Opinion

Mr. Macaroni And Cultural Politics

Published

3 years ago

June 16, 2022

NewTimes

Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon

By Toyin Falola
Human evolution is a scientific reality that reveals the nature of becoming human. By evolving to the full realisation of humans, nature teaches us that the construction and calibration of ideas in every human society and civilisation involve a critical process of superordinate experiences where unwanted particles of ideas are repealed and important ones are incorporated from time to time. The moment humans understand they have a similar physical identity and a common goal to survive in the jungle we call life, their awareness compels a corresponding social behaviour, unanimously accepted because of the drive to outsmart other creatures sharing the environment with them. Here comes the ground reason for the development and evolution of culture. The culture of a society comprises the foundational resources from which every other ideological or ideational construct is drawn. In essence, a people’s culture would ultimately reflect in all aspects of their lives, no matter how insignificant this reflection may be. In other words, a people’s culture may influence their socialisation process and system, political ideas, religious identity, and even general human philosophy. These are the core tenets of human identity everywhere in the world.

Mr Macaroni

If political ideas, like other markers of human identity, are exclusively determined by the arbitrary assimilation of in-group values, the logical question would be how is it possible for the same people to teach ideas of otherwise different humans and, by implication, cultures, as it is generally believed that these ideas will most predictably disrupt or sometimes tamper with their identity? The readily available response to such an imaginary question is that as long as humans interact with other groups of people, they have the possibility of embracing much of their in-group ideas, even when they sometimes run at variance with the individual’s primary identity. In essence, an English person can adopt the political culture of Greek democracy through cross-border movements and transnational economic exchanges, and an Indian can decide to be a Confucianist through similar processes. However, what is predominantly undebatable is that ideas not produced from one’s native identities are always laced with characteristics that would show their obvious departure from the source when adopted. Therefore, we can talk about American democracy not as we would talk about the Indian democracy because these civilisations have injected attitudes and attributes of their indigenous identity into their political ideologies.

READ ALSO: Debo Adedayo: Mr. Macaroni And Socio-Political Activism

Consequently, if we talk about politics among African people, especially from the postcolonial lens, we will be doing many disservices to the system if we disengage the African cultural dynamics from its making. While politics gives a comprehensive dissection of human and administrative affairs management, their cultural traditions reveal how these systems will be operated. Thus, the place of culture in these political architectures is respected poignantly, and the moment there is a flagrant repudiation of this unwritten code, there will be eruptions in the system, capable of leading to its colossal disaster. This leads us to the concept of cultural politics and the various dynamics in the African political landscape.

Every human civilisation has a political system with ideas and values; however, it can succumb to cultural traditions’ superordinate or superimposing hands. Debo Adedayo, aka Mr Macaroni, is a well-grounded Nigerian in cultural politics who understands that while activism is a vital instrument of political negotiation and an effective means of demanding leadership accountability, the place of culture in the actualisation of all these remains strategically emphatic. Given this understanding, he makes himself available to the dictates of culture even in his artistic activism against unbridled leadership that has long permeated the political fabrics of the country.

The marks of a great individual are visible to see. These signs may not be easily obvious for people to make meaning of, but they are always there because the signs are the accumulating forces that propel the individual to attain greater heights in their subsequent years. Although not everyone experiences challenges and issues that draw out these marks of greatness at difficult times, that become great in life, there has never been a great person who did not experience a body of challenges in their course of growth and the process of becoming. Among other eventful experiences that Mr. Macaroni has had as an evolving young man, a defining one tried his resolve as a student leader representative in the Redeemer’s University, a faith-based institution that produces quality people.

READ ALSO: Court Orders Release Of Mr Macaroni, Other Arrested #OccupyLekki Protesters

Due to the nature of his representative position, he was supposed to deal with different quarters of the school’s administrative organogram where negotiation, concession, and collaboration are necessarily required so that the positions of the people he represented would not be jeopardised or threatened. He was stuck at a particular time because of the difficulty between him and the management body, but because he made himself available to assimilate more cultural ideas, he was baptised into the crucible of cultural politics through his engagement and conversation with Professor Wande Abimbola.

