Category: Tuesday

Muyiwa Hassan, ace photo journalist now with The Nation but one of his former staff at the defunct The Anchor newspaper, thought he was springing a pleasant ambush.

His photographic muse told him to create a giant, almost life-size portrait of Dr. Adewale Adeeyo, long, long before he turned 70, on August 27.  But he got the surprise of his life — Adeeyo flipped.

“Muyiwa,” he remonstrated with his familiar, passionate loving anger, “I don’t hang giant photographs in my sitting room!  I’m no illiterate!”

The man was grateful but pained.  Pained, because he would be loath to jettison a strong personal principle.  Yet, anxious not to hurt another, who just translated his love and awe, into his own idea of concrete honour.

After much soul-searching, he hit a heart-rending compromise: according to Hassan, he found a place, for the giant frame, in his bedroom!

Whether only illiterates are gaudy enough to adorn their sitting rooms with giant self-photos is debatable.

But that impassioned protest spoke of the quintessential Adeeyo — debonair, avuncular, cosmopolitan, polite and refined; class, permanent and quiet, that need not be showy.

Indeed, his sitting room, neither sparse nor expansive, nevertheless roomy enough, is a virtual harvest of African and continental art, crafts and sundry artifacts, some of them framed.

Were Adeeyo to live in that epoch when the Church was fissuring, he would gladly have hugged the simple taste of the Protestant Movement, and shunned the ornate baroque of the Catholic mother church.

That much was clear, as some 50 or so people — family, friends, business associates and well wishers — gathered in art-powered serenity, to offer Islamic prayers, ushering him into his 70th year, that Monday morning.

But no matter their stations, everyone appeared at peace, gathered under the Adeeyo simple, serene but elegant code.  That is the quintessential Adeeyo, at peace with making friends across different spectrums.

The ever loyal Hassan was there, clicking away to capture the landmark.  But so too, were the high and the mighty, across the professions, economic sectors and even the political rainbow.

The Adelekes, Adedeji and Ademola, Adeeyo cousins from their Ede nativity, were there.  So was Mrs Funso Amosun, First Lady of Ogun State.

Though no Muslim, The Nation’s very own Prof. Adebayo Williams also graced the prayers, apparently representing, at least symbolically, the literati and allies clans — a constituency the “birthday boy” can rightfully count himself to belong; with which, nevertheless, he loves to cut-and-thrust.

That would explain his investment in The Anchor, a newspaper that, in its short life span, established a high intellectual hue.

Much later, at the garden party, Wale Edun, The Nation Board Chairman and man of exquisite taste himself, would join the celebration.  So would Sola Adeeyo, the celebrator’s well-heeled nephew, and virtual neighbour.  And also, Adewale Maja-Pearce, famed Anglo-Nigerian with the piercing pen.

At the morning prayers, aside from the clerics, from his native Osun and from Lagos, were two ladies with a striking resemblance.  Prof. Williams explained they were daughters of the late S.B. Bakare, one of the richest and most connected Nigerians of his time.

I first got to meet Adeeyo, at The Anchor office suites, in Lagos.  The Anchor, then seriously unanchored, was reeling in a gale; and the staff, near-fatalism, believed only the “Chairman”, with steady hands, if not magic wand, would stay the course.

He had been away overseas on medical emergency, following a robbery attack.  It was formative years for The Anchor, and not a few believed his absence, at that critical period, made all difference in the newspaper’s fortune.

When he eventually emerged, atThe Anchor suites that early evening, he made quite an impression on the many, meeting him for the first time — his politeness, suaveness, exquisite dress sense, intellectual curiosity, freshness and, well, youth.

That sense of “youth” would strike his guests even more, when in not-so-casual discourse, at his 2018 Ileya feast open house, he casually announced he would be 70 a few days hence!

And intellectual curiosity!  That was what he brought to The Anchor Editorial Board, which he always found time to attend.  The Board’s inaugural chairman was the late Tunji Oseni, before the journalism icon became former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s chief spokesperson.

