Forgotten Dairies
APC Governors’ Forum’s Missing N800b -By Festus Adedayo
In that Arise TV interview, Otubanjo provided the nexus between endemic political corruption in Nigeria and Nigeria’s perpetual underdevelopment. The worst part of it is, thinking that a manifestly corrupt government and system as we have today could offer the people hope, is akin to waiting for Samuel Beckett’s Godot. Anyone hoping that Nigerian political parties, as they are currently constituted, can bring about any change is day-dreaming, says the former University of Ibadan professor.
Principle. What principle? Two concepts dropped on my mind as I read that pep-talk statement. One is a famous aphorism of the president’s Yoruba people. The thematic concern of that wise saying is hypocrisy. It goes thus: It is only a hypocrite who, face to face with a masquerader, greets him, ‘it’s been a while’; what affinity do the living have with the dead? In its raw Yoruba form, that wise saying is rendered as, “Alábòsí èdá níí kí eégún pé ‘ó tó ojó méta’; ní’bo l’ará ayé ti bá ará òrun tan?” The aphorism sits on the cosmological perception of the Yoruba that masquerades are “ará òrun” – beings from the other world. The masked ones, they believe, are earthly manifestation of their deceased ancestors who visit from the terrestrial world. The yearly pilgrimages of the masquerades are believed to be connections of spiritual intermediaries with the living.
The second concept provoked by the president’s pseudo sanctimony is‘Àtubòtán’. It emerged from these same president’s people’s centuries of values of everyday living. Many attempts at interpreting Àtubòtán have failed to hit the bull’s eye. Some say it is the end of a human being or end of their action; to some others, it approximates consequences. Àtubòtán is however deeper. It can be said to be the posterior of human actions and inaction, the final outcome of life’s script. To the Yoruba, no one is considered lucky until the final script, the denouement of life’s stagecraft. That, to them, is the point of Àtubòtán. In musically drilling into the concept of Àtubòtán, late Yoruba Fuji music icon, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, once sang that the hypocrite (Alábòsí) could be wealthy; they give birth; they build magnificent edifices, etc. but the Àtubòtán of the Alábòsí is always calamitous. In the same vein, in his “Oramedia as a Vehicle for Development in Africa: The Imperative for the Ethical Paradigm of Development,” Prof Abiodun Salawu of the North-West University, Mmabatho, South Africa, affirmed this symbiosis when he said, “the end of the mischievous, the fraudulent, the corrupt is never pleasant (Àtubòtán alábòsí kìí dára)”.
So, the president wants peace in the APC? That is interesting. Again, my mind dashed down to my Jamaican reggae music idol, Peter Tosh and his iconic track, Feel No Way. The message of the song is founded on justice. It offers spiritual endurance to those confronting hardship and steely hands of oppressors. Strewn together in raw Jamaican patois, Feel No Way means, “don’t worry”. It is a message of assurance; that every person will get their due reward as this is a natural, logical symmetry of life.
Often referred to as “No Bother Feel No Way” or “Payday”, in the track, Tosh sang: “No bother feel no way/It’s coming close to payday, I say…/Every man get paid accord his work this day/…It’s coming close to payday I say…/Cannot plant peas and reap rice/Cannot plant cocoa and reap yam/Cannot plant turnip and reap tomato/Cannot plant breadfruit and reap potato…Cannot tell lie and hear truth/Cannot live bad and love good/Cannot live up and get down/Cannot give a dollar and want a pound…”
Tosh’s cause-and-effect homily finds corroboration in holy writs. The Bhagavad Gita, ancient 700-verse Hindu scripture, believed to serve as a practical, spiritual guide to navigating life’s challenges, emphasizes the symbiosis of good and evil. In it, the natural chronology of evil begetting evil has its roots in the universal law of karma: action creates an inevitable reaction. Lord Krishna, one of the most widely revered deities in Hinduism, worshiped as the eighth incarnation, avatar, of Lord Vishnu and as the Supreme God, explains that any action done with selfish attachment and harmful intent sparks negative energy. The evil of a today is a catalyst for future suffering. In the same vein, the teachings of both the Bible and Quran are that actions have consequences. To them, God is a just judge who not only rewards good deeds but holds every individual accountable for the evil they commit.
