WHO IS A HERO?

Victor C. Ariole argues that heroes do not quit

To proclaim people as heroes or a person as a hero in a ship that is still sailing to an unknown direction could be deceitful. However, when people decide to jump into the ocean and swim away from the ship that is still sailing in a cowardly manner, they should be termed villains. Nigeria’s ship is still sailing with wrong compass and those to provide the compass are not in want but somehow shy away from providing it. Pa Richard Akinjide seems to be one of those who had remained and continues to remain evasive in providing the compass. In his recent interview he claimed that rain started beating Nigeria and distorted its vision from the time the military struck in 1967 and according to him it was a coup led by Aguiyi -Ironsi and not Emeka Nzeogwu as being told. Furthermore he stated that it was still not the whole truth and that he was avoiding giving room for sensational headlines.

Pa Akinjide is very proud of his children and grandchildren who are either first class degree holders of Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. And he can’t claim to be proud of Nigeria from where the platform was provided and in which ship he had and has been jumping in and out as the sailing process continues to remain rudderless. As these children of his try to find Nigeria inhabitable and prefer to stay abroad as part of an indictment on his rudderless contemporaries and, as well as deriding the nests from where they were hatched, he should rethink his stance. Unlike Zik, Balewa, Bakare, Awo, who had never abandoned the ship in its stormy sail, Pa Akinjide children had seen him run for his dear life every time the ship seemed to be running aground or hitting the rock – from 1959 when he found Zik untrustworthy to 1967 when Balewa was no more seen by him as true cabinet leader to finally discarding Shagari as he failed to listen to him on his coup whistleblowing.

To him, he had all along seen Nigeria as a fraud crafted by the British even when he does not see his sending his children to acquire their degrees as fraudulent. Beyond slave trade which could even be seen as relatively better than the plundering of the African wealth by its elite like Akinjide, there is no fraud in making Africans come together as a race starting from Nigeria. After all, no country in the West started as a homogenous nation. They all worked hard to be one in the midst of differences; even the current Catalonia issue had been there for centuries as Spain kept on managing to be one with 17 autonomous regions.

According to him, he has travelled all the length and breadth of Northern Nigeria and had seen and still sees that their leaders do not want progress as poverty remains endemic in the north. And he claimed to have seen in Ahmadu Bello as against Balewa, his cabinet leader; the former to him knows how to promote aristocracy than the latter; and aristocracy is never for the empowerment of the masses from whence poverty could be reduced. So, how does he expect aristocrats to promote issues like free education that could have enabled the children of peasants and the talakawas to be empowered? Of course there was no way Akinjide could have subscribed to UPN or AG – parties for the empowerment of the less privileged. From his interview, he shows great respect for Akintola and Bello as he acknowledged them to be the people who had the same vision like him to prevent the Ironsi, as he claimed, the same way he had wanted Shagari to see in him a coup buster which Shagari failed in not accepting that the ‘chap’ he sent to deal with the Chadians was about overthrowing him. Again, here, it is neither Idiagbon nor Babangida coup.

On Ironsi, Pa Akinjide sounded as if he was the one who prodded Ironsi to take over. According to him, even when there was no Balewa and it was certain that he was gone as well as Akintola, they were still holding cabinet meeting with a new assigned leader. Zik as he put it was on deceitful leave. Akinjide never agreed that power was handed to Ironsi by the acting president. Ironsi, as he said, was always with them in their meeting until he personally started questioning him on why his continued presence as Ironsi assured him that it was for their protection. Pa Akinjide only disappeared from the scene when he sensed that the Zik he felt was on a deceitful leave came back and drove down to Bakare’s house. Then and there he ruminated that the same people in control of power were also in control of violence.

Pa Akinjide is back in another stormy sailing period and he still cannot tell Nigerians how to steady the ship instead he could attend Akintola’s children ceremony and still fail to tell them why Nigeria remains in a rudderless state as if another set of group in control of power are still not in control of violence. Or, again, as if those he had aligned with in the past find in him a smarter person as he could be bold enough to say Shagari sent his two wives to him in London and he catered for them in the hospital. London the capital of the British people he claimed fostered fraudulent amalgamation on Africans.

In deed Africa can only know peace if it finds heroes in the likes of Pan Africanists like Nkrumah, Nyerere, Balewa, Zik, Dubois, Senghor, Haile Selesia, Hamani Diori, Boigny , Mandela, Murtala, Rawlings, etc., who really know that there is no escape for the blackman who fails to see in the African continent the salvation ground as against those who run away at any slightest storm. In effect Africa must not postpone the common currency march. It should start and who says it could not be the match that could light up the courage to forge ahead and avoid running at any slightest storm. Down the villains and shine the heroes.