Opinion
Soyinka, Pyrates Confraternity And The God Factor
Published
4 months agoon

By Tunji Olaopa
The invitation of Professor Wole Soyinka to the just-concluded Lagos Book and Art Festival was, as is usual with WS, an event all by itself. From poetry to activism, and from scholarship to Nigerian politics, Wole Soyinka’s intellectual pungency has not been diminished by age. At the occasion, he put paid to all speculations about his religious affiliation. When asked what specifically was his religion, WS responded that he had never felt there was an imperative for him to have one. While most already knew that he was not a Christian or Muslim, most are now shocked that he denied being an òrìsà worshipper. According to him,
I have never felt I needed one. I am a mythologist. I believe that people have a right and cannot help creating mythologies around themselves, around their experience about what they project from the inner recesses of their minds as answers to questions. And so, I find nothing wrong with utilizing mythologies as part and parcel of my creative warehouse. But religion? No, I don’t worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real and imaginative worlds.
This definitive response of Prof. Soyinka has, expectedly, been stretched over whichever way by commentators, especially on social media. I feel compelled to use it as a springboard for outlining a different concern, one that WS is not a stranger to—the relationship between the Pyrates Confraternity (PC), moral degeneration among the youth and the God factor as a significant variable in the urgency of moral rebirth in Nigeria.
Any talk of the PC brings to mind the terrible loss of innocence of an idea that was well-intentioned, but that metamorphosed according to the ravages of social anomie. When Soyinka wrote the Season of Anomie in 1973, it was a literary depiction of the emerging corruption that would eventually incapacitate the Nigerian society. And forty-nine years later, that anomic situation has further raised the issue of moral rebirth as a critical component of Nigeria’s development unfolding.
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I recently came across the interview granted a former friend of WS and co-founder of the Pyrates Confraternity, the late Prof. Olumuyiwa Awe, who spoke about his participation in the group, his conversion and dissociation from the PC, and the degeneration of that group into a violent cult. Not surprisingly, when Prof. Awe got born-again and became a Christian, his ministerial responsibility revolved around cultism and the need to rehabilitate former fraternity and cult members into Christ, and hence into a new sense of responsibility to the Nigerian society.
What is intriguing for me is simple: two bosom friends who co-founded a confraternity not only diverged on relationship with it, but eventually resolved their spiritual journey in two different ways. Professor Wole Soyinka still retains a critical and patronal relationship with Pyrates Confraternity/National Association of Sea Dogs (NAS), the late Prof. Awe severed all ties with the confraternity and indeed went on to establish a ministry that was meant to provide spiritual succor and direction for former cultists. Of course, WS has explained, ad nauseum, that it is disingenuous to conflate (con)fraternity with cultism. The charitable and humanitarian endeavors that characterized NAS now are vastly different from what the late Prof. Awe would have wanted—the total disestablishment of NAS and all other (oc)cultic groups in the Nigerian society. Of course, both co-founders are committed to the project of moral rebirth within the Nigerian society. But that must come from different spiritual perspectives.
When the Pyrates Confraternity came into existence, it emerged within the context of an ideological framing. The Magnificent Seven—Wole Soyinka, Ikpehare Aig-Imoukhuede, Olumuyiwa Awe, Pius Oleghe, Nathaniel Oyelola, Sylvanus Egbuche and Ralph Opara—were motivated to challenge the congealing elitism of the upper-middle class in the Nigerian society of the 1950s. The confraternity was thus founded on the ideals of social justice and the protection of human rights from the high-handedness of elitism. The Confraternity was also particularly irked by the increasing tribalist sensibility that was rife on Nigerian university campuses. The increasing incidence of obscene wealth and tribalism fueled the humanistic and radical ideological orientation of the Confraternity. The idea of the brotherhood of all humankind, that is the central objective of Marxism as well as all human religious institutions, is at the heart of the Confraternity’s underlying philosophy. Martin Luther King, Jr. must have had the Confraternity in mind when he argued that “The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.” Wole Soyinka has been uncompromising not only in his belief that justice is the first condition of humanity, but also in the conviction that the societal transformation away from social anomie requires concerted efforts of individuals and groups.