At the drop of a hat, the president unapologetically gloats about the dwindling fate of Nigerian opposition parties. Whether as a Freudian slip, presidential flippancy borne out of a Kabiyesi mentality, or his usual you-can-go-jump-inside-the-
That violent “scattering” inclination of the president has trickled down. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives and his Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, apparently taking a cue from the president’s obviously un-statesmanlike public statement, doubled down on this recourse to violence. It reminds me of Malian author Yambo Ouologuem’s Bound to Violence. A 1968 tragic-comedic epic which exposes the brutal, bloody history of the fictional African empire of Nakem, Ouologuem brutally indicts the duo of the oppressive indigenous Saïfs dynasty and European colonizers, using a Paris-educated protagonist who struggled against both forces as his canvass. So, last month, at a dinner marking the birthday of the wife of Leke Abejide, Kogi State lawmaker representing Yagba Federal Constituency, Gbajabiamila urged Abejide not to leave the ADC but to stay in the party and “fight and scatter” the party. “My charge to you is to stay in that same ADC. Fight them. Scatter them… We like what you are doing. Continue,” he said.
Such comments, given imprimatur by the president himself, have further fueled and fouled the political climate. The decibel of political violence in Nigeria is so high today, close to a year before the election proper, that it invokes dread and concern. This has invariably confirmed the wonky logic of electoral competition in Nigeria as a zero-sum game where survival of the fittest and elimination of the weakest reign. But the Nigerian opposition is also not helping matters. Like fissiparous seeds of a walnut pod, the Nigerian opposition is in such an embarrassing disarray today, their greed for power and inability to coalesce round a single candidate being the Achilles heel that Tinubu capitalizes upon to wreak his havoc on multiparty democracy.
Regime grovelers have, ad nauseam, mouthed the president’s distancing from the fate of the opposition. Which is self-serving. Motive being the first consideration in a crime investigation, the president and his APC have the most robust motive in the destruction of the opposition. Psycho analyses have fingered Tinubu as being mortally afraid of losing the 2027 election. While it is not a crime to gloat at the disintegration and castration of the opposition, it is criminal to sow seeds of discord in their midst, using the instrumentality of the electoral institution as well as judicial manipulation. Open innuendo that smacks of admittance of a hand in the opposition’s disintegration, as exhibited by the president and his chief of staff, is a stimulus for the kind of chaos and uncertainty that we witness in Nigerian politics today.
Government is not hiding its desperation to hold the opposition down. For instance, an underhand tactic cloaked in the robe of judicial pronouncement has held a major opposition leader, Nasir El_Rufai, in detention for what is, even in criminal justice estimation, an overkill, a surplusage of judicial retribution. A recent release by ADC leader, Atiku Abubakar, sees El-Rufai’s continued incarceration as a deliberate ploy to keep him out of circulation until a final nail is rammed into the coffin of the ADC. I agree. The ex-Kaduna State governor is seen as a major strategic brain-box of that opposition party.
Now, the president wants peace in his APC. Didn’t Tosh warn him that “It’s coming close to payday”? His inversion of Karmic law reminds me of Tatalo Alamu, Ibadan’s legendary bard. He who walks in the terrace of disrespect, if he attracts disgrace, there is no harm in it, Tatalo sang, which he renders in Yoruba as, “eni f’abuku, t’o ba f’oju kan ete o, ko si laburu nibe o!”
APC kicked off its primary election across the country yesterday and Àtubòtán, Karma if you like, is already manifest. The chaotic situation in the party across the country is a replica of the Yoruba Àáràgbá tree that is neither accommodated within nor without. In incantation chants, Yoruba translate this state of discomfort as “Ilé ò gbàá, ònà ò gbàá níí se ewé àáràgbá”. In the Karmic world, APC’s hen has perched on a rope and neither the rope nor the hen is able to find peace. In Tosh’s words, APC and its leaders “cannot plant turnip and reap tomato”.
Listening to Prof Femi Otubanjo yesterday on an Arise TV interview seems to reveal to me that total destruction will be the only solution to the current Nigerian chaos. It was what Bob Marley saw in his Ouija board almost five decades ago. Otubanjo’s flaming review of Nigeria’s party politics’ dysfunction coincided with my reflection on the intra-party chaos among Nigerian APC governors which occurred a little over a week ago. That chaos, like a disturbing whoosh of vapour, vamoosed as disturbingly as it came. It led to the near-removal of Hope Uzodinma, Imo State governor, as Chair of governors who called themselves progressive but whose minds are as regressive as the sideways walk of a crab.
