It has been unseasonably cold in England. An icy fog lays a brutal siege on the entire country from Inverness to Portsmouth. The ambience in Birmingham is grey and dreary as country and people are frozen into a vast mass of drooping icicles. It is the worst winter in thirty years, and February is the cruelest of months. Even this late in the year rather than retreating, General Winter has been advancing.
Trapped inside the house by a ferocious sleet storm and wrapped up like a Siberian wayfarer, Snooper has hit the bottle on the rebound. Our comforter is a vicious Austrian liqueur known as Stroh”80″. Known otherwise as the spirit of Austria, It is eighty per cent alcohol and a sip could take a bull out in a second. I often wonder why the immensely cultured but imperious Austrians are allowed to do this to the civilised world. But then, there are many things the Austrians will want the world to forget.
The generous provider of this heady spirit is an Aeronautical Engineer friend of Kogi extraction who is based in Birmingham. A hilarious and witty fellow, our man once told Snooper of how he took a bottle of the strong stuff home as a Christmas present to the Oba of his town who happens to be his cousin. Kabiyesi often boasts of his drinking prowess. A few hours later when the engineer returned to the palace to retrieve a document, his royal majesty had passed out on the bare floor with his staff of office lying on top of him.
For intellectual comfort, Snooper has been reading excerpts from the interesting memoirs of Engineer Akindele, the first Director General of the Nigerian Telecommunication. It is riveting read which shows how things used to be with the civil servants and civil service of yore. But by far the most interesting revelations in the memoirs concern Akindele’s memorable encounter with the tempestuous and unpredictable Murtala Mohammed both as Head of State and as Akindele’s supervising commissioner at the Ministry of Communication. At a point, Akindele was so exasperated by Murtala’s bullying antics that he blurted out in Yoruba that his own child was three years’ older than the menacing Mohammed.
The straight-laced bureaucrat thought he was making an uncomplimentary comment beyond Mohammed’s linguistic ken. Little did he realise that the mysterious warlord spoke and understood Yoruba perfectly well. A few years later, in fact on the eve of Mohammed’s assassination, Akindele almost took to his heels when Obasanjo asked him in Yoruba language whether he had forgiven them for the shabby manner the government treated him, only for Mohammed to retort in Yoruba: A si nbe. (We are still pleading with him)
Although still very controversial with regards to many aspects of his distinguished career, particularly the pogrom in Asaba and the infamous burglary of the exchequer in Benin, Mohammed has long been canonised as the nation’s most iconic leader. It is also arguable that had he lived longer, Mohammed would have unraveled as deliberate and painstaking statesmanship became unamenable to his short-fused hell-raising and impetuous grandstanding. But give a man his dues. Mohammed was kind, humane, charitable and ever ready to make amends when and where his conduct or the policies of his government might have caused harm or grievous damage. Here was a noble ruler.
From a very unflattering background reeking of supremacist arrogance, Murtala made a dramatic transition to a bold and visionary conception of the nation as an organic community of equal stakeholders. From a sectarian warmonger dripping with religious and regional prejudices, he became a Pan-Nigerian patriot of unusual mettle. It was an apostolic conversion of Pauline proportions. At a very grave time when Nigeria is once again in danger of fracturing along regional and religious lines as a result of the antics of a visionless and greedy cartel, Mohammed’s dynamic and visionary leadership commends itself to an endangered nation.
These were the sober thoughts that engaged one’s attention as the ferocious sleet storm raged outside and one took a hard swig of the spirit of Austria. Suddenly, the last sentence of an e-mail one had been reading on the computer screen shattered the icy complacency. “Sir, at this moment, President Yar’Adua is flying back home and is due back in the early hours.”
“Coming back to where and to what?”, Snooper screamed at the computer screen in towering rage. The source of the news being too authentic and impeccable, one was left to impotent fury and implacable disgust. Forgetting how scantily dressed one had become in the intervening hours, one rushed out of the house and into the receding snow storm.
It was bitterly cold outside. Snooper swept past the adjoining streets not knowing where one was going. As the fury slowly subsided, the icy frost began to bury its chilly fangs deep in the body. It was as if one was beginning to have an out of body experience as outlandish creatures from outer space started crowding the vision. Out of nowhere, a middle-aged man appeared, smartly dressed in a navy blue French conductor suit. The military swagger and the swashbuckling gait was unmistakable. It was the old general. It was Murtala Mohammed.
“Talk of the devil,” Snooper mumbled in muted excitement as the teeth clattered away. In edgy contempt, the general ignored his new-found companion and then launched into a bitter tirade about the weather.