READ ALSO: How Nigerian Govt Frustrated My Returning Home At Paris Airport – Soyinka
Let me unpack my thoughts. Nigeria faces a significant challenge is facilitating the moral rebirth that constitutes the most significant fundament in transforming her socioeconomic and sociopolitical frameworks. At the base of Nigeria’s postcolonial predicaments is the function of a moral deficit that frustrates a thorough commitment to the dynamics of good governance. In its basic form, political and bureaucratic corruption is a moral issue that speaks to the predilection of individuals—politicians, bureaucrats, public functionaries, etc.—to siphon the commonwealth for private considerations. Thus, moral corruption stands at the core of the disconnection between the government and the governed. Furthermore, this moral deficit is equally responsible for the loss of human dignity arising from the dysfunction of institutional dynamics. Administrative institutions have broken down and have lost their efficiency because those manning them have lost their moral compass. The healthcare system in Nigeria, for instance, has become moribund because people profit from sicknesses and deaths.
And this moral decadence becomes aggravated with the advent of a youth counterculture, from cybercrimes and frauds to a virulent sociocultural disregard for ennobling values. Even the very idea of a cult has been transposed out of its original ritualized essence into a violent counterpoint to all things meaningful. “Fraternity,” from the Latin fraternus, relates to brotherhood. Indeed, the idea of “confraternity” has its root in a Christian charity and pious organisation of laypeople. It was this idea of brotherhood that signalled its significance in colleges and universities from where Soyinka and friends picked it up as a nodal point for ideological advocacy. In fact, the idea of the Ogboni confraternity embed judicial, political and economic function that grounds the Yoruba worldview in the ordering of the society. That commitment to societal unity and functional relevance is still preserved in the metamorphosis of the Ogboni to its reformed essence in the Reformed Ogboni Confraternity. When the first internal crisis surfaced in the Pyrates Confraternity, it was the prelude to an unwholesome transformation that caricatured the original objective of upholding human dignity and agitating for a just society.
Nigeria is essentially out of moral articulation; we have lost our moral compass, and the values required to put decency and dignity at the core of our national reconstruction. Ana Navarro, the Nicaraguan-American commentator and strategist, noted insistently: “There is a minimum requirement of morality, of moral compass, of decency, of moral empathy. And if you are incapable of meeting that minimum requirement, you can’t even talk to me about policy.” She is right! At the very core of good governance is value reorientation that, at least at the minimum, directs the path of policymaking in ways that improve the quality of life of the citizens. What is not clear is where that value should derive.
READ ALSO: Shege!
This is not a discourse that Soyinka would want to be involved in, but the late Prof. Awe would insist that the spiritual experience of being born-again is a sufficient condition for a moral rebirth — “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” The newness that comes from that spiritual rebirth refers to being reborn with a new set of values and virtues that practically make the person a new-born. Here, the God-factor is a potent moral force for moral rejuvenation. Of course, a lot of critics of the Christian faith will look at the larger picture in keying into the moral force of Christianity. The absolutist epistemology that grounds the Abrahamic faiths—Christianity, Judaism and Islam —undermines the basis for social and national relation. The three religions are founded on an exclusivist and exclusionary frame that differentiate humanity into the believers and the unbelievers. And this distinction is circumscribed by monotheist belief in one God and a set of conditionalities on how that God can be accessed. For Christianity, for example, salvation comes only through Jesus Christ. Any other mean is counterfeit. And all sorts of religious violence have been perpetrated on this dichotomy.
The African traditional religion still remains one of the victims of religious discrimination. The fundamentalism that is the logical derivation of an exclusionary religiosity violently confronts any and all appearances of evil, including “heathen” and “idolatrous” practices. When the Colonial missionaries confronted the traditional Africans, they only saw souls who needed to be delivered from savage barbarism, rather than a set of humanity who had developed a cultural heritage that had sustained them for centuries. The Yoruba traditional religion is famous for its accommodationist dynamics. There is no exclusionary epistemology that demonizes the Other. And that is because traditional African religion does not insist that it has the whole of the natural and the supernatural realms all figured out. It considered itself just one framework out of many for understanding the cosmos and all its dimensions.
