17 Nov 2005 |
|
Adamu Adamu, the respected Friday columnist of Daily Trust, has been waging a significant one-man war against the organisers of the Abuja Carnival which, if the government doesn't suddenly lose its nerve, should take place from the 24 th to 27th of this month. In two articles, 'Abuja Carnival: Sex and foreign exchange' (Daily Trust, Back page, Friday November 4, 2005), and 'Salute to CAN' ( Daily Trust, Back page, Friday November 11, 2005), Adamu went beyond what may be regarded as fair commentary and delved into supercilious and gratuitous goading. Indeed, in the second article, what seemed to be an attempt in the first piece to shame religious leaders and royal fathers in the North into distancing themselves from the carnival, graduated into outright name-calling blackmail that left a rather sour taste as one struggled to read the column to the end. The effect, as seen in the recent pronouncements of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and some other parties, is that the warrior on a warpath to an untenable peace has cut a swath which runs deep. How unfortunate. While not holding brief for any party, your correspondent feels doubly disappointed by this regrettable turn of events. The first and most obvious cause of one's disappointment is that Adamu's 'Abuja Carnival: Sex and foreign exchange' was published two days after a news report in the same newspaper by this writer which covered the motives, contents and some other aspects of the carnival. The story, 'Abuja Carnival to showcase authentic African culture' ( Daily Trust, Page 38, Wednesday November 2, 2005), came about after a chat one had with Dr Ahmed Yerima, the carnival's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the event's Central Planning Committee. Considering his role in the event, Dr Yerima, an urbane gentleman, should be expected to know more about the carnival than Adamu, who, to the best of this writer's knowledge, has no role in either planning or hosting the event. As such, Adamu's claim that the event is going to be about nudity and paganism -- the two pillars on which he has hinged his opposition -- has continued to astound your correspondent. It is necessary to refer here to information garnered during the chat with Dr Yerima, which held on Monday the 31 st of October 2005. As recounted in the story that resulted from the discussion, Dr Yerima's response to what the carnival would look like implied that,
The reader may now consider what in any of this promises or hints of nudity and paganism. The other source of one's disappointment, as unlikely as it may seem, arises from Dr Yerima's organisation itself. Even before Adamu's damaging if undue and imprecise appraisal, the organisers of Abuja Carnival were not, in the view of this writer, communicating sufficiently with the Nigerian people. Indeed, in early November, seeing adverts on the international cable television circuit for the fiesta came as a mild shock as, at the time, one was not aware of a commensurate effort on Nigerian airwaves. Perhaps this was deliberate, the aim probably being to target the international audience and take the acquiescence of the local one for granted. Well, the limitation of that strategy is now self-evident. And yet no matter what flaring the organisers deserve, a good dose should go to Adamu because his specifics were off beam. Moreover, in what one can only describe as utter mischief, he went overboard in stoking up religious passions over a non-existent problem of nudity and paganism. What -- one would truly like to know -- constitutes nudity and paganism in the usual traditional dances and shows that we see everyday in this country? If Adamu is against the carnival, as he certainly is, it is his right to say so. Yet, considering his pre-eminent position in journalism, especially on this side of the Niger, he really ought not to be adding fuel to an unfortunate tendency that already exists, which is to 'religionise' every issue and, sometimes, ignite unnecessary violence. It may surprise the reader that this writer couldn't be bothered whether the festival holds or not. Either way, one would get on his bicycle and go about life as usual. In any case, when the government was busy dreaming up its carnival, one knew nothing of it. And there's the nagging question whether the carnival-goers would not become victims of the robbers that are almost laying siege on Abuja at this time. But at the same time there's a part of one that says, let the show go on! This is basically because -- let's all face the truth -- there is, as Professor Oculi Okello so eloquently put it the other day, "simultaneity in life." At the same moment that babies are born, people are dying. On the same weekends people attend weddings and child dedication ceremonies, other people -- sometimes even the same people -- attend burials and wake-keepings as well. One man is laughing; another is crying. So even if robbers have turned this once peaceful city to a mini siege zone, there's no reason why we shouldn't be entertained at the same time, for, mark you, if the carnival holds, that is all it would amount to. Forget any talk of the country earning any foreign exchange, because that, as Mallam Kabiru A. Yusuf, the editor-in-chief of the Trust papers likes to say, is "a pie in the say." Also, one would like to see the carnival hold if only to learn if the impression of a forthright man one has of Dr Yerima is deserved or not. So will the carnival still hold? As the pidgin expression has it, na dem sabi! But your correspondent fervently hopes so. It'll be too bad to stop what may well end up being a bloody good show, if nothing else, on account of inaccurate and unfair estimation. Oduobuk is an Assistant Editor with the Trust pape
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
# 
# 
Your Comments
Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.