And this is where modernity, human evolution, and cultural traditions meet. As humans uncover a new form of technological invention or innovations powered by the continuous use of intellectual power, they are always compelled by the situation to reconsider their culture, politics, and economy, too, because all these are always coming with their corresponding impact on all available structures. For example, consider that the emergence of the internet has completely redefined human communication and its distribution. With the internet, there is a continuous probing of cultural ideas, forcing cultural ideas that cannot withstand the pressure of scrutiny to fall off the surface. Mr. Macaroni was trained to be a thespian in the university, but his leadership involvement entrusted him with speaking for the people’s rights. Whereas that order is meant to be challenged by the force of society where he will begin to navigate his world after graduation, accepting leadership responsibility is possible if he would integrate the emerging realities into his dreams and ambition. It is possible to actualise one’s ambition in an era where the internet has created a parallel space occupied by humans with the power to conduct their normal day-to-day activities without human contact. Mr Macaroni took the stage to another level when he understood that possibility.

Debo Adedayo chose the internet and the social media platforms as his stage, where he delivers the truckload of ideas that his professors, especially Professor Ahmed Yerima, a seasoned playwright in Africa, imparted to him while at the university. Though it took him long to understand that the stage does not have a specific physical reference, the moment he updated his understanding of a stage as a space where others can access one’s fictional performances, he immediately began to explore ideas and the orientation accumulated as a student learning under the four walls of the school and also as the leader of a body of students from whom the responsibility of protection, quality representation, or positive relationships are expected as a basic contribution.

By exploring the internet as his environment of action, Mr. Macaroni has made substantial progress, speaking with a loud decibel throughout his works. He has produced works that crudely satirise the totalitarian posture of various government dispensations and, in addition to this, added a bit of physically demonstrated action to support the course of the common people as against pitching his tent with known oppressors. Whether he is deliberately choosing all these by himself (from being at variance with his university management to being the target of law enforcement agencies for the roles he played in the popular #EndSARS movement) is immaterial; what remains constant is that he has been in the limelight for leadership-induced responsibilities.

At some point, the Lagos State government invited Mr. Macaroni for a conversation on peace, which was believed to be necessary for the post-EndSARS period so that the vibrant generation of youth involved in the movement would not keep assuming that the government was flagrantly against their safety, ambition, and access to a decent lifestyle. This invitation, which he honourably declined, attests to the importance of the internet in formulating policies in contemporary times. It shows that the cultural traditions of every society with internet access are bound to be affected because communication, information dissemination, and consumption have changed for good. Cultural politics comes into play in this beautiful dimension.

READ ALSO: Police Arrest Mr Macaroni, Other #OccupyLekki Protesters

It should be emphasised that Mr. Macaroni’s rejection of the State’s invitation was inspired by his awareness that the internet community from where he won his recognition as an important representative is actively alive and would not tolerate the acceptance of class suicide. The punishment for this would have been the loss of his identity, economic sources, future ambitions, and his psychological or mental wellness. Considering all these, refusing the invitation would be a preferable sacrifice, which he did, not by dishonouring the governor’s seat but by highlighting why honouring the invitation would be a betrayal of conscience. Here is cultural politics outpacing every other thing.

With this feat, one would almost believe that Mr. Macaroni, who engages the government through his online media platforms, is a firebrand activist, especially if one is unfamiliar with his thespian background. However, listening to him for some minutes would immediately make one understand that he represents his childhood career choice of drama in his engagement. For one, he has truly been positively transformed to the point that he is not considered less than a cultural and theatre icon whose knowledge of how things work in the social media age cannot but be tapped into. He demonstrates his grasp of events by educating anyone who cares to listen that social media platforms are in their emerging stage and come with intimidating economic benefits that will immediately sweep people off their feet.

In essence, because change has inevitably happened, professors must accommodate these changes and incorporate them into what they teach to the students. Individuals in the school should not be denied embracing the internet and social media platforms as a place where they can put their talent to the test. The flexibility of the current time shows that one’s audiences are already available and scattered everywhere in the world. They will embrace what creative people produce when they find their content suitable. Therefore, it would not matter if the audience is in Russia; they will immediately have direct access to what you produce in Nigeria through social media.

