous undercover agents who beat him to a pulp as his more intrepid accomplices escaped by scaling the fenced perimeter of the iconic market. Enraged and frustrated by the loss of revenues, the undercover police had torched the abandoned stalls of the suspects turning the whole place into a bonfire of exploding undies.

Please recall that exactly a week earlier, Mama Igosun had accused Okon of plucking off the high wire her iconic undies from colonial times and had threatened to have Shango, the god of Thunder,   deal with the crazy boy. Mid-afternoon into the fourth day, a thunderous rainfall erupted in the neighbourhood as the skies crackled with lightning and metaphysical fireworks. As the rains rumbled without cease, a clearly distraught Okon crashed into snooper’s bedroom.

“Oga, oga, I swear no be me steal dem mama him dross (drawers) oo , becos dis one as him dey mumble Yoruba witch-words and dem rain come dey fire machine gun like dem Black Scorpion man, make dem no come kill innocent people for Yoruba place”, the mad boy chanted breathlessly as he fell on snooper’s feet.

“Okon, there is nothing to be afraid of as long as you didn’t steal anything. Yoruba juju doesn’t work like that”, yours sincerely assured as he pushed the boy out of the room. Ten minutes after as the fiery thunder continued, the mad boy stole into the room again with fear and panic written all over him.

“Oga, what if I no steal dem mama dross but I sabi who steal am? Se thunder go still kill me?” the crazy boy whispered.

“Okon, please leave me out of this nonsense. Both the thief and the person who sells are liable to death”, snooper screamed at the crazy boy and pushed him out of the room with great force. One was later to learn that the crazy boy stole out of the house in the dead of the night during a lull in the rainfall.

Having survived the scary storm in an abandoned colonial hangar near the domestic airport, Okon was on his way to the market very early the next morning when he was apprehended by undercover police as he approached the landscaped precincts.

The atmosphere at Alatupa Police Station this early morning was like a riotous carnival of state disorder. As usual it was impossible to distinguish between the law and the lawless. The whole place looked like an abandoned hospital full of arrested Covid-19 patients, absconding paramedics who had been caught pilfering test kits, trans-border trespassers of no fixed address, police informers, state enforcers and the odd charge and bail lawyer with white shirt caked in grime and soot.

The presiding Desk Sergeant was a bright but overzealous cop with a reputation for efficiency and eccentricity. Having passed his Part 11 Private Correspondence Law examination, he was fond of signing off as Lawrence Izamoh, Inter-LL.B, and was adept at quoting the great names of the English legal system, going off at a tangent and at short notice.

Behind his back, his colleagues who had attempted O Level examinations by private tutorials with him called him Oversyla, an abbreviation for over syllabus because of his ability to roam in the field without any anchor or regard for specific course content.

After slamming the charges of grand larceny and conspiracy to defraud the state on Okon, the rogue sergeant had patted himself on the back for a job well done. If the mad boy was found guilty on the first count alone, the loony cop surmised, that would be enough for him to spend the rest of his adult life in prison.

“If he likes let him go and bring Dingle Foot”, Sergeant Izamoh exulted as he eyed snooper with brash disdain. He had been sifting through the application for bail brought by yours sincerely while helping himself to a generous dose of local snuff.

“And oga who be Dingle Foot sef ?”, the desk corporal inquired with reverence.

“No be dem Awolowo lawyer for treasonable felony be dat?” Over Syllabus replied.

“Ha, dis oyinbo people sef. He get one lawyer like dat dem dey call Jingle Bell”, the beefy corporal croaked as Over Syllabus chuckled to himself in superior scorn. It was at this point that he motioned to snooper to come over.

“Oga this boy is a confirmed criminal, you know that?” the crazy sergeant asked snooper in a rather patronising manner.

“Well, you can’t call him that if he has not been convicted “, snooper responded calmly and without being ruffled.

“Politicians are never convicted, but everybody knows they are criminals”, the desk sergeant snorted as he eyed snooper with wary respect.

“I am not here for that. Just release the boy”, snooper snapped sensing a trap. At this point there was a distinct sound of approaching commotion. A sense of panic and apprehension overtook the entire premises.