READ ALSO: An Encounter With Toyin Falola: Between Celebration And Canonization Of Intellectuals
By considering himself a mythologist, rather than a worshipper, Wole Soyinka calls on an eternal theme in his literary and nonfictional works—the role that myths and history can play in the renewal and regeneration of the human society. Myths, WS will agree, provides a storehouse of symbols that allows us to keep reimagining the possibilities that are embodied by the human spirit and human will. Mythology takes the idea of renewal and rebirth seriously, and Soyinka remains the arch-activist in his commitment to the transformation of the Nigerian society through mythological reassessment and reformulation. Indeed, it is in this sense that he prefers being regarded as a mythologist than a worshipper, even of the òrìsà religion. According to him, “But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real world and the imaginative world.” It is in this sense that Soyinka can travel with Ogun, the Yoruba divinity of war and creativity, as a mythological re-enactor of change and rebirth. In Ogun, the human society is always in the acting of being reborn.
How does this Soyinka’s vision of the relationship between mythology and transformation pan out within the Nigerian state and her urgent need for a moral rebirth? Or more specifically, we can ask about the feasibility of upholding an exclusivist religious and moral framework for value orientation in a plural context like Nigeria. I am too enlightened to know what the consequences would be. Fanaticism. A fanatical sensibility has the propensity to recreate the society around an autocratic image or idea, rather than allowing for a collective and concerted recreational essence. If, as Soyinka argues, everyone has the right to create the myth around which experiences can be grasped and better understood, then we arrive at an ecumenical point that commits everyone to viable alternatives of individual and social change. This act of will, demands in Soyinka’s mythological framework, that the renewal of the inner self be translated into an active outer quest for societal change and communal transformation.
Mythology does not recreate the societal possibilities in the image of any gods or divinities; rather, it allows for a revolutionary recreative possibilities drawing from the entire spiritual energies a society can manufacture. I read this as a society’s capacity to draw on the spiritual belief of a Prof. Olumuyia Awe in the transforming power of Jesus Christ, a Muslim’s conviction in the peace-potential of Islam, and a traditionalist’s communitarian and relational capacity to draw everyone and every belief into a convivial framework of interaction. At a very deep level, the moral energies of all the religions represented within Nigeria’s religious landscape have the capacity to contribute to the search for moral rebirth. I mean to say that Nigeria requires a dynamic framework of mythological narration—through a national integrity and moral system—that speaks to all Nigerians equally within a broad moral prism they can all identify with; a prism that is not discriminatory or exclusivist—a framework that is undergirded by the objective of regenerating Nigeria’s decadent social fabric by appealing to the very best in the religious myths and symbols that humans have created themselves.
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Religions are meant to alleviate humans’ existential anxieties and national disarticulation. And this is where they serve the purpose of assisting in Nigeria’s search for a moral reformation as a precondition for her sustainable good governance. In this sense, the late Prof. Olumuyiwa Awe and Professor Wole Soyinka want the same thing—a transformed country guided by the best in moral rearticulation. This was what led them to the vision of the Pyrates Confraternity in the first place. And when that idea became caricatured, this is what led to Awe’s dissociation and the embrace of what he considered a better alternative. And this, it seems to me, is what keeps reanimating Soyinka’s mythological reenactment of societal possibilities, either through the confraternal philosophy of brotherhood, or through the cosmic vision of any of the Yoruba deities and divinities.
To achieve a wholesome framework of moral armaments that would sustain her quest for a postcolonial democratic and developmental transformation, Nigeria needs a moral discourse—the type that swings around the possibilities typified by Awe and Soyinka, rather than a fundamentalist understanding of a value reorientation that demonizes others for what they believe and the myths they have chosen to recreate their own experiences. God is a factor that is a real force for transformation for some. And for others, God remains a creative myth that could facilitate transformative experiences at the individual and societal levels. Either way, the God-factor is potent.
.Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, and Professor, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies
(NIPSS), Kuru, Jos .
