The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Snooper

  • An afternoon with Iku Baba Yeye

    An afternoon with Iku Baba Yeye

    What can we do without our royalty? And how will the world as we know it be without kings? Kingdoms and empires seem to vanish, but kings and emperors have remained with us forever. Radical historians and other intellectual regicides view them as risible relics of a feudal past that is better forgotten. But the joke appears to be on the revolutionaries. In traditional societies transiting to modernity, royalty seems to playa a critical and crucial role.

    For over three hundred years, the Yoruba have been engaged in a war of will and wits with theirs. Sometimes, they succeed in banishing a few or sending the odd royal to his maker. But as a long term strategy in a war of attrition, they seem to have settled for the policy of giving unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. The king does not die, and neither does kingship. Please note that king, Caesar, Czar, Tsar and Kaiser are all etymological variations of the same word.

    The English succeeded in decapitating one of theirs in an epochal revolution. But after the Cromwellian levelling became a joke taken too far, they quickly signed on a new royalty. It might have been a typical English fudge but it works. The English royals are the nearest object of reverence and national veneration in Britain up to this point. Surprisingly, when the Spanish monarch asked the late Hugo Chavez to shut up in full public glare, the Latin American revolutionary promptly shut his trap.

    The French sent off their royal couple to the guillotine only for emperors and presidential monarchs to surface like social submarines. The Elysee Palace can only be occupied by royalty. After they blew up the entire royal family, the Russians found themselves cursed with Leninist and Stalinist Tsars until the revolution collapsed one sunny morning. Now, Vladimir Putin is behaving like another Russian Tsar, minus the pomp and pageantry and the Russians are not exactly resentful.

    In the case of the Americans, they, vowed from the word go never to have anything to do with royalty. They seemed to have learnt their lessons from the implacable tyrants they fled from in Europe. But with the regal Reagans and the kingly Kennedys, the Yankees appear to have spoken too soon.

    Always centralise! If this is the motivating motto of all modern societies, it also tells us why we seem to be stuck with kings. There can be no centralisation without a central figure. As long as this remains the preferred mode of human organisation, revolutions and the dissolutions of empires may consume royalty but only for new royalties to emerge. Napoleon acidly noted that a throne is but a bench covered with damask, but the sly Sicilian eventually ordered one for himself too.

    Snooper spent last Thursday afternoon watching a grand royal opera. It was as magnificent as it could have been in the ancient times of magical lore. The event took place at the Wallan Hall of D’Rovans Hotel, Ibadan. It was at the formal presentation of a collection of essays on chieftaincy laws in Nigeria in honour of his Imperial Majesty, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111.

    The Oyo monarch is a principal emblem of royalty in Nigeria and Africa and one of the most sacred totems of the unyielding potency of the institution. When it is said that Africans cannot build durable institutions, you can always point at the institutions of obaship which has survived and thrived for centuries. It is colonial and post-colonial disorientation which have made it impossible for Africans to adapt to western institutions.

    Built like a compact but supple prize fighter and without any hint of mechanical inflexibility, his Royal Highness exudes supernatural self-assurance. With his charisma, carriage and comportment , the Oyo monarch is a royal showstopper any day. The finely chiselled features hinting of centuries of breeding and genetic refinement, the Alaafin is the ultimate advertisement for royalty anywhere in the world.

    Like most exceptional kings, the Alaafin is many things rolled into one: scholar, diplomat, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, raconteur, warrior, political strategist, traditional savant, writer and supreme athlete. In these days of sharp and severe division of labour even within the same profession, this kind of royal polyvalency is a throwback to some earlier times of superhumans.

    Ironically because of its virility and continuing efficacy, the obaship institution in Yoruba land often feels like a jungle of royal adversaries with our traditional fathers often jostling for supremacy and superiority of dynastic lineage. Snooper does not have the capacity or sagacity to dabble into the cloak and dagger world of Yoruba royal politics..

    Suffice it to say that while Ile-Ife was, and remains, the ancestral homestead and originating sacred site and spiritual shrine of the Yoruba race, it was the old Oyo Empire that took the race to the pre-colonial zenith of its military, political, diplomatic and economic genius.

    All the children of Oduduwa must be grateful to both founders and pathfinders alike for bequeathing a sophisticated culture which has transcended its origins in the forest to become a global brand. While it was the centralising genius of Oduduwa that cobbled and fused the disparate strands into an organic ethnic group, it was a succession of Oyo kings that expanded this into an empire with sub-continental reach.

    Like his martial ancestors, the incumbent Alaafin has phenomenal guts and what they call plenty of cujones to spare. It was an unusual act of personal bravery for a prince of Oyo to train as a professional boxer. The boxing ring does not recognise royalty. You are all alone and on your own. Only the handlers and the proverbial towel can save a prince from punitive pounding, particularly from adamant regicides on the margins of society roused by class hatred and envy. For every prince, there is a waiting pauper.

    The early life of the future Oba is the stuff of magical fables. Like all prize fighters, the Alaafin has taken a couple of hard blows. But he has also managed to deliver some sledgehammers. By his own public admission in Ibadan on Thursday, Oba Adeyemi has been involved in about a hundred litigations, ninety five of which he won by technical knockout and a few through lack of diligent prosecution on the part of his opponents. In boxing parlance, this is the equivalent of an opponent not answering the bell for the next round.

    It was as if from birth, his father, a strong-willed monarch, strenuously prepared the young prince for royal ascendancy. From early childhood, he was sent off as a royal apprentice to serve in the household of foremost traditional rulers and notables. It was an exacting and tasking royal journeymanship/.