This conversation brings us to the concept of satire in literature, which M. H. Abrams describes in A Glossary of Literary Terms as “the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation” (2009: 320). Writers, dramatists, and other performers have substantially adopted satire from time immemorial because it provides them with soft-landing to express their inner feelings and desires, which can erupt into social reactions if not handled cleverly and satirically. The place of human culture is also important in the manoeuvring of satire, for without such observation, the message would be eclipsed in the process. Mr. Macaroni has been involved in several activism-oriented engagements to challenge the establishment of their outrageous political behaviour, unbridled and inordinate ambitions, and many other devastating problems that their engagements propel. However, activism at his stage and level cannot be organised as it was when he was a student. It would either be the product of reverberating annoyance, such as the one you find in the #EndSARS protest, or it will be masterminded by fully determined individuals who do not bother about the consequences of their actions.

But now, Mr. Macaroni has social media platforms, which he effectively uses to further his ideological convictions about representation. He uses satire, most of which reveals the biting decadence that has enveloped the country and how the intricacies of power have resulted in a socio-political compromise that triggers social and economic disparity, unrest, and even the overarching influence of law enforcement agencies in the country. Mr. Macaroni has produced numerous satirical acts that reveal how compromised the country’s political system is by introducing cultural politics to his engagements. By putting actions into comic plays, Mr. Macaroni has continued to engage the political class to educate them about their gross misconduct in the political domain.

Due to the commercialisation of Nigerian politics, followers sometimes make wrong choices that they know would have minimal impact. Because the system already is bastardised, injecting sanity into it has been impossible as the helpless youths who are denied generational access to financial power have been carefully cut out from the system. Since they are not actively involved, most of what happens to them are determined by those who do not share their feelings. In his little way, Debo Adedayo has always engaged the world’s denizens about what obtains on the political front in Nigeria. Amid all these, there is a place for every individual to make their marks as living organisms roaming the earth’s surface for a particular time. Much as the generality of humans is critically involved in the construction of human ideas and values, the combination of which gives or produces cultural traditions and identity, the fact that everyone would be remembered for their contributions cannot be undermined.

More so, the social media age helps to amplify the contributions that individuals make in their course of existence. Whether good or bad, they will be remembered for their activities when the lasting memory will be created from all these. So, when Professor Yerima asked Adedayo how much, or if at all, he wanted his artistic productions in the social media to influence the coming generation and how they would continue to be relevant even after he retires from these engagements, the young man’s response was everything anyone needs to understand about his ideological identity. He believes that assigning values to humans should be informed by the understanding that such an individual has something they represent and stand for in the general scheme of things. Inevitably, people will have experiences that will stretch their resolve but what will make them stand out is their determination not to compromise.
When individuals have made considerable progress in piloting the affairs of their lives, it is a moral responsibility that they touch on substantial aspects of human experience so that they can influence areas and issues positively before the termination of their relevance. The social recognition associated with Adedayo comes with expectations of responsibilities that people want him to fulfil as a social being. During the conversations, it became obvious that his role in redefining the feminine image by portraying every form of their social experience should be known. This is necessary because it is a conventional reality that silence on salient issues may be construed as conspiracy, which would have outrageous consequences on the individual. For many community members, remaining silent without any socioeconomic and sociopolitical power would mean nothing. However, to have substantial economic, social, and political power and remain silent when salient issues, especially those affecting women’s freedom of women, are mentioned is considered unforgivable.

Society expects that the magnitude of an individual’s popularity imposes corresponding social behaviour and contributions on them. For anyone in Mr. Macaroni’s position, it is not out of line to expect that they use their voices to project society’s anomalies so that it will receive ultimate redefinition. Of course, Mr. Macaroni has done this substantially in his depictions of political predicaments caused by the irresponsible leadership that Nigeria has encountered from time immemorial. He does not factor in sociocultural issues like the underage marriage popular in the country, improper political relations between men and women, cringing domestic violence that is ubiquitous in the country, and several other areas where women have been unfairly treated, and this has necessitated the question about his position in all of these. In response, he claimed that in his skits, he has addressed the issue of domestic violence faced by Nigerian women and how they can overcome it, with the promise to explore all other areas.

