NIGERIA’S ALBATROSS, TINUBU’S BEAST OF BURDENS: Is Emergence of a new Dawn Here?
By Tunji Ajayi
(A Voice from the Garden of England)
At last His Excellency, Bola Ahmed Tinubu now comes in as the 16th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria! In a country like ours where we have a horde of praise singers, hosanna chanters and political party’s adherents feeding fat from propitiation, every critic, no matter how honest, is vilified and wrongly dressed in the toga of a rebel. I once argued that every nation benefits from her own rebels. A nation without her own rebels may never grow. Yes. An adage says beware of a friend who never sees anything wrong in whatever you do. Even when you are dancing into the doldrums and dungeon of disasters he keeps hailing and clapping for you like the traditional king’s court raconteur who gets paid handsomely for his esoteric skills. And until his principal gets to the brink of precipice and falls fatally into the cesspit of disaster, he chants his praises to higher crescendo to ingratiate and appease his master.
In “Our Infamous 50th Macabre Dance” (Guardian July 4, 2010) I asserted: “. . . the word “rebel” is often used with negative connotation. But whatever meaning we appropriate to the hated and nebulous word, I honestly think every country needs many rebels with their free lips to constantly pull the nation’s ears before being driven dangerously to the brink of precipice and subsequent fatal fall. Rulers need to be constantly prodded in order that the nation they govern may grow and the people survive. Like James Morton the great artist would say, free minds and free lips are necessary in order that men may grow and learn. Any society without her pantheons of rebels may never move forward. Late Nelson Mandela, who fought ferociously against apartheid and white dominance in South Africa for many years, was a dreaded rebel to the erstwhile South African white minority rulership, until the hitherto subjugated blacks totally secured their freedom in 1994. So was Martin Luther King Jr. who fought for civil rights in America in the 60s. Marcus Garvey was a rebel advocating for black economic independence with his African Communities League in the early 20th century.”
One of the main challenges the incoming President Tinubu would have to contend with and urgently dispel is that of the pantheon of stooges and bootlickers often milling around the kings courtyard. Accurate information is key to governance. This is so because decision-making in every sphere of human lives is a function of accurate information. The Buhari administration had scored herself high and boasted to have performed well and succeeded in leaving Nigeria better than they met it in 2015. This may be a spurious claim Nigerians have no reason spending precious time to controvert. The Yoruba proverb says: Alára níí gbé aráa ga. B’ádìe ó wolé a bèrè. Yes. Empty bravado is cheap and commonplace, thus the hen stoops while entering through a house door. In his musical album SALPS 46: The Truth, (1985), KSA sings: Àgbà tó wéwù t’ó k’ojú è séhin, b’ó bá ti dára sí òhun ni kí e bi.” – An elderly person who wears his robe adrift obviously knows whether it is fitting or not. Conscience is an open wound, only the truth heals it, so says the Fulani scholar and teacher, Uthman Dan Fodio. Those who served Buhari’s administration are better left to their conscience. Even if they are not prodded by it, History - the unbiased record keeper has profiled our past leaders appropriately for posterity. As I wrote this, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was being sworn in as the 16th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. On the other hand, Mohammadu Buhari’s administration was being recorded by Wikipidia in the past tense. What a transiency of power! But the obvious truth is that the main problem of every government often starts from the insincerity and hypocrisy of their appointed spokespersons who serve as the eyes and ears of the president, and often feed him back with falsehood. If our past governments had leveraged on the wisdom and expertise of their legion of ministers “for” and ministers “of”; and the hordes of senior special assistants, special assistant to this and that, etcthe question of why we are where we are at this sordid state would perhaps not have arisen. Even when the nation was bleeding to death socially, security-wise and economically our presidential advisers often chanted in praise of their bosses“l’etat ces’t moi”, you are the State, the most popular gods;and were telling the chief executive that all is well with the led. But the Bible warns: Woe unto to those who call bad good and good bad.
Consequently, the success of the incoming administration may begin from aggregating and articulating the problems of Nigeria and Nigerians and prioritising the solutions. Any country whose youths are idle can never be free from social vices in the form of kidnapping, vandalism, brigandage, robbery, advanced fee fraud, yahoo-yahoo, cultism etc. Nigerians are renowned for being entrepreneurial. Her youths are resourceful and quick witted. Just an overview of youth’s activities in our “Computer Villages” across the country confirms the veracity of this claim. For example, without much formal technical education, no sooner the latest computers and sophisticated mobile phones came into Nigerian technology space than many of our curious and quick-witted youths started to dismantle and repair them. Many who went into the entertainment industries were compelled to find jobs for themselves while jobs became elusive after leaving schools. But how does a nation ever thrive technologically in darkness without regular provision of electricity? Many graduates believe that whatever cannot be avoided must be borne, and turned to riding Okada motorcycles to eke out living. Our youths watch us with disbelief the level of our hypocrisy and inconsistency in the past years, to notice that the same derelict system that bred youth’s unemployment had been the same apprehending cultism, kidnapping, pick-pocketing and other vices.
