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Bolaji Aluko and Achebe’s Rejection of a National Horror: A Response to Habitual Hypocritical Grand |
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Monday, 08 November 2004 |
When the topic shifts to Ndigbo, this greatly endowed nation of men, the petty jealousies and platonic hatred of their detractors is invariably given a free reign. This bunch of despicable hypocrites, appoint themselves as superlatively prejudiced and irredeemably opinionated judges of cant, to sit in the tribune of perjorative bias, against Ndigbo and all they represent. The parameters they deploy to that end, smacks of the highest form and expression of undiluted pharisaic and sanctimonious hypocrisy. This was the kind of hypocrisy which so much affronted the fragile sensibilities of Jesus the Christ, that he reproached the Pharisees, with righteous indignation, to “go remove the heavy logs of wood beclouding their vision, before they could then enjoy an uncompromised and un-obfuscated vision and ability, to remove the splinter from other people’s eyes.
A roll call of these wandering minstrels, beating the drums of bias, whose stock in trade is the peddling of Igbophobia, has names like Reuben Abati, Mohammed Haruna, and Bolaji Aluko. These people discharge their inglorious self-assigned charges, with the kind of self-conceit, that has eternally remained the exclusive preserve of hypocrites. Their first defence when confronted with their prefabricated prejudice is to plead the defence of objectivity. Once you try to point out their double standard, the shout on top of their voices that they are being objective. Had I not had some formal training in hermeneutics and gneosology, I would have equally been sold on their wild claims to objectivity. They so very easily advertise and front this non-existing objectivity, with the precision of a missile, as a basis and justification for their unwarranted hatred of Ndigbo, which so very readily overflows the banks of reason to irrigate their false pretensions, as they write out their projectional frustrations, on a race of men, whose bearing challenges their indolence, and explodes their envy.The claims to objectivity, has from time immemorial remained the battered refuge of incurable hypocrites, and their regime of cant. This nebulous and non existence concept has being flogged to extinction by the rational approximation of thinking men across time. No man can lay claims to unadulterated objectivity, without crucifying the quiddity of epistemology. This flows from the fact that every man habours within himself a seething bundle of turbulent prejudices, though not in the perjorative sense, which informs his choices and colours the spectrum of his perceptions. Every man comes from a background, which orientates his appreciation of reality as it is. We are congenitally possessed of attitudes, affinities, propensities and tendencies. These constitutes the backdrop; the primitive irrational canvass of thought. All a human being can possibly approximate, is a dialectical dialogue of subjectivities, an intersubjectivity, or an objectivity that is extremely qualified. Going into epistemic authorities of ancient, medieval, modern or comtemporary philosophies to replay the argument of each school, and epoch of philosophy, will eat up our slender attention span. But the simple fact, that they are divided on the existence of an epistemological absolute, validates our contentions here. This stand is not to be misconstrued as a canonization of pathological scepticism, or absolute scepticism, which is another “absolute“, which our view seeks to discredit, and which should join its relatives on the witness box.
To this end, therefore, when someone in an impulsive bid to cast Ndigbo in some bad lights of his fevered imagination, invents absolutes or pontificates ex-cathedra therein, he has not only tied himself to a stake, and earnestly pleads to be shot up and smashed for good measure, by bullets of right reason; he has entered a gneosolgoical cul de sac. It is only experience and willingness to embrace truth, that has the potency of scuttling a very natural slide into bias as the vehicle of our judgements. Education can equally do this, but some people have been educated unto prejudice. And it seems that this is what we have in our hands in the cases of Bolaji Aluko, Reuben Abati, and the likes. Truth brings it home to us that our little social conceptual cocoons can never be the centre of the universe.To that end, our perspective on issues cannot be the absolute. We concede to every man the fact that he is a product of his millieu, and has the right to hold and express opinions on any issue under the sun. But they should remain opinions. They should be obedient to facts and truths. Since they are only opinions, they are necessarily approximations and fundamentally lacks the authoritative capacity to speak or pontificate ex cathedra on the core issues of another milieu. Anybody can make approximations based on facts and truths, with a little tincture of subjectivity, that does not end up compromising the truth value, or displaying a hypocritical propensity to double standards. Had this been the case, this response would not have arisen in the first instance. But it has severally, never been; hence our response. We are unfortunately, no longer ready to spare the bullets of right reason. These men have really invited and earned it, and to them it comes.
This triumvirate of perjorative subjectivity have hewed out a new religion for themselves. This religion is a whole new sub and superstructure of ideologies, born of their common resentment of a nation of men that is “notoriously enterprising“[i]. And to effectively worship this goddess of furious hate, they have so very much displayed an arrant willingness to revise history, distort facts, and mangle neutral opinions. They haemorrhage Igbophobia in cyberspace and in print, all to advance the crooked cause of their narcissism and Liliputian complexes. Their all engrossing preoccupation and that of their disciples, is their common hatred of Ndigbo.