    A series of character-steeling adversities ensued. In the event, his father was deposed and banished by the then Action Group government. Inevitably, the new political elite thrown up by the colonial irruption came into conflict and collision with the old traditional class. Oba Adeyemi became a principal casualty of this shift in the locus of power.

    In the north, the same dynamics was to see to the removal and banishment. of the old Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi. Whereas the ordeal of Sanusi exemplified the tension between the old Kano metropole and the new Sokoto caliphate which began with the Othman Dan Fodio conquest, in the west there was a hint of old sub-ethnic rivalries and pre-colonial animosities about it all.

    Ahmadu Bello had fought with his cousin, Sultan Abubakar for the Sokoto throne and even after becoming the de facto ruler of Nigeria, this was still the prize he coveted most. Obafemi Awolowo, on the other hand, belonged to the new ascendant class who owed their hegemony to the colonial disruption of the old order.

    But looking at a king’s mouth, one would never have imagined that he ever sucked at his mother’s breath. At seventy three and after forty two years on the throne, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has worn very well indeed. The entire hall erupted in swooning adulation and veneration as the royal retinue, replete with dancers and drummers, heralded the arrival of his imperial majesty. Resplendent as usual in fine native plumage, his royal highness was quite a sight to behold.

    Perhaps one was going to get a gift of royal dancing. Like all gifted musical artists, his royal highness has a supreme sense of inner rhythm which translates into exquisite fancy footwork and the inimitable regal trot. But it was not the time for royal cantering. This afternoon, his imperial highness seemed to have weightier matters on his royal mind. The scholar and the cultural warrior were ascendant.

    As he sat impassively on his chair behind a wall of practised silence like an all- seeing, all-knowing, all-hearing deity, you get a sense of why the Yoruba consider their kings as being next to their traditional gods. The ways of these deities are truly mysterious.

    You got a sense that your number was up when a native enforcer informed snooper that the Alaafin had ordered that he should be brought before his royal presence. But it was to exchange witty banters. As the king would later publicly reveal, he keeps a file on all major writings in the country. Needless to add that he has a capillary network of informants where it matters most. It doesn’t get more chillingly impressive.

    It has been an engrossing encounter in Ibadan with a worthy embodiment of arguably the most durable and viable institution thrown up by the ancient Yoruba society. In his rigour and painstaking devotion to duty, this remarkable traditional ruler shows just how sophisticated and socially advanced the pre-colonial political order could have been. The life of the Alaafin teaches us two important lessons: The immutability of destiny and the fact that it is not life that matters but the courage you bring to bear on it. Here is wishing the Iku Baba yeye many more fruitful years on the throne of his ancestors..

  • Baba Lekki unfolds his coat of arms

    Whilst we are still on the subject of whimsical and arbitrary rule and its self-perpetuating dynamics, it is proper to report that arbitrary violence is a logical fallout of arbitrary rule. Arbitrary rule is an act of psychological violence against the populace. Accustomed to the routine and wanton cruelty of arbitrary rule, arbitrary violence takes root in the society as everybody luxuriates in the superiority of brute intimidation.

    Last Tuesday as snooper was making his way through the vehicular maelstrom of Matori, a group of desperate urchins sitting atop a moving train and armed with stones the size of boulders were aiming their hand propelled grenades at passing vehicles. One of the crude missiles landed just behind snooper and made such a clattering noise that the fear of the lord was driven into everybody. Nobody could have stopped a moving train. This is as close to Hades as it could get on earth.

    A few days later, snooper was still ruminating on this apocalyptic meltdown when he was confronted by a most outlandish sight in the kitchen. It was a glum and gloomy Baba Lekki wearing a huge outsize coat with its front pockets bulging with poorly concealed weapons of mass destruction. His face was grotesquely swollen with a massive lump superimposed on what used to be his nose. He looked like somebody who had just managed to extricate himself from a giant rodent trap with telltale wounds. Snooper was secretly enthralled by this remarkable discomfiture of the old contra and master of anticipatory violence. But all efforts to draw him out about the nature of his plight failed woefully.

    “Okon, which one be this one again oo, or has your baba become a comedian?” snooper asked gleefully, casting a wicked glance at the human fiasco in the kitchen.

    “Oga, dis one no be matter of comedian ooo. Even dem comedian dey cry for Lagos, becos palaver no be dem play and anikura come pass alawada. You know say Eko na wicked place. He no good make dem small yeye boys dey beat old man. Na dem beat baba sotey for Idumota him head no correct again. You no see how him Yoruba nose come big pass him mouth? Na dem panel beat am silly silly. He get one kata Yoruba welder boy for Oshodi. Him name be Kamoru. Na him dey beat dem people. Efen police sef him dey beat dem. He come beat dem policeman like dat he come shit for uniform”, Okon retorted, eyeing Baba Lekki with a wicked grin.

    “Okon, so why is he wearing this big coat?” snooper asked, trying hard not to burst into laughter.

    “Na him native insurance be dat one. Inside one pocket baba get dem heavy stones, inside another him get dem blade and dem jack knives and inside dem top pocket him put dem Awka pistol and dem Yoruba juju. If Baba hit dem elephant with dat one elephant go kaput”, Okon sniggered.

    “Men, this is anarchy”, snooper exclaimed.

    “Anarchy ko, inaki ni”, Baba Lekki rumbled at last with violent scorn even as he sulked like an infant.

    “Okon, tell him not to come to this house with this coat again”, snooper ordered with a comic frown.

    “Ha oga, I no fit tell am dat oo. Baba say na him coat of army be dat. You no say baba be old soldier for dem Congo. Na for Congo dem wild monkey come bite him head fiam fiam and baba him head no correct again “ Okon snorted.