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By Leo Igwe
In January, I registered for a professional course in counseling at the Attitude Development Institute (ADI) in Lagos. After my doctoral program in religious studies, I thought I was done doing any other academic course. But I was mistaken. I recently noticed that something was missing in my academic and learning accessories. And I needed to rectify it. So I started this professional diploma program. I embarked on this course in my quest for a more competent way to assist people who contact me for help and support. Many contact me saying that they are tired of life and could not find anything meaningful to do or to earn a living. Many attribute their problems to ‘village people’, witches and wizards, generational curses, evil spirits, jinns, demonic attacks, etc. Many attribute their failures, setbacks and misfortunes to juju or harmful magic. I decided to do this diploma in counseling because I felt that something was lacking in my knowledge and understanding of human beings and human problems.
Last year, a lecturer on guidance and counseling at a college of agriculture in Ebonyi state invited me to come and talk to some of his students. Some of the students wanted to do money rituals and he was worried. This lecturer asked me to come and persuade them against engaging in this futile and criminal venture. But how could I do this professionally and effectively?
I wondered what else to tell these students apart from what I had repeatedly said in the past. That money ritual was a superstition, and the belief had no basis in reason or reality. But will that help? Will that be enough? Will the students be persuaded by that proposition? I asked. I felt that telling them that ritual money was a myth would likely be an exercise in futility. It would likely be inadequate and would not yield effective results. I felt that young people needed a more structured way to get them to change these thoughts and behavior. Anyway, I went to that college of education and met with some students and spent time talking to them, advising and persuading them not to indulge in money rituals. I urged them to try and complete their education and then seek out other evidence-based ways of making money. I do not know if my talk yielded any positive results.
Before and after this incident I encountered many who strongly believed in ritual money, and who, given the opportunity could kill, or use human body parts for rituals. Last year, someone contacted me from Kwara state. He inquired how he could do money rituals. I offered similar advice. Some people have contacted me seeking some other forms of help and support. Someone called from Imo state asking how he could stop gambling. That it was ruining his business and that his friends were pointing accusing fingers at his landlady. They said the woman was a witch and was responsible for his dwindling fortune. I offered him some words of advice. Also, in advocating against witch persecution, I have come across people who had anxiety, and mental and emotional disorders but who attribute these psychological problems and other existential challenges to witchcraft. I have been looking for competent ways to manage witchcraft believers and suspecters. I have been searching for more professional ways to support traumatized victims and survivors. I have been seeking a skillful mechanism to empower, guide and enable entertainers of witchcraft fears and sufferers of witch persecution to heal, recover and take control of their lives.
Beyond that, there are personal reasons. I am the first son in my family. I started dealing with family issues at a very young age without any knowledge of human psychology. I was socialized to help my younger brothers and lead even when I barely knew my left from my right. I was made to manage and resolve family-related issues even when I was a child with barely an understanding of how life worked. I was not self-aware or socially aware. I did not know human personalities and temperaments. I was not allowed to grow like every other child. I was pressured to behave like the first son, the deputy head of the family, and to intervene in family issues including my parents’ marital issues. Even now my father has passed away, I manage family issues and deal with members with personality disorders and untreated traumas, including my siblings who engage in micro/transferred aggressions and other negative behaviors rooted in childhood experiences. They intentionally make life miserable for me; they complicate matters to settle childhood scores, to punish or deal with me for some real or imagined privilege that they thought I had enjoyed as a first son.
In addition, I started teaching at 17 years, I taught at a local seminary and helped in nurturing children. I did not know children and educational psychology. It was like a child teaching children. It was while studying for my bachelor’s in philosophy that I did some psychology courses. I learned about Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Ivan Pavlov and their explanations of human behavior. But it was all theory. Then my focus was on getting good grades and passing examinations, not applying the knowledge to real life and issues. In the course of my humanist work and campaign, I have come across people suffering from religious trauma, and victims of religious oppression and persecution.
I would like to offer them effective help and support. As a humanist celebrant, I help families that are grieving, couples who are getting married, or those celebrating the arrival of a new baby. To provide effective help and services, I realized that I needed some professional training in counseling. I searched online and got some information about one Counseling Association of Nigeria. I contacted them and registered. But I realized that the focus was mainly on guidance and counseling in schools. That is important. But that was not what I wanted. My impression was that the association was mainly for teachers and lecturers. I needed some training that could qualify me as a professional counselor. I went online and saw some information about two counseling institutes in Lagos. They offer professional training.
