Why opponents of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), often shirk from engagement on ideas, could be gleaned from the March 29 colloquium in Lagos, meant to mark his 62nd birthday.
It was tagged The Summit of the Common Man.
On parade were some truly common, and not so common folks. But all were afflicted by the everyday problem in the Nigerian state that incorrigibly boasts the too common plague of shirking responsibility.
It was the summit equivalent of Lagbaja, the musical persona. Lagbaja, the music man, is masked; the telling anonymity of the street folk that feels the pinch. At the Summit of the Common Man, the common man came well and truly unmasked!
The roll call: Nasir Bala, Ron Mgbatogu, Bathsaida Home for the Blind — a struggling charity for the disadvantaged and rejected: the quintessential common man — Eric Dooh, Elizabeth Unah, Musa Ali, Adamu Baba, Yusuf Audu, and the unemployed chemical engineering graduate of Niger Delta University, Bayelsa, Sopriye Victor.
This was a summit of telling symbolisms — how Nigeria has got it wrong; and more importantly, how Nigeria could get it right. It is like a well crafted novel or play: no overt preaching. But the message comes clear from its nuanced plot and rich imagery.
Justice Isola Olorunnimbe said the opening prayers. He lunched off the Christian way, but with his cap on, after a hilarious joke about the imperative for brevity of prayers on such occasions. But in a jiffy, he made a seamless transition into Islamic prayers!
That is a South West gift to Nigeria: why should adherents make enemies of themselves, when they pray to the same Almighty God, father of all humanity?
Then Anglican Cleric, the Most Reverend Ephraim Ademowo, chaired the occasion. Yet, Tinubu is an APC chieftain, the party, by the propaganda of Olisa Metuh, spokesperson for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is an “Islamic” party. A Christian priest schmoozing with rabid Islamists? A quiet answer to the hare-brained Islamist charge!
Ironically, that same day, President Goodluck Jonathan was holding a PDP North East zonal rally in Bauchi. Now, the North East has borne the bestiality of Boko Haram and its blood-thirsty insurrection.
In the neighbouring Buni Yadi, Yobe State, the crazed Islamists brutally slaughtered innocents in a Federal Government College. The president never visited: to commiserate with the slain; or in solidarity with the troops, as commander-in-chief.
Yet, there was the president in Bauchi, passing the buck, trading blames with North East governors and boasting his party would sweep the North East in 2015!
Now, was this the normal real-politik issuing from political braggadocio or absolute contempt for the local voters? Still, contrast the Bauchi show with the Lagos summit, and how the APC used the occasion to sell its road map, and it is clear the hustings for 2015 are here.
The federal ruling party brags, despite its parlous performance. The foremost opposition reasons, despite a discernible pattern of brilliance by its governors. It promises, indeed, a campaign of contrasts!
But back from political hubris to the common man, the ultimate victim of that hubris. It is also back to the Lagbaja (Yoruba for “somebody”) metaphor.
All on parade at the summit were just somebody — mere statistics: united in impotence, from tragedies and discomfort, as a result of the omission or commission by the Nigerian state.
One was a communication royal, even passing through the great portals of Lintas-Lagos, an advertising aristocracy, if ever there was one. But in his grey years, after giving his professional all to his country, the retiree has nothing to fall back on but the hospitality of a church. A country that neither cares for its youth nor its elders is criminal-minded to expect any iota of patriotism.
Then another, an uncommon common man: a university graduate, a former banker turned farmer. Now, this citizen is no robber, either of the pen or bullet hue. He is irrevocably committed to clean business. But alas! His country trembles at the sight of fertilizer rings. Though he works hard making losses, the fertilizer ring reaps while lazing away — and he is impotent, doing anything about it.
Yet another fisherman, in the Niger Delta creeks, must lose his means of livelihood because of the almighty crude that spills all over. Now, no thanks to those spills, he is unemployed and perhaps unemployable. Now that his goose is cooked, his country has moved on to more urgent matters, than the plaintive cry of a local fisherman with poisoned ponds.
The next four are caught in the Boko Haram tragedy in Nigeria’s North East. One lost his uncle, aside from wife that bore him six children. He lectures at the University of Maiduguri and the Islamists wanted him, the very symbol of Boko Haram — Western education is sin — but killed his wife in his stead.
Another is a teacher in a secondary school, who on two occasions lost his students to the murderous Islamists. The two times his school was attacked, the security forces of his country were caught napping. Though he escaped with his own kids, the trauma of the slain youngsters, under the school’s charge, would live with him for the rest of his days.
The next two would just not fold their arms, while Boko Haram made a devilish feast of the cream of the local manpower. So, they banded together with others to form the famed Civilian JTF — JTF after the military Joint Task Force. This cadre of braves somewhat succeeded in running Boko Haram out of Maiduguri, into the adjourning rural areas and bushes.
As confirmed by the victim university and secondary school teachers, Boko Haram’s audacious assassinations have greatly reduced in Maiduguri metropolis, thanks to the Civilian JTF. These braves appear to have heeded the John Kennedy injunction: ask what you can do for your country — and done it. But pray, what has their country done for them?
The unemployed graduate is the all too grotesque face of the Nigerian youth — hurting, angry, scorned and rejected. But after, even against all odds, she managed to found a beauty salon, came the 2012 “floods of Noah” that sacked everything.
Now, she is back to where she belongs: the ranks of the unemployed — or, as they of the comfort zone love to snap and leer: the ranks of the university unemployables!
Still, the Bathsaida Home for the Blind emerged perhaps the most profound image from the summit: a struggling charity that rehabilitated a youth that lost his sight because of inability to pay for a glaucoma surgery that cost N200, 000! The proud beneficiary and no less proud proprietor spoke at the summit. But where was the government and the big charities at the youth’s crunch time?
The Summit of the Common Man showcased the common man, with common woes, feeding a ticking bomb. The government must do the needful to defuse that bomb.
