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Olugbenga Ogunmoyela: Being An Omolúwàbí In The Midst Of Cultural Anomie

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Olugbenga Ogunmoyela: Being An Omolúwàbí In The Midst Of Cultural Anomie
Prof. Olugbenga Ogunmoyela

By Tunji Olaopa

Celebrating my knowledge and affinity with Professor Olugbenga Akin Ben Ogunmoyela certainly goes beyond the fact that he is my in-law. My invaluable wife, Olufunlola, hailed from the enviable Ogunmoyela family of Ifon, in Ose LGA of Ondo State. It is now more than 38 years ago when I first encountered the Ogunmoyela family, and that encounter had furthered my learning curve, especially with regard to the role of values as a core ingredient in the shaping of national rebirth and progress. I started that bit of my learning experience when I met the patriarch of the family, Papa V. B. T. Ogunmoyela, of blessed memory, who welcomed me to his Ibadan home at that time with a story that demonstrated the way families could serve as the value foundation of a nation. It is this unreserved commitment to family values that occasioned Papa’s immense respect and appreciation to my grandfather, Rev. D. A. Olaopa, the first chairman of the Afijio LGA of Oyo State and Balogun of the ancient Oyo town. As the narrative went, Papa’s career as an administrator went off to a commendable next level with a good dose of mentoring from Rev. Olaopa, when the former came on a posting to Oyo town.

Prof. Ogunmoyela is now the current olori-ebi (or patriarch) of the Ogunmoyela family. And he just retired from the Bells University of Technology, where he held the chair in Food Technology. He is the very living exemplar of all that is best in the Ogunmoyela’s family tradition; indeed, all that is virtuous in the value orientation that I grew up with in the fast-fading traditional value system that builds character and families. This makes Prof. Ogunmoyela worth celebrating as one of the remnants of a traditional framework that Nigeria requires. For those who have followed my commentaries so far, I place a great stock by value rebirth as a significant piece in achieving national development in Nigeria. Even the most brilliant diagnostic assessment of the postcolonial Nigerian predicaments must factor the high level of cultural and value anomie that we need to transcend to restore Nigeria to greatness. The absence of a value prism—indeed a national integrity system—accounts for why there is no ethical framework guiding political action across all strata. It accounts for why corruption, political, bureaucratic and nominal, has taken the center stage as the most significant value issue Nigeria has to engage. Corruption and the erosion of values in Nigeria raises the fundamental need for a cultural adjustment programme; a need for a moral rebirth as the first order of business for Nigerians.

READ ALSO: Africa: Ideologies And Narrations

And this is what brought my celebratory lens to Prof. Ogunmoyela. He just achieved a double honor. He has entered the septuagenarian hall of fame, at 70; and he just delivered a deep valedictory lecture to signal his exit from Bells University after many years of meritorious service. 70 is an iconic age in biblical and social significations. When a person reaches the zenith of what the scripture and culture signal as the zenith of wisdom and hoary grace, I mean when a person becomes elderly in the deep Yoruba sense of an agbalagba, such a person deserves our attention in terms of what is said and what is communicated. In an age of instant wealth, and instant any other thing, character and values are becoming hard to come by. And so those who embody them require attention. I am talking about a character forged within the context of a good home, deep sense of service, and fundamental respect for others and for humanity. There is no surprise therefore that Prof. Ogunmoyela’s valedictory lecture delivered on the 21st of September, 2022 at Bells University, Ota, has that inherent quest to make the world a much better place for others. It is a didactic narration of a child that had to go through the battles of life without any significant assistance—a cow without a tail! For such a person, principles of success are expected, and he did not disappoint: believe in yourself, dare to trust God, think outside the box, be diligent and disciplined, invest in yourself.

The one that appeals to me the most is “always remember the son of whom you are.” That imperative resonates with my upbringing and cultural tutelage while growing up in my little hometown, Aawe in Oyo State. That injunction carries the burden of cultural heritage that every family name encodes. I carry this injunction around all through my training at the secondary school and the university education. I doubt if there is any student from a home founded on good Yoruba value that did not carry that burden. I am stretching my imagination with a question as to where we all lost that cultural imperative not to soil the family’s good name, especially when we grew up to become professionals, government functionaries, public servants, and so on. Why have we failed to translate such a cultural imperative into solid principles of service to the Nigerian nation?