One is in Ikeja, which is the ADI, and the other is in Victoria Island. I spoke to some counselors and one recommended ADI. After some telephone conversations and WhatsApp exchanges with the director of the Institute, I enrolled in its diploma class. The classes are held once every week. I joined the second week. After my first class, I realized that I was in the right place and that the program that they offered was what I was looking for. It was a twelve-week program, very intense. The courses included the foundations of counseling, counseling theories, and skills, children/teenage counseling, marriage/family counseling, and crisis/trauma counseling. Some of the courses focused on Christian counseling, grief counseling, sex therapy, and mental health. When I started I was worried that the lectures would be bland, another monotonous exercise in issuing handouts, but they were not. The lectures were interesting. And the lecturers were engaging and entertaining. They were very articulate and used so many examples to illustrate their points. The program occasioned some intellectual shocks and dissonance. It has helped me to correct some misconceptions about counseling and counselors. First I realized the importance of counseling and counselors. Look, human beings suffer both physical and emotional injuries. Both injuries are treatable. While medical doctors help treat physical wounds, counselors as therapists help treat emotional and psychological injuries. Again, counseling is widely understood to mean advice. We were told several times that counselors were not advisers. They do not advise their clients. A foremost counselor, Irvin Yalom whose book, Love’s Executioner, we reviewed throughout the course said the task of a counselor was to make himself or herself obsolete. Yes, it is tacitly saying that for the counselee to live, the counselor must die. He noted that the counselor’s role was to help the client take responsibility for making himself or herself better. Instead of advising, counselors support counselees to take control of their healing and living.
Again, throughout the program, the lecturers made it clear that one of the characteristics of a good counselor was listening. A counselor must be a good listener. He or she must have good listening skills. Also, counseling was not meant for some people, some psychologically troubled and maladjusted people. Instead, the lecturers made it clear that counseling was for everyone, for both the counselors and the counselees. In the course of the lectures I kept flashing back and recalling so many people that I have met in life who needed counseling. Everyone is grappling with some trauma or emotional issue at one time or the other. They encouraged the trainees to go for counseling. Each class was indirectly an exercise in group counseling and therapy because the classes provided opportunities for members to pour it out, to draw from their life, work, and family experiences in discussing the topics.
Yes, I realized that everybody needed counseling. And nothing illustrated the need better than a particular incident that happened during the program. Due to some miscommunication, one of the counselors managing the program communicated the wrong date for the class graduation to the management. When she came and informed the class, she was told that she communicated the wrong date. And this counselor became furious(meanwhile her name is also Fu…something). Discussions became quite heated and tense because she continued to insist that she communicated the correct date. The room became very noisy and rowdy because some people were trying to correct her but she refused. At some point, a member of this class set that calls itself, Ignite, raised her voice. She is in this class of women with a huge and imposing stature, looked quiet from the outside, and could be mistaken as phlegmatic. She said emphatically while pointing her five fingers at this counselor and swinging the hand up and down: “You are not listening”, “You are not listening”. At that point, the counselor tried to calm down. A senior management colleague intervened and urged the counselor to leave the room. As soon as she left, another class member said: “She needs counseling”. And some class members chuckled.
So, everybody needs counseling in Nigeria.
Igwe,PhD, is a trainee counselor at the Attitude Development Institute, Lagos.
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By Tony Afejuku
These past three weeks have been three supreme weeks of supreme value to all of us who have been gluing ourselves to this column for the right reasons: No room for lying; no room for deceits; no room for propaganda; no room for vanity. No room, no room, no room for what should not be here. Thoughts of the streams, thoughts of the spheres, music of the streams, music of the spheres enhance the column in diverse ways.
