In my study of life and the many uses to which authority can be put, I have come to an irresistible conclusion that there is indeed a correlation between poetry, power and pepper.
And this conclusion I first reached in 1985, when I encountered General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida within the 24 hours he usurped power and assumed office as Nigeria’s only military president to date.
It was at the Flagstaff House in Ikoyi, the official residence of the Army Chief of Staff from where he launched his assault into the Presidential Villa; and from where he operated for weeks, before he took up almost permanent residence at the State House, secured inside Dodan Barracks in Obalende side of Ikoyi; before finally moving the nation’s seat of power to Aso Villa in Abuja.
My late friend, then Navy Captain Okhai Mike Akhigbe took me there on a mission to be assessed if I could become the spokesman for the new Nigerian helmsman (which he wanted), but I had a different motive, kept close to my chest and which I did not unveil until I was face to face with Nigeria’s undisputed face of courage in uniform, in 1985.
When I was ushered into General Babangida’s presence, I almost froze, in the certain knowledge of being before a hard-boiled soldier who now had the power of life and death in his stocky palms; and whose motive of wanting to see me was different from why I wanted to be with him – just for a short while.
Well, I was already inside the pool, as the Yoruba adage would put it and it was therefore pointless to be afraid of cold; so I summoned up the courage to draw him in, by congratulating him on his assumption of power, which came amidst a wide and popular clamour that the regime he supplanted was not what Nigerians wanted.
That drew his smile and exposed to me his gap-tooth, after which he started quoting, copiously from Shakespearean books. I confess, that fascinated me so much because of my naive belief prior to that day that soldiers “don’t know book but gun” – a fallacy that petered out in my mind from that meeting with IBB. I then recalled once hearing that ‘wine is bottled poetry’ and you cannot appropriately talk of the quintessential soldier without the three ‘W’s of work, wine and women. Added to that, which I also remembered, was the time-tested saying that “a vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men”
IBB almost dribbled me to a corner but courage, which normally comes out in crisis situation, offered me an escape window to get my point across to him before outwitting me to get into a deal that my mind was averse to.
Yes, how, in good conscience, could I cut a deal to become a soldier’s chief press secretary when the boss that gave me the platform to become known and marketable, was languishing in military jail? Then, Jakande was being tossed around Kirikiri and Ikoyi prisons, not for committing any grievous offence other than being a hard-working and achieving but unfortunate state governor at a time the national government was bleeding the country blind, economically.
I moaned to IBB that the treatment being given to LKJ was unfair and unjust; and that what I desired most at that point in time, was to use the instrumentality of his high office to set the man free and allow him to return home to his wife and children, in peace. A wry smile welled up his face, perhaps wondering how silly I could be to be smartly and politely turning my back against a “juicy deal” and canvassing for the freedom of a boss with whom I was sacked from office by the military in December, 1983.
He got my point well-made anyway and asked if I did not see Wole, Chief Awolowo’s son, on my way to Flagstaff House. When I replied in the negative, and perhaps thinking he needed that to get me to change my mind, he told me Wole too had just left him, with a message to re-assure his father that he (IBB) would soon set “Papa’s Boys” free, in reference to the UPN governors, most of who were eventually said to pass the litmus test of integrity and probity. He kept his promise, if I must tell.
But the man I refer to as the face of courage, who’s reputed to have participated in ALL successful coups in Nigeria from the 1966 one that threw up the then Lt Col Yakubu Gowon as “head of state and supreme commander of the Nigerian Armed Forces” to his own in 1985, had his courage fail him at the most crucial moment of his life when he annulled the presidential victory of his close pal, Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the early 90s; on the prompting, by his undenied admission, of his boys who masterminded his coming to power as military president in the first place.
Give it to General David Mark who IBB portrayed as showing uncommon courage by opposing him from handing over power to Abiola. Perhaps IBB knew his boys won’t just blast him off like that, but would give him “pepper” before snuffing life out of him. The mesmerising Maradona of politics must have come across the many books on power and military strategy that it requires more courage to suffer, than to die!
An acclaimed military strategist, he must have also experienced the piquant burning taste of pepper and why Yorubas say, to drum home the point on the ultra-effectiveness of pepper, that minute as pepper is, it superintends over the big, bulging eye, any day. Bintin l’ata, to fi n’soko oju.
It was the fear of pepper, I suspect, that made IBB buckle under, for his loyal boys at the crucial moment, the very reason his popularity rating plummeted and his political relevance diminished.
I’m his fan, no doubt, but I guess an eternal lesson has been served: for a man who, on his assumption of office, blurted that “we are not just in office but we are also in power”, this sad ending of a glorious military and political career shows that power, with all its paraphernalia, has its limit.
Baales as kings, yes; but high chiefs as kings, capital no!
The obaship controversy stirred by Ajimobi’s Government in Oyo State will not go away easily; at least it cannot be wished
away, not when ill thought-out statements like the one from the Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII) keep assailing our ears and insulting the intelligence of an average Yoruba man who is versed in our culture and tradition.
To be sure, no one can quarrel with the upgrading of the status of Baales to Obas, especially those whose existence dated way back in ages. Akanran that shares a common border with Ijebu Igbo is a classic example. They have defined areas they superintend over, the jurisdiction of which is not in contention. These are kingdoms bigger in size and mineral and vegetable potentials more than places where kingships had long been given them in other states.
But high chiefs, without kingdoms, as obas? If it is not sacrilegious, and it is not intended to ridicule the office of the Olubadan or targeted at a particular person, as it is already being insinuated, I wonder where the sense is, in the odd arrangement. Obas without kingdoms are like kings without oloris (wives); where is the pride or dignity in those kingdoms?
Abiola Ajimobi I met at close quarters once, since he mounted the gubernatorial chair; and the humility and respect he accorded me on that occasion linger in my mind till now but that impression contradicts what some others think of him; they ascribe pride and arrogance to him but who can satisfy the world, anyway?
Governor Ajimobi did well to upgrade Baales to Obas but to mix it up with the controversial elevation of Olubadan high chiefs to obaship where they will be wearing beaded crowns is not on. The natural question that arises from this is: will these high chiefs remove their crowns when they enter Olubadan’s Palace for meetings since we are being told they will remain under Olubadan’s authority or Ajimobi wants it recorded against his name that he’s the one who made nonsense of the long-held belief that while you can have myriads of chiefs in the palace, only one king reigns and presides at any given time!