Even after Alhaji Oseni left and Prof. Ralph Akinfeleye, of the University of Lagos, took over, the board was still a multidisciplinary dream team: Prof. Ayo Olukotun, Prof. Diji Aina, now vice chancellor, Caleb University, Bunmi Adetunmbi, rigorous development thinker and former senator of the Federal Republic, Wale Maja-Pearce, Ngozi Asoya, Osita Nwajah, now with EFCC, Tunji Adegboyega, now deputy chairman, The Nation Editorial Board, Dapo Aderionola aka Africa, and, of course, yours truly.

That board celebrated many Nigerian and African feats, hinting at some African Renaissance, at the turn of the millennium: Agbani Darego’s historic 2001 Miss World win in South Africa; and the late Kofi Annan’s Nobel Peace Prize win, which he shared with the United Nations, as its sitting secretary-general, also in 2001, among others.

It also helped to ventilate local political grievances, as when the late Muhammed Lawal, military-era state administrator and then sitting Kwara elected governor, came calling in late 2002.

He swore, with solemn vehemence, that with his bruised manly honour and hurt military pride (he was a retired naval general), he would fight — and stop — the creeping Saraki “imperialism” in Kwara.  He was in a political battle of his life, even as the Baba Oloye, Dr. Olusola Saraki, with no less vehemence, counter-swore to unhorse the governor and mount, in his stead,  Bukola, his son.  Saraki won. Lawal lost.  But could the political history of Kwara have changed, had Lawal won?

Those were exciting days, very early in this 4th Republic!

But whether at The Anchor Editorial Board or in his serene home, Adeeyo cultivated a crop of young and brilliant minds.  Many of them, since The Anchor days, have since morphed into younger and doting friends.

At home, the ensemble is either meeting some VIPs: The Anchor men of ideas come to cross-fertilize the powerful (wo)men of policy, local and international.  I remember meeting, for the first time, Prof.  Agboola Gambari at the Adeeyo home.

Or, at his yearly Ileya and Itunu Aawe receptions, during the Muslim feast of Id-el-Kabir and post-Ramadan fast, Id-el-Fitri, where ideas, open and free, cascade, over choice food and drinks, as the coterie discuss and debate.

But beyond that, you savour even more, intimate private visits, where Adeeyo shares, with his younger friends, his vast experience, on the Nigerian reality.

From that one-on-one, you always come out better and grateful, for it’s an invaluable trove of the good, the bad and the ugly!   But then, isn’t that what life itself is all about?

At 70, aside from an eternal thirst for knowledge, Adeeyo epitomizes God’s munificence, sans greed or venality; wealth without conceit, success without airs, but comfort with compassion.

That is refreshingly rare, in a Nigeria plagued by money without value.

The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction” — Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (8 May 1895-9 December 1979), American Catholic priest.

Fulton J. Sheen, the American Catholic priest whose beatification is only a matter of time, gifted us this opening quote.  He could well have been living in — and speaking of — present-day Nigeria.

Add the opening of the full quote, and the moral gargoyle, that today’s Nigeria has become, glares at you in all its cold menace:  ”The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision.  It is a silent acquiescence to evil”.

That captures the many critical segments of Nigeria today, especially the religious elite; whose forte ought to be moral radicalism, if not outright puritanism.

Now, when you link the Sheen opening quote to “The Second Coming”, that famous poem by the no less famous Irish, William Butler Yeats, the resonance is startling: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”.

Again, that is today’s Nigeria: the upright keep mute, while the roguish rattle without end.  Yet, the polity teems with folks easily swayed by cant.

But might culpable moral ambivalence, if not outright indifference, be a function of about every society, going through critical but painful change?

The partisan spat between Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki on the defection question was a media feast.

Yet, not a few must have completely missed Tinubu’s posit — true in all its evidential proof — that the country is going through a critical phase: where old ways are, willy-nilly, yielding to new.

Many, of course, with sundry motives, would rush to controvert that claim, and query whether that “new” way is indeed better or worse, in the best tradition of the liberal press, that holds great stock by fairness and balance — a great and noble tradition, to be fair.

But even that runs the risk of becoming otiose: a cheap medium for the evil to rant, not because it is right, but because it’s a democratic right.