“I no be thief. Na becos I get dem Colonial Titus dem arrest me”, one man whined from inside the cell.

“Shut up or I will call Sergeant Pepper to give you your medicine,” the desk sergeant, losing his cynical composure for once, screamed. Then he switched his attention to yours sincerely again.

“You know I interrogated the mad Okon boy and I ask him why he was stealing corsets, bra and allied stuff and he asked me whether I didn’t know that this was a feeding bottle democracy”. At this point, the source of the commotion became clearer. It was Baba Lekki, accompanied by heavily armed people, waving an order of mandamus and asking everybody detained to be released. The whole place erupted in jubilation and singing.

*After confrontation with Mama Igosun, Okon demands security vote

Tatalo Alamu

With economic implosion staring the nation in the face as a result of a global fiscal meltdown, and with the drums of dissolution getting louder by the day, Nigeria surely faces interesting prospects in the post-Covid-19 phase. It will be foolish to ignore the ominous signs.

There is raw anger in the land, only blunted by the weariness and desolation arising from the ravages of Coronavirus. But for those who can read the political horoscope, never in the history of the country had there been such a palpable feeling of dejection and disappointment about the tragic turn of events.

There is secessionist hysteria in the air, and it is loud, freewheeling and no-holds-barred. What is most intriguing is that the noise has reached its highest decibel in the western part of the country, the section of the country that has never openly canvassed for its dissolution. Whatever its tribulations in post-colonial Nigeria, the west has never seriously considered the exit option despite occasional hell raising after it has been steamrolled by the northern power juggernauts.

That sunny optimism always had a dark underside to it: the possibility of excluding the excluders based on fair competition and in a Nigeria rid of feudal chicanery. Famously articulated by the late Bola Ige in his Nigerian Tribune column, it is the feeling of satisfaction you get when the shoe is on the other foot. Parity of pains is often the surest path to political and social equity.

The optimism is beginning to fade rapidly as the possibility of political and social justice in Nigeria disappears into the shadows. In several Yoruba fora, intellectual circuits and platforms, the emerging consensus is that the handshake has slipped beyond the elbow and that the political and socio-economic situation has deteriorated past the recent mantra of restructuring or devolution of power. According to this school, nothing but outright dissolution will do. And the time is nigh.

To be sure, a lot of this secessionist claptrap is nothing but sheer scaremongering. Some of it is mere platform posturing for extracting better political deals from an obdurate and recalcitrant hegemonic order.

A few can be traced to reactionary  propaganda rallies by those who have not reconciled themselves to having lost federal power via the same means and method they thought they had perfected. There are also those who believe that the nation can be returned to the misbegotten epoch of their PDP forebears.

Yet it is also true that the scaremongering and apocalyptic sabre rattling feed on genuinely scary developments. The wages of the mismanagement of ethnic, religious, spiritual and economic diversity is here with us.

No other government in the history of Nigeria has done more damage to the fabric of national cohesion than the current government. Occasionally, one begins to wonder whether some people in government take a perverse and sadistic pleasure in putting the country’s nose out of joint.

Apart from the lop-sided pattern of federal appointments which has now become a standard fare, there is also the general lack of political equity in the entire country, and the growing evidence of a total abdication of corporate governance and federal responsibility. Open bickering among ministers and government officials appear to be the order of the day with no one with the power and authority to rein them in and no one in sight to re-impose order and discipline.

But far more worrisome is the clear deterioration of the security situation in the country, particularly the large-scale invasion of the western part of the nation by rampaging youths from either the north or beyond with many of them carrying military grade weapons. Even in informed and normally placid quarters, the suspicion is that these are the remnants of the Boko Haram sect recently routed by Idriss Deby or the massing of the faithful as a prelude to a jihad.

It will be foolish and ill-judged to expect the Yoruba nation to keep quiet in the face of this extreme provocation. Those who are interested in justice and fair play will remember that the inchoate and still embryonic Amotekun militia was brought to being in the face of stiff federal opposition and on-going subterranean attempts to scuttle the initiative. Yet unlike the fully weaponized invasion of the west, Amotekun is for purely defensive and not offensive purpose.