    “I said coat of arms and not army coat”, Baba Lekki groaned as he wobbled out of the house to snooper’s immense relief.

  • Re: Four Yoruba and Nigerian Avatars

    Snooper is at it again, in his elements in “Four Yoruba and Nigerian Avatars.” Clinically incisive, especially your characterisation of “The Four”. Yes, “Obasanjo…is arguably the outstanding political games-master”, sugbon , “elewon maa..nloga.” Ask him about “The Lion of Bourdillon”, whose heroic exploits in our political firmament are still unfolding. We pray he would not falter. Just fire on, Tatalo Alamu, we will be reading and enjoying you. ——Feyisola Famutimi .

    This writing business, osa, often dreary and torturing, is like prospecting for gold. You came close to a prize find in the second essay on Yoruba avatars dripping with rich insights. A book on such lines will be seminal. How does Asiwaju fit into the picture? Professor Ayo Olukotun.

  • The Dean’s November

    The Dean’s November

    It has been a glorious week for journalism in Nigeria and for a scandal-fatigued nation by extension. There can be nothing more morally satisfying than watching good people finish first. In the ethical free trade zone that is Nigeria, this is immensely gratifying and a cause to be grateful to almighty. Allah de indeed.

    Watching the great man soak up all the accolades and encomiums , all the ringing ovations and rousing oratory at the Yoruba Tennis club last Monday, was like watching a king in autumnal splendour. It is the dean’s November. And all the men of timber and calibre came to pay their respects to the doyen.

    It was like an occult gathering of bi-centennial egunguns. The entire hall reeked of camphor cubes, organdi lace and other ancestral textiles. There were one or two double partings reminiscent of Edwardian dandies. Victorian Lagos came alive again.

    It was a Veterans’ Day, and as the reviewer of the collection, Dan Agbese, noted, it was perhaps the greatest collection of aging journalists that the nation has witnessed. Perhaps not since they founded Yaba Old People’s Home, snooper must caution. It was 17 years since snooper himself had a memorable breakfast of steaming Oturkpo yam porridge with Dan in company of the impossible Colonel Dickson Ovie-Itete. In the intervening years, the great Newswatch trailblazer himself has taken on a sage otherworldly hue.

    The man of the moment took it all in his stride. Not for once did the calm, impassive and Roman noble exterior betray any emotion. Like an all-seeing, all-knowing traditional deity, Allah De wore his usual mask of Olympian reticence. Only my master knew what my master was thinking about. Alhaji Alade Idowu Odunewu took in all the hype and hoopla with a regal forbearance that suggested good breeding and cultivated restraint. There is a stoic equanimity about the man that communicated deep wisdom and even deeper faith. When shall we see his like again?

    When Winston Churchill was told that Clement Atlee, his great rival and ultimate electoral conqueror, was a modest man, Churchill noted with caustic severity that Atlee had everything to be modest about. In our own Alade Odunewu we have a man who has everything not to be modest about but who has chosen the path of modesty and rectitude. There is something ultimately forbidding about Allah De’s simplicity and lack of airs. There is something about his casual, self-effacing mien that is a subtle indictment of the pompous self-importance of many of our contemporary rulers. Allah De is a different proposition altogether.

    There are great writers who are squalid human beings. There are great people who are squalid writers. There are people who are squalid human beings and squalid writers to the bargain. To be a great writer and a great person is a rare combination indeed. Alade Odunewu, by right and reputation, belongs to this special breed. Nigeria has produced greater writers and perhaps greater people in the realm of politics and entrepreneurial daring. But Allah De is in a class of his own as a great person and a great columnist.

    In their epic duel which was to earn Allah De the sobriquet of the dean of satirical journalism in Nigeria, Zik of Africa cautioned Odunewu about deploying major artillery to fight minor skirmishes. How about some preliminary skirmishes before the main tournament, Zik famously asked of his antagonist, trying to lure the wily journalist into a fatal clinch. Allah De did not decline. The result is a classic slugfest that has since become a benchmark for civilised discourse in post-colonial Nigeria.

    Zik, the apostle of Fabian socialism, the ardent disciple of Fabius Cunctator, the great Roman strategist of attrition, was drawing Allah De’s attention to one of the fabled tenets of delayed engagement and graduated violence as learnt from the master himself. Preliminary skirmishes must not be fought with major artillery. But the great Zik could have saved his breath. Allah De was never one to rush into political hostilities.

    In the end, it boils down to a question of style for great man and great columnist. The great riddle of Allah De’s life as a man and a prose stylist has to do with the complexity of simplicity. More often than not, it is not simple to be simple. Although Allah De’s style evinces a powerful simplicity, it is a simplicity that has been worked over several times by a profound and complex mind. It is not the simplicity of the Fleet Street journeyman, or the simplicity of the zealot of the American night school of journalism and ersatz fast food communication. It is a simplicity under-girded by a potent imagination.

    This is the point Dan Agbese seems to miss in his otherwise refreshing review. While praising Allah De for the simplicity and elegance of his writing, Agbese also betrays the mindset of the fundamentalist of the old school of journalism with its war cry of clarity and lucidity. By so doing, Agbese manages to skirt round the issue thus resurrecting an old stylistic ghost which dogged Newswatch at its inception and which provoked a memorable defence of stylistic complexity by one of its star columnists.

    It is true that the classical canons of modern mass communication are anchored on lucidity and simplicity of style. But such lucidity and simplicity of expression are often in collusion and complicity with ruling class agenda. They are tools of mass deception. The simplistic mind often hides under the mantra of simplicity to obscure and obfuscate complex issues.

