By Lasisi Olagunju
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 12 February, 2024)
The last premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, asked his guest what the town was saying. The guest told him the town was solidly behind him. The guest backed his claim with a cassette which he said contained the adulation with which the people of Ibadan welcomed every step so far taken by Chief Akintola. The premier listened to the cassette and brightened up. He thanked the guest, Chief A.M.A. Akinloye, as he took his exit. Akintola’s young confidant and aide, Adewale Kazeem, walked in. The premier told him of Akinloye’s good news and gave him the cassette to listen to. Adewale listened to the cassette, sighed and was downcast. The premier looked at the worried face of Adewale Kazeem and asked why. “The town is not good,” he told Chief Akintola, and added that the content of the cassette was not a true reflection of what the town was saying about the premier and his government. A shocked Akintola intoned “ta l’a á wàá gbàgbó báyìí (who do we believe now)?” The young man told the premier: “You had better believe me, Baba.”
The above happened sometime in 1964. A year later, the problem multiplied for Chief Akintola who became increasingly troubled, his hands unsteady; “he could no longer write his signature on a straight line.” One day, he was advised by the same aide, Adewale Kazeem, to resign his post as premier and end the raging crisis in the region. Akintola’s response was: “Adewale, ó ti bó; ikú ló má a gb’èyìn eléyìí (Adewale, it is too late. It is death that will end all this).” The above details are on pages 161 and 172 of the book ‘SLA Akintola in the Eyes of History: A Biography and Postscript’. The book, published in 2017, was written by a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Kehinde. The author did not put those conversations in the book as hearsay. He heard them directly from Adewale Kazeem who rose in life to become a well-respected oba in Osun State.
At 5.50pm on 6 August, 1962, Chief Obafemi Awolowo left his place for the residence of the Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, for a 6pm appointment. It was at the height of the political crisis of the early 1960s. Awo arrived at Balewa’s 8 Lodge on the dot and wasted no time opening their discussion. He asked Balewa: “Are you sure in your mind that this crisis will end well for all of us and for Nigeria?” Chief Awolowo said “Balewa replied in a low, solemn voice that he was sure it would not end well…” (See Awolowo’s ‘Adventures in Power’, Book Two, page 249). And, did it end well? There is no point answering that question. We all know how it ended. Today, there is a new fire on the mountain. Things are bad; very bad. Paris-born Nigerian singer, Bukola Elemide (Asa) sings: “There is fire on the mountain/ And nobody seems to be on the run…” The first time we heard a cry of fire and fear in our politics was in the Western House of Assembly in 1962. Since then, the mountain of Nigeria has been badly scarred by political bush-burners. A fresh blaze is balding the skull of the poor today and the consequences cannot be imagined.
There are consequences for everything anyone does or does not do. Even the words that I use here will have consequences. Ethnic and business ‘friends’ of the president will abuse me like they’ve always done to poets who refuse to do palace clowning. They forget that I am a child of the farm; I walk the furrows, not the ridge. I am beyond their shot. Authored by researchers Iain McLean and Jennifer Nou, a piece appeared in the October 2006 edition of the British Journal of Political Science. And the title? ‘Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand?’ That is the question we dare not ask here without them saying we should bring our heads. They say the president is our brother who cannot do wrong. They forget that we were not taught in Yoruba land to merely chase away the fox and pamper the cocky bumbling hen. We were taught to give justice to fox and then to hen – one after the other. How is keeping quiet when the ‘war’ is all around us going to help “our brother”?
The hunger that is in town today is more serious than the hunger that made Sango burn down a whole town. Yet, our leader appears not worried. He is not scared. It is business as usual. Why are we not fearing the consequences of our misbehaviour? A journalist recalled that sometime in 1965, Prime Minister Balewa was at the airport in Ikeja and was asked what he was doing to quench the fire in the Western Region. The big man looked around and declared that “Ikeja is part of the West, I can’t see any fire burning.” Truly, he was kept busy with positive assurances by flightless birds around him. He lived in denial, or in self-deception, he ignored the firestorm. The fire he refused to see grew uncontrollably wild; it became a blaze so much that when the cock crowed at dawn on January 15, 1966, it was too late for the head of the Nigerian government to save even himself.
There were protests in parts of the country last week by hungry Nigerians. But President Bola Tinubu’s trusted people said the protests were unreal; they said the president’s policies are good and popular with the people. They are telling the president that the hungry are not very hungry. They said it was the opposition playing politics, inciting the poor against the state. I saw Lagbaja, the mystery musician, from a distance at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, on Friday. I tried unsuccessfully to reach him and get him to sing: ‘Mo sorry fun gbogbo yin’ to those telling the naked president that his garment is beautiful. The ‘sorry’ is more for Tinubu. He is the one chosen and crowned to rule; and he is the one whose tenure is being measured by mass suffering, mass hunger, mass kidnapping. He is the one being scaffolded from the ugliness of the street. Tinubu is an elder. Should it be difficult for him to know the next line of action when a load is too heavy for the ground to carry and is too heavy for the rafters? We say in Yoruba land that when the going gets tough and life faces you, shoot at it; if it backs you, shoot it. When you are alone, reconsider your stand.