If this is the better foot Nigeria wants to put forward in the post-Covid-19 world, then we might as well conclude that the nation is irretrievably and irredeemably lost. The post-Coronavirus order will be dominated by powerful extra-human and in fact anti-human agencies which will make a short shrift of poor nations, particularly those already facing problems of internal stability and cohesion.

The helpless paralysis of many nations in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic is merely a sneak preview of a great and tragic human drama unfolding. If the richest and most powerful nation the world has seen can be so piteously and traumatically upended by a mere virus, we must shudder at the fate of lesser countries, particularly in the abandoned craters of Africa.

Absolute poverty has been an integral part of the human condition since the dawn of civilization. But the contempt for poor people and poor nations has never been more resonant. An array of sprightly donkeys is still no match for a hobbled horse. All the countries of Africa and Asia combined are still no match for an America even in its terrible state.

A wounded America presided over by a narcissistic and megalomaniac president is far more dangerous than anything the world has seen. This is why it has continued to forcefully intervene in the UN, the WHO and even the EU. Whatever the merits or demerits of the case, America’s unilateral intervention this past week in the choice of the president for the African Development Bank when it is not the major shareholder is a reminder of the abiding contempt of rich nations for poor countries.

While former president Olusegun Obasanjo and many of his retired colleagues have bravely plunged into the icy waters, the Nigerian authorities have chosen to err on the side of tactical and strategic caution. These are not the days of Murtala Mohammed. Nor is it the Nigeria of her golden age of power and prosperity.

In these days of “database of ruin”, ECI, “exceptionally controlled information” and BAG, “the Big Awesome Graph”, nobody can fathom the extent of metadata America is holding on any individual or organization particularly if it wants to use such for disruption and subversion. How it eludes the former African leaders that an “African development bank” with forty per cent American capitalization is a sitting time bomb and a conceptual misnomer beggars belief.

Knowing the way these things work, what the Americans have put out so far and which has sent the AfDB on a tailspin may just be the opening gambit in a major psych-ops. Having exposed to public scrutiny what they consider to be the septic innards of the bank under a Nigerian presidency, the Americans are content to wait it out and watch how the poison circulates through the system and how Adesina will preside over the toxic effluvium.

It is an unprecedented move and a very bizarre one going by international banking procedures. But it is a reflection of desperate new global realities and how far the US will go in shoring up its fading hegemony.  Our man in AfDB should tread cautiously and with crafty reticence rather than noisy propaganda. A man cannot learn to become left-handed in old age, as Chinua Achebe famously asserted. A diplomatic détente should be fashioned out in which no one appears to lose face.

With the French covertly pulling the strings and with all the major European countries openly endorsing the American position on internal governance ethics, it will be unrealistic to expect a robust rally from a debt-shackled Nigeria in the pursuit of fundamental national interests. In the post-Covid-19 world, any hapless nation trying to punch above its weight is likely to be poleaxed into submission by bigger prize-fighters.

These are the forces of unenlightened nationalism that are likely to shape the coming normalization of the abnormal, euphemistically known as the “the new normal”. You cannot question how normal is the new normal because it is a new template of normality. The bottom line is that an America with its back to the wall and with the Chinese snow leopard snapping at it relentlessly is more likely to behave like a bull in a China shop.

So before our very eyes, we can see the post-Covids-19 era unfurling. By a curious irony, the second major non-human agency which affects and afflicts humankind may actually turn out to be more deadly than the Coronavirus. This is the phenomenon of climate change.

In a Brief Encounter with the editors of Prospect published in the March edition of the magazine, Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, noted that climate change is humanity’s biggest problem. “Nothing else matters if we don’t deal with that”, he asserts. Climate change can profoundly alter the delicate eco-balance on which contemporary human civilization is based. It can also make nonsense of the post-Westphalia nation-state paradigm.

In Africa, particularly south of the Sahara, global warming and advancing desertification are already putting a question mark on the colonial cartography of the continent and the whole post-Berlin Conference partitioning. Hordes of humanity and nomadic habitués of the arid zones of death fleeing advancing dunes and ravaged grazing lands have invaded farmlands leading to civil wars in Mali, Central African Republic, Sudan and ethnic flare up in Kenya, Somalia and Namibia.