“Kai, kai, it is bloody cold. Shege. Doualla, bani taba. Akoi Benson and Hedges?,” the general growled demanding for a stick of cigarette. Snooper quickly pointed at a huge neon sign prohibiting smoking.
“Walahi, I will soon prohibit that your useless mouth for you,” the general cursed.
“:No, no no, it’s not me, it is the whiteman. They have their strict rules and regulations,”Snooper protested.
“Listen, I hate these stupid Oyinbo people. They are bloody hypocrites. They brought corruption and cheating to us and they keep calling us crooks. May Allah forgive them,” the general fumed.
“Is that why you only took bribes from them?” Snooper demanded.
“My brother, one bad turn deserves another,” the general began with a crooked, much endearing smile. “By the way how did you bloody rogue come by that? You have been reading classified material, eh? Yaro barawo ne?”
“No, no no. I have been reading Akindele’s memoirs,” Snooper corrected.
“Ah that old bugger, is he still around? He is a good man but I almost shot him. I overheard him cursing my mother in Yoruba,” the general growled.
“I never knew you spoke Yoruba language,” Snooper marveled.
“Ajoke, my wife is half Yoruba,” the great warlord noted wistfully.
“General, how about a drink at Old Orleans at Broad Street?” snooper offered.
“Drink ke? I am a devout Muslim, you know,” the general protested.
“I also know something else. There was a famous restaurant in Lagos which was your watering hole. For years after your departure they use to take adverts to celebrate your patronage,” Snooper noted with a sly wink.
“You are a real sonobabitch, you know. Okay, we’ll have a drink, but the Stout here is not as stout as the one back home. The one here is totally useless, like the people. I’ll have Johnnie Walker instead,” the General crowed with boyish enthusiasm.
“By the way, General, Umaru is back”, Snooper said more like a complaint than anything else.
“Who is Umaru?”, Murtala replied in genuine ignorance.
“Umaru Yar’Adua,” Snooper replied.
“What does he do for a living, and is he related to Shehu?”, the general queried.
“He is our president, and he is Shehu’s brother. Obasanjo left him there after returning to power two decades later.” I replied.
“Hmmmmm. That must be the boy calling himself 007,” the general began with a sardonic smirk on his face. “I don’t want to be uncharitable but has Nigeria now become a James Bond film? I know Shehu as a noble and first-class officer, loyal to the core. If he were to be around, I would not have been killed. Your yeye brother ran away. But this Umaru???”, the general brooded uneasily.
“He is being supported by some northern elements who claim that the presidency is the north’s birthright till 2015 and that nothing should be done to disturb the arrangement,” Snooper noted without much passion.
“Those lot again!!! I never allowed them near the seat of government when I was in power. They are an idle lot, forever seeking for relevance and power. If I have my way, I will put them on the farm settlement near Bagauda Lake,” the general growled.
“They are led by a man called Inua Wada,” Snooper observed.
“Kai mana, but that is my own uncle,” Mohammed blurted out.
“I was wondering, too,” Snooper croaked with some mischief.
“You see, the problem is more fundamental. By the way, what did Obasanjo himself forget at the State house that he was looking for?” Mohammed snarled.
“He forgot to mess things up properly. Now for the first time in the history of the country, we have three presidents at the same time: An Acting President; an inactive President and an active President,” Snooper noted with muted relish.
“I see. What is Theophilus Danjuma doing about the nonsense?”
“Danjuma and Obasanjo are no longer on speaking terms,” Snooper replied.
“What ? You know sometimes it may be better to die young. Longevity is a curse in Africa”, Mohammed reflected with misty eyes.
“What the colonial Army put together, post-colonial oil blocs have torn asunder,” Snooper cynically pressed on even as a sad Mohammed ignored him.
“And where is Akinrinade in all this?” Murtala growled.
“He is out in the street protesting against all of them,” Snooper replied.
“I see. It is a total disaster then. It is Abagana all over again. I must thank Sub-Lieutenant William Sheri for not missing his target. A country where Alani is a protester on the street is not worth living in”, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed noted and began moving away.
“General, what about the drink?” Snooper protested.
“To celebrate what?” Mohammed snapped. “But let me tell you this. Those of us who have killed for Nigeria and have been killed for Nigeria hold all of you responsible for this mess, this disgrace of the blackman.”
The ferocious sleet storm was still raging in Birmingham. Luckily, the automatic heating system had come on unfailingly, rousing Snooper from his catatonic stupor. The computer screen was still flashing with the lone apocalyptic message: Umaru Yar’Adua is on his way home.