By and large, all these issues are closely related to political participation in the human world. It is important to say that the construction of an identity does not evade the contributions of many people because they all would partake in shaping a collective image for themselves through their actions and inactions. Humans are naturally complex, so they have continued to undertake various activities to ensure they remain proportionally relevant in all their engagements. Politics comes from their cultural understanding because it is the basis of their sociological and socialisation methods. Once an individual is baptised in the ideas and philosophies of their indigenous identity, they remain strong in representing the values when they come of age.

Debo Adedayo, aka Mr. Macaroni, has demonstrated his zeal for speaking out for the oppressed since his undergraduate days, and society has continued to mould him so that he will understand the dynamics of cultural politics and how he can effectively feature and make generational contributions.

Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Opinion

Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

Published

4 hours ago

December 22, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

Published

1 day ago

December 21, 2024

NewTimes

Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State

Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

Opinion

Burning Issues: (FCT Minister And Paulosa) (2)

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The other burning issue, apart from Farotimi and Babalola’s, which I wish to take a look at – and which I am taking a look at now – relates to what is happening in our capital territory. What is this burning issue – which our human rightists and civil society organisations and personages are surprisingly and un-satisfactorily not inclined to focus attention on and examine as they should? I may be wrong, but it surely seems to me that this issue, this burning issue, which is of more importance than Farotimi and Babalola’s – which has been given undue adulation – is deliberately being neglected and depreciated by proclaimers and heroes and heroines of human rights, justice, equity and equality of rights in your country my country our country. Why, why, why and why, why, why? Anyone who has any iota of patriotic sensibility, feeling and judgment well watered and buttressed by a very great influence upon his or her critical judgment will keep on asking the question I am asking.

Mr. Nyesom Wike, as almost everybody who can read and write a little knows, is the current minister of your, my and our Federal Capital Territory. His post or office is akin to that of a governor of a state. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State who was drafted, after his two terms there expired, to continue in the FCT as its new minister-governor or governor-minister under the auspices of a party he is not a true member of, Mr. Wike cannot but be seen as a lucky man. He is in every possible and impossible way. Minister-Governor Wike is a lucky man and a very fortunate one indeed. No former governor of Rivers State (or of any Nigerian state), as far as I know, has achieved what the famed political rouser of rabbles has achieved in one short gubernatorial life-time, and at a relatively young and fertile age. His dual achievement with and in two different political parties at this delicate point of Nigerian politics indicates to our politicians and us all that there is always time for a reminder that there are ready-made high rewards for arch-angels of betrayals. And Mr. Wike may go down in Rivers and Nigerian history as both an arch-angel and an emperor of betrayal of us all if we attempt to indicate what I have defined here as his dual achievement.

We can roughly divide, briefly, Wike’s political development into two periods. During the first, excluding his lower political positions before he became the governor of Rivers State, he quickly adapted his style to that of an emperor who became a rabble-rouser of rabble-rousers whose gubernatorial efficiency moved from stiffness to stiffness. He did not at any time feel that he needed suppleness to govern Rivers State. “Let the heavens fall if they must fall!” We are not there yet in this attempted analysis of the stiff-hearted and stiff-minded one. True? But he is already demonstrating this characteristic in Abuja. False? Judge and give the answer yourself.

Even after he left Rivers State a short while ago as governor, he is still trying to control happenings there to the political discomfiture of his hand-picked successor, his erstwhile “boy” and “son” – with whom he has fallen out. As the minister-governor or governor-minister of the FCT, Wike is occupied with the other taste of the emperor-juggernaut formulator – doing the work of two key political masters in one room and desk of political jugglery. Since his appearance in the FCT, minister-governor or governor-minister Wike has allegedly attempted to recover or transform for Abuja what is not traditionally or socially Abuja’s, for example, the city’s social idiom and landscape and terrain as well as its environs. In doing this he sometimes over-steps his bounds and mark of human/inhuman decency/indecency and psychological understanding of human nature, if you follow well what I am saying; he has so far become at best not really better than a typical pedestrian Nigerian lawyer and officer of political power: in his explorations so far in the Federal Capital Territory we have come to the realization, as T. S. Eliot would say, that “it is so often true that only by going too far can we find out how far we can go.” But one has to be a very negatively obstinate and self-serving emperor and a thorough-bred arch-angel of betrayal of the people and masses to justify such perilous and perfidious expeditions and adventures.