    In the tortured and tormented labyrinth of the post-colonial state, with its state assisted crimes and ruling class delinquency, this kind of simplicity is going to be a tall order indeed. In a post-modernist world where writing about adventure is also the adventure of writing itself, this is like a relapse into stone- age verbal exchanges among hunter-gatherers of primitive information.

    At any rate, less is just less. Anybody who has something memorable to say must find a memorable way to say it, if they are to register with posterity. Poor Dan Agbese, journalism is too serious a business to be left to professional journalists. It is not by coincidence that the most remarkable journalists that Nigeria has produced are people who bring the fertile resources of other professions to bear on the trade.

    We are talking about the great Zik with his polyvalent potency, Awo with his classical erudition, Anthony Enahoro with his powerful intellect, Aiyekoto with his urbane and cosmopolitan swashbuckling, Allah De with his world-weary wisdom and superlative imagination, Sad Sam with his cynical perspicacity, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo with his polysyllabic virtuosity, Dele Giwa with his elaborate literary conceits, Stanley Macebuh with his mandarin ruminations and our own Olatunji Dare with the clinical clarity of an absconding scientist.

    While most of these men often return to their primary trade, while some of them would take a French leave from journalism, Allah De remains the quintessential journalist. Again, it is a question of style and taste. Allah De does not mix journalism with partisan politics. But this is not say that he was ever indifferent to the political fortunes of his beloved country. When affronted, Allah De roiled with quiet tempest. But he was wise and worldly enough to leave political rascality to the professional rascals. In such moments of sublime impotence, the great man would probably sigh: Allah De.

    The result is a body of writing that is at once penetratingly critical but also ruler-friendly. This is the man the entire nation celebrated last week. Since everybody seems to have an Allah De story, snooper might as well end with his own. Once upon a long time ago, Allah De missed his way in the jungle of primeval beauty that was one of the nation’s finest universities.

    Snooper snooping around as usual in the dense jungle recognised the great man and helped him on his way. The doyen was full of urbane gratitude. It turned out that in characteristic humility and fatherly affection the great man had come all the way from Lagos to thank one of his daughter’s teachers for his diligence and devotion.

    Last week the nation returned the full compliment to one of its most illustrious and noble sons. It was a moveable feast. Here is wishing the great dean many happy returns of the day, sir.

  • Okon floors Father Kukah

    Okon floors Father Kukah

    (On the rise of Wa Jetzi}

    Just about the time one has finished praising the country for a healthy development in one department, one is immediately confronted by unsavoury developments at a more worrisome level. This one is a superior mess because it hints at spiritual decay and utter debauchery in the church. There is already a concurrent armed critique of the state and a major religion going on at the moment. The contemptuous invasion and desecration of hitherto hallowed spaces of worship by armed hoodlums may well be the beginning of another brand of the same phenomenon.

    Snooper has been monitoring the unholy kong-fu among men of God ever since Bishop Kukah detonated his grenade about the embarrassment of jet-setting spiritualists. The internet dogfight and proxy wrestling have seen supporters on both sides locked in a mortal clinch. For daring to upbraid their idol, some irate commentators have gone as far as dismissing Kukah himself as an AGIP. Temperance, my lords spiritual, temperance. In Kenya, it was the Wa Benzi or the Mercedes people. In Nigeria, it is now the church Wa Jetzi.

    In a bid to write a long objective piece on this development, snooper has had to seek an advance permission from Bishop M.H. Kukah to quote portions of an earlier private exchange between the two of us to illuminate the perennial dilemma of the civil society activist transiting to state actor. When no response came, snooper sent a terse reminder which elicited the following response from the feisty father confirming that he never got the first memo. “Is this [Name of suspect withheld]……the Master and Slave driver of poor Okon? Perhaps the guy swallowed it as protest over poor pay.”

    Like a practised spiritual insurgent, Bishop Kukah has set fire on snooper’s homestead, opening another front before one could subject him to a severe siege. Snooper has long suspected that Okon has some masters high up in the system who are urging him to declare a trade dispute. To the best of our knowledge, the boy enjoys free boarding and lodging, apart from generous stipends which allow him to indulge his satanic fancies.

    It was an irate snooper that pursued the crazy boy to the kitchen the following morning.

    “Okon, do you know Father Kukah?”:snooper demanded

    “Chei, kai kai, Oga dem Ibo thief don beat man to dem title,”

    “And whst is that supposed to mean?”, a furious snooper charged.

    “Oga abi father cooker no be baba for all dem cook? Na dem title I wan take. But cook na cook. Na too know dey make dem Yoruba people dey call cook cooker. So na me be father cooker, But he get one Yoruba man for Surulere dem dey call Chief Kuku. Dat one he don cook sotey he don become chief”, the crazy boy retorted with mad relish.

    “Okon, you are a fool. I mean Reverend Father Kukah, the Catholic priest”, snooper corrected.”,

    “Ha oga, dat one for Costain for Kaduna? I sabi am well well. Na to my village for Itigidi him come run as dem Abacha wan kaput am. For dem early morning dem man they cry cuckoo, cuckoo as if dem Abacha don dabaru him head. Him say dem small bird wey dey protect him from Abacha na dem him dey call, but dem Oyinbo engineer come tell us say cuckoo mean say him head no correct again”, the mad boy sniggered

    “Okon, Okon!!!! Father Kukah is condemning church leaders who buy planes,” snooper stated without excitement or flourish.

    “Ha oga for that case, na only god of man fit save man from dem men of God. But na too know dey worry dem yaro Father. Wetin concern Kukah if dem holy people dey buy plane? No be dem plane dem go take reach heaven? If dem wan go reach god quick quick no be dem plane go take dem go? Dis Kukah man sef, na bad belle dey worry am. Abi him no sabi say when overseer don oversee too much him dey go overseas be dat?”

