Monday Strains
Akeredolu, loss of life wishes and 2024
By Lasisi Olagunju
(Printed within the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 1 January, 2024)
The primary day of the 12 months isn’t a superb day to write down about loss of life and dying. Rotimi Akeredolu spent the final three or 4 years hard-headed on the frontline. As planted in his identify, Akeredolu, he was a small man who nurtured himself to bigness on life’s battlefield. He was not my good friend. Aside from one media engagement the place I requested him two or three questions -one of which he answered with a frown, there was no direct assembly of our streams. However I later grew to become his fan as a result of he performed his position properly as an Ogboju Ode on this forest of heartless demons.
The purpose of all life is loss of life (Sigmund Freud). Medical science has repeatedly advised us {that a} prognosis of most cancers is just not in all circumstances loss of life quickly to strike. Akeredolu, I gathered very reliably, confirmed he had prostate most cancers someday in 2016. He had surgical procedure in Germany in 2019. He was to go for a compulsory follow-up process in 2020. However he couldn’t go for that; COVID blocked him because it blocked all the world for a complete 12 months. That hole in therapy was the twist on the hand of destiny. He misplaced the battle to most cancers lengthy earlier than his closing breath final week. Might he have helped it? No. That was why he was born; it was his exit path. King Sunny Ade sang within the ’70s: Gbogbo wa l’òpè nípa àkúnlèyàn (we’re all novices in issues of destiny).
Dying is dangerous – particularly for the dwelling. However each loss of life has a beneficiary – they might be the grave digger or the coffin maker. In case you had been a governor like Akeredolu, the beneficiaries of your departure could be many – your deputy could be the primary. When a governor dies, he goes down with so many who put on his badge; and the deputy goes up together with his personal crowd of recent women and men. I’m tempted to say this: One of many dangers of the American presidential democracy is the sword of deputies dangling each second over the principal. Underneath our legal guidelines, a deputy governor or vice chairman is primary in ready. They could not admit this, however it’s true that it calls for superhuman efforts for a deputy governor to not think about himself taking the place of the boss. And it takes only one loss of life to attain that with out paying for votes. Nearly precisely just like the vulture in Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize picture, they wait (im)patiently for his or her victims’ expiry date. It’s in some kingship system too. In Ibadan, when the funeral bell tolls within the palace, the gong of pleasure sounds within the homestead of the following in line. Agbótikúyò is the oríkì town gave that streak of sadistic want. It means “individuals who hear information of loss of life and rejoice.”
It’s an everlasting reason behind rigidity and friction in energy circles. No governor asks his deputy to look at over his drinks. However, is it strictly about buildings or particular person character make-up of individuals concerned? In J.D.Y. Peel’s ‘Ijeshas and Nigerians’ (1983, web page 107), we encounter an Owá (king) of Ilesa who rebuked a messenger that introduced with sorrow the loss of life of the king’s deputy (Chief Ogedengbe). The messenger uttered “aiyé ti bàjé (the world is spoilt)”. The oba disagreed together with his courtier. As an alternative of the world being “spoilt” by his deputy’s loss of life, the king responded with affirmative pleasure: “mo j’Owá l’ónìí (I change into Owa right now).” Ogedengbe was a blustery, thundery quantity two in whose presence the primary quaked. Then he died one moist day in July 1910. To that king, the loss of life of the overbearing Ogedengbe meant freedom from the deputy’s deadly shadow; it marked the king’s actual enthronement because the owa and the precise starting of an unfettered reign.
A possible widow heir must not ever be seen rejoicing on the husband’s loss of life. I want Governor Akeredolu’s successor, Fortunate Aiyedatiwa, a profitable tenure. A loss of life has moved him from a possible identified to an precise identified; a shadow reworked to the true factor. I commiserate with him too on the loss of life of Akeredolu, his future helper. However has Aiyedatiwa watched the tv report of his very first public engagement and communication with the world as governor on the day his boss died? Is he happy together with his conduct, comportment and selection of phrases instantly earlier than and after his inauguration as governor? Has somebody advised the brand new governor that “A kú oríire” (congratulations) uttered at a mentor’s loss of life is a slur on character (ìwà) and that it casts a pall on all of humanity? Was it a mistake or a Freudian slip? I have no idea whether it is acceptable in Ondo State to say “A kú oríire” (congratulations) in a time of mourning. The place I come from, that phrase belongs in joyous moments; it’s particularly stated with uncontrollable pleasure in maternity wards when each mom and baby are properly and steady and their voices heard loud and clear. It isn’t a greeting for relations and mates of a person contemporary within the morgue. Saying “A kú oríire” the place it was stated degrades all of us within the language group known as Yoruba. It shames the folks of the start who coined that phrase of joyous exultation.
