Chronicle of a tragedy foretold
I have now seen the enemy, and he looks so familiar
The Boxer Uprising from which this piece takes its remote inspiration was a Chinese revolt against colonization and the occupation of parts of China. The Chinese at that point in time were arguably at the nadir of their national fortunes. Beaten black and blue by the Japanese to the West, tormented by the Russians to the North East, they found themselves within an inch of being formally colonized by the greatest naval power of the epoch.
For a proud people who have lived continuously in that corner of the globe for over five thousand years, this was as humiliating and demeaning as it could get. The Chinese who believe there is always plenty of time for a people to recoup everything they have lost would have been nonplussed. Where were the English, the Russians and even the Americans when their own doughty ancestors were sending mighty ocean-going vessels to the world and as far as Mombasa in Africa in the seventh century?
The Chinese resistance to British rule was encased and encrusted in The Boxer Uprising, so called because the rebels were fond of dressing in boxers’ shorts and were experts in martial arts. Though eventually crushed, it was the beginning of events that would culminate in the Chinese Revolution several decades later.
It should be obvious that the spirit of the carnival has entered Nigeria’s chequered political transformation. It can be seen in the dancing, singing and joyous clapping as the people cock a snook at the authorities or wrest power from them. It can be seen in the increasing number of actors, actresses, singers, dancers and thespians being nominated for higher office in the land.
To be sure, these entertainers are themselves steeped in the ruling class and its mores. One or two of them are billionaires in their own right, and they have acquired the habits and tastes of the super- rich. And there is nothing on ground to suggest that they are bringing fresh ideas about how to improve the lot of Nigerians to the table or a novel vision of societal transformation. It is essentially an intra-elite scuffle rather than the classic notion of class warfare.
What can happen is that their constant badgering and chipping away at the foundation of the state parties may so undermine and subvert the legitimacy and authority of the dominant political hegemony in a way that opens the door to more potent social forces which are beyond their own ken and comprehension. They themselves may then become casualties of the forces that they have helped to unleash. This is what may be approaching, like a silent turbo locomotive.
It has been argued by a certain category of social theorists that revolutions and societal transformation cannot live by blood and bloodshed alone. Sometimes, radical social transformations need fun, real fun and this is when the carnival spirit enters the spirit of fierce protest and social rebellion.
Recent human history attests to this fact as seen in the social tornadoes that toppled the frozen and fossilized socialist autocracies of Eastern Europe, the momentous and almost spontaneous upheaval that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and recent pictures from Sri Lanka. In all these, a cancerous and obdurate social order that has become a burden to the people it is supposed to protect from hunger, misery and the vicissitudes of human existence finally meets its nemesis.
Nigeria is a different kettle of fish. All human societies are alike in certain respects. But that is where the verisimilitude ends. There are human societies and there are human societies. No two human societies are the same in the dynamics that power the way they evolve. Yet since laughter and crying are universal verities among the gamut of human emotions, it is obvious that no society can be exempt from the spirit of the carnival.
The spirit of carnival entered the miniscule state of Osun this past week as the major streets of the major towns were said to have erupted in dancing, singing, clapping and hooting of horns as the winner of an epic gubernatorial duel was announced. A report in The Nation on Wednesday actually noted the carnival-like atmosphere in which voting and celebration took place in the ancient town of Ila-Orangun.
It must be noted that although this was a fiercely partisan crowd, no attempt was made to disrupt or debar the joyous procession by the electorally vanquished. No guns boomed. It was all very polite and civilised, a model of crowd rejoicing. The dancers have elected the dancer in chief as the chief executive of the state. It is the dancers’ uprising.
To be sure, the people of this core Yoruba state are no rabid electoral regicides. Neither are they flaming revolutionists. In fact it is possible that they are traumatised and disoriented by the tragedy of unfulfilled expectations, the lot of many Nigerians since the Fourth Republic and the advent of civil rule.
But at every point and at every turn, like the democratic royalists that they are, they seem bent on their inalienable right to choose their electoral king or elect their democratic sovereign no matter the circumstances. It is a right they have insisted on exercising even where it leads to absurdity or a developmental cul de sac. The will of the people must prevail.
Here are the cold statistics. Like the sister Oyo state from whose cavernous belly it was hewn by the military authorities in 1991, the baton of gubernatorial rulership has been exchanged thrice since 1999 between countervailing forces in the two states.