    On that note, snooper quickly beat a disorderly retreat.

  • Flying to conclusion

    ( Okon delivers his magisterial verdict)

    Snooper sympathises and commiserates with our avid aviator and flying governor of Taraba state, Danbaba Suntai, as he is swapped up in a German hospital battling life-threatening injuries. It was reported that Suntai’s personally piloted light aircraft crashed about 38 miles to Yola Airport on the Yola-Numan Road hours after departing his native Taraba state from a private airstrip.

    They are grave questions bordering on state and national security to ask when a serving governor is perpetually prone to taking personally to the sky. It is said that after pumping billions of naira in an unviable airport, Suntai summarily abandoned this project only to build for himself an airstrip near his village of Suntai. In obedience to good taste and compassion, we will leave further questions until the grounded governor fully recovers. From a remote distance, Suntai looks like a decent and urbane fellow who can be fruitfully engaged.

    Still from a purely human angle, snooper cannot hold back a grudging admiration for Danbaba Suntai’s pluck and courage. There is something to be said for any individual who has conquered humanity’s natural fear of dizzying heights and the starry stratosphere. For those who have been bitten by the bug, next to the fear of flying is the fear of not flying.

    Those who have heard or read about the exploits of Antoine De Saint-Exupery, the great French aviator, will know what we mean. The dapper and Bohemian Frenchman practically lived in the skies and died there. Remarkable poet, writer and philosopher, Saint-Exupery flew several solo missions for war and peace in his rudimentary, ill-equipped planes until he met a watery end off the coast of North Africa.

    And those who have read Charles Lindbergh’s remarkable memoir, Hour of Gold; Hour of Lead, will know what it means for a solitary individual to engage the demons of the skies without adequate provision or reliable aeronautical data. Lindbergh was the first human to fly solo across the Atlantic from America to Europe.

    It has been noted that Danbaba Suntai’s first love was flying. Even though he secured admission to that famous aeronautical institution in Florida, he was cheated out of contention by sheer financial adversity. He trained as a pharmacist instead. But even as an elected governor, the chap from Suntai never forgot his first love. Obviously by private arrangement, he sought and secured admission to the Aviation School in Zaria where he was trained to become a pilot.

    But in a piece of delectable irony, Snooper had been thinking that the controversy as to whether Suntai was a trained pilot was thus resolved when an angry listener to Gbenga Aruleba’s morning programme on AIT shot back to claim that what the governor went through was a “crash programme.”

    It was at this juncture that the inevitable Okon crashed into his master’s bedroom.

    “Oga dem don say dem governor dem give am crash programme.” the mad boy sneered.

    “So, what is your own there?” snooper demanded angrily.

    “No be say dem train am to crash be dat? Abi na Okon’s head no correct again?” the crazy boy shot back and was promptly expelled from the room.

    It all reminds one of a story from the famous Readers’ Digest. Locked into the blue and eerie skies, a trainee paratrooper once asked his trainer what would happen should the parachute refuse to open. The gruff old warrior took a look at the frightened fellow and then shot back. “That, my boy, is what they call jumping to conclusion!” We must hope and pray that His Excellency has not flown to conclusion.

  • Thinking the unthinkable

    Thinking the unthinkable

    From Friday October 26th till Sunday October 29th, the cream of Yoruba intelligentsia, business elite, dominant leaders of the Yoruba progressive wing, or the Afenifere old guard as they are known , and emergent political conquistadors gathered at the alluring ambience of the Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan to map out the way forward for the Yoruba and Nigeria.

    Snooper was there, and was as busy as the proverbial beetle. It was not as a learned pundit or intellectual hell-raiser, but as a humble student of history. And history was aplenty to learn from. As Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer has noted, there can be no greater test for a doctor than to suffer an affliction in his own speciality. There is a crisis of intellectual initiative in contemporary Nigeria, and snooper is badly hit.

    The first shock on entering the hallowed premises of the Tropical institute was profoundly cultural, and then perhaps social and political. It is hard to imagine an oasis of rationality in a desert of disorder. But there it was in all its lush splendour. Everything worked, including the showers. The staff were polite and focused. And yet virtually all of them are Nigerians.

    Less than three miles away is the urban hell of Ojoo where berserk trailers compete with its equally disturbed denizens for the laurel of lunacy. The Americans at the apex of things at the Tropical Institute would have none of this nonsense. They have created a little America in suburban Ibadan. If Ojoo and its deviant ethos were to be transported to America, the entire inhabitants would have been quarantined as a threat to national sanity.

    The distinguished and illustrious Yoruba sons and daughters who thronged the Tropical Institute did not come for sight-seeing, but it helped in this particular instance to show how far Nigeria has regressed. So did a guided tour of the institute at the end of proceeding.

    They came from far and wide. From the academic community, the arms-bearing strata, the business and industrial sector , the political class, civil society spectrum and indeed from the powerful Diaspora. It was , so to say, perhaps the greatest collection of Yoruba brains since Chief Jeremiah Oyeniyi Obafemi Awolowo dined alone.

    Needless to add that it was a revealing and illuminating occasion. It was also not without its great ironies. Unlike major gatherings of the Yoruba in the past that held under an atmosphere of federal siege against the people or against the backdrop of an imminent dissolution of the federation itself, this one took place in an atmosphere of perfect tranquility.

    Ironically, it was this seeming atmosphere of peace and political placidity that increased the background anxiety. Coming after eight years of sustained assault on law and order, on political rationality, on the fundament of the federation by a power mafia led by a Yoruba son and culminating in an election marked by spectacular fraud, the joke was on the Yoruba elite.