READ ALSO: A Life Of Solidity And Value: Celebrating A. K. Ahmadu At 70

I am aware that this question, no matter how fundamental, has to be balanced by the context of deep anomie that those who want to do right and act with principles have to confront and engage with. In our attempt to make sense of life and progress in Nigeria, we all would have come across the saying: “If you can’t beat them, you join them.” There are so many who have been dragged into abandoning supposedly futile cultural and moral instructions to “join them” while many who have refused to join them have either left the country or have adopted the siddon-look posture of cynicism, resignation and non-involvement. This leaves only few individuals who keep struggling with the patriot desire to build Nigeria, even at great cost to their lives and existence. And this is no mere worry. Many heroes and heroines have been hounded, in the whole dynamic, to death and then celebrated after they are dead. Those who choose to remain within that national space of demanding tension have to make a choice among forthrightness, capitulation or resignation. I have lived with this tension. And this is especially with regard to my professional course as an institutional reformer in a national context of a Federal civil service that is averse to reform, reform-mindedness and being change agent. I started my professional reform sojourn with the arrogant naivety that reform requires 70% technical expertise and only 30% political acumen. It took many years of institutional frustration to come to the critical sense that the reverse is the case. And even after that shocking realization, I kept struggling to ensure that I do not get too comfortable as to become that someone I would not recognize with time.

Prof. Ogunmoyela carries the weight of an omolúwàbí so well through all the years when life has bounced him through all the thick and thin without anyone to guide him. In all his years wading through the tough terrains of research, academia and industry, Prof. Ogunmoyela has remained uncompromising in carrying the spirit of his spiritual and cultural principles; of always remembering the son of whom he is, even while being derided for rigidity and eccentricity, or as it’s commonly put, ‘he’s principled to a fault’. That is a tough accomplishment given that he has had to operate within several situations of anomie and even hostility from those who prefer to compromise by joining the crowd.

READ ALSO: Chika Okeke-Agulu: Shining The Spotlight On A True ‘Son of the Soil’

An omolúwàbí, within the Yoruba cultural and moral framework, is not a perfect being or a saint, and Prof. Ogunmoyela is not one. He is just a person who has made the conscious decisions to achieve two ends. The first is to consciously adopt and adapt behavior and attitudes that make him a social being who deploy the highest moral comportment as a member of the moral community—forthrightness, civility, integrity, transparency, compassion, humility, and so on. An omolúwàbí is of course beloved, because he or she is a valuable member of the societies; and he or she is valuable in two senses—one, for adopting values that make progress possible, and for being invaluable to the community. The second end has to do with the omolúwàbí’s other-regarding qualities. Indeed, the omolúwàbí is someone whose is valuable to the community because he or she has relational qualities that will not jeopardize communal sense of belonging. An omolúwàbí will not corner the commonwealth for personal use. And would not undermine the communal bond for self-aggrandizement. Of course, the omolúwàbí is not immune to temptation. It’s just that he or she would be checked at all points by the counter-suggestion that a good name is better than gold.

This is the lesson to be learnt from the trajectories of life and career of my dear brother, Prof. Ogunmoyela—even in the absence of godfathers to pave your ways, you can still leave marks through dedication and service. Ogunmoyela ran the gauntlet of life and profession by trusting in his principles and in God. His eyes were always cast back to his cultural formation and the moral lessons inscribed on his conscience by a virtue-conscious family, a sense of purpose and an unrelenting desire to always tread the path of honor, with eternity in focus. From him, we recognize what Aristotle has been saying many centuries ago: a nation becomes the site of continuous moral rebirth if value consciousness can be ingrained upon the national consciousness through millions of individuals who have been habituated to behave well. Starting from the family, the value trajectory of virtuous individuals—like Professor Ogunmoyela and the godly children he has been commissioned to train to be like him, in the order of Abraham—reaches forward into communal and national development.

