For the Algerian journalist, editor and editorialist, playwright and director, novelist and writer of brief tales, political essayist and activist, Albert Camus, life is meaningless and absurd. To him, it’s inexplicable why we reside, battle all via and die. The meaninglessness of life is defined in his e-book The Fantasy of Sisyphus the place he captures the absurdity of the god, Sisyphus struggling to push a rock up the mountain. The rock is pushed uphill; the rock rolls again in an infinite, fruitless battle of forces. It’s what human life represents to the author. You can not have a full sky of happiness that won’t be undermined by some clouds of unhappiness. Why? Camus says it’s absurd for any man to hunt which means in life (and within the after-life) as a result of there may be none – and nobody can get any.
So if we agree with Camus that life is really absurd and with out which means, why can we spend the entire of our days perspiring to beat the world? Why mourn those that have exited the absurdity of life like erstwhile Ondo State governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, Ghali Umar Na’Abba and the 200 folks murdered in Plateau final week? Why can we construct seemingly impressionable castles as if we are going to inherit the dominion of this absurd earth? Why can we take enjoyment of gloating about our existence and why do palace folks flaunt fleeting fripperies?
The deaths on December 27, 2023 of former Speaker of the Home of Representatives, Na’Abba and Akeredolu, erstwhile governor of Ondo State, have provoked epistemological questions on why the wealthy and highly effective die. So additionally the killing, on the eve of Christmas, of 200 individuals in Bokkos, Barkin Laddi and Mangu space of Plateau State. The latter ugly deaths of these harmless, unarmed countrymen had been prosecuted by animals donned in human skins. The 2 calibers of deaths have additionally additional erupted questions on why human beings die in any respect. Why does God permit loss of life? Is loss of life the tip of existence? The place does man go after the cessation of breath? Or does he simply perish like vapour that’s extinguished with out hint? For ages, these questions have remained unanswered and unanswerable, regardless of spiritual, philosophical, psychological, cultural and medical examinations of loss of life and dying.
Na’Abba and Akeredolu’s deaths are very sobering. Each had been staunch readers of this column and had been acquainted with me. Na’Abba and I started as ferocious enemies. When he launched missiles in opposition to President Olusegun Obasanjo, he grew to become the proverbial ripe orange on a tree, offspring of Mom Tree, which attracts pelting of stones on its mom. The impression Na’Abba created when he started that adversarial pelting of the presidency with cudgels was that he was an anvil within the palms of the northern institution which was averse to relinquishing its presidential birthright. So Na’Abba started to obtain a confetti of assaults and scrutiny of each of his actions. The assaults had been so vehement that he despatched his then Particular Adviser on Media who later grew to become Member of the Home of Representatives, Eziuche Ubani, to the Tribune Home to demand what his offence was and search armistice. We instructed Ubani pointblank that we had no grouse in opposition to his boss however couldn’t stand what appeared to us as his ethnic antagonism in opposition to Obasanjo. And the flaks continued. Then sooner or later, Na’Abba bought my telephone quantity and referred to as. Sadly, I used to be within the thick of slumber and like one in a delirium, answered him incoherently. He promptly referred to as Hon Babs Oduyoye who represented my constituency in Ibadan to get in contact with me as I sounded unwell. It was the start of a long-lasting friendship. I used to be overwhelmed by his humanity, his excessive workplace however. We maintained that friendship till his passage final week.
Akeredolu, extensively generally known as Aketi, was an “Ibadan boy.” He was well-known for his unconventionality and stubbornness. He might have a look at an Ominran – big – within the face and name his bluff. Apparently bolstered by his data of legislation, he was like an avant-garde, an iconoclast for those who like and feared no man. When he later joined politics, to us, he regarded like a fish out of the water. Individuals puzzled how he would purchase the opaqueness of politicians and the way his lacerating tongue would match the invoice of politics. When he sought reelection, I brazenly queued in opposition to him and he knew. My folks of the state capital he administered felt he was not truthful to them, particularly their extremely revered monarch, the Deji. So each time he noticed me, he tagged me with the sobriquet, Akure Lo Kan – It’s Akure’s flip. Some months in the past, I referred to as him to commiserate with him on his mom’s demise and I believed I had afforded him a possibility to invoke his notorious lacerating tongue on me. The Akure group I belong – Ooye Improvement Initiative – had issued a really unsparing riposte to his authorities’s choice to cease the traditional Aheregbe pageant in Akure and we felt it was unjust. I signed the press launch which gave him the again of our tongue, asking the governor if he would cease the Igogo pageant of his folks in Owo merely due to its unconventional nature. Throughout that decision, Aketi disenchanted me. He rigorously defined why his authorities stopped the pageant in a manner that mesmerized me. That was our final dialog.