    This time around there was no Kaduna mafia to rail at. There were no Hausa-Fulani hegemonists to harangue and harass. The caliphate supremacists have retreated into their dark laagers, battered and badgered into submission by the militarised might of a monster state. Having contributed their own quota to the stunning incompetence and malevolence of the Nigerian state, there was a lot to be modest about for the Yoruba elite.

    If a bungling old soldier, a combatively incompetent autocrat, was all they could contribute to moving the nation forward, then why have they been disturbing the peace of the nation for 40 years? For the Yoruba, the enemy is not abroad. The enemy is within.

    In such circumstances, it was to be expected, and also perfectly rational, that Obafemi Awolowo should loom large. And the sage from Ikenne was there in all his commodious and overpowering presence. Awolowo hovered over the conference like a presiding deity and spiritual paterfamilias. He dominated the proceedings, and at every turn, his illustrious name was invoked like a timeless talisman.

    It is a measure of Awolowo’s stature as a politician and philosopher that 20 years after his death, it has proved impossible to move Nigeria or the Yoruba nation forward without first coming to terms with his prognosis and prognostications. Just as it has proved impossible for the capitalist world to move forward without first coming to terms with Karl Marx’s historic hectoring, it is impossible to think Nigeria without first thinking through Awolowo. But since Nigeria has been in permanent denial as far as Awo is concerned, the best thing is to leave Nigeria severely alone until we all come to our senses.

    That being said, Awolowo remains the greatest Yoruba man in recorded history. But just as the late twentieth century was to prove that despite his devastating critique, Karl Marx was nothing but a great closet capitalist, it may yet be that when Awolowo’s ideas are fully implemented, he would be seen as the greatest closet Nigerian, contrary to the impression of his many traducers who dismiss him as a tribalist.

    It was not surprising that the surviving Awolowo lieutenants were there in their full strength. These are the titans and grandees of the struggle for the emancipation of the Yoruba within the federation of Nigeria. History will accordingly note their heroic stance and principled refusal when it mattered most. The last five years must have been a nightmare for them, having seen their flock dispersed and their influence dramatically whittled down.

    And so they sat in suburbia Ibadan hunched with fright and disoriented by looming political irrelevance. Despite the occasional sabre rattling by the most rambunctious of them, it was clear that the fire has gone out of the belly of the old men. Their 2003 capitulation to Obasanjo was historic in the sense that it was an acute reading of the handwriting on the wall and of the mood of the sophisticated Yoruba political mob.

    Having studied them at close quarters between 1999 and 2003, Obasanjo forcibly appropriated their mantra as defender of Yoruba interests without provoking massive revolt and animosity from his northern patrons. Thereafter, Obasanjo raided their ammunition dump to the bargain. If you say you are the defender of Yoruba interests against northern domination, here is a Yoruba son who is providentially positioned to do it much better and with vast federal resources too.

    Reading the script correctly but fatally was Bola Ige who was on the verge of resigning from the federal cabinet in order to quarantine his beloved South West from the PDP power-mongers even while conceding the centre to Obasanjo. But by then, the great Cicero himself had done enough to undermine and hobble the AD and had also supplied enough ammunition for his own demystification to Obasanjo.

    It would have been a nasty dogfight indeed with Ige in a lose, lose situation. Thereafter, the west succumbed to internal conquest by a mafia that knows everything about power but nothing about its responsibility. The result is the political regression and underdevelopment that stare us in the face today.

    But you cannot step into the same river twice. If Awolowo himself were to be alive today, he would have had to reinvent himself severally and severely to take on board new political realities. Brilliantly proactive as usual even while holding dismal cards, Awolowo saw this when he retired from active politics in 1983.

    Something tells this columnist that time is up for the Awoist old guard. But among the Yoruba there is a protocol for the retirement of elders. Snooper will not support the old men being harassed and harried into humiliating political dotage. Let them take their time in a dignified exit. We must learn from the crisis of the last eight years and even from Obasanjo’s iconoclastic intervention, whether we like him or not. Having proved themselves to be human and fallible if the old men are expecting instant obeisance from the new generation of progressive Yoruba political warlords, they are in for a rude shock.

  • Okon is Commander in Chef

    Okon is Commander in Chef

    As tragedy blends fluidly and fluently with comedy in our daily existence, it is becoming impossible to separate the comic from the tragic. The old sub-genre of tragi-comedy does not quite capture the stirring monstrosity of our reality in contemporary Nigeria in all its brilliant chiaroscuro. Darkness is clearly visible. Welcome to Kafka’s Penal Colony. Welcome to sub-Saharan cinematography and the cabinet of Dr Caligari. Welcome to comi-tragedy.

    Imagine that the casualties from Monday’s Mubi massacre probably surpass the figures from one month of mayhem in Mogadishu even at the height of war and lunacy in that strife-torn country. Yet it is Somalia that we blithely refer to as a failed state. When shall we learn to call a spade a spade? Or the opium is just a flower?

    Snooper was deep in rumination about these tragic fatalities and the infelicitous gaffes and goofs they elicit from officialdom when he almost collided with a truly outlandish figure in the kitchen. It was the impossible Okon dressed in a crude travesty of the full ceremonial uniform of a Commander in Chief complete with silky gloves and bristling epaulettes. Before yours sincerely could finish marvelling at the kitchen Napoleon, the crazy boy exploded..

