Very soon, the political elite who hold over Nigeria’s tomorrow would realize that they are the Okete who, on the day of the festivity for their mother’s funeral, they had eaten the animal hide meant for making the drum for the entertainment of guests. By then, it would be too late. All that would be heard is the sorrowful tune of a dirge
By Festus Adedayo
I am reading a copy of Marcel Dirsus’ How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive. A 2024 non-fiction book, in it, Dirsus examines historical strategies for overthrowing dictators. He also looks at how effective dictators can be in this modern era, especially in a world of contemporary mass surveillance technologies. One of Dirsus’ narratives that prologues the book is the imperious reign of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Fast-forward to February 15, 2011. Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, was in turmoil. Gaddafi had ordered the arrest of a lawyer who represented victims of the Abu Salim prison massacre in Tripoli in 1996. Human Rights Watch had estimated that 1,270 prisoners were massacred in the prison by Gaddafi. Protests began to mutate. Then bombs draped the streets. He was on the verge of kissing the canvas. As he ran from house to house in Sirte, where he was born, it was obvious that the end, mimicking biblical exegesis, was nigh. Rebels had taken over nearly all parts of Gaddafi’s huge Libyan personal estate. One of them, upon taking hold of Gaddafi’s home, seized his golden gun as symbol of his rout. Gaddafi and remnants of his bodyguards were so hungry that they made do with miserable pasta and rice. When the end came on October 20, it came with indignities. The rebels brutalized and sodomised the Libyan leader with a bayonet. They then flung him on top of a car. As he lay dead, the only shroud for his topless corpse was the indignity of being kept inside a locker in a local shopping mall.
Fast-forward again to sometime last week. Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi’s second-born son, was assassinated. Libya media said armed “four masked men” had killed him in Zintan, Tripoli. Earlier, three of Gaddafi’s sons were also killed in the uprising that eventually consumed him.
Two things came to my mind at Saif’s assassination. First was Peter Tosh, Jamaican reggae music avatar’s warning of the retribution of Karma. In his Feel No Way track, shawled in Jamaican patois, he sang: “No bother feel no way/It’s coming close to pay day, I say/No bother feel no way/Every man get paid accord(ing to) his work this day…” It is a message of karmic justice which spells out that everyone will reap what they sow.
In a way, Tosh’s sermon speaks to Dirsus’ epilogue about Gaddafi and his celebrated Golden Gun. “This is what I call the Golden Gun paradox: tyrants can have all the trappings of power, even a gun made of gold, but at the point where they need to use their power to save themselves, it is already late,” he said.
What I have on offer today is a potpourri, an assemblage of seemingly unrelated issues kneaded together with rainbow-colour threads.
Once they encounter an issue that troubles them, my people surrender themselves to the embrace of the allegory of the pouched rat, the Okete. The Okete it was who, on the day of the festivity for his mother’s funeral, the animal hide called awo, slated to be used to make the native Gbedu drum for the entertainment of guests, was found pockmarked, torn into unrecognizable shreds by hungry incisors. The rat had consumed the instrument of his own glory. Such moments, immortal Fela Anikulapo-Kuti described as Oro p’esi je moment. Literally, it means that word had swallowed response/meaning. What kind of song does one sing to that cryptic Gbedu drumming? Like the Gbedu drum itself, the Okete allegory mirrors an existential dilemma.
Mrs Tinubu’s Trump
A number of events that occurred in Nigeria last week signify a de ja vu, an Oro p’esi je conundrum. Tatalo Alamu, Ibadan bard notorious for his caustic tongue and massive self-underscore, illustrated this conundrum with another allegory of the rat, this time, a variant of small house rodents called the ofon. In a missile aimed at his imaginary musical enemies, Tatalo told them that the outcome of a fight for supremacy between him and them was a foregone conclusion. The rat had just been found to have peed on the soup delicacy called gbegiri while a feast was about to begin. The dilemma, sang Tatalo, will necessitate that everyone who had readied to dip their corn meal food (eko) inside the soup would have no choice but to beat an immediate retreat. He sang: “ofon to-o gbegiri, k’onikaluku o k’eko re dani”.
How does anyone link a soup soaked in a rat’s pee?
In Nigeria last week, uproar and condemnations across board erupted, following Wednesday’s Senate passage of a bill to review the Electoral Act 2022. In that political vinyl, you could see the small man of Nigeria’s parliament wielding the gavel and playing big Gaddafi. Apparently, you could see the small combine, ostensibly mannequins of Aso Rock, giving Small Gaddafi support to trample down people’s will. Barau Jibrin quickly rose to support the motion to kill Nigeria’s tomorrow. Ope Bamidele’s face was lit up with hunger to consume the people’s electoral future like a plate of pounded yam.
The lesson of Marcel Dirsus was totally lost on them. It is that tyranny does not inhabit only empires. It lurks round even small hovels where men play God. It is nourished in the hearts of those who try to foist their tomorrow on people’s tomorrow. Those Villa urchins know that in a free and fair election, without tweaking the Electoral Act, they will be footnotes of history. Godswill Akpabio is the small symbolism of political tyranny. Gaddafi wanted to live perpetually in Libya. He built small effigies and totem of power in his children like Saif al-Islam. Akpabio, the water bug, “Ìròmi”, dancing on top of the water, whose drummer lives in Aso Rock, and their recruits, like Gaddafi, all want to live longer than 2027 in power. They are united by a tyranny of purpose. Some people may see this as an exaggeration of Nigeria’s current political reality but, what the dog sees that makes it bark ceaselessly is same thing the sheep sees and looks seemingly unbothered about. The èsìsì (the Tragia plant) must not sting Nigerians twice. Infamous for its sting, the èsìsì is deployed as an instructional metaphor for people to learn from and not repeat their past mistakes.