Achebe was not experimenting with speculations, when he in 1983, stated that Nigerians of other tribal extraction see Ndigbo as “a particular irritant, a special thorn in the flesh of the Nigerian body-politic”, and “will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo”[ii]. He was giving a granite and concrete description of the facts, as they were and still are, with the characteristic bluntness resident in his integrity and native to genius. Till today, nobody has ever faulted or discredited this Acheberian observation. The vociferous bleatings of these revisionists all but bears Achebe out. To this end therefore, it then behoves all, whose trademark is the truth, to rise and stand in vehement refutation of this cheap attempt to hawk dummies to the unwary. Our stand follows from the fact, that we are not going to stand by and watch mutilations of facts a walkover. We are not going to silently preside over an assault on what we represent. The obverse is the furniture of cowardice. That is extraordinarily, and extravagantly exhorbitant. Our heritage is too precious to be smeared by cheap blackmailers. We are not going yield any turf.
Resisting the temptation to identify these men as inspid bigots, would have been a successful exercise, if an obverse of this construction would successfully conduce to that attempt. But the square of contraries did not balance up here. They have really configured themselves into bigots of a very inspid quality. This arises from their unsuccessful attempt to hide and peddle this depraved habit through the agency and authority of scholarship.
Reuben Abati’s bout of Igbophobia is really an incurable one. He habours within his psyche a pathologically cancerous and traumatic allergy for Ndigbo. Whenever Ndigbo becomes the issue, he catches a psychological dysentry, that unwittingly litters the public space with some maladrous literal farts. His series of arguments and articles about Igbo issues portrays a man who writes about a people, with the confidence and certainty which profound ignorance breeds. This is a man who invents meanings and significances where none could be extracted, and remains so very ready to superimpose his manufactured ideals on issues that dwarfs his ignorance. Where Ndigbo are concerned, he has proved himself a chronic embellisher and manufacturer of facts[iii]. He is among those educated unto neurosis, which the presence of Ndigbo offsets. He is most probabaly among those weaned on the tribalistic curds of Obafemi Awolowo, which sees and labels any place outside Owo as Igbo land, as T. S Elias made us to realise. His unhappily unbalanced temperance, so very unwisely refuses adamantly to proportion his beliefs and statements to the evidence. But to his greatest chagrin, whatever aspersions his Igbo neurosis is able to conjure, has almost always been neuralized by the hard truths that are eternally unassailable. Ndigbo have refused to die
Mohammed Haruna, as a mind, is like a ship marooned on the sandbanks of psychosocial instability. He is wasting his time, groping in the dark grottos of debilitating irrelevance. He has no identity of himself that is stable; a victim of superlative confusion. His writings unveils a mind housing coagulated and fossilized layers of uncertainty and credulity. He either has no intellectual wares to sell or that he exists on a plane of thought that has expired. To rediscover himself, he felt that joining the discordant choir of those seeking a scapegoat for their ineptitude is the shortest cut to prominence. He knew that the searchlight of refutation would be beamed on him, once he takes up the unharmonious refrain that attacks Ndigbo. He craves the attention that Igbo voices of reason, will inadvertently direct his way, in their certain bid to do battle with his ignorance and put a lasting cure to his errors. He is simply filling out some repressed needs for attention. Screaming to be noticed is really a neotonic and infantile handicap attendant on one’s failure to reconcile his stages of psychosocial development. These reasons recommends our glossing him over.
Bolaji Aluko has for so long exploded his unadulterated Igbophobia under the deceptive pretexts and ruse of being objective, that a silent hope that he would cure himself is no longer a tenable option. We have chosen to surgically dissect this cancerous habit of spreading opinionated hatred dressed in the robes of pretended objectivity.
I would have resisted the temptation to state that Bolaji Aluko is an incurable bigot. But the facts of his dalliance with opinionated cant against Igbo issues and interests, does not conduce to an obverse construction. Facts will bear us out in due course.
When the Nigerian police under Tafa Balogun played out the Obasanjo scripted blueprint to discredit Igbo aspirations to the presidency come 2007; a clamour which was gathering a lot of moral momentum at that time, by raiding Okija Shrine; a shrine which was no less a nauseating and monumental insult on right reason; Aluko[iv] and Abati[v] were firing away from the hips, taking the cue from where their kinsmen, the Balogun of Owu and Police Balogun stopped. Achuzie who saw through the phony and hypocritical machinations of Obasanjo’s government to cast Ndigbo in bad light, stated in no mean terms, that all parts of Nigeria are home to worse shrines and worse practises than obtained in Okija: Yet the police did not sack those places. They were rather detailed to cast Ndigbo in a bad light, even before the guilt of the suspects were determined. These vendors of irresponsible phobia, kept on writing out their neurosis. What Achuzia was reacting against, or questioning, was not that a ring of syndicated fraudsters, trading on the fears, ignorance and anxieties of the people, was smashed. What this hardened veteran of Nigeria’s history of double standard, revolted against, was the subterreanean reasons behind the singling out of Okija for bad press, from a national forest of human sacrifices, which transcends tribes, nations and regions to embrace all the peoples of Nigeria, as well as the way the suspects were treated as guilty by the police, before ever being arraigned before a court of competent juridiction. The business at Okija is a despicable one that attracts our strictest rebuke and condemnation. But equally repulsive is the attitude of the Nigerian government, that cranks out cheap hypocritical capital, of political import, off a situation, which fundamentally queries her competence. No less repulsive is the attitude of our self-righteous commentators, who gave their hypocrisy a free reign, because Igbo integrity was on the decapitation block.