    “Oga, Okon now be commander in chief, no be like dem yeye Yoruba musician ooo. He get time like dat when I dey see dem fine and dandy young Yoruba Oba for Lagos. I come ask wetin be im name and dem say na Elegusi, so I come think say dem better Yoruba people dey give dem cook Oba title. I come say I be Elewedu and dem area boys come beat me sotey. Naim I come tell dem I be Emir for Tuwo Shinkafa. But dis one like dem Jonathan be commander in chief for inside dem Aso Rock, Okon be commander in chief for kitchen sef. Make dem area boys come try dem nonsense make I put better pepper for dem konta konta eye.”

    “But Jonathan is a real Field Marshal.” Snooper offered.

    “Oga, no be wetin we dey talk? Na for inside dem field for Aso Rock him dey do him road Marshal for independence ceremony. Even dem Ekwueme and dem old soldier Gowon dey hide under dem Aso canopy. I see dem with my korokoro eye. Dem mountain Anyim dey cry for Ibo, biko, biko, biri kem biri. Dem Boko be dem mama him husband. I don tell dem Jonathan make dem cancel dem independence day, abi na by force?”

    “Okon, have you been hit by shell before,” snooper demanded.

    “Plenty time. Shell no dey kill Efik man. Dem stupid Yoruba barber come throw dem cowrie shell at Okon for Bar Beach,” the crazy boy sneered.

    “Okon, you are a big fool, big time,”snooper noted with a comic frown.

    “Ha oga no be only dat. He get time like that for dis dem Oduduwa kitchen. As Okon come break egg from dem Ogbologbo Yoruba witch for Oyingbo market dem egg come do Gbuaam and dem shell come hit Okon and dem bird come comot and him dey cry tin o tin oo for kitchen. Naim I come pick race. Calabar juju come finis Yoruba witch. Who born Gbetugbetu for Creek Town?”

    It was on that note that snooper quickly shut the kitchen door at the Chef Commander.

  • Victor Ludorum

    Victor Ludorum

    (An evening with the great Victor Abimbola Olaiya)

    The problem with Nigeria is not an absence of human resources but an embarrassment of human riches. It is arguable that no other nation on earth is so spectacularly endowed in terms of human capital. The prodigious capacity to excel no matter the adversarial circumstances is part of the Nigerian narrative. Yet it is also an integral part of the Nigerian paradox that at every turn, particularly in national politics, we keep throwing up our third eleven.

    The fact remains that in all spheres of human endeavours, a nation must always put forward its best foot if it were to make any showing in the comity of nations. A nation must constantly showcase its great exemplars if it must cultivate a cult of heroic examples. What you plant is what you harvest. If you showcase nonentities as your national heroes, then you are cultivating a cult of nonentities.

    Last Sunday inside the commodious bowel of the excellently refurbished Lagos City Hall, Snooper witnessed all that was great and good about great and good old Nigeria. It is so appropriate that it was this iconic monument that was chosen as the venue of the occasion. The building itself has survived several man-made disasters, including an attempted obliteration by fire. So last Sunday, indestructible Nigeria caught up with the ineluctable genius of the nation.

    It was the celebration of sixty years on stage of the great musical ace and avatar, Dr Victor Abimbola Olaiya. The historic showstopper was the brainchild of the cultural entrepreneur, tireless promoter of good music and notable Highlife musician himself, Femi Esho. From humble beginnings, the indefatigable and irrepressible Esho has firmly established himself as the most notable cultural Czar in contemporary Nigeria.

    Ably comperéd by Aremo Olusegun Osoba, assisted by his musical enthusiast wife, Beere Derin Osoba, it was, needless to add, a moveable musical feast. It was a cultural extravaganza. Nostalgia invaded the entire hall. There was excitement and enchantment in the air. The magic and aroma of great music filled the place like some excellent fragrance.

    Victorian and Edwardian Lagos came alive once again. For connoisseurs and aficionados of great music and good breeding, it was time to savour what Nigeria was before the apocalyptic blackout. Where and when did we get it so catastrophically wrong in this potentially great country?

    As to where and when, there will be many contending answers. But one fact is incontrovertible, and that is the pre-eminent status of the guest of honour at the Lagos City Hall last Sunday. Without doubt, Victor Olaiya is the doyen, the primus inter pares and the Victor Ludorum of Nigerian Highlife music. In a country wracked by ethnic animosities and contending cultural rivalries, this claim may open one to charges of Yoruba irredentism or even sub-ethnic sabre-rattling. Highlife, we must remember, was the nearest thing to our national music and hence a site of fierce intellectual contestation.

    Let us now use the concept of Victor Ludorum to elaborate the signal importance and pre-eminent status of Victor Olaiya. In its Roman instance, Victor Ludorum means the victor of the games or the overall winner of the competition. Overall is the operative word here. In other words, other competitors may surpass the eventual winner in some departments, but when the overall aggregate is taken, the winner is clear.

    Celestine Ukwu will continue to dazzle with the sheer poetry and musicality of his compositions and the philosophical profundity of thought. Rex Lawson , the Kalabari crooner, will continue to thrill and astound with his masterly cadences, the poetic sonority of his voice and the bewitching originality of rhythm.

    When it comes to John Ademulegun Akintola, a.ka Roy Chicago, the urbane self-assurance, the metropolitan swagger and breathtaking lyrics, particularly the infusion of his native Ikare folksongs into highlife, will surely outlive him. Fela will be justly celebrated for the genius of his innovations, particularly the hectic syncopation of the post-Lobitos era, and his political and ideological bravura. Victor Uwaifo trumps all with his electrifying rhythm and mastery of the guitar.

    But among this stellar array of musical giants, Victor Olaiya is the true prodigy of musical engineering. Possessing most of the attributes of his rivals and contemporaries, he could blend disparate elements together to create truly memorable and mellifluous music. Yet he makes it look so simple and deceptively easy. True genius is often such a formidably disruptive phenomenon that it must wear the mask of ordinariness. On an ordinary day, Olaiya could pass for your average uncle next door. It takes true genius to mask true genius.