The outgoing President Buhari who contested four times and lost in succession, while weeping inconsolably each time apparently did not prepare for the challenges of leadership and the gargantuan pressure he met in the office. Many Nigerians were critical of his iron-fist rulership while he was a military Head of State between 1983 and 1985. It was a period marked by the “War Against Indiscipline advocacy. Though many Nigerians felt he was too tough then. But there can be comedy in tragedy. Many had thought his perceived disciplinarian stance would transform Nigeria. We were wrong! Like Cawdor through his ignoble conducts and perfidies showed Duncan in the tragedies of Macbeth, Buhari showed us all that it is not a mere cliché but a truism that “There’s no art to find the minds construction in the face.” Every day of the last two years was apparently hot for the out-gone President Buhari, even up till he gave his farewell speech barely 24 hours to his final exit from office. He kept on expressing tiredness and eagerness to go, and perhaps run away from his country to Mali to have rest. This is un-statesmanlike.
But all this shows that it is not aspiration for office that matters. It is the capacity and genuine zeal to get peoples’ perennial problems assuaged. Tinubu must be fully prepared to listen to our nations “rebels” even more than the usual praise singers at the corridor of power. Many of our past “rebels” fought relentlessly for social justice till death - Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Gani Fawehinmi, Tai Solarin, Adaka Boro, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Beko Ransomi Kuti, Bala Usman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, et.al. I had lamented in a piece: “Having being psychologically troubled about our stagnation as an underdeveloped black nations should we not ponder deeply like music maestro Eric Donaldson did in his song: Do we Really Have to Fight when he lamented: “Must all these great heroes die in vain, while we go into slavery once again?” Should Nigeriansalways groan, taking to the streets for agitation before right things are done? Must we and our innocent childrenremain in perpetual slavery? Human brains built up the beautiful Dubai where Nigerian leaders run to for holidays. I toured a few streets and highways in London few days ago and I marvelled at orderliness. Till now I haven’t seen deadly craters. No Police blocking the roads with log of woods to check car booths and requesting for “something-something”. No Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) men chasing 60-passenger buses into 50 meter ditches and rivers to fatal death because of cracked side-mirror. Yet there is orderliness. No V-I-P men or senators even show their faces on the streets, let alone driving roughshod and breaking one-way traffic rules causing gridlocks for 48 hours! Nigerian leaders run to these great countries on tourism visits, but for over three decades they hardly ever replicated what they saw and enjoyed for the benefit of the famished people.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in his epic album Original Sufferhead moaned in pain for Africa: “United Nations got a name for us. Dem dey call us non-aligned nations. . . . Dem dey call us underdeveloped nations . . .” He added: “1st and 2nd dey, dem dey call us 3rd World. We must to dey craze for head to dey sleep under bridge. Dem turn us to suffer head o. Fela lamented. But he gave an antidote. Yoruba is a rich tonal language. Ìfà with upper glides means “benefits” while Ifá (wilth lower glide) means “divination”. The music war lord advised: “Before we can je ìfà-head’, we must be ready to fight for am o. I say ‘Suffer-head must go. ‘Je’fa- head’ must come” Fela meant that we must fight for our rights to enjoy the benefits from our tormentors of many decades. Here lies the big questions: Will Bola Ahmed Tinubu be ready to do this on behalf of the famished Nigerians? Or will our children also run this route under asphyxiating and sub-human conditions their parents are passing till 60, 70 and 85 years?
The new President Bola Ahmed Tinubu needs to prove many sceptics wrong. This writer is a Nigerian and as such, he is one of them. Yes! In “Tinubu’s Tinkering . . . Claudius Nero Neurosis: The Maladies of a Nation Ruled by Emotions in Lamentation” (see Ohio Wesleyan University Press, USA., Oct 16, 2022), I submitted without equivocation that: “. . . it remains unsafe to submit that a man motivated by “sèkàn kò mí, ko sèkan ko rà’re” syndrome, viz: “please yourself with one, and also get one for myself” is being truly driven by altruistic and philanthropic zeal to serve the needy and the famished. A typical Nigerian politician hardly gives back to his society or does anything for free.” Yes. Many politicians act on “quid pro quo principle.” I pray the new president proves me and many other Nigerians who feel the same way wrong.
But here is a story that may buoy up hope in us: Marcus Garvey, the great black activist and freedom fighter after his return to Jamaica in 1914, while reading a chapter “Up From Slavery” inBooker Washington’s autobiography confessed to have been buoyed up with great courage to serve his people by forming the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A) in 1914. He was only 28 years. Hmm! Many our youths no longer read! They keep laughing at Face book photos and playing games on phones for 24 hours daily. But sound knowledge is acquired from wide reading. (A story perhaps on the Illiteracy of the so-called Literates in the future) Marcus Garvey asked himself thought-provoking questions: “Where is the black man's Government?' 'Where is his King and his kingdom?' 'Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?” I could not find them, and then I declared, “I will help to make them”. Will President Bola Ahmed Tinubu be buoyed up to give Nigeria a truly new dawn? Or will the charade thrive on? Perhaps he could go down in history as the president who “changed the many contradictions of our blighted existence in Nigeria” like the erudite scholar late Paul Adesanmi would say. After all like the great speaker and motivator Femi Emmanuel ones said: “You can succeed if no one believes in you. But you cannot succeed if you don’t believe in yourself” Bola Ahmed Tinubu has held out and promised he could perform. Thus, he must be poised to succeed regardless of pessimistic or myopic viewpoints. That will be most honorable and the acme of good leadership.Verbum Satis Sapienti
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*Tunji Ajayi, a creative writer, author and documentary producer on holiday presently writes from England.
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3Please watch out for the book: “MACABRE DANCE ON PERAMBULATOR: Essays on Nigerian Contemporary Issues” by Tunji Ajayi
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