Our debaters for the past three weeks have demonstrated this. Each of the professors (all of them, in fact) has demonstrated this in the geometry of their presentations, in the minds of their geo-biographies, in the arithmetic of their convictions and persuasions. They in varying degrees did not support the will of INEC in the presidential election, even though the INEC chair is one of them, a fellow professor in the sphere of the humanities. In going over the longitude and latitude of the flow of our professors, of our debating professors, in their authentic and responsible sphere of spheres the clarity and precision of the geo-biography and nature of patience moved towards me. This may not be the right way of putting it, but I found and still find each debater to be a patient debater. Goodness! How a patiently patient listener and presider over the debate Professor Olu Obafemi was/is! The rhetoric of his ears or of his eyes or of his tongue was/is the rhetoric of the sage. If I imagined this, I imagined it well. His rhetoric was/is not the creation of this recorder, but it is the rhetoric of the music of the shaping of the debate and the words of the debaters who like him are fellow writers and creators.
Now I present to our readers the summation of Professor Olu Obafemi who presided over the reported affairs of the literati:
“This debate has gone on very well and quite enlightening. I have learnt quite a lot from the various positions eloquently proffered here. I like to chip in this bit: (1) there will not be much ideological departure from PMB to BAT. We will still operate a neoliberal economy, fraught largely with parasitism and consumerism. It is very likely, from his experience in investment, creative commercialism/commodity consciousness and cosmopolitanism in governance, Tinubu will be a lot more distribution-prone, more productive, and more people friendly than his predecessor; (2) having operated in comprador praxis in the US, Tinubu will engage globalization with discretionary envisioning (these are loaded, unconventional concepts that may require greater elucidation in future; (3) having not operated unitarist governance strategy that we have had since Ironsi till date, and with his governance experience in Lagos, including standing up to OBJ to run a well-structured State in Lagos, BAT will be more of his own man who will surround himself with talent rather than a cabalistic instinct (I am talking here about power delegation as opposed to power relegation); (4) we have good reason to believe that Tinubu will not go for a winner-take-all, conclave-prone governance and will strive to deliver goods and services— democracy dividends more generously/humanely. May the future be better and more tolerable for our people and all of us in this country, and all our fellows and compatriots in foreign lands, that is, the diaspora.”
But the pastor-spirit as well as the track of traditional culture in him elicited from Professor Ademola Da Sylva what amounted to a kind of vote of thanks to Professor Olu Obafemi and the co-debaters in the literati.
“Many thanks, Baba O.O., for your thoughtful, clinical and lucid interventions; and IBK’s, (and others’) too! So palpable and infectious are the feelings of hope, and delight of the innocent, that you have demonstrated in your concluding postings, and my silent response was a loud A-m-e-n! Then I turned to God the Almighty, and said, “Baba-God, these genuine feelings expressed by these great minds, aggregate what is uppermost in the mind of the Nigerian people at this point of our history. Can you, please, do this one last favour for the masses of this country? I believe it is not beyond what you as the Almighty can do for an otherwise potentially great country like Nigeria! Simply protect BAT, from the powers that have constituted themselves into human principalities in the corridor of power; completely and permanently seal the mouths of those demonic lions labelled as Cabals in Aso Rock that have, thus far, truncated Nigeria’s destiny! AMEN!” Perhaps we should remind ourselves that our hope was this high when many Nigerian voters, including yours truly, trouped out to vote in Buhari as President! Now, I remember, “demonic forces” written about by Reuben Abati during the Presidency of GEJ, unfortunately, like some nameless hydra monsters they always rear their ugly heads with every new administration, these Aso Rock principalities. PMB has his good share of them in the Abakyaris, and very familiar ones, for obvious reasons, like the Ngiges, et al, never for once did they allow PMB to be! They took advantage of his visibly infirm state, to take over the reins of governance in what could be described as a “civilian coup” and ran-over the ship of the country crashing against the Aso rock! The reason we are where we are, right now! BAT like PMB, also has a visibly infirm visage/characteristic unless we pretend to not acknowledge it, a new set of cabalistic demons would join forces with the existing ones, after all, it is still the same Political Party, to take advantage of BAT’s current clinical status! BAT of 20 or 10 years ago, isn’t the same BAT today on account of age and health. Yes, unless God Almighty does something about these principalities through His human agents, they might yet soon take over the affairs of Nigeria under BAT too, to do what they know best: to steal, to kill and to destroy, and ensure that the status quo remains as it has always been, in the spirit of Ted Hughe’s very famous poem, ‘The Eagle’!”