Of course, all citizens cannot be virtuous. What Nigeria is lacking is a critical mass of virtuous and patriotic omolúwàbí. At least we have one in septuagenarian Ogunmoyela—and his entire household after him.

.Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, and Professor, National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies
(NIPSS), Kuru, Jos .
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

 

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Opinion

Toyin Falola At 72: The Conscience Of The Nation

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Prof. Serges Kamga

By Serges Kamga

One of the most important yet demanding jobs in life is teaching and writing. Teachers, by virtue of their calling, foster the right to education and shoulder the responsibility of transmitting values and information to the learners who are believed to become the leaders of tomorrow. Teaching is difficult generally because it mandates the teachers to involve themselves in many activities in their efforts to become active and relevant in their engagements and management of the students. The teacher becomes the doctor within the four walls of the classroom because they would have to carry out pedagogical but not surgical operations in the minds of their students who would graduate to become valuable to the project of community development. To, therefore, become successful in this engagement, the teacher is required to have sufficient information that they can use to enhance the success of students in all ramifications. At the same time, the teacher is a lawyer, for they are expected to defend the students when faced with consuming challenges in life or the process of their development. Again, teachers, irrespective of their discipline, will have to inconvenience themselves just so that they can become valuable and useful in the lives of their students. There are many other things that the teachers must do in an effort to transform the lives of humans and the human society itself, and they often embrace this very responsibility with open arms. It is difficult to come across humans making invaluable contributions to the human world who have not passed through the tutelage of sound teachers. Interestingly, the responsibilities of a writer are similar to that of a teacher.

Meanwhile, the expectations of excellence from the teachers and writers are not exclusively for the students; human communities also have high expectations of their teachers and writers for obvious reasons. The teachers and writers in every community are their conscience and even their consciousness. Without them, society may be stuck in a stagnant state for a very long time. Writers especially are believed to undertake the mandate of wrestling the soul of the society from the hands of beasts who want to use it for provincial objectives. Falola belongs to the category of writers who have remained committed to helping their homeland to detoxify its organs of things that could potentially bring about its imminent destruction. He has become the champion of ethics. However, it is not unlikely that the human system will take up behaviors and attitudes that are potentially destructive in very many ways. They often do this not because they are unaware of the destructive consequences or potential of what they are about to do but because they prioritize personal ambitions beyond collective safety or beyond the common good. The responsibility of detoxification, therefore, rests on the human conscience to ask them why they think certain actions are to be considered even despite their knowledge of their possible problems. In a nation, humans are the different organs of the body that take up negative, destructive, and dangerous behaviors because they are calculated to be of immense importance to them, even when it comes to the detriment of society. In the same vein, certain humans are controlled by conscience. In this case, Falola, a writer of international repute, is the conscience of the nation, given his very significant responsibilities. Follow me.

In legal parlance, the State is the duty-bearer of human rights. This means it is obliged to ensure that citizens enjoy their rights. Yet, for this to happen, sometimes the state needs to be held accountable and reminded to deliver on its commitments to people. As the conscience of the nation, Falola has been at the forefront of intellectual protest examining efforts and policies of African countries, including his country, Nigeria, in a bid to identify the potential benefits associable with them, and where it is nonexistent, he has always spoken his mind to question the moral rectitude of efforts and decisions of the government. Of course, people are at the center of everything in the human world, to the extent that it is their responsibility to create ideas and values that they believe would bring sanity to the world.

Once it is apparent, for example, that they are, however, overcome by selfish ambition, they need to be examined in critical ways so that the decisions of the few would not jeopardize the interest of the collective. This is called “speaking truth to power,” as the well-known Journalist Prof JJ Tabane would say in South Africa. Falola, on many occasions, has subjected to test the policies and interventions of the government not with a view to discrediting the actors in these institutions but to ensure that their contributions are eternally effective to the project of resurgence and emancipation or full enjoyment of human rights. In that case, the writer is conceived as an integral part of society, for he/she offers resourceful contributions to collective issues even when dissatisfied forces threaten his/her position. The sense of right or wrong is not always important to people, especially in situations when they must achieve parochial intentions, but then, if such is allowed without intervention or questioning, it would expose everyone to problems that they could be incapable of solving at some point. Falola has produced knowledge at different phases of his growth, and recently, he has increased his dedication to this mandate, and a couple of them will be examined here.

