Sir Olaniwun Ajayi is a nonagenarian dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, writes Toyin Falola
Sir Olaniwun Ajayi refuses to retire and sit under the mango tree to do battle with mosquitoes and flies, drinking palmwine to while away his time. Rather, entering his 90s, he stays in his library and does battle with the politics of ethnicities, national identity, regional domination, and federalism, the themes that run through his book.
His age allows for the accumulation of ideas from various locations and sources, combined with his own multi-dimensional practical experiences, and the ever-burning desire for political change and progress.
He is intellectually stubborn, if a younger person like me can be so bold in describing someone who could be his father. But my assessment is not intended as rudeness, but to note the constancy and consistency of his adopted tropes. This stubbornness is driven by a troika mentality: that his country. Nigeria, which he sees as fading, is a victim of colonial injustice, ethnic imbalance, and faulty federalism.
In Sir Olaniwun’s troika, there is a triumvirate of evil at work, shaping a chaotic historical process. In spelling out the three evils, he seems guided by the injunction in Matthew 7:3-5: “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck: out of your eye, and behold, the log is in your own eye? “You hypocrite. first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye”.
In taking the log out of his own eye to remove the speck out of the eyes of Nigerians, he intends to expose the origins and consequences of the axes of evil. He criticizes other ethnicities, and surely they will criticize his own as well, but this is part of removing the logs from all our eyes. He is qualified by age to speak his mind, to engage in the battle of the mind and intellect as if nothing else matters. He sees collaboration between the British and the Hausa-Fulani ruling elites as the fundamental source of Nigeria’s problems. Portraying both as warriors in the quest to control Nigeria, he offers an angelic antidote to a cosmic battle.
There is a battle here for identity, one for his own people, the Yoruba, whose race, he warns, must not fall; and second for Nigeria, one that Sir Olaniwun thinks must run strictly on a federal principle. An elder cannot be begrudged for fighting for his identity, as this is a legitimate battle, a cleansing spirit. In his sometimes aggressive tone, he sees identity as worth defending. He refuses to stay neutral in the ethnic battles. Passivity, he reckons, will not quench the desire of the enemy to fight hard and dirty. He directs his anger at the injustice perpetrated by the British, and what he sees as its extension by the North. I may disagree with him to the clusters of his identified “enemies” since, in reality, it takes two to fight, but I admire his patriotism and wild-eyed fury as well as his determination to construct an alternative pathway to a glorious future.
He also sees Nigeria as worth fighting for. He wants to engage in a war before he loses the battle. As a warrior, there seems to be a set of principles that emanate from his book:
• He fights for integrity, in this case, defined as the integrity of his name and analysis, whether one believes it or not;
• He fights for the restoration of the shame inflicted on his people, as he is angry with the slave trade and its consequences (portrayed in chapter one);
• He fights against the shame imposed by colonialism. See chapter two where Nigeria was ground to powder; where the weight of imposition crushed the people; where the boulders of exploitation created grief in people’s minds;
• There is the Frankenstein’s monster of how ethnicities constitute themselves (chapters 3,4, and 5) and became misapplied producing wreckages, not in a forgotten memory, as his chapter 6 reminds us, but as a nightmare;
• He deals with the wounds of colonial barbarism and “tribalism” in Chapter 7, of foreign imposed atrocities in Chapter 8, and of the rejection of hope in Chapter 9;and
• As a champion and leader of the Nigerian project, he travels to other lands in chapter 10, like Amos Tutuola wandering in the forest of ghosts, to bring back ideas on how to restore the broken chords of federalism. His political sorrows become transcendental and transformational, unencumbered by pride to reject ideas that do not work. The hardship of the Nigerian past becomes converted into an intellectual masculinity to reflect on possible political stability, in spite of a series of miscarriages and the self:’ inflicted pain of atrocious political self-immolation. Perhaps the collective suffering, the sage seems to be offering in his prophetic voice, can become a source of strength. The loss of the past exposes the weaknesses of the present, but also the cure for the ills of the future. To what use will this book be put? Well, to cite the book of Matthew (7:6), I can only hope that the following will not be true: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will {rumple them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces”.
But suppose the Nigerian leaders and managers become swine, then there is a message for them as well in Matthew 8:12: “But the subjects of the kingdom’ will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
May there be no “weeping and gnashing of teeth” in the land invented by Lord Lugard. Sir Olaniwun Ajayi has provided words to discover a collective strength. His words, even when we disagree with them, unleash the discovery of our weaknesses, so that we can walk with others to seek answers to our problems.
Let us walk with Sir Olaniwun Ajayi “The Elijah hunted by the slave traders, the colonisers, and the dominators”; “A survivor, who wants to spark a revival”…Let us march with Sir Olaniwun, “Daniel thrown into the den of tribal lions”, “Delivered by the net of analysis”…Let us commune with Sir Ajayi, “The persecuted Paul, writer of much of our New Testament”, “Who gives us the verses to survive the strongholds of our enemies’…”Feel empowered by Sir Olaniwun’s words”; “Forget the hurts” in Chapters 1 and 2; “The pain and agony” in Chapter 8; “Gather the strength” in Chapter 9; “Become the warrior to implement the changes recommended” in Chapter 10; “Embrace the truth with the elderly man’; “Mobilise the youth to tight shame and waste”; “Become wired to battle for a true identity” and “Tore-Iabel Nigeria From Paradise Lost To Paradise Regained”.
•Prof Falola is of The University of Texas at Austin, US.