Well, well said, O debaters. But let the columnist-terminator and terminator-columnist have the last word. The time won’t be long to ask INEC this simple question: Did INEC lavish allegedly over three hundred billion naira to register the paltry figure or number of voters for the 2023 elections? Did the very small number (below ninety or so million) match the more than very huge sum of money that INEC got for registration of voters and for other election related matters, duties and responsibilities? How much money in millions upon millions did not allegedly go under and distributed to “principalities” and “demonic forces” hovering over Aso Rock and the Presidency of the presidencynologists? Any clear or unclear answers to these questions cannot or may not but tell us that the presidential election in particular was INEC’s will. Our debating Professors will not say on oath that they did not know. Did the presidential and other elections meet the expectations, wishes and will of the people generally? INEC has the answer. And our debating professors will bluntly tell the chairman of INEC this.
Because our professors are fellow writers, I must terminate the discourse by drawing their attention to the following poem “For the Consideration of Poets” by Haki R. Madhubuti (original name Don Luther Lee), the 81 years old African-American poet, author and publisher, and a native of Little Rock, Arkansas:
where is the poetry of resistance,
the poetry of honorable defiance
unafraid of lies from career
politicians and business men,
not respectful of journalists who write
official speak void of educated thought
without double search or sub surface questions
that war talk demands?
where is the poetry of doubt and suspicion
not in the service of the state, bishops
and priests,
not in the service of beautiful people
and late night promises,
not in the service of influence,
incompetence and academic
clown talk?
The above lines speak volumes. Let them stay glued to our memories day by day. And may INEC’s chairman become the poet and historian of resistance after finding time to read this!
Terminated for now.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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By Promise Adiele
Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot avails itself of multiple interpretative tools with a compelling grip on the moral imagination of the audience. As a timeless drama, it thrives on the hopelessness of the human condition dramatized by two vagabonds, Estragon and Vladimir who waited for a mysterious, titular Godot that never came. One of the features of the absurdist literary tradition portrayed in the play is the failure of language in the verbal context as a means of communication. The verbal exchange between the two vagabonds is evident of misinterpretation. One says one thing, the other interprets it differently. Thus, it calls to question the potency of language in the verbal medium as a means of communication. The preceding analogy reminds me of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and his purported insult to the good people of the Yoruba ethnic group. Perhaps, misinterpretation currently manifests as an inexorable content of Nigeria’s absurd credentials.
Last week, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, philanthropist, accomplished businessman, the Balogun Babaguwan of Yorubaland, Ahaejiejemba of Igboland and elder-statesman, while reacting to events that happened in Lagos during the last election when many Igbo people were bloodied and harassed, assured the world that “the Igbo and Yoruba are not at war”. On the heels of that statement came another one “they are Yoruba political rascals”. A syntactic analysis of the two sentences affirms that the Chief never meant to insult the entire Yoruba ethnic group. Rather, he was referring to rascals in Lagos who maimed, killed, and vanquished Igbos, non-Yorubas, and even some Yorubas with Igbo semblance, stopping them from exercising their voting rights during the election. He also said “we know them and we will deal with them”. Language scholars know that Chief Iwuanyanwu did not mean to insult the Yoruba. Sadly, some social nitwits, victims of acute cognitive impairment, went on a rampage to misinterpret and manipulate his statement to suit their treacherous, mischievous purposes. It is absurd.
Anyone who knows Chief Iwuaynanwu’s antecedent will never ascribe offensive rhetoric to him. He is soft-spoken, conciliatory and peace-loving. Like every sensible person around the world, not just the Igbo, he was aghast with lurid photos and video evidence of harm against the Igbo in Lagos during the last election. Unfortunately, people who ordinarily frolic in the whirlwind of ethnic hate have seized the opportunity to insult the Igbo ethnic group while using acerbic words on the revered Chief. These people, in their degenerate and diseased mentality, are trying to install a wall of hate between the Igbo and Yoruba. Let me state categorically that the Yorubas are wonderful people whose spirit of brotherliness, conviviality, and tolerance speaks volumes across the world. I have maintained over time that the Igbo and Yoruba share a cordial, interwoven relationship in marriage, business, friendship, association and neighbourliness. The two ethnic groups can never be involved in a conflict. Many Yoruba people have helped many Igbo people to their destinies and many Igbo people have helped many Yoruba people to their destinies too. An attempt for one ethnic group to harm the other will result in serious harm for the two. It is as implicating as that.