So, why did Aketi and Na’Abba die? Why do folks die? Is the loss of life of the physique, notably the stoppage of the working of the mind, an absolute finish of any type of aware exercise? The reality is that loss of life is common and a organic on condition that nobody can escape. I’ll die my loss of life and you’ll die youts. We are going to all die. The one factor that’s not given is how we are going to die and the place we are going to die.
As I stated earlier, so many scholarly works have been performed on death-bed moments by students, physicians and nurses. One locus classicus research was performed by Karlis Osis in 1961. Osis, who was born in 1917 and died in 1997, was a Latvian parapsychologist whose space of specialization was exploration of deathbed phenomenon and life after loss of life. His maiden analysis, which started within the Forties, bought its inspiration from English physicist and parapsychologist, William Barrett’s work, Demise Mattress Visions. This led Karlis to aim constructing on Barrett’s analysis and subsequently a four-year research he did specializing in docs and nurses within the US and northern India. He needed to know what these medics noticed about their dying sufferers.
Whereas religionists say that life ends with loss of life and the soul takes over, resurrecting on Judgment Day, pre-industrial societies like Africa disagree. In Africa’s cosmologies, philosophies, mythologies, non secular and ritual life, we give out clear messages that loss of life can’t be absolutely the and irrevocable finish of life. Connected to that is our perception that life or existence continues in another types even after organic demise. We imagine that loss of life is an integral a part of life. In loss of life, the soul of a deceased travels, present process complicated adventures and the lifeless is aware of this posthumous journey of the soul. So, for us, loss of life shouldn’t be the final word defeat of the physique neither is it an finish of existence however an vital transition.
That is maybe why in Africa, our lives are woven spherical cultures of spending time round dying folks and venerating their corpses. In First world international locations, the dying are given impersonal remedies that don’t mirror perception that they’re merely transiting into a better life. I just lately engaged a buddy in a dialog on why the Igbo lay a lot emphasis on the lifeless, a lot that, if a relative dies even in a far-flung place like Australia, their corpses can be introduced dwelling at enormous monetary expense and complex cultural rites of passage and elaborate rituals performed for his or her transitions. So, whereas organic loss of life is seen as representing the ultimate finish and cessation of existence, in addition to an finish to any aware exercise of any type, we imagine that loss of life is a pure transition from the seen to the invisible.
Africans have their very own indigenous methods of coping with loss of life and a novel manner they conceive and perceive the world. To them, life is in three discrete levels which begins at conception and ends with loss of life. For the primary stage of this tripod, loss of life is a marker of the tip of that stage of life. At this stage, Africans imagine that the lifeless actually stop to exist however its flipside is that loss of life is perceived as an built-in and steady developmental life course of that can not be separated from life. When folks die, with the extinguishing of their physicality, Africans imagine that they transcend to the non secular world. There, within the phrases of philosophers like Kenyan John Mbiti, such residing lifeless reside in an unseen neighborhood that’s reserved primarily for a folks referred to as the residing lifeless. Such lifeless individuals merely transcend mortality for immortality, the latter being a state of collective existence the place the residing lifeless mingle in firm with different spirit beings.
This most likely is why Africans revere their lifeless. The appearance of religions appears to erode and abridge such relationship between the residing and the lifeless. Earlier than these religions, Africans believed that their residing lifeless, with whom they nonetheless talk via rituals by their graves, represent an inseparable and influential a part of their existence. There’s a constant and potent communication between the residing and the residing lifeless. I’ve a extremely educated buddy who believes that nobody can harm him as a result of his late mom at all times intervenes for him. This has remained a potent corpus of his perception in non secular protect from evil doers. Another folks commune with their residing lifeless who they declare to see in desires and who instruct them on what to do. In addition they declare to be in fixed contact with the spirit of their lifeless father or mom as a transparent illustration of the amity between them.