Each human event has its forex of verbal engagement. Dirge, the vocalisation of ache; and elegy, written phrases of loss, are by no means songs of pleasure. They’re time-honoured teary strains of loss; catharsis of anguish. To start out commenting on loss of life on the primary day of a brand new 12 months is a really heavy, foreboding factor to do. However what lets do when throughout us are contemporary mounds of departure? At the moment’s graveyard has no grace; its wardrobe of skulls is stocked with horrifying regularity: Governor Akeredolu, Speaker Ghali Na’Abba, over 200 anonymous victims of terrorism in Plateau, a whole lot of others north and south. What number of songs of grief shall one then compose? W. H. Auden (1907 –1973), arguably the best English poet of the twentieth century, shares my feeling in his poem ‘In Reminiscence of Sigmund Freud’: “When there are such a lot of we will need to mourn, when grief has been made so public, and uncovered to the critique of a complete epoch, the frailty of our conscience and anguish; of whom lets converse? For daily they die amongst us, those that had been doing us some good, who knew it was by no means sufficient however hoped to enhance a bit by dwelling…”
The loss of life of Governor Akeredolu is a button of revelation pressed. First, I can see that one’s weak point in life can change into one’s power at loss of life. My preliminary encounters with the departed Governor Akeredolu advised me he was a brash, conceited fellow. Nothing was too gross for him to say and I as soon as watched him abuse a choose in open court docket. Then he grew to become governor and Nigeria occurred to his folks and I noticed that brash, uncooked, unbending braveness turning into prepared weapons of defence of the land. He did so properly as a subject commander that at his loss of life final week at age 67, it was as if he had lived 100 years.
His loss of life birthed one other revelation: the color of individuals’s dedication to humanness and humanity. We now see that there isn’t a unanimity of judgement on what loss of life and grief imply. At this loss of life, folks cried and other people rejoiced. Those that cried had private causes for doing so; the glad occasion additionally had private causes for thanking their stars. Each side take no heed of a lesson of life: the happy-at-death folks will die; the unhappy ones will die too – and the dwelling will proceed the odious cycle of retributive reactions.
It’s pure to react to loss of life with feelings – some calm and unhappy; some wailing with what John Ruskin describes as “the extraordinary, or false appearances.” I learn President Bola Tinubu’s eulogy of Akeredolu greater than as soon as. I learn it and shouted God is nice! The phrases of Tinubu on Akeredolu’s character, coverage selections and political selections ought to excite each pupil of human metamorphosis. Folks change – like Saul turning into Paul. Learn this: “In a difficult second of our statehood when marauding brokers of darkness unfold their tentacles throughout our nation, Rotimi was a powerful voice within the wilderness calling us to rethink our safety structure so we will have a safer nation. His unrelenting advocacy led to the start of the native police within the South-West… In the course of the darkish hours when marauding brokers of darkness visited the state and killed defenceless residents the place 40 worshippers of the Catholic Church of Owo had been killed on June 5, 2022, Rotimi’s management qualities as a real statesman and compassionate chief radiated brightly to the world. He was a mourner-in-chief who guided his folks by an agonising interval. At the moment, I mourn a fighter and fearless defender of reality and the lots.” That was Tinubu. Who would have ever thought the hitherto absent warrior would roar that tribute to valour? It’s by no means too late to reach. Al-Hariri, an eleventh century Arab grammarian, would have a look at this turn-around and say: “What we can not attain flying we should attain limping”.
In life, each new daybreak breaks with a shock. God is nice is the suitable exclamation to shout after studying the president’s emotional piece. It was greater than a salute to valour; it was a give up to a highway despised and spurned. Akeredolu’s loss of life merely introduced again house to us the political forager tricked by ambition into the woods of Nigeria. The Yoruba man within the Villa lastly spoke, endorsing actions his folks unsuccessfully begged him to take when red-hot terrorism charred their forests. However each Saul has their Highway to Damascus expertise. If that’s the case on this case, then the hem of Akeredolu’s loss of life has raised Lazarus. It means Akeredolu has not died in useless. It additionally means we should always be sure that the president’s patriotic phrases don’t transit with Akeredolu’s transition. Now that the president appreciates the place of a decentralized police system, he ought to now encourage his protégé in Lagos to embrace “the native police within the South-West”. Let the president do this and likewise set in movement the methods and means of constructing Nigeria a real federation the place the components are free and inspired to compete in excellence.
Huge males, small males typically cuddle sure when no is what their hearts want. They are saying one factor and do one other. Public figures amongst them dub their alternative of behaviour political correctness. We didn’t see that in Akeredolu and that’s the reason, warts and all, he’s going house in a blaze of glory. Even his enemies acknowledge his forthrightness. When terrorists attacked Owo, Ondo State, in June 2022, Akeredolu didn’t converse tongue-in-cheek. He shot straight for good and dangerous folks to listen to. He known as for self-help: “We’ve got known as on our conventional rulers that we should all be able to rise as much as defend our land and defend our folks…you’ll be able to’t fold your arms and say folks (attackers) are coming and you might be operating away. No. If they convey a combat to you, combat them again. There isn’t any room to run away from it…We’re not lazy; we’re an indomitable folks – in spirit and every little thing and no person can dominate us…Battle these folks again. If they arrive, push them (again) into the forest and go away. Whosoever has the (stronger) arm will survive.” That seems like Julius Caeser addressing his commanders on the financial institution of Rubicon.