In Nigeria as we broached earlier, the on-going invasion of Southern farmlands by organized bandits and heavily weaponized marauders from the Sahel have occasioned rising ethnic tension. It may end in an apocalyptic bloodbath if care is not taken. The drums of war are already sounding and communities that have hitherto lived together in peace and harmony are viewing each other with hostility and wary distrust.

But for greed and base political calculations stoking the fire of ancestral misgivings and resentments particularly in traditional African societies, these are not insurmountable difficulties for humanity. What is needed is more cooperation and understanding among local communities, nationalities and larger national units.

For example, if the whole of Africa can shed the toga of abject colonial nationhood and come together in a supra-continent arrangement which radically reframes the whole paradigm of post-colonial statehood, African people may find it much easier to solve the problem of global warming, under-development  and the pandemic viruses that we may have to live with from now on.  What is required is more human interconnectedness and interlinks rather than clamouring for atomistic statehood and separatist igloos.

It is now obvious that the nationalistic hubris of the original exemplars of the nation-state paradigms has continued to prevent global harmony and human integration. It will amount to an utopian dream to expect traditional African societies further fragmented and divided by colonial rationalization to come together or dissolve into organic wholesomeness.

The bane of the old normal is unbridled nationalism which led to two world wars. The mantra of the new normal is virulent nationalism in the face non-human adversaries which is costing the entire world global harmony and mutual goodwill. The more things appear to remain the same the more they change. That is the essence of the new normal.

After six hundred years and despite the miseries and sufferings it has inflicted on many human communities, the greatest mode of organizing territorial space that the world has seen now faces its gravest peril in the hands of non-human agencies such as climate change and a host of viruses.  The ancient African sages and griots will be chuckling in their grave.

After confrontation with Mama Igosun, Okon demands security vote

As Coronavirus retreats into its shameful abode, and as the lockdown eases country-wide, gaiety and humour are gradually returning to their vacated stalls in the country’s rich market of daily transactions. Nigerians are quite a humorous lot and even in the most adverse of circumstances, a certain joie de vivre, an infectious bonhomie, never really deserts the people.

But Covid-19 really put the fear of the Lord into most people. Except for the hard-headed ones, many wore a haggard and mournful look with heavy trepidation in the air. It was a dreadful unseen enemy which returned pre-colonial fetish and superstition to the post-colonial imagination. A lot of people concluded that it must be the baleful god of smallpox returning for unfinished business in a new guise.

To the shame of the accursed pandemic life is gradually returning to the street. On a good morning, snooper often opens the window shutter to take in fresh natural air and to listen in on conversation in the street laced with the wit and wonder of a gifted but totally impossible race. Last Friday opened to the usual noisome altercation over menu between Mama Igosun and Okon which got yours sincerely rolling from one side of the bed to the other in mirth and jolly good humour.

“Mama good morning. Wetin you go take for breakfast? Na Akamu and akara we get oo”, Okon sniggered.

“Na your papa him grandfather go take Alamu, abi wetin you call am? Se dat yeye nonsense be food or ipapanu? (Yoruba word for light refreshment)” the old woman cursed.

“Ok, mama no vex now. Make I bring agidi and okro soup?”

“Agidimolaja!!! “ the old woman screamed. “No be dem Ife juju be dat?  Okonkwo abi wetin be dat your yeye name again, you wan kill your grandmother? Abi I don become Irunmole for Akanbi dem house for Lagos? Agidi ko, Agidingbi ni”.

“Ok, mama I don tire for early morning. Wetin make I prepare?” an exasperated Okon demanded.

“Give me hot pounded yam felifeli served with Sukuniyan and kokoruwa”, the old woman snorted with relish even as she pouted her lips like a naughty girl.

“Mama I don tell you say those na Old Testament food. Na Oyo Empire people dey eat dat kind food before dem mala drive dem comot and dem come run pass Majidun”, the mad boy jeered.

“Ha, ehnnnn se na Lambert Alekuso dey teach you dat nonsense? Wait make I go come”, the ancient contrarian griped as she back-heeled to her room. Sensing trouble, Okon quickly shut the kitchen door and headed upstairs towards snooper’s room.