For the Ndebele folks of Matabo in Zimbabwe who’re a part of the Nguni folks of Southern Africa, with their robust Zulu cultural hyperlinks, like many different components of Africa, loss of life marks a transition from the world of the residing to the world of the residing lifeless. The Ndebele idea of life and loss of life additionally looms giant in the best way they ritualize and medicalize the 2 ideas of loss of life and dying, in addition to life after loss of life. The Ndebele imagine that loss of life shouldn’t be a medical phenomenon. They see it as a response to a house name by their ancestors who want firm within the non secular world. That is particularly so when the lifeless fellow is perceived to have fulfilled their time on earth as decided by the abaphansi or amadlozi, the ancestor.
That is chargeable for why ancestor worship may be very potent among the many Zulu. They imagine that these ancestors, who had been as soon as like us, reside within the spirit world with Unkulunkulu – the very best god – and there’s a connection between them and the residing. There are various methods wherein the Zulu ancestors are believed to look to their folks. These are by desires, sicknesses and even as animals like snakes. Diviners such because the sangomas invoke the spirits of the lifeless ancestors to come back to the help of the residing.
One other faculty of thought says that our lives and existence are simply desires. The concept that life is sort of a dream is a philosophical idea that has been explored by thinkers and writers all through historical past. Some folks use this metaphor to explain the fleeting and impermanent nature of life, whereas others use it to emphasise the mysterious and typically unreal high quality of existence. Even the Psalmist within the ninetieth chapter amplified similar thought. Now, if life is only a dream as it’s assumed, then, all mortals who nonetheless draw the breath of life should take time to peruse their lives to find out if they’re a nightmare or a candy dream. What precisely is our lives price? Is it within the variety of mansions and unique vehicles that we flaunt?
Another African societies, via their cultures, imagine that after loss of life, the departed particular person begins to reside in a spirit world and receives a brand new physique that has an identical options with the earthly physique they hitherto donned. There, nonetheless, they’ve transited into an ancestor with the ability to take care of the residing. There’s a qualification however for this: the lifeless particular person will need to have lived a significant life whereas on earth and should not have had their lives minimize brief in unnatural methods like accident.
Life could not have which means however man will endlessly search to beat it, even with inanities. Take for example a video that’s trending in digital virality. It’s that of the Nigerian president, the native boy made good, who had arrived his dwelling metropolis for the yuletide. On Friday, twenty ninth December, 2023, the president drove via a really soiled road of famished Lagosians in Lagos Island. The serpentine, long-winding convoy of unique vehicles was like an elephant in a market – it bought a sea of spectators. Don’t thoughts me; I’m fairly conscious that the socially unhealthy optics of an enormous variety of vehicles is a presidential pestilence that predates this presidency. It didn’t begin with the incumbent; it was a safety necessity that created that tradition of obscenity post-February 1976 when an unarmed, lone-car-driven Murtala Muhammed was assassinated. However, should mortal man proceed that veneration of Camus’ life absurdity in such useless type? Sooner or later in time, each Na’Abba and Akeredolu additionally helped in deifying this absurdity. Because the president’s convoy snaked to wherever it was headed, snide feedback adopted it. “Ebi npa wa o!” We’re hungry; the folks hollered. This similar individuals who Frantz Fanon referred to as wretched of the earth had, days earlier, gathered in an embarrassing queue on the president’s Bourdillon Street to demand meals to placed on the desk for Christmas. The unstated phrases had been that, whereas perishable man was gloating in his behemoth of affluence, his folks had been roasting in abject poverty. It’s an oxymoron to suppose that the price of fuelling that interminable queue of SUVs slithering via the grime of the Island might wean a few of these wretched Nigerians of their poverty.
The homily to not venerate the flesh that can sometime develop into meals for maggots as ours is nonetheless by no means heeded by man. The rationale why it is going to at all times fall on deaf ears is that many imagine that, in opposition to Camus, life is a extremely addictive drug. The longer one lives, the extra depending on this drug of residing one is.
As I commiserate with the households of our latest ancestors – Na’Abba and Akeredolu – who’ve all of a sudden develop into our seniors on this dying existential affliction, let me additionally congratulate us all for the brand new 12 months we’re about to enter. One certain factor is that the brand new 12 months will mark a 12 months much less in our engagement with this ceaseless and absurd rock-pushing referred to as life. Once we transit ultimately, maybe we could discover out that loss of life may not be a foul factor in any case?
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