It was not the primary time Akeredolu would converse so forcefully loud. When Amotekun was denied the usage of sufficient weapons by the Federal Authorities and President Muhammadu Buhari’s Katsina State received approval for identical, Akeredolu took on the president; he spoke as a pacesetter of his folks: “The video making the rounds displaying the equal of the Western Nigeria Safety Community (Amotekun Corps) in Katsina, acquiring the approval of the Federal Authorities to bear arms is fraught with nice risks. Denying Amotekun the urgently wanted proper to legitimately bear arms is a repudiation of the premise of true federalism which we now have been clamouring for. That Katsina was capable of arm its state safety power with the show of AK-47 means we’re pursuing one nation, two methods.” Akeredolu declared that the Katsina state of affairs conferred benefits on some “within the face of generally confronted existential threats” He added that “it signifies that our unitary policing system, which has failed, is a deliberate methodology of subjugation which have to be challenged.” He went past the superficial and dug deep into the foundational unfairness of our troubled union. “The Independence settlement was primarily based on a democratic association to have a federal state with devolved inner safety mechanics. We should return to that settlement. We wish to reiterate that what’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander…We are going to defend our folks.”
Believers in a really federal Nigeria will miss Akeredolu’s ingenious interventions. However they won’t miss him and his brave essence if Nigeria President honours the reminiscence of the lifeless by doing that which protects the folks. The president has this new 12 months to restructure Nigeria alongside among the strains in his Akeredolu tribute. If he does in any other case, these phrases of his will probably be assumed to be opportunistic pods with out seeds, a hole homily composed to deceive. And if you deceive and you might be caught, you lose all entry keys into circles of respect. You can be known as a hypocrite.
Bob Marley sang many iconic songs; ‘Hypocrites’ is one. That’s one soulful creation of the evergreen that has not stopped inviting us to query man, his methods and his motives. Bob Marley’s central themes in ‘Hypocrites’ cowl the pervasive deception and false appearances round us; they cowl life and the injustice that guidelines it. Above all, ‘Hypocrites’ stresses the necessity for man to shine his eyes, query authority and ‘drag’ its ethical claims.
I’m not certain anybody, irrespective of how wicked, would take pleasure in being labelled a hypocrite. Joseph Conrad has a synonym for that phrase in his ‘Coronary heart of Darkness’. He calls it ‘whited sepulchre” – a fantastically painted white tomb that homes rotten skeletons. There are different synonyms of hypocrite. In a dictionary, I noticed trickster; I additionally noticed cheater, cheat, plaster saint, humbug, pretender, deceiver, dissembler, impostor, phoney. Every of these phrases is a poisoned spear; it shouldn’t be directed at any human of worth. However, we’ll use it for your complete Yoruba elite (together with me) if Nigeria stays unrestructured on Could 29, 2027. President Bola Tinubu himself won’t odor of roses if he ends his presidency and the 37 Native Council Growth Areas (LCDAs) in his Lagos State stay unlawful entities. He will probably be reminded that your complete political relevance of his was constructed on the German flooring of agitation for true federalism. Claims and accusations that the Olusegun Obasanjo Federal Authorities was actively towards permitting Lagos to have its required variety of native governments had been the concrete that cemented Lagos to its proprietor. Now, the liberty fighter has change into what he needed to change into, he shouldn’t wait at some point longer earlier than setting in movement the method to try this which he accused Obasanjo and all others of not doing. He should recreate Nigeria alongside the strains of its starting. If he fails to do and obtain this, all hypocrisy synonyms will apply and Bob Marley will probably be invited to sing for the Nigerian chief.
The final emperor of the Pax Romana and thinker king, Marcus Aurelius (26 April, 121 – 17 March, 180 AD) in his ‘Meditations’ has a sermon, not for the lifeless, however for the dwelling. He asks you to “consider the life you will have lived till now as over and, as a lifeless man, see what’s left as a bonus and dwell it in response to Nature.” He asks you to “love the hand that destiny offers you and play it as your individual…” He asks all of humanity to go by this life – “this patch of time” in excellent concord with nature. He asks us to go to our closing resting place like a ripened olive that drops “praying the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it life.” I believe Aketi learn Aurelius; his passing is a rendition of John Donne’s ‘Dying, Be not Proud’ – significantly the road: “One brief sleep previous, we wake eternally…” He died in his sleep. Could the soul of the departed relaxation in peace. I want all of us a cheerful, protected and affluent 2024.
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