Assorted controversies
YOUR country my country our country is a place of controversies of diverse colours. Day in day out we see things, we hear things, we feel things, we smell things, we touch things, we taste things all of which tell and remind us of things that are things and of things that are non- things. There is some kind of paradox contained in this submission. We need not be surprised. After all this country your country my country our country their country has become a country of controversies, a country of elaborate controversies governed by elaborate paradoxes and a series of them - that continually birth a series of elaborate paradoxical controversies and real paradoxes devoid of rhetorical rhetoric. Don’t mark me as a words- man or a smith of words. I am only trying to state precisely and not so precisely what your country my country our country their country that is not their country currently means to me, if not to you.
Those who currently govern this place called Nigeria from head to toe and from toe to head lack the energy to do so. Those they govern from head to toe and from toe to head equally lack the energy to be the followers of those who govern or pretend to govern them. They dissipate energy on what they should not dissipate energy on. I don’t mark out myself from this paradoxical equation. Let me halt my speaking in paradoxical tongues devoid of the rhetoric of Biblical and Islamic preachers and scholars.
Nnamdi Kanu is a household name in this country today. So also is the name of the young man called Sunday Igboho whose Adeyemo surname is vanishing – or has vanished - from his agnominal identity and mark not now or no longer his identity and mark or what he is now known by or he has attached himself to.
Both of them we controversially can call filibusterers today – rightly or wrongly. These revolutionary freebooters see themselves as non- Nigerians as at today and as we speak which includes as I write this column which you are enjoying now – I hope. Their followers also see themselves as non- Nigerians. The ascertainment of my submission in this text, in this column now, may be sounding controversial. But it is rightly so to all intents and purposes.
Who created the filibusterers? Our negatively despotic despot and autocratic autocrat called Buhari who in 2015 I invented as PMB when I was a Nigerian Tribune columnist. I meant well then when I so invented him and coined him in the positive image of a democratic president called PMB. ( Let me spare you the details of how the coinage came into being, but I meant that he should carry himself as our elected President Mohammudu Buhari ( PMB) who would govern us well and fruitfully. His presidential maxim’s import was expected to be Nigeria’s public good, not his private ends to please himself and his friends and ethnic group). How I wrote and wrote in support of his candidacy! But the man since 2015 when he entered Aso Rock has caused your country my country our country too many distresses that have been steadily grounding it controversially and non- controversially.
So Nnamdi Kanu was shot up by Buhari who obviously gives no sharp thought to his posthumous reputation. To say this does not mean that we shall deny that Nnamdi Kanu committed some “wrong acts” against the Nigerian state for which he was standing trial, and for which he was granted bail which he un- tenably jumped. Then surprise, surprise, three or so years after he allowed himself to be plucked like a ripe mango ready for licking by his flawed enemy. ( I hope this image strikes the right chord). So Nnamdi Kanu and his indigenous warriors of “Biafra” had no workable or functioning intelligencenetwork- and- service to counter and count out that of the enemy? How come the enemy knew in and out his weaknesses and negative aspects which he and his cohorts exploited to put the loquacious filibusterer where they now have him? So Nnamdi Kanu could not after all play a Tompolo game or make the enemy feel that he, Nnamdi Kanu, was in the same positively rebellious pedestal as Sunday Igboho. Did his charms fail him or he had no traditional charms at all? Nnamdi Kanu fall my hand o. Abi nor be so? Abi na yeye breeze na him e be? Despite all the right and wrong feelings his arrest, or re- arrest, or capture, or re- capture or kidnap or whatever has ignited so far, the young man for some time will emerge in our imagination or fantasy as an ostensibly disorganized revolutionary. If he happens to die in solitary confinement the threat to his posthumous reputation will be a clearly foregone conclusion. And only a few rebels from “Biafra” will want to share a connection with him filiatively as products of his labour and undertaking, that is, if the battle and war end in victory for them. And I don’t see how his absence is going to mean for them the highest form of presence. I am really in a rotten mood to have this feeling. The supposed guyman allowed yeye mugus to pounce and pick him just like that! No hailings for the jongbo
man, for the olijongbo.
Sunday Igboho is a special controversial topic. Since the storming of his Ibadan residence as well as the failed attempt to stop his Saturday, July 3rd democratically revolutionary rally in Lagos, several stories and accounts of his spiritual prowess have reached me. The young man takes his task very seriously, I am told. He has no flawed thought, mannerism or behaviour that can be employed to cage him. He is wiser and cleverer than a serpent. He knows when to disappear from here to Egypt and when to appear from there to defeat those to be defeated at the appointed time. There is no fantasy whatsoever concerning his spiritual feats. He is a highly virtuosic revolutionary whose arrows security forces everywhere and anywhere must be wary of. This is despite his ordinariness or seeming ordinariness as a talakawa. As I am told, and as underlined to me, there is no exaggeration in all the reports concerning Igboho, the illustrious Yoruba son of thorough revolutionary competence. May we not eat our words and vibes and tunes and tones and compositions! May the day not come for us to do so.
Things are so bad in our polity that it is surprising that legislators in our Senate and House of Reps are bluntly and controversially shying away from their constitutional and historical role. Take, for instance, the Petroleum Industry Bill ( PIB) that they have just passed into law. Giving a skeletal three percent to oil or petroleum host communities is an invitation to chaos that is more than chaos to come and kill and bury Nigeria. How can they not see that they and the president and presidencynologistswho are lording over this place are daydreaming?
Our Niger Delta hot heads and brains will soon let them know that today’s personages from the region are different from yesterday’s personalities who they bribed and manipulated to do their bidding. The times have significantly changed from what they were yesterday and yester- years and yester- decades. Let them and their fellow Southern and non- Southern transactors of business as usual do as they please; let them do and do and do. Sooner rather than later their do will prove difficult and extraordinarily so in the present time. Their imagination will no longer be their imagination. It will lead them to permanent exile of mad men. You better believe me.
Afejuku can be reached via 080552130959.