Falola became an in-expendable voice of emancipatory advocacy through his continued consistency about the place of language in the preservation and access of resources or historical materials needed for contemporary insights. As I argue in my book on Falola’s works, The Complex Interplay between Power, Politics, and African Agency: The Philosophy of Toyin Falola, Falola contends that the otherwise stereotypic sentiment tying African knowledge production to the marginal space has been sustained because there is an archival problem when it comes to accessing the records of epistemic discoveries associated with past Africans. He believes, for example, that the absence of knowledge production linked to Africa has contributed to the emasculation of their intellectual power in the community of intellectuals where ideas are used for the growth of a people. Meanwhile, absence does not signify a lack of existence in this sense; it only showcases that there is a force that challenges its existence in fundamental ways. That force, that is, would be eventually realized as an archival and linguistic barrier that is militating against the recognition of African inputs in the global knowledge economy. Falola reminds his country and the continent at the same time that unless they retrieve knowledge of their ancient time and refine it for contemporary adoption, Africa will continue to be a trashcan for others where they dump ideologically ineffective solutions to the myriad of homemade challenges. For that, there has been a steady reminder to his country that it is important that knowledge mining should start with their conscious efforts to promote Indigenous values so that they can chart new ways to develop in this time and period.

Falola has always been very consistent about the multidimensional nature of Nigerian (and African) leadership problems and has remained with his argument that the nature of power transition has always impeded true growth, especially for Africans. In my examination of power in the works of Falola, I argue that Falola is unequivocal in showing that the transition of power from the Europeans who took it from African kings and queens but bequeathed it to the elites during independence has been a cringing problem for the potential of the people. He mentions, for example, that African neocolonial leaders have always been victims themselves, but one that basks in the surplus of material wealth, which was enough to silence them. This is what he means. Nigerian and African leaders of the current time benefit from the shamble political structures that they inherited from erstwhile colonial imperialists, and that is the reason for their continued patronage of the system. The structure was dismissive of established and existing indigenous systems, and its survival was built on the onslaught of the latter. The power that was taken from the indigenous leaders was, however, returned to the hands of the elites, who themselves are the very creation of the European colonialists. It goes without saying that the unscrupulous government available in the country and the continent is aware of its relative minimum impact, which is where they should have been giving maximum results. They are content with that slow level of development because they do not share the mandate that the traditional leaders have towards their people. This, therefore, helps to remind politicians that much as they might have the interest of the people at heart, they cannot bring home success if they continue to maintain the structures of despondency that they inherited. This is a clear call for the inclusion of the African indigenous system in the governance of African countries, as requested by His Excellency Thabo Mbeki, the former President of South Africa.

The contributions of Falola have continued to penetrate the various disciplines known to man. As a watchdog and conscience of the society, he educates us about the invaluable contribution of women to the development of African epistemic legacies and, thus, calls for the reevaluation of the collective stance against women. Females have always been critical to the growth of the continent, and it goes without saying that what they achieve in Nigerian and African history cannot be underwritten. If anything, they have always been recognized as a very vibrant tool in the making and transmission of knowledge for the benefit of humankind. Beautiful contributions associated with women cannot be overemphasized on the ground that they are not documented in orthographic representation as their male counterparts. And as I argue in my book on Falola’s philosophy, women in recent African history have not been found wanting. More importantly, they have used their forward-looking ability to project a future through the creation and transmission of knowledge. African women are found in the category of educators who used oral mediums to put across their messages, and they have been very instrumental in creating invaluable knowledge useful for humanity at different points in time. For this reason, they do not deserve the marginal space created for them by their male counterparts or through institutions that are erected at different times of human inquiry. Falola ensures that such engagement helps to reiterate the significance of women’s rights and gender equality with specific attention to the role of women in building a worthwhile culture and sustaining a civilization for a very long time. For this, he always reminds society of what they must do in order to make themselves continually relevant and productive. Without a conscience of the nation, the standard of living of people will not improve, and human rights in general will not be worth the paper they are written on.