Yet, a democratic right to do what is patently wrong is nothing but absurdity. That is the danger of mechanical balancing — that artificiality to be seen to reflect all sides, when common sense clearly demands you praise the good; and raze the bad.

Democratic right to do what is patently wrong?  That is the crippling absurdity of Saraki and supporters, rippling with humbug on why a minority senator must retain the Senate presidency.

They, of course, know that has absolutely no basis in logic and common sense, not to talk of morality, pristine mores codified into formal laws.  But more on that presently.

Right now, suffice it to say mechanical balancing is the clear grave of any national consensus towards development and progress, particularly at grave junctures as now, when you transit from the wilful ruin of 2015 and before, with all its pains.

But that is the comfort zone, where much of the media, now snooze in false bliss.  And spurred by this moral cowardice, a reckless breed, on radio and social media, has barged in with vacuous controversy — a euphemism for the suspect, the abominable and the repugnant — in the name of democratic right!

Talk of the honest cowering with no power of conviction, and the crooked bristling with passionate intensity!

Still worries, earnest or roguish, would appear natural in a changing society.  That the past was horrible, and the present woeful, would appear not enough motivation for many — if not most — to hug change!  The human fear of change is real!

Today, the Romantic phase of English literature could have turned admirable trove, historical, emotional and intellectual.  Yet, back then, in 19th century England, when the industrial revolution was “ravaging” the English life, the fear of the unknown, and acute anxiety it ensued, forced that impassioned rally for Nature, against Nurture.

You could feel that in the pathos of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the leading poetic voices of that era; in the gripping melancholy of John Keats, he of the many personal challenges and family tragedies; and even in Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, the passionate debacle of Tess, the novel’s ill-fated heroine.

Yet, that change, two centuries later, has shaped better living across the board, even if Nurture has brought own universal peril. The radical altering of Nature has brought climate change, with its grievous health hazards.

So, as Nigeria moves from a past of free-wheeling gravy, that suited a few but ruined the most; to a future of applying scarce public funds, to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, in the famous words of Jeremy Bentham, the old parasites won’t go down without a fight.

So, you can feel their media clatter, since the democratic space seldom boasts a consensus on manifest goodness; as everyone tries to push his view and discredit others’.

That cannot — and should not — be stopped.  But after fair and equitable media access, to every shade of political opinions, public good takes over.

That vaults the media — of conscience — from the democratic right to personal-institutional preferences and partisan sympathies, to the sacred altar of journalistic duty.

And it dare not subscribe to any standard lower than Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which takes duty as rather serious business!

Neither, for that matter, should any judge or priest, or anyone whose job comes with the privilege of lording it over others.  Only that sense of rigorous duty can reimburse the society for that golden privilege.

From that, a vigorous sense of right-or-wrong, would evolve; from the present neither-nor moral placidity, that gifts the evil the audacity to rattle.

It is at this key juncture that the media appears flailing, if not outright failing. But the religious order suffers the same, if not worse, debility — talk of the Sheen damning verdict:  ”The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision.  It is a silent acquiescence to evil”!

That brings the discourse back to the Tinubu-Saraki spat.

With a more exerting public ethos, Saraki and confederates wouldn’t have dared to test the sterile controversy of a minority senator staying on as Senate president.  Anything but honorable resignation would have been infra-dig, if not outright political apostasy.

Neither would the polity buzz with macabre toast of parliamentary defections, when what that execrable fraud deserves is nothing but sweeping lambast.

Also, the changes Tinubu referred to: the slew of pro-poor policy injections into the polity and sundry developmental projects — Trader Moni loans to the lowest cadre of market folks; the schools feeding scheme, novel as a federal policy; and the renewed rail activism — ought, as duty, to compel serious media attention: critiquing, analyzing and trading ideas on how to push the least kobo to the best value.

That is what serious media do — jousting with the government on serious policy issues.  Besides, grappling with such would banish, from the public space, current inanities.

Nigeria’s navigation of change, difficult and painful, ought to come with a strong moral component, across the board. That could make the crucial difference between a past lost and a future regained.