Did President Tinubu read Segun Adeniyi of Thisday last week? The columnist asked him to go and watch again the Yoruba mainframe play, Saworoide. If you are not Yoruba, look for the plot summary of that play, it should be online. Read it. It should tell what the warning is all about. They are all prophets – the warners. Did the president read Abimbola Adelakun of The Punch last Thursday? She warned that “things are getting out of hand.” Did Tinubu read Tunde Odesola of the same newspaper the following day? He wrote that in Tinubu’s Nigeria, “the poor can’t inhale, the rich can’t exhale.” Farooq Kperogi of Saturday Tribune has written twice (last week and the week before) on hunger and anger in the land. He warned Tinubu two days ago not to see himself as Buhari who misruled big time but escaped the whips of consequences. Festus Adedayo yesterday in the Sunday Tribune likened today’s Nigeria to ravaged Ijaiye, a defeated community of hopelessness. I, particularly, find very apt Adedayo’s reading of today’s suffering as Kurunmi’s war-ravaged Ijaiye of 1860/61. In 2024 Nigeria, respectable people beg to eat; mothers sell one child to feed another. It is tragic. Bola Bolawole’s offering drew from French and Russian histories of social and political tragedy. I do not know what Suyi Ayodele of the Nigerian Tribune is cooking for tomorrow, Tuesday. I will be surprised if Tinubu’s ‘friends’ have not reported these warners to him as his enemies. That is how we are being governed.
The naira is ruined, the kitchen is on fire. We thought the regime of Muhammadu Buhari was the last leg of Nigeria’s relay race of tragedy. Now, it is clear he was actually the first leg in a race that won’t end soon. Tinubu took the baton from his game-mate and said his wand is made of hope in renewed bottles. His first eight months have proved that it is not true that the child does not die at the hands of the circumciser. This is better said in Yoruba – àsé iró ni wípé omo kìí kú lówó oní’kolà! This one is dying – or is dead. Before the president’s very eyes, the country has become a vast camp for stranded people; a nation of displaced people who live on food rations. The people now ask who is going to be their helper. Legendary Ilorin musician, Odolaye Aremu, at a moment of anomie as this, lamented that the one we said we should run to for safety is urging us to run even far away from where he is (eni tí a ní k’á lo sá bá, ó tún ní k’á máa sá lo).
Cluelessness is a physician treating leprosy with drugs made for eczema. Who told the president that opening the federal silos is the solution to a bag of rice selling for N70,000? It was N7,000 nine years ago. The protesting people from the north and in the south are not saying there is no food in the market. There is no scarcity of foodstuffs. It is not a demand and supply problem. There is food in the market, but the food in the market is priced beyond the earnings of the people. That is the issue, the problem, and it cannot be solved with handouts from grain reserves. It can only be solved with a magic that will shrink the price of foodstuffs to a size within the financial capacity of the poor.
Some say it is age that ails Tinubu making him unfelt in this season of pain. But, he won’t be the first old man to be king. There was a prince in Ofa who owned neither calabash nor plate (kò ní’gbá, kò l’áwo). But he had a large piece of cloth as his only item of value. He did not use it; it was too unuseful to the poor old man who would rather lend it for a fee to others for use on their special outings. The man’s condition remained critical, his poverty unremitting. He prepared himself and went to an elder for consultation. He sought counsel on what he could do so that he might gain importance. He was told to give up the large piece of cloth, sit back and watch. He did as he was told and soon after that sacrifice, the king of Ofa died and the people of Ofa made the poor old man king. They said among themselves that “this one will not be long before he dies and another will take his place.” But the old man became king and refused to die. Instead of dying, he became increasingly robust, younger and stronger. Life and living in Ofa became good and pleasant as well. The poor became prosperous and the rich richer. The people of Ofa fell in love with their king; they no longer wanted him to die. He reigned long and well. At the end of his journey, the departing king was satisfied that he had good tidings to take to his alásekù – those who reigned without destroying the crown, the ones who passed the stool to him for him to pass to others. This Ofa story belongs in the grove of the wise; it is deeper than I have told it. Its code is with the elders.
All who are favoured are counselled to take it easy with life. They should cast away the garment of greed, of hubris and of lust for the self. If they care, they can take counsel from these lines from the ancestral scroll: “Do not run the world in haste. Let us not hold on to the rope of wealth impatiently. What should be treated with mature judgment should not be treated in a fit of temper. Whenever we arrive at a cool place, let us rest sufficiently well and give prolonged attention to the future; let us give due regard to the consequences of things. We should do all these because of the day of our sleeping, our end (Má fi wàrà wàrà s’ayé, K’á má fi wàrà wàrà rò m’ókùn orò. Ohun a bâ fi s’àgbà, K’á má fi sè’bínú. Bí a bá dé’bi t’ó tútù, K’á simi simi, K’á wo’wájú ojó lo títí; K’á tún bò wá r’èhìn òràn wò; Nítorí àtisùn ara eni ni).
Tinubu’s salvation lies with his orí inú- his inner head. That is the priest he should consult. It is what he should go and ask for the way. His reign is painful.