The Nation Newspaper

Tag: fable

  • A king and his hangman – a fable

    Once upon a time, there lived a king in a faraway land. He was well loved by his people that they desired him to live forever that he may rule eternally. But the king had a small problem, the king is emotionally blank; he could not feel. In other words, he could not understand people laughing or crying.

    He only laughed when he saw people around him laugh and he grew moody and even cried by emulating others. But none of his subjects knew this. Not even his family understood this strange phenomenon. Worse, even the king did not understand he was afflicted with this peculiar disorder.

    Incidentally, only his head guard who doubled as his chief hangman had an inkling of this royal disorder of a strange kind. But alas, Kotukotu, the hangman, totally misread, or shall we say mis-diagnosed the king’s ailment. However, he loved his king so much he would do anything to protect and preserve him. And knowing his Highnesses’ disabilities, or rather believing he knew, he was always on guard to ensure that no one took advantage of him.

    By the call of duty, Kotukotu was an abiding presence in the presence of his majesty. Even when he was removed from the royal presence by some design, he had devised a means of his own to always keep an eye on his principal. He had a hole drilled in the palace’s wall trained at the royal stool. This way, even when he is not within sight, he had the crown in his sight.

    So it happened that each time his majesty frowned – in reaction to the frowning of his subjects before him, Kotukotu took exception to such occurrence. Depending on the size and importance of such a personage, the repercussions were often severe.

    Such a one that brought a frown upon the king’s visage was often circumscribed, sequestered, quarantined or guillotined altogether. In the event that a subject’s head was brought down for the ‘peace’ of his majesty, Kotukotu preserved the prize in a special purpose House of Skulls he made not unlike a yam barn. In fact in his lighthearted moment, he called it a barn.

    So he would keep an eye on the king’s audiences and whoever elicited the slightest frown on the king’s visage was doomed. You were a prisoner or a skull altogether. Through the years, Kotukotu’s ‘barn’ grew large. He was dreaded.

    Ironically, the more the subjects went with frowning visages to the king over strange disappearances and sequestrations, the more Kotukotu’s barn swelled!

    One day, all the subjects marched on the barn and pulled it down. They frowned all day at the harvest… and the king won’t stop frowning… and Kotukotu hugged his sword…

  • Fable of a clone, a clown and a crown

    Out there in faraway Poland the other day, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari put out a disclaimer that he isn’t what Mazi Nnamdi Kanu of proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, says he is. Kanu asserts the man we refer to as our beloved president is really his double. The one we voted for died in London last year during his medical tour, he says. His loyalists then packaged a look-alike from Sudan called Jubril Aminu Al-Sudani to impersonate him, the Biafran agitator concludes. Kanu hasn’t thrown the tale to us as a joke. He believes in it as he does, he is the runaway leader of outlawed IPOB. He has captured a credulous followership, among them many of the high and the low in the society.

    Even the yarn has got sections of the global media salivating. On American television programme, The Daily Show hosted by South African Trevor Noah, a correspondent ridiculed the Nigerian leader’s denial. He imitated a fraudster composing a scam email thus: I’m a real president who’s trapped in my country because they think I’m a clone. Please send me $10000.’’

    The late night Jimmy Kimmel Live show in the US added a mordant wit. After referring to Buhari’s statement that he isn’t counterfeit, Kimmel told his viewers that the president’s denial was ‘’exactly what a clone would say.’’ Quite unkind!

    But Buhari and his handlers are responsible for making this clone story gain a foothold in international newsrooms. Why go to Poland to pinch the balloon flying the news? They had plenty of time in Nigeria to bring down the ladder many have been climbing to join the swelling ranks of believers in Kanu’s wildly salacious theory. The world community hardly took interest in it until the December 2 Poland remarks that made the headlines worldwide.

    Our leaders are tardy in their response to urgent national matters, consigning their resolution to fate. Most times, they wait in expectation that the challenges that come at them would die naturally to give them a respite. No such thing happens. Then, as Buhari and other politicians have often done, we run abroad to offer a wraith of answers to the domestic problems through speeches that lock us into more mindless mire of controversy. Finally, we all are consumed by this myopic and centrifugal approach to leadership and governance.