    Famously described as the evil genius of highlife music by another prodigious exemplar, the great and unassuming Allah De, Olaiya was born in Calabar of Ijesha Isu parentage, schooled in the east before coming to live in Lagos. This seeming cosmopolitan rootlessness was to turn out a great source of strength, allowing Olaiya’s genius to roam far and wide for musical fodder, borrowing freely from Highlife’s origins in the old Gold Coast and its ashiko variant from Sierra Leone’s ex-slave coastal community. Like so much grist for a musical mill, Olaiya’s genius worked over the chaotic potpourri producing a unique blend and an even more unique brand.

    It can now be said that what Olaiya has going for him more than anyone else is the sheer accumulated heft of experience, the sheer longevity of career and the professional gravitas accruing from this. No other Nigerian musician, dead or alive, could boast of sixty years on stage and the glittering accolades. As the Chinese would say, if you stay long enough by the river side, the bodies of your enemies would wash by.

    Olaiya played for the queen of England on a visit to Nigeria in 1956 and four years later at the Independence Ball. For a musician, it doesn’t get more royal than this. Olaiya is a royalty among the nobility of Nigerian musicians. This much was evident last Sunday as great musicians such as Sunny Ade, Dele Ojo, Orlando Julius, Tunde Osofisan and the octogenarian but mysteriously agile Fatai Rolling Dollar, fell over themselves to pay homage to his dandy majesty.

    Yet the beginning was not so propitious or flattering. True enough, Olaiya was born into immense riches. True enough, there was music in the family, the father being an accomplished lay organist and the mother a singer of repute. But to the Olaiya pere, music was what you play in your spare time and not what you choose as a profession. Professional music was for the flunkies and junkies; the no-hopers and casual riffraff on the margins of society. It was not for scions of the new merchant class.

    Having passed his matriculation examinations in 1951, the young Victor was expected to proceed to Howard University for a course in Civil Engineering. But Olaiya rebelled and chose music and a different kind of Engineering.. It was a decision that was to cause much sorrow and gnashing of teeth. In cocking a snook at his family, Olaiya joined Bobby Benson and Sammy Akpabot in rebellion, just as they were to be joined later by the then Fela Ransome-Kuti. It is doubtful if as an engineer, Olaiya could have brought more fame and historic importance to his family.

    The irony of pre-Independence highlife music in Nigeria was that many of its leading exponents were from affluent well-heeled background that rebelled against their class in order to create the music appropriate and befitting for their class. If they showed great determination and force of character in this rebellion, they were to show greater integrity by refusing to kowtow to the arriviste new class or pander to the crude taste of the parvenus. Till date, highlife music remains a class act, but also music for a class in ascendancy.

    But everything has its time and place. Even while highlife music was recording its magnificent successes, the material conditions for its possibility were being eroded by new dominant and emergent realities. First, the coastal elite lost economic and political power to the hinterland elite. Then the military overran both..

    In a touch of mesmerising irony, Olaiya himself was given the field rank of Colonel to entertain soldiers fighting the civil war. It was like a man playing at his own professional funeral. Military and police bands may play excellent highlife music at ceremonial balls but in real life, the new military aristocracy and their emergency contractor buddies do not care a hoot for the sedate languor and the kusimilaya ballet of highlife music. They would need praise singers and a more pulsating beat to reflect new social and martial exigencies.

    Perhaps the most delectable piece of irony of this glorious evening with the master musician was when Sunny Ade reminded him of how as a boy, he held his trumpet for him at the Fakunle Major Hotel Oshogbo. But more importantly, Sunny Ade reminded the great musician that when decades later his band’s musical equipment was impounded after defaulting on terms of payment to Olaiya’s musical equipment company, it was Olaiya who quietly ordered that the equipment be released. It was like a general handing over a cache of arms to an ambitious major. Juju music killed highlife

    As historic empires rise and fall, so do musical empires. Whether highlife would come back in a modified form is besides the point. Such things do not depend on an individual genius but on the configuration of material, social and historical forces. But for Nigeria to rise again, it will require the genius, the nobility of heart and the generosity of spirit evident in Dr Victor Olaiya. It has been a memorable evening at the Lagos City Hall. Here is wishing the greatest of them all many happy returns, sir.

  • Birthday wishes to all nine-niners

    Last Sunday, September 9, snooper added another year. As usual, the whole day was spent entirely in bed amidst a crushing avalanche of books, journals, periodicals, newspapers etc. After a lifetime of gruelling exertions, it is not just the failure of expectations and the expectations of failure that turn one into a social coward. It is the failure of Nigeria to justify the immense suffering and misery it has inflicted on Nigerians.

    Snooper wishes to thank those who sent felicitations, particularly our sister and aburo, Deputy Governor and dancing Diva on the high hills of Ekiti-land, who sent a big okura with the stern warning that Okon should not steal his master’s meat. That will be the day, maam. Okon now goes by the title of Chief of Domestic Staff to snooper with concurrent accreditation to the boudoir.

    Snooper sends belated felicitations to all glorious nine-niners who berthed on this mystical day and in particular, General Buba Marwa, Hon Dipo Akingbade, our in law, our very young friends, Chukwuma Kanu, Oluwafolajimi Oladunni, the families of late Professor Ojetunji Aboyade and our late friend and classmate Aderemi Adesoye, a.k.a “Gurube”, a former permanent secretary in Ogun state, who was born exactly the same day as snooper. This fact was only discovered after reading his in memoriam a few years ago. Memories are made of these. God bless you all.