Last week, I saw on Arise Television “The Morning Show” Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the dutiful widow of the late Nigerian supreme patriot and soldier, Colonel Ogbebor (of Benin stock) battling, so to say, to wrest the legacy of her late husband from the tight grip of the adventurous FCT minister-governor who has registered his name and signature in the hearts and consciousness of the people as the depriver of their possessions. The three anchors of “The Morning Show” were in their respective ways splendid in their structures of remarks and questions to Chief (Mrs.) Rita Lori-Ogbebor whom I have had occasions in times past to call patriotically Rita A-K 47 on account of her natural right to fire her beautiful tongue at any person, usually an enemy, of just actions. When she made the case she made to protect the estate of Paulosa Nigeria Limited, her late husband’s aforesaid legacy in the FCT, she was in her natural territory, habitat and element where even at age eighty-four, she never ever loses her stability – although she unusually restrained herself in the Arise Television appearance. Dr. Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, and Ayo Mairo-Ese clearly explored seriously but delightfully the mind of the mother-hen of Warri – my other coinage and appellation I gave her in my poetry. Her “The Morning Show” appearance enabled me to see the poignant cry de profundis of the FCT inhabitants whose property and residences in different guises have been demolished. She did not say anything that was out of joint. She spoke and came out as a mother, protector and symbol of the people who have suffered – and are suffering – from the state of affliction and anguish Wike’s demolitions have placed – and are placing – the people.

Ojy Okpe in her delicious and delectable “What is Trending” slot on the same show, showed without exaggeration but with further elaboration what people in and outside Abuja/FCT think of the mighty Wike’s demolitions, a burning issue that the Senate has asked “Let Heaven Fall” minister-governor Wike to halt as the committee the Senate set up on the issue starts its work. Of course, we cannot but assume that Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as well as Mrs. Ireti Kingigbe, the senator representing the FCT in the Senate and other patriotic senators diligently did what they did on the floor of the Senate when the burning issue was tabled for debate with the gracious understanding and authorization of the Senate President.

I need to state further that the “The Morning Show” anchors did well and extremely so by giving the minister-governor the opportunity to air his anti-Paulosa story. His senior special assistant on public communication and social media, Mr. Olalere Olayinka, stood in for him. After he gave the reasons for the clamp-down, his responses to the questions the anchors put to him followed the usual pattern of denials by artificial men in power – denials that they always use to intimidate and betray the people. In fact, Mr. Olayinka’s ploy to ride easily over our dear Rufai Oseni, a wholesome representative of the deprived, that the chap (or is it guy?) and his boss always employ their colloquial speeches and remarks to dishonor, failed. Yes, the ploy failed woefully. In stanza after stanza of the exchanges between Mr. Olayinka and the Arise anchors, he deteriorated – and his deterioration was hall-marked when he unwittingly revealed that the Paulosa land had been acquired by his minister-governor’s close cohort, an act that was nothing short of gross abuse of power and authority.

Because the Senate is already using its authority, power and privilege to resolve the burning issue, hopefully, in a way that the late Colonel Ogbebor’s legacy and family will not be subjected to any kind of degradation, I will utter no more words for now. I trust, however, that the liberties the Senate is taking – or has taken – are for the sake of order to favour the down-trodden.

As for the minister-governor, the PDP emperor at large, here is an immortal quote from Marcus Aurelius, the magnificent and authentic Roman Emperor and philosopher (A.D. 121-180): “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” You lose nothing by giving us a slice of your humanity by your right acts and correct words. Everything changes and passes. Be humane as a human being.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.