“Oga, oga good morning. He be like if say mama wan kill me with him juju oo”, the crazy boy chanted breathlessly as he fidgeted with the door.

“Calm down, calm down, Okon. It is too early in the morning. Where is your evidence?” yours sincerely asked Okon feigning ignorance of the whole drama.

“Oga so if thunder wan kill somebody dem dey look for evidence?” Okon demanded sending his boss to a bout of wild hilarity.

“Okay, Okon, I will have a word with her”, snooper cajoled sobbing with mirth.

“Oga, dis one don pass one word or two word oo . Before I fit continue with dis dem job, I dey demand security vote”, Okon shouted. Yours sincerely could not believe his ears.

“Okon, what is security vote?” snooper asked.

“The money dem governor dey use shoot trouble and shoot dem trouble-shooters. Abi dem born dem gobment well pass Okon?” the mad boy demanded before slamming the door.

Tatalo Alamu

As Coronavirus retreats into its shameful abode, and as the lockdown eases country-wide, gaiety and humour are gradually returning to their vacated stalls in the country’s rich market of daily transactions. Nigerians are quite a humorous lot and even in the most adverse of circumstances, a certain joie de vivre, an infectious bonhomie, never really deserts the people.

But Covid-19 really put the fear of the Lord into most people. Except for the hard-headed ones, many wore a haggard and mournful look with heavy trepidation in the air. It was a dreadful unseen enemy which returned pre-colonial fetish and superstition to the post-colonial imagination. A lot of people concluded that it must be the baleful god of smallpox returning for unfinished business in a new guise.

To the shame of the accursed pandemic life is gradually returning to the street. On a good morning, snooper often opens the window shutter to take in fresh natural air and to listen in on conversation in the street laced with the wit and wonder of a gifted but totally impossible race. Last Friday opened to the usual noisome altercation over menu between Mama Igosun and Okon which got yours sincerely rolling from one side of the bed to the other in mirth and jolly good humour.

“Mama good morning. Wetin you go take for breakfast? Na Akamu and akara we get oo”, Okon sniggered.

“Na your papa him grandfather go take Alamu, abi wetin you call am? Se dat yeye nonsense be food or ipapanu? (Yoruba word for light refreshment)” the old woman cursed.

“Ok, mama no vex now. Make I bring agidi and okro soup?”

“Agidimolaja!!! “ the old woman screamed. “No be dem Ife juju be dat?  Okonkwo abi wetin be dat your yeye name again, you wan kill your grandmother? Abi I don become Irunmole for Akanbi dem house for Lagos? Agidi ko, Agidingbi ni”.

“Ok, mama I don tire for early morning. Wetin make I prepare?” an exasperated Okon demanded.

“Give me hot pounded yam felifeli served with Sukuniyan and kokoruwa”, the old woman snorted with relish even as she pouted her lips like a naughty girl.

“Mama I don tell you say those na Old Testament food. Na Oyo Empire people dey eat dat kind food before dem mala drive dem comot and dem come run pass Majidun”, the mad boy jeered.

“Ha, ehnnnn se na Lambert Alekuso dey teach you dat nonsense? Wait make I go come”, the ancient contrarian griped as she back-heeled to her room. Sensing trouble, Okon quickly shut the kitchen door and headed upstairs towards snooper’s room.

“Oga, oga good morning. He be like if say mama wan kill me with him juju oo”, the crazy boy chanted breathlessly as he fidgeted with the door.

“Calm down, calm down, Okon. It is too early in the morning. Where is your evidence?” yours sincerely asked Okon feigning ignorance of the whole drama.

“Oga so if thunder wan kill somebody dem dey look for evidence?” Okon demanded sending his boss to a bout of wild hilarity.

“Okay, Okon, I will have a word with her”, snooper cajoled sobbing with mirth.

“Oga, dis one don pass one word or two word oo . Before I fit continue with dis dem job, I dey demand security vote”, Okon shouted. Yours sincerely could not believe his ears.

“Okon, what is security vote?” snooper asked.

“The money dem governor dey use shoot trouble and shoot dem trouble-shooters. Abi dem born dem gobment well pass Okon?” the mad boy demanded before slamming the door.