    That’s been the trajectory (and tragedy) of the current clone contention. Of course, it’s a clownish account, which should be listed among Aesop’s fables. But Aesop wrote his great fiction in ancient Greece nearly 3000 years ago, fully conscious he was turning out fabulous tales about animals who spoke and acted like human beings. He also had a moral lesson he passed on to those who read him. They were simple and short witty anecdotes, in which he taught that if you had a good conduct in your relationship with others, you’d be rewarded with good. And if you did evil, evil awaited you. The good were crowned, as it were, while the wicked were dishonoured. Aesop’s animal kingdom was orderly, even when the powerful and carnivorous ones cohabited with the weak and herbivorous ones.

    What, however, do we make of the fable of our day? There’s a tale which ought not to be accepted because it is incredibly outlandish. Nevertheless, it is gaining ground. Why? Nigerians would believe the devil and follow him to his home in hell if all he’s giving them is a chance to replace the leaders they are fed up with for performance deficit. Nigerians sometimes get to the point an unhappy, frustrated and serially battered wife reaches: eager to leave her home for another. You’d need supernatural effort to stop her.

    Just last week, Kanu gave Nigerians half a dozen more reasons to believe his story. They haven’t moved him a flea-hop close to reality. But they have fuelled more curiosity, pushing some citizens to call for an ‘investigation’ into Kanu’s claims! He started as a lone ranger; now he seems to be commanding fanatical troops, going the way of IPOB. Government can’t proscribe them as it did the Biafran outfit.

    Are the authorities and our president therefore helpless in the face of the clonists threatening to crowd us out? Not at all. If they admit it is a metaphorical referendum on their work in office for nearly four years, it may sober them up and rouse them from complacency. Many are wondering how a government that received tumultuous welcome at its advent and enjoyed phenomenal goodwill and popularity is, in the twilight of its tenure, getting a bashing sending it to the nadir of the public space and disallowing them a crown.

    What’s responsible? What is missing? Where did we go wrong? Cassius, a Roman nobleman in William Shakespeare’s historical play, Julius Caesar, provides this food for thought: ‘’The fault…is not in our stars, But in ourselves…’’

     

    • Ojewale, a writer, sends this piece from Ota, Ogun State.

  • Champagne jurisprudence – a fable

    Once upon a time, in a certain large and shambolic country, there lived a man of immense affluence known as Chief Cleanface. He was of such  means that all the nobles, princes and judges of the land would always gather in his palatial abode for one purpose – to quaff champagne.

    Chief Cleanface loved that bubbly, fizzy, golden popper. Of course he loved all the good things of life and he can well afford nigh everything money can buy but he had a thing about the ‘champ’. He had it specially blended for him from vines in far-flung lands. Champagne was his particular and especial passion.

    One day, the unexpected happened to Chief Cleanface: a local miscreant dared to desecrate his pristine abode. The misbegotten fellow managed to scale the high and imposing fence of Chief Cleanface’s pad, and having beaten the security, like a rat, he scurried into Chief’s living room.

    Bedazzled by the wanton opulence of Chief’s lounge, the young man trembled notwithstanding that he held Chief at ‘gun’ point. Unable to withstand the awesome presence of his ‘victim’ any longer, the pale intruder grabbed a fancy object within reach and made for the door. Of course the hapless fellow was soon ensnared in the exotic security web of Chief’s equally exotic palace.

    The miserable bugler was soon arraigned and put on trial post haste. The entire judiciary was agog and judges fell over each other for this special assignment. What cheeky, little, vermin dared to try robbing the Right Honorable Chief Cleanface; a noble of no match, a philanthropist of oceanic magnitude? This miserable young man must be taught a lesson never to look great men in the face how much more contemplate robbery, the judges thought.

