Daily Independent Online.
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Thursday, August 12, 2004.
What can Soyinka do?
Wakil Oyeleru Oyedemi
Basically, almost all the news that you read about
Nigeria are grim, sad and incredibly pathetic for that bleeding giant of a
blessed nation. There was a comic relief recently however when the Nigerian
Information Minister Chukwuemeka Chikelu unveiled a supposed image laundry
scheme that will (or may) change the outside world’s perspective about
Nigeria. Chikelu’s idea is good, sound and laudable. Needless to say that
the better the international world thinks about Nigeria, the more they will be
willing to invest in the country and the greater the turn around in the fortune
of the people will be. And, for a country that ranked amongst the lowest of the
low in the recent United Nations 2003-2004 ratings despite the abundance of
wealth, Nigeria definitely will need use of a respectable image laundry and
launderers. But that is exactly where it all ends-just as a good idea. The
questions I asked myself on reading about the scheme were:
•Does Nigeria Need Wole Soyinka for this?
• What can Soyinka Do?
After a very deep rumination that bothered on
weighing the facts on the ground, every issue came with up the same answer -
Negative. Nigeria presently does not need Soyinka for this, and Soyinka can do
little or nothing for a turn around image management and global reception for
Nigeria. Right now, Wole Soyinka is an angry man, and he has every reason to
be. The only difference between Soyinka on one hand and Awolowo and Azikiwe on
the other hand is that while all these great men fought assiduously for a
better life for Nigerians, the last two occupied political or elective posts.
But they have or will have something in common. Awolowo and Azikiwe died angry.
If Wole Soyinka should die today, he will die an angry man. It doesn’t
make any sense at all either in morality or in simple reasoning to make a man
who is angry about a project the image maker for such a project. Nigeria is
such a project, and Soyinka is such a man. And why does Soyinka deserve to be
angry.
Everything that Soyinka has fought for relative to
Nigeria has been ridiculed, jeopardized or tossed in the garbage can with
harrowing impunity. A few examples will suffice. It’s a known fact that
the origin of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) dated back to the agony
of Soyinka over the alarming rate at which his students in Great Ife were dying
daily on the Ife-Ibadan road, which replicated the situation on Nigerian roads.
Under him, the FRSC was near perfect, as corruption was never allowed. Today,
though we still have what passes as the FRSC (at least in the name).
Regrettably, almost all the uniformed services have their own "FRSC"
clones. The Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Police, and every organization that can
come up with a uniform can barricade roads even in front of Aso Rock, wield
riffles, molest drivers and extort money. It has even gone to the level of men
of the Police, Army and Airforce killing each other over who has the most
rights to harass the helpless drivers the most. That great dream of FRSC has
therefore been turned into a nightmare with the active collaboration of the
Nigerian authorities.
The origin of the Seadogs at the University of Ibadan
and the enviable activities of its brilliant members in those days are well
documented. Wole Soyinka and others still defend that organization and its
objectives as an open cult and not a secret one with the sole aim of fighting
colonialism and repression at the premier University in those days. Members
were said to be the most brilliant of students and sound ideas and
intellectualism were the weapons then. Today, those in the authorities right
from the military era have turned that sound idea upside down, and they profit
from it. Today, secret cultism is the rule and not he exception in the Nigerian
campuses and the cultists are so audacious that they meet and kill fellow
students in the open while the authorities look the other side as we saw at the
University of Ibadan recently.
Exactly five years ago, Yemi Iwilade (the
secretary-general of the OAU Students Union) and six other students were
gruesomely murdered in cold blood. You cannot but see the hands of the
authorities in the death of Yemi Iwilade and others. The security men and
apparatus of OAU, hitherto so hyperactive in harassing students union leaders,
all engaged in a deliberate slumber as Iwilade and others were being axed to
death for the whole of the night and despite the cry for help by fellow
students. The school went on air the following morning to say the killing was a
"mere fracas". Obasanjo himself set up the Eyo-Itam Panel as a cover
up for the state sponsored killing of the student leaders. Thus the report of
that panel was never published. No member of the authority of the
University-even the heads of security- was ever brought to book-even for dereliction
of duty. The court freed a cultist who confessed to his participation. So, the
orgy of cult killing continues while government does nothing but lip service on
it.
Almost his entire life, and even now, Soyinka has
fought for justice, and alongside it democracy. We all know that democracy
cannot take root on a soil of injustice. But when Soyinka (like many other well
meaning human beings) looks around what does he see. He sees that at every turn
when there is victory for the positive forces, the vultures of the negative
world prey on that victory and render it worthless. He sees the Niger Delta,
the good woman whose milk nourishes every one else except her own children. He
sees the vultures taking over governance and becoming men of the moment. He sees
Buhari, the head of the Petroleum Ministry when Billions of Dollars was stolen
at NNPC and later the head of the most horrible tyranny in Nigerian history,
donning the toga of a statesman. He sees Babangida, a man who deserved to be
hanged for all his atrocities becoming the man of the moment. Not only these,
Soyinka sees erstwhile fighters for democracy carousing with these soiled men-
Buknor Akerele carousing with Babangida, Bola Tinubu carousing Buhari. He sees
the administration unapologetically destroying the educational system (the way
Odi was destroyed) so that the Obasanjo and his friends can monopolize the
educational system. He sees surrender in the face of Nigerians where hope used
to reside, while flamboyance continues in the government; and the Nigerian
Youths directing their energy towards violence since violence is the only
industry where there are jobs.
Finally, will somebody tell Information Minister Chikwelu
that Nigeria’s problem is not external but internal. Tell this man that
the entire globe will have no option but to embrace and invest in Nigeria once
there is manifest security of lives and property. Once electricity and other
amenities are stable, corruption becomes minimal; and the government refrains
from both being tactically anti people and openly encouraging tyrants of yester
years. Internal rehabilitation has worked in Botswana and South Africa without
a Soyinka- it can work in Nigeria. Until the system makes it possible for
Soyinka to tell the world that thieves are no more our rulers, or that our
rulers are no more thieves, I think you should allow the Nobel laureate to age
in peace. Let these fresh yam eaters look elsewhere for comrades.