In all likelihood, Oyo state was won in 2007 by the late Abiola Ajimobi flying the ANPP banner. But his victory was suborned by the powers that be. In 2011, Ajimobi returned to trounce the incumbent before his own senatorial bid succumbed to adversity in 2019 after two terms as governor.
In 1999 in Osun State, Bisi Akande romped to victory as the AD carried the day in the old west. The legitimacy and authority of the old men of NADECO could not be challenged in anywhere in Yorubaland. But Akande was ousted four years later in 2003 by the PDP flag bearer, Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Such was the scale of the electoral heist in that election that it has made it impossible to establish the true wishes of Osun people that year.
In 2007, the Oranmiyan tsunami steamrolled Oyinlola and the PDP. But Rauf Aregbesola was denied victory through some spellbinding electoral magic. It took three whole years, an activist judiciary led by Justice Isa Ayo Salami and some clinical forensic evidence, to retrieve Aregbesola’s hijacked mandate. One interesting twist to the story is that Osun State under Aregbesola was the only state in the South West that voted for Nuhu Ribadu in the presidential election of 2011.
After two terms, the people of Osun State appeared to have tired of what was perceived as Aregbesola’s failings and excesses and seemed bent once again on exacting their pound of flesh on his party candidate. Only some cliffhanging magic and a judicial sleight of hand allowed the APC to cling on to power. Last week, the people came back baying for blood.
It should be noted that the Osun election was not a referendum on actual performance. Were it to be, Isiaka Gboyega Oyetola ought to have won hands down. Glumly uncommunicative, politically unskilled and socially self-distancing he may be, but he had turned in a decent performance in the efficacious management of scarce resources and prudent managerial oversight.
In four years, he paid salaries and other benefits regularly. He improved the state’s IGR from a paltry 10 billion to 19 billion and he succeeded in moving the state several notches up the perception index. Several inner road projects were also undertaken. But as usual, the stormy and unpredictable Osun electorate reserve the right of first and last refusal.
First seek yee the political kingdom and every other thing will be added. Several things went wrong in Osun State. In the abiding interest of friendship and fealty to a certain Yoruba creed of honour and chivalry, this columnist will not even attempt to wash the APC dirty linen in public. But two things must be pointed out for clarity of analysis and political house-cleaning.
The relationship with the consequential Adeleke family of Ede could have been better managed. Had the brother been given the senatorial ticket the family demanded upon the death of their notable son, the story might have been different. The Adelekes are cut from the progressive loins, their father, Raji Ayoola Adeleke, being a die-hard Action Grouper and a UPN senator in the Second Republic.
Watching from the grave beyond, only God knows what the spare, Spartan and austere former nurse and trade unionist would be thinking as his descendants mount a devastating siege on the stronghold of the very progressive tradition he had helped to build through thick and thin. Just what on earth can be going on?
But we live in a period steeped in deep and cruel ironies. The late James Ajibola Ige told this columnist of how, as the chairman of the SDP Screening Committee, he had helped to clean up the late Isiaka Tunji Adeleke’s credentials when he ran as governor in Osun State out of abiding respect to a friend and much esteemed political comrade.
Now, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. The epigones of old heroes crisscross different ideological fortresses as if they are mere market stalls. All that was once solid melts into thin air, leaving the bewildered but politically naïve struggling with vapours. In political dystopia, there is no room for idealism, only harsh pragmatism and coldblooded calculations.
To inject some humour into this grim and unremitting analysis, it is useful to point out that Adeleke will not be the only preening and prancing dancer to have ruled Osun State in the Fourth Republic even though he appears to have taken the art of jigging and flapping about to its extreme physical frontiers. It is as if the people of this core Yoruba state take their dancing very seriously. It must be something in the genes.
Towards the end of his first tenure, Aregbesola took to the stage himself, capering and cantering with impish relish. Anybody who has chanced upon Olagunsoye Oyinlola doing his princely and courtly strides in measured aristocratic cadences will appreciate the influence of traditional court music on this ancient people and brainbox of empire.
There will still be plenty of room for convergence of contrasting interests as Nigeria’s brutal and turbulent postcolonial history unfolds. If Jackson Nurudeen Ademola Adeleke does not want to end up as a dancer of disaster, he will need to roll up his sleeves and get to hard slogging work. In the light of the foregoing, any talk about the people of Osun having seceded from the progressive bastion is mere froth.
The advent of electronic voting and the liberation of the Nigerian electorate will make them even more irritable and more unpredictable in the nearest future. All will not be quiet on the western front. But as history has shown, they know where to pitch their tent when they face collective existential threats.