    Soon the celebrated trial began. Of course no counsel stood for the poor son-of-gun save for a state prosecutor who all the time wondered why the state would waste so much time with a rascal. It turned out that the ‘gun’ the blighters brandished was only a toy pistol. It also turned out that all he ‘stole’ was an empty champagne case that resembled a compact stereo set.

    Even Chief Cleanface sobered up as the case reached its ugly crescendo. The intruder was an armed robber and the punishment was death. According to the judgment, he was found guilty of an offence bordering on conspiracy to commit armed robbery and was sentenced to death by hanging. Soon the Brahmins of the community repaired in Chief’s abode to celebrate his ‘survival’ and the triumph of the rule of law. Of course champagne flowed like water but Chief wallowed in private melancholy.

    He was a much tortured man and as soon as the crowd dispersed he lapsed deeper into sorrow. He remembered he had changed his name to Cleanface after pulling off a multi-billion naira pension scam. He had hired six seniors advocate; he had had to part with half of the loot in a quiet plea bargain. He still had about 10 billion with which he relocated far from the city and begun a new life as Chief Cleanface. Yes, his face – head, beard, eyebrow and all – he shaved clean in his new life. If this boy is hanged… he thought, as he turned in his golden bed later that night.

    Moral of the fable: the law is an ass….

     

  • Champagne jurisprudence – a fable

    Once upon a time, in a certain large and shambolic country, there lived a man of immense affluence known as Chief Cleanface. He was of such  means that all the nobles, princes and judges of the land would always gather in his palatial abode for one purpose – to quaff champagne.

    Chief Cleanface loved that bubbly, fizzy, golden popper. Of course he loved all the good things of life and he can well afford nigh everything money can buy but he had a thing about the ‘champ’. He had it specially blended for him from vines in far-flung lands. Champagne was his particular and especial passion.

    One day, the unexpected happened to Chief Cleanface: a local miscreant dared to desecrate his pristine abode. The misbegotten fellow managed to scale the high and imposing fence of Chief Cleanface’s pad, and having beaten the security, like a rat, he scurried into Chief’s living room.

    Bedazzled by the wanton opulence of Chief’s lounge, the young man trembled notwithstanding that he held Chief at ‘gun’ point. Unable to withstand the awesome presence of his ‘victim’ any longer, the pale intruder grabbed a fancy object within reach and made for the door. Of course the hapless fellow was soon ensnared in the exotic security web of Chief’s equally exotic palace.

    The miserable bugler was soon arraigned and put on trial post haste. The entire judiciary was agog and judges fell over each other for this special assignment. What cheeky, little, vermin dared to try robbing the Right Honorable Chief Cleanface; a noble of no match, a philanthropist of oceanic magnitude? This miserable young man must be taught a lesson never to look great men in the face how much more contemplate robbery, the judges thought.

    Soon the celebrated trial began. Of course no counsel stood for the poor son-of-gun save for a state prosecutor who all the time wondered why the state would waste so much time with a rascal. It turned out that the ‘gun’ the blighters brandished was only a toy pistol. It also turned out that all he ‘stole’ was an empty champagne case that resembled a compact stereo set.

    Even Chief Cleanface sobered up as the case reached its ugly crescendo. The intruder was an armed robber and the punishment was death. According to the judgment, he was found guilty of an offence bordering on conspiracy to commit armed robbery and was sentenced to death by hanging. Soon the Brahmins of the community repaired in Chief’s abode to celebrate his ‘survival’ and the triumph of the rule of law. Of course champagne flowed like water but Chief wallowed in private melancholy.

    He was a much tortured man and as soon as the crowd dispersed he lapsed deeper into sorrow. He remembered he had changed his name to Cleanface after pulling off a multi-billion naira pension scam. He had hired six seniors advocate; he had had to part with half of the loot in a quiet plea bargain. He still had about 10 billion with which he relocated far from the city and begun a new life as Chief Cleanface. Yes, his face – head, beard, eyebrow and all – he shaved clean in his new life. If this boy is hanged… he thought, as he turned in his golden bed later that night.

    Moral of the fable: the law is an ass….