The fact which they schemed over was that Okija was an indictment of Nigerian government at all levels. This flows from the fact that in a country where the justice system works; where justice is not only done, but seen to be done, places like Okija are rendered redundant unto extinction. It equally indicts the government in the sense that places like Okija, subsists on the consolidated ignorance of the people. One cannot be exceeding the boundaries of common sense, in questioning successive Nigerian governments on what they have done to liberate people from ignorance, which breeds and erects superstructures of credulity, upon which superstitious frauds like Okija are, if not hoisted, but maintained and sustained in being, up to the thresholds of the 21st century. Though that is not of primary interest to us here, our primary interest lies in the fact that when a newspaper report came up that what Nigerians saw at Okija, pales into insignificance as some prank antics of spoilts kids and cannot challenge comparison to the horrible practices of a shrine in Oregun, in the Yoruba heartland[vi][vi], mum became the word from our self-acclaimed “objectivity masters“. What was then gravy for the goose became a delicacy unaffordable for the gander. Double standard was patronized. Okija’s downtown should be derisively exposed to the whole world, but Oregun is not to be talked about, save in conspiratorial whispers. At that instance, Abati’s pen stopped flowing. His crusade for social hygiene lost every momentum. Aluko’s viewing glasses got lost. He posed a nelson’s eye to what obtained in his backyard, but Okija that was many kilometers away from him received the scalding hypocrisy of his truncated vision. They all became frozen in time. Reasons : Oregun is not Igbo territory.
For these people, no opportunity should be spared in sniping at the tall achievements of Ndigbo. Even one Dadodawa on one internet forum[vii][vii] had the effrontery to state that Ndigbo succeed in the world because of their uncanny ability to peddle the Biafran story. To this, we met his errors and educated his ignorance with a list of great Igbo sons and daughters, whose achievements remain a source of a pride to the black race. We asked him to point out any of them who succeeded in his station, by hawking the Biafran Story. Names like Chinua Achebe, Pius Okigbo, Christopher Okigbo, Philip Emeagwali, Barth Nnaji, Dora Akunyili, Austin Okocha, Innocent Egbunike, Chidi Imo, The Ezinwa Twins, Chukwudifu Oputa, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Obiora Ike, Gordian Ezekwe, were presented to him. We equally ask him to give us a name of an Igbo son that succeeded on the back of beating the drums of the Biafran story. He failed. Aluko at another point battled to deny that Ndigbo lost their properties and lost their investments and holdings in 1970 to the vindictive and impoverishing policies of Awolowo’s finance ministry. But since the detergent of falsehood can never essay to rewrite history, the facts had remained to their chagrin; ageless and deathless like the rock of ages.
All the above is simply a prolegomenon to further incisions. We are now about to storm the fortresses of self-righteousness and sanctimonious pretentiousness.
Enter Achebe.
Bolaji Aluko wrote a piece titled “Achebe’s Refusal of National “Honor“ Award: Matters Arising“, which circulated on some internet web portals. The copy we are taking apart could be found at http://www.nigerialinks.com/Articles/mobolaji_aluko/2004/10/achebes-refusal-of-nigerian-national.html. It is this piece which reeks with an unvarnished affront to reason, that has drawn our response. It will be an unforgivable disservice to truth, if this wholesale exhibition of subtle insults, directed at the person and integrity of Achebe, is left to ferment, without an adequate response from conscientious opponents of doublespeak.
The events, which informed Bolaji’s piece, is well known to everybody who should, or happens to be in the know. The subject has been adequately flogged in local and international media circles; both in print, electronic media and in cyberspace.
Chinua Achebe, a foremost cultural ambassador; a larger than life personality; an institution; and a worthy son of Africa, broke his silence; and in a few paragraphs of delicately selected words, delivered with the mathematical precision and ballistic exactitude of a missile, summarized Obasanjo’s misgovernment of Nigeria; rejected the government‘s attempt to defame his character, by associating him with an award, which was simply designed to ensure the admittance of a conglomeration of scoundrels into seats of honour. Achebe like a great, wise hunter, killed so many birds with one piece of stone. With words and an action pregnant with multiple meanings and significances, he said a lot in a few words. He told Obasanjo in one fell swoop, that his government of Nigeria is superlatively dysfunctional and excruciatingly strangulating the Nigerian people. He told him also that his grotesque incompetence is simply liberalizing poverty, insecurity and underdevelopment in Nigeria. His letter implied that Nigeria is imploding on its inglorious weight while the leaders are busy conducting the orchestra