Professor Serges Kamga is the Dean of the Law School, University of the Free State, South Africa .

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Professor Babafemi Badejo: An Icon Of Icons

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Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon
Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

People’s journey in life differs for fundamental reasons. First, every individual has specific God-given responsibilities to fulfill in the land of the living, and for that reason, they are imbued with fitting characteristics with which they would navigate the jungle of life where they exist. Second, humans have a body of history of which they are usually unaware but become players in the sustenance or resistance of the same history. For illustration, people come to life from a family with a special history, and ahead of them is a permanent mandate to make their mark in building or destroying such history so that people who would come from them would not face unwarranted complications that can endanger them.

Such is the complexity of the human world in which everyone would shape their own life. Professor Badejo falls within the category of individuals who boldly face the reality of their world and decide henceforth that rather than be mere observers in the unraveling of their existence, they would become active determinants that shape, write, and inscribe their names on the sand of time. The activity of struggling to acquire education during the youthful time is mostly undertaken by courageous individuals, not because it was actually a hard thing to enroll for academic work but because on the shoulders of every schoolgoer is the responsibility to channel their energies to change the tides of their people and become a compass of their collective aspirations. In essence, it was not enough to attend school as everyone would want; you needed to make something critical out of it.

Badejo’s acquisition of political and legal education was the foundation of his intellectual evolution, becoming the basis of his cognitive development while simultaneously exposing him to the rubrics and universal ideals of the human world. The sage became conscious of his responsibility to operationalize his initiatives that would transform society, and that was the turning point of his sagacious disposition to everything.

The first indicator of his awareness lies in his decision to become a teacher. It is not an exaggeration to argue that teachers are the shapers of human society, literally because they are given the responsibility to develop the collective cognition of their environment to trigger the minds of their students to become useful and helpful. This professor became a teacher, and his quality intellect during that exercise can be measured by the number of people he has nurtured. Many people today are a testament to his exemplary teaching qualities and how his skillful delivery of educational insights has become a constant source of energy renewal. But this does not tell the whole of his story.

Unbeknownst to many, Badejo started his early work as a productive researcher. He has been able to gather important data that are used in a number of educational departments, and I cannot emphasize enough how this has inspired some level of changes in the human world. No wonder that his intellectual significance stretches further to the conflict management arena. It was during his time as a learner of law that he added this feather to his cap.

When you examine the aggressiveness of his intellectual production, especially one that can be accessed in his writing and publications, one cannot but concede that he remains an outstanding individual in whatever he does. I have the honor to inform the public that no one can overemphasize Badejo’s contributions to decoloniality and decolonization. I need to remind you that this intellectual engagement is a dedication to the course of cognitive remodeling and freedom away from the shackles of ideological contraption that Africans have found themselves in for ages.

Badejo thus understands that the first duty towards the reclamation of lost African values is to re-engineer their cognition, which has become a trans-generational victim of self-defeatist teachings that have altogether weakened their ability to progress in whatever form. In one beautiful piece of work, this talented professor emphasizes how deeply ingrained the contamination of African knowledge content has spread across different domains of their existence. For example, political ideologies that are projected in Africa have no particular co-referentiality with their social and cultural systems, and it is important that when such contradictions occur, it would be very difficult for the attainment of progress. Therefore, it is just a logical decision that such irreconcilable political ideologies be dumped entirely, and where that is impossible, perhaps because people are deeply immersed in it, it should be radically recalibrated to accommodate the things that are peculiar to the people. This is a testament to his extraordinary intelligence.