  • Our chairman has done it again – a fable

    Once upon a time in a publicly quoted company, let’s call it Njinji Plc, matters had come to a head. In other words, the company faced a certain extinction unless drastic measures were taken urgently. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) had been schedule; far-reaching decision must be taken, indeed, it was poised to be the most explosive meeting in the annals of the company.

    Actually, at the root of the roiling in Njinji Plc is its chairman, call him Chief Gedegede kponukpo. He is a confounding enigma in the sense that he had been a corporate mogul for over 25 years yet he seems not to know the difference between a balance sheet and profit and loss accounts. In fact, everything for him is income or profit or both. Since he was appointed chairman of Njinji the company’s fortunes went on the decline.

    But the irony of it is that Chief kponukpo had no clue the firm was in dire straits. As far as he was concerned, so long as the cash register rang, the company made money. Njinji was the largest producer of edible oils in the land. How then could the MD and his management team convince Chairman that the company ailed?  “Have vegetables and nuts finished in the land or have the people stopped making soup? Perhaps you people are tired of producing oil?” he would ask sarcastically each time he was shown the red figures.

    “It is when I request for money that you people will tell me that the company is dying but when you people pay yourselves fat bonuses and allowances there is always money,” he was wont to say in his pedestrian elocution. And did he raid the firm for funds? No week passed without one request or the other; always drawing beyond his statutory limits and putting the MD and his team on edge. He knew no  control or restraint. The company’s position was made the more hopeless because he was a nominee of the major shareholders who knew not much more than him. In fact, he was their eyes and ears.

    But the die was cast: he was either chucked out or Njinji died. This was the decision before the AGM in one week. Chief Kponukpo saw the danger signals, he may be on his way out as management has prepared a damning report to convince the shareholders. He moved swiftly, filibuster the Board and got them to postpone the AGM insisting the company wasn’t ready.

    Chief Kponukpo got his wish. He got a six-month postponement. Presently he set to work to get the MD discredited and sacked before the AGM. He tried every trick he knew but none cut ice because the MD was a man of integrity and untainted character. All accusations against him fell flat. Then one day, Chief Gedegede Kponukpo, Chairman of Njinji Plc did the incredible and outright irrational: he took full-page colour advert in all the national newspapers to discredit his MD, someone he headed the board that employed him.

    When the MD, his management and staff saw the barrage of adverts signed by the chairman with his picture to boot they were shocked beyond words.

    Ha, our Chairman has done it again! Some of them exclaimed.

    Moral of the fable: a desperate man is a crazy man

  • Old men and the loot-bag – a fable

    Once upon a time, in a small hamlet that once had a remarkable name among hamlets, lived a notable group of elders who contrived to establish themselves under the name, Aferafera. They are men of means; they are men of learning, men you would recognise in a crowd. Though they may act mean, which is an irony, they are no mean men.

    Though the Aferafera may not be models of celestial graciousness, you would not accuse them of Satanism or vile machinations either. Perhaps their crime may well be that they love themselves much more than they love others. It is either that they dwell in their beautiful world of self interest, which naturally galls the people who are condemned to be around them or that such hapless people are merely envious.

    But because it is a hamlet peopled by Aferaferas and other people, stuff will always happen, which will converge divergent interests. Stuff like this: one cool evening in this hamlet, commotion broke out around the village square. Some youths had circumscribed a rascally lad better known by his public name: Alapapin.

    The angry youths held Alapapin by the scruff, well hampered and made ready for a mob judgment. Alapapin scuffled and screamed his innocence loud enough to rouse the entire hamlet. Presently, some members of the Aferaferas invited the mob into the walled precincts of the imposing edifice of one of their kinds.

    What would the matter be, they asked?

    Alapapin is the thief, they chorused. All the livestock that had disappeared in this land all these years, this is the thief. Here is the evidence right here in his bag. The wine tapper here had espied him from up the palm tree as he snatched a little goat, stuffed a rag in its mouth and threw it in this bag. The tapper hurried down, trailed him and alerted the rest of us. Here, in this sack, is the live evidence.