Since the presidential elections, keenly contested by different candidates from different ethnic groups in Nigeria, some people have desperately sought to reduce the entire development to an ethnic affair. It is myopic and at once condescending. Does Peter Obi represent the Igbo? Does Bola Tinubu represent the Yoruba? Does Atiku Abubakar represent the Hausa/Fulani? These candidates all have supporters across the country. Of course, they will have a preponderance of support from their ethnic base. That is the way of politics. Unfortunately, ethnic jingoists have, in the inerrancy of their bleak convictions, reduced the entire political discourse to an ethnic affair especially Yoruba vs Igbo. These people, stranded in the realm of ethnic hate and communal intolerance, have done everything within their powers to inflame ethnic tension to crucible dimensions. It is wrong for anyone to insult a whole ethnic group in whatever guise. In Chief Iwuanyanwu’s case, he has put the records straight by clarifying what he meant, insisting that he was quoted out of context. But the morbid and decadent will not hear of it. They insist that Iwuanyanwu and all Igbo should be roasted alive. As far as these simpletons are concerned, the Chief spoke the mind of all Igbos. How idiotic and harebrained can anybody be?
Recently, some people have also indulged in ethnic slurs. Unlike Chief Iwuanyanwu that clarified himself, Bayo Onanuga offered no apology and insisted on standing by his words. Onanuga spoke for himself and couldn’t have insulted the Igbo on behalf of the Yoruba. MC Oluomo, while registering his socio-political disorientation, spoke for himself when he threatened the Igbo on an election day and went on to make good his threat which the police shamelessly called a joke. FFK has also made inflammatory remarks which were his personal opinion and not the opinion of Yoruba. It is therefore, a function of disabled, primitive awareness for anyone to insult an ethnic group based on the comment of one person. Such insults and abuses expose the quiddity of phenomenal foolishness which, hitherto, was concealed in some people by the façade of education. No, these hate mongers belong to the stone age. Nobody should be deceived by their pretentious liberalism.
The question is, are there political rascals in Nigeria? Definitely yes! These are the particular people Chief Iwuanyanwu referred to concerning what happened in Lagos during the last elections. Of course, all parts of the country have their share of political rascals. It is not peculiar to one ethnicity. Political rascals are those who walk the streets, snatch ballot boxes, stab people due to their ethnic origin and prevent them from exercising their civic rights. They are not educated. They are thugs, street urchins and never-do-wells employed by politicians to advance nefarious objectives. There are also some educated political rascals. They don’t walk the streets, but demonstrate humane deficiency of unimaginable proportions using social media and sundry news outlets. They spread hate, provoke enmity and fan the embers of war. They incite the uneducated, urging them to bay for the blood of ordinary citizens. Their social media handles are replete with expletives and insults. Abusive engagement allows them to flourish. Another category of political rascals populate government establishments like INEC, the Police and different security agencies. These people compromise the electoral process in exchange for financial inducement and material gains. They are unconscionable, desperate and invidious. Are these people from another planet? No, they are among us. We know them.
The ethnic hate narrative is a device enunciated by the political class to keep the people divided, breaking their rank and file to unite and fight a common enemy. The opposition LP and PDP are convinced that the election was marred by sharp, underhand practices and therefore have gone to court. Is going to court to challenge the outcome of an election a legitimate practice? If it is, why can’t detractors of equitable process allow the law to run smoothly? The call by some decidedly frustrated fellows in search of relevance and pecuniary patronage for the arrest of the opposition presidential candidates is from the pit of purgatory. The propaganda that there is a plan to disrupt the handover ceremony is a bundle of falsehood from the depths of Hades. Although many Nigerians regard the judiciary with a pinch of salt, people of goodwill should advocate for a peaceful resolution of Nigeria’s political challenges. Ethnic rhetoric should stop immediately. People should sheath their swords. Let us all close the road to Rwanda.
Adiele, PhD, writes from Mountain Top University.
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