Calabar — How time flies. Former Liberian President, Mr. Charles Taylor will be celebrating his one year stay in Calabar, Cross River State in a few days time. The man came in style. He flew into town aboard his personal aircraft called “Stage three” on August 11, 2003. It is probably a reminder that life is in stages.
For Charles Taylor, stage one was when he was a rebel in the bush of Liberia fighting late President Samuel Kanyon Doe. Stage two was when he became that country’s president. Life at stage three for Taylor saw him in exile, hence the name of his private jet. So much frenzy greeted his arrival in Calabar. The war crime Tribunal in Sierra Leone wanted him deported to Freetown for trial. But the Federal Government is not in the mood to turn in the man. The press screamed, Calabar people grumbled. While some wanted him around; others wanted him out.
Newspaper editors wanted every minute detail on Taylor's activities, if possible, twenty four hours every day.
This made news correspondents in the state to sit up and different reports on the exiled man made the news.
The writings did not excite Governor Donald Duke. He called journalists fiction writers. He once quipped “all these things you people are writing about Taylor, has any of you seen Taylor before?" But Duke perhaps doesn’t know that if a journalist wants to know the colours of the bedsheets in his innermost bedroom, it would be a matter of minutes and the information would be at the reporter's desk.
In journalism, people use inside sources to acquire information. Charles Taylor is not alone in his house. He has Nigerians working for him, cooking for him, washing his clothes, empting his trash bins and these Nigerians live with us. The man has since become “a child of God”, Vanguard was told.
He prays more often than those at the seminary. Sources told Vanguard that he is presently on a 21–day fasting and prayer session. After all, when everything else fails, man turns to God. The man’s life now reminds me of a song by Jimmy Cliff, when he sang “everything in creation must obey a law; simple truth everybody knows; when you were in front you were well protected; now you feel like a fish out of water; oh! What do you want in the house of exile; watching you now for your last smile.”
There is no doubt that Taylor must be stunned by his abrupt reversal of fate but he is getting on no doubt. He does plenty of exercises, particularly playing lawn tennis in a nearby tennis court. The aim obviously is to kill boredom. His many children are sprinkled in several primary and secondary schools in Calabar. But no one of them is in a public school. Public schools are, after all, not meant for children of kings, lords, clergy, landowners and oppressors. Public schools in Nigeria are for the down-trodden in the land.
Taylor’s children are aware that they are not in Liberia but in Nigeria on exile. They are, however, not aware of the import of being on exile. They should ask another Liberian warlord now Pastor Yomie Johnson. They should find out how it feels to be away from ones natural habitat, especially when one is forced out of his home. He who knows it feels it. The man’s wife has been busy doing some shopping in Watt Market on Calabar Road. There is a resemblance between Watt Market and Waterside Market in Monrovia. The difference, however, is the non-existence of Lebanese traders in Calabar as against the huge number in Monrovia.
Taylor’s wife loves wrappers, after all, she is an African Woman. The ex-president’s children love the house of God. They rarely ever miss Sunday service. Of course they have to patronize God to plead for the neck of the head of the family. What with the frantic and desperate demands for his presence in Sierra Leone to face charges at the War Crime Tribunal there. Taylor loves his dark glasses. Each time he appears with it, he cuts the appearance of a Bruce Lee in his famous film titled “Fist of Fury.”
The fury of Charles Taylor ended in Liberia and maybe Sierra Leone. Don Quixote once said that “I know who I am, and who I may be, if I choose.” It follows then that we are architects of our own lives. You cannot go to war and kill in cold blood, even when there is no need for it, and you expect to find peace in your later life. No. That will be against natural law.
Taylor’s spiritual restitution is necessary, he needs it to appease his creator. But one is not sure if God will be in the mood to hear the lone voice of a brutal man seeking for pardon when there are many voices of the brutalized crying to the same God for justice.
Every leader must pay for his deeds on earth, be it Cross River State or Iraq, be it America or Sierra Leone and be it Sri Lanka or Bujumbura. Injustice has a twin-brother called justice. It must come because it started from the Garden of Eden. There is always a pay day.