    Well Alapapin what do you have to say, the Aferafera elders asked him?

    My Lords, the owners of this land, you all know me in this hamlet. Though a stranger I may be here but I won’t have young men accuse me falsely. Am I not the handy man of this hamlet? Am I not the same who fetches, who digs who erects and who traps the biggest game for our elders? When did I become a thief? How can they mistake this little game I have in this sack for a goat? My noble elders, if these excited young people do not know a game in a sack I believe you do. Do look into this sack and tell these young rascals what you see…

    The exhibit-in-a-sack was passed to the Aferafera elders, about six of them. The atmosphere was electric as each of them peered into the bag and grunted. After they were done they looked at each other nodding and declaring in unison – it is indeed a poor little game in this sack. Now let Alapapin be; and as you know, what shall we do without him. You must disperse now; return to your chores. The youth left; much crestfallen.

    Moral: Every man has a price; even old men.

  • The Annual General Meeting (AGM) – A fable

    Once upon a time; in fact this fable is set in this present age of corporate governance, due process and shareholder power. This story is of this age in which the shareholder is akin to the voter: but though the shareholder like the voter, has all the power to change boards and governments, that happens only on paper. The company board, like government, is a monster that eats up the mass of people which brought it to power. So power (let’s not delude ourselves) still lies with the wielder and not the voter or the shareholder. The men of power would first violate the vaults and treasuries and fortify themselves so that when they cough the shareholder and voter will catch fever.

    But sorry this is not about business ethics or philosophy, it is a simply fable about a mining conglomerate, let’s call it OPL 1000 Plc. OPL mines and sells a fuel product that is in hot demand across the world; let’s call the product, HOT PROVIDENCE (HP for short). Ordinarily, OPL ought to refine this product to maximise benefits before shipping but out of sheer mental laziness of the board the product is sold in its raw, crude form to other companies and even countries that refine and make about ten times the profits that OPL makes. But not to worry, OPL has the product in stupendous reserve under the ground, enough to last several generations which explains why OPL couldn’t be bothered to begin puttying about with this grimy product. And the base logic is: if a company has a winning product that is in hot inelastic demand, a product in which it could ship out about two million barrels each dawning day, then it can afford to, sit pretty and reap its bounties. Such a product can safely be called providence isn’t it? You now see why they called their product what they call it?

    Now dear readers, there is a small ruckus at OPL. It is worrisome enough that management cannot be bothered with the tacky business of refining in spite of the age-long protestations of the shareholders, now OPL loses thousands of tanker-loads of HP to thieves everyday. How could that be, people have been wondering considering that OPL is as good as a state? OPL is as good as any garrison and it is as powerful as any state. It has access to any force or agency in the land and has the cash and sass to press them to use. How then does it happen that thousands of tankers just fade into the horizon daily in this day of hi-tech metering and GPRS?

    OPL 1000 was at this sorry pass when it had to hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM). The board suspecting it would be an AGM like no other, did their best to circumvent the shareholders: they deliberately mixed up the date, they picked an impossible venue, sent out notices at the last minute and made announcements in near-moribund newspapers. But a crowd of shareholders thronged the venue all the same prompting the managing director to try some filibustering. He spoke for hours on end going from company’s financial algebraic to Afghanistan politics. The people were weary but not out. It took one shareholder to set it off:

    Shareholder: Mr. Chairman, you have told us that our company loses thousands of trucks of our products daily. Why is that so considering that you have all the security personnel you need at your command and what are you doing about it?

    Chairman: We have set up a committee to catch the thieves and we have also asked our neighbouring and foreign companies, even our customers to help us fight the menace.

    As if rehearsed, most uncharacteristically, the crowd of shareholders rose in rowdy protestation. How can trucks grow wings!? Why don’t we get neighbouring companies to run OPL?! Why don’t we get the foreign companies to do your job? Enough is enough!!

    Moral of the fable: Everyday is for thieving board members, one day for the shareholders.