No wonder, in his work, “Situating Democracy…,” Badejo explains the rubrics of the term, revealing that democracy is only “beautiful” when it reflects the nuances of a people. He insists that democratic governments could be dangerous to themselves and the people over which they govern on the occasion that they do not contain and internalize ideals in the local community. If a people collectively decide that this is the form of democratic policy and governance that they wanted, it would be an affront to their human rights to negate their position if they are not self-destructive or immolative. After all, the fundamental definition of democracy is that it comes from the people, and it is meant for them, too. In that case, one cannot but situate democracy within the context of a society so that they can achieve greatness and accomplish their desires as and when due. Although such debates and topics are controversial, one cannot accept that the message in them is golden. I can confidently say this because I am aware that this intellectual has used every available opportunity he grabs to educate people about the affairs of their society and how they can become models and an icon of transformation that the world would look up to. Of course, he has always acknowledged that people’s desire for change and progress is universal, and for that reason, there should be some universal traits to a democratic system. The fact remains, however, that he prioritizes the safety of the people over whom democracy would be used, and this remains a valid argument.

Meanwhile, Badejo has never compromised his callings, serving as the conscience and the consciousness of the masses, for he understands the basic reasons for the perpetual decline of Nigeria’s political and economic value. Badejo has never failed to educate anyone who cares to listen that Nigeria’s democracy’s inability to challenge its contemporaries across the globe is that its custodians are enmeshed in corruption controversies that ordinarily make things difficult to improve in their ordinary national life.

Badejo has educated everyone that corruption thrives in Nigeria because there is a deliberate incarceration of the legal frameworks that would have been the right checks and balances to the system available. He laments the pervasiveness of corruption and how it continually threatens the possibility of genuine transformation in the country.

When Badejo preaches through his work, one cannot particularly conclude who his intended audience is, even when he spells it out. The reason for this is that it is always common that he uses his message in ways that would reveal ideas in his determination to capture everything or everyone that is found wanting in a particular allegation. Africa, for example, has been consistently described in very negative terms, especially in relation to its courtship with corruption, and it is no surprise that Badejo addresses the issue in his works.

Despite his dedication to his professional responsibilities to social and political affairs, Professor Badejo has never failed to contribute to human and community development. He has become so instrumental to the growth of the human world that he is recognized for being relentless in helping people regardless of personal cost. In his capacity as a lawyer, he has offered his skills to save people who are wrongly persecuted and used his capacity to bring light to their world. It is particularly enticing that he has offered many of these services pro bono. Apart from offering professional advice and services to people, Badejo has also been very effective in helping to shed light on international issues for people who cannot afford his services and need them.

There is hardly any aspect of life to which he has not had his tentacle of influence spread. As a matter of fact, he has seen the avoidance of conflicts in many African countries by being a mediator, using his experience and expertise to convince parties of the need to embrace dialogue and inclusivity. His ideas have been able to foster peace in many places where he gets to. A man of peace deserves peace.

PS: This is a preliminary piece to celebrate Badejo’s forthcoming 70th birthday in March 2025.

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Opinion

As The Old Year Dies, New Hopes Arise!

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By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

The old year dies. An old year dies. New hopes arise. Twenty-twenty-four will die in days. Never to return. It will go into the abyss. We shall not miss it. Or, most of us will not miss it. It will be remembered as the year of infinite hardship in Nigeria. A year of hardship in which, in his first media chat, the President, father of the nation said that he doesn’t regret his hard policies. The people are suffering. So be it. They will enjoy the fruits later. No words of comfort. So insensitive. So uncaring. In 1983, then governor of Bendel State, the late Professor Ambrose Alli asked hungry, striking teachers whether they wanted him to produce money from his blood! That question sealed his fate. He was voted out at the next election, and the compassionate Samuel Ogbemudia became governor.

2024! It is the year we will never forget. It is the year of the triumph of the captors of the State. The year that some mothers sold off their children in order to feed. Or to raise capital and trade. Or just to survive. It is a year of full subsidy removal. It is the year when dozens died while queueing for the so-called palliatives. The year gas explosions killed many. The year in which bandits took control of parts of a state, while soldiers were busy killing innocent citizens in Okuama, Delta State. It is the year when bandits seized whole families. It is the year of slander, of defamation, and near-violent reprisals. It is the year of sudden deaths because of life’s pressures. The ebullient Onyeka Onwenu died while entertaining guests. What pains did she bear? It is the year where psychiatric wards were filled with patients. Victims of depression. It is the year the price of rice killed the appetite. It is the year of silence from the House of Men of God. The priests have elected to stay with their chattels in brothels of dishonour while the Feast of death reigns over the land!