A newspaper report had alleged that the sum of N800 billion warehoused to fund the President’s 2027 re-election campaign, was misappropriated. This momentarily led to the factionalization of the Governors’ Forum. As we speak, apart from an amorphous group which calls itself the South East APC chapter, which gave a tepid rebuttal of the humongous heist, the man at the center of the allegation has remained mum. For 31 state governors to cause a diversion of monies meant for their people’s development from the federation account into the personal election drive of a single person, is not only a criminal theft of their people’s patrimony but an indicator of the systemic rot Nigeria confronts. Prior to this allegation, there was an allegation that the sum of N100 billion develops wings monthly from the Nigerian federation account. A N20 trillion is also alleged to be missing from the same federation account. None of these allegations is disturbing enough to get the president’s comment, nor action from the system. The anti-graft agencies have however lived happily in silence thereafter. Even Nigerians whose money was allegedly stolen and diverted are silent.
Anyone who reads me on this platform will bear me out that, from inception, I have always attested to the Ogundabede, (head or chief of thieves – Olórí Olè) spirit that governs the hearts of the present runners of Nigeria. They have chests that are as hard as the carapace of a tortoise. In the Yoruba Ifá corpus, Ògúndábède, also known as Ògúndá Ogbè, is a prominent and complex figure. It is a divination sign called Odu that is often associated with the archetype trickster Tortoise and legendary thief who deploys his wits and manipulative tendencies to outsmart others. When divined as an Odù in a divination, Ògúndábède divines significant financial windfalls or blessings which rain unexpectedly on its beneficiary. It sometimes comes with minimal physical exertion. Regardless of its linkage with trickery, however, Ògúndábède teaches the fatality awaiting free wealth, importance of truth and integrity.
Yes, from independence and even prior, Nigeria has been ravaged by an endemic and persistent political Ògúndábède spirit that has led to severe crisis in the country’s economic, social and political development. Never however has Nigerian leadership been faced with this level of concentration of termites in high places, in an orgy of pandemic corruption. The pathological effects of this are manifest as corruption-ridden democratic instability, political assassination, nil or low governmental legitimacy, perpetual insecurity, abject poverty, infrastructural decay and electoral crisis. They are all with us.
In that Arise TV interview, Otubanjo provided the nexus between endemic political corruption in Nigeria and Nigeria’s perpetual underdevelopment. The worst part of it is, thinking that a manifestly corrupt government and system as we have today could offer the people hope, is akin to waiting for Samuel Beckett’s Godot. Anyone hoping that Nigerian political parties, as they are currently constituted, can bring about any change is day-dreaming, says the former University of Ibadan professor. The chaos and plunder we see today reflect the nature of Nigeria as a dysfunctional state. That nature of state produces this nature of politics and political parties that lack substance and format. No Nigerian political party, Otubanjo said, is democratic as they are mere instruments of getting power. Nigeria and its party system are inherently enveloped in a corrupted system.
The Àtubòtán the APC is cooking in all the 36 states of the federation, in the name of primary and consensus, in the words of Otubanjo, is a ruse, a cloak for authoritarian decision making. It cannot but lead to anarchy. It is a means of recruiting bendable people the president and his people can control and an avenue to shrink democratic choices. Governors have become so powerful and stupendously rich that they hold the leash of their parties and recruit their Yes-men into elective offices. Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State is fighting to install himself and hirelings in political offices like the Ibadan Alapansanpa masquerade. So also are other governors. With the consensus gambit that Tinubu brought to the states, a tragedy has befallen our political party system under this Leviathan. You could see a mini-emperor, Gbajabiamila, strutting like a peacock in the Surulere Lagos constituency and magisterially anointing candidates like a Kábíyèsí. They all feed into the rot, revealing the Kabiyesis in power today.
But, Àtubòtán is most times slow in its judgment. It will nevertheless strike. These ones have thrown a stone that hit the Iroko and are feverishly looking backwards waiting for its strike. They should be told that the Olúweri, the spirit inside the tree, is painstaking, even in its wrath.