Political activists, civil society organisations, election monitors and opposition parties stakeholders are unanimous that the Akpabio legislature had some “America Wonder” tricks up its sleeves. If the 10th Senate is allowed to block electronic transmission of results, it will be a perfect prelude to rigging the 2027 elections. If their ploy is not countermanded on time, fighting the 2027 election with them would be akin to, again in the words of Tatalo Alamu, wearing a high-heeled pair of shoes (bata) on a lame, (atiro) preparatory for a 100-meter dash.
If you read Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (V.S.) Naipaul’s satirical voyage on elections called The Suffrage of Elvira, like Tatalo Alamu, you would see the atiro, the incongruousness and wobbling in Nigeria’s electoral system.
Come to think of it, “sebi” we are told that Aso Rock is so fortified and is standing “gidigba” for a second term, with 30 governors now in its kitty, and having had opposition political parties held down for it? How come it needs to again hold the Electoral Act’s Golden Gun aloft, strewn with all manner of rainbow-colour threads, for all to see? Why? I raced for my copy of Dirsus’. Dictators are also created in small amulets and little effigies. Yes, their liar is a den of secrets. Yes, power is personalized in their pouch. Yes, proximity to dictators is more important than formal power. Yes, they run on whispers, clandestine deals and cover-ups. But, dictators don’t fall in one fell swoop. Tyrants and closet tyrants fall day by day. There will always come a tipping point. That day, the fear of the people and the confidence of the tyrant will exchange sides. The people will be confident and tyrants who do all manner of things to stay in office will nurse fear like a painful sore. That was what it was for Gaddafi.
Now, last week was a huge celebration in Nigeria. Mama Nigeria, wife of the president, Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu, had just harvested a plaque of honour from saber-rattling American president, Donald Trump. So when Trump went gun-ablazing last year, Aso Rock was seized by indescribable spasm. Political traducers said Trump was actually gunning for a replacement of the president in the 2027 elections.
But, what money cannot do, more money will, was a clandestine quote ascribed to the husband of the latest American honorific, the Nigerian president. So Villa thinkers set a-thinking. Money can do it. Chris Smith, America’s House foreign affairs Africa subcommittee chairman, was the one who burst the bubble. Nigeria had entered into lobbying deals with some American concerns to influence the US government and secure Trump’s smile, said Smith. That deal fructified with last December hiring of the DCI Group, a lobbying firm, for $9 million. Its brief was to communicate the Tinubu government to Trump pleasantly. Some strands of Nigerian money also went into it from other friendly purses. Same month, Matthew Tonlagha, vice-chairman of Tantita Security Services, contracted Valcour Global Public Strategy, a Washington-based lobbying firm, to clean up the smelly anus of the Tinubu government.
Thank God for little mercies. Last Thursday, Nigeria reaped dividends of her petro-dollar investments. It was at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Since Abraham Vereide established it in the 1930s, the Breakfast has been the norm since Dwight Eisenhower broke its veil. Indeed, the Breakfast is a political, social, and business elite forum. Holding his microphone, his head slanted in his usual, Trump looked at the crowd and sprayed a huge deodorizer on Mrs Tinubu. From a man who labeled the country the Tinubus govern “a disgrace”, that indeed was huge.
The world knows that Trump is a master of superlatives. No middle of the way. It is either ‘biggest’ or ‘smallest’. On Trump’s faith, many Americans have chosen to see him more of an anti-Christ, a Hitler-reincarnate than a Christian. At that same Washington National Prayer Breakfast, Trump did not shock Americans when he claimed without evidence that immigrants threaten churchgoers. This was a man who, on Air Force One last year, had told reporters that he was not sure that he would make heaven.
At that same breakfast meeting, Trump called a sitting Republican party member of the House of Representatives a «moron» for opposing Republican legislation. He also spoke of his inability to sleep well on airplanes, and had nothing but mockery for Christians who pray at mealtime. A few days after, Trump re-posted on X a racist photograph caricaturing Mrs. Tinubu’s black brother and sister, the Barack Obamas as apes. He has since refused to apologize. Apes are indeed obeying.
But not to worry, it was time to play politics of re-contextualization. Adams Oshiomhole, former governor of Edo State and senator representing Edo North, recently embroiled in the sleazy allegation of a libido run riot, was in Aso Rock to deflect arrows. Allegations are flying about like arrows that he was the man aboard a private jet massaging a lady’s legs. My people say that if you do not walk in the mode of the Okete giant rat, also known as Awasa, no one would offer you palm kernel, that big rat’s most sought after delicacy. Leshaan Dagama, a South African lifestyle influencer and adult content creator, later came out on her Instagram page to say, “Your senator is the problem, go be mad at him, not me”. This was after Oshiomhole had threatened fire and brimstone, while claiming that the video was AI-generated.
When it was obvious to Oshiomhole that, in the course of catching the Okete inside its hole, all he had in his hands was the peel of the rat’s tail, (Okete ti bo’ru) the Senator then visited the Villa. The mission was clear. What else could he latch on to? The celebrated Trump doggerel. Jimoh Ibrahim, the Ondo State senator, who abandoned the parliament for an ambassadorial posting, also followed the tide of this genuflection. Palace courtiers and fawners of power, they are. I am sure Gaddafi had his, too.
Very soon, the political elite who hold over Nigeria’s tomorrow would realize that they are the Okete who, on the day of the festivity for their mother’s funeral, they had eaten the animal hide meant for making the drum for the entertainment of guests. By then, it would be too late. All that would be heard is the sorrowful tune of a dirge.
•Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly of the writer/ author and do not represent the views of The Daily Crucible.