A year lasts three hundred and sixty-five days. Or three hundred and sixty-six days, when it bears the burden of a leap year. Why is a leap year the brother of drowning compatriots? Yet, sometimes a year could seem like forever. A year with slow feet drags us back. Or keeps us still. And we cannot afford to stay motionless on account of a slow year. So, the year must die. It is true that even a sweet year will die.

What gives life to a year? Things said? Things done? Things undone? A year is potpourri of events. What is not done is part of the spirit of the year. Some years are more powerful than others. They carry with them the power of change. Of fortune. Of failure. Of disaster. Of death. Of life. Of escape. Of exclusion and inclusion. The force of a passing year hits us in different ways. How it comes and from what direction, we are not prophets to tell. So, we grope. We hope. We plod on in hope that the new year will grow vegetables for us even in our dark days. What audacity! What presumptuousness!

Sometimes we are in a hurry to push the year away. A year that is bad, needs to go away. No one wants to live a permanent nightmare. A bad year kills the spirit. Only the strong ones or the ones favoured by heaven will survive. Those who arrive at their last bus stop will go no further. They will pass away with the spirit and temper of the year. Whose fault is it? The year? The managers of the people, that is, the government? Just providence? In times of an epidemic, it is bad for everybody, even if not all carry the virus. The fear of the virus is enough prison, as it happened during COVId-19.

A good man can die in a bad year. Just as a bad man can die too with the year. When a year opens its belly to receive your body into the abyss, your hands will be hanging from your sides. And the carriers of the carcass will proclaim how heavy the carcass has become. It is the way of life. It is the road which mankind has travelled on in aeons. Yet, we do not live in humility. We live as if we own life, as if it was not given to us, and that it can be taken away at short notice.

Yet, how dreadful would it be if we were to live in constant dread of disaster, of disease, and of death! Physical trepidation could injure the heart. Could traumatise one and lead to mental health challenges. The joy of living would disappear. So, we are wired to forget so that we may enjoy the little pleasures of this life. The tragedy or death of a loved one – family, friend, colleague, neighbour – reminds us with a jolt of our mortality, our frail being, our smallness in the mighty scheme of things. We are not different from animals in this sense. There was this Anglican bishop who used to urge politicians to visit the morgue once every year. In his view, that would sober them up for a while. Have you been to the morgue recently to view a loved one? Have you ever been to a morgue? How did you feel even in the most sophisticated and ‘poshest’ morgue? This call to forget and remember at the same time is one of the conundrums of humanity. How we walk the tight rope makes or mars us. Every man his fate, every man his cross, every man his sadness, everyman his death.

From the sobering morgue experience, we move to the burial site and immediately walt off to the party venue and dance away with zest and gusto, forgetting the dead, remembering only the living. And we have no apology for that. It is the way of life. It is the way of the living. To remember is to cry. To forget is to live on! Contradictory? Yes. The world is filled with contradictions.

Except we record the events of the year, no one remembers the year. No one can forget 2019/2020, the year of COVID-19! So, the year must give birth. Give birth to etches. Things to remember. Memories are the library of a dead or dying year. What memories do we hold about a year? The dying year 2024 took my closest sibling away. Wish 2024 never came. True that our paths bifurcated on account of social and religious frictions. Yet the bond of eternal brotherhood remains. It is the way of memories. It is the way of life. Regrets often come later, after the event, after the facts.

Reading this essay is no guarantee that the reader will survive 2024 and enter the belly of 2025. Those who left the earth on 25th December had high hopes. But providence had other plans. January 1st 2025 is coming. But will this coming be the going away of some? We are no prophets to tell! Only time will tell!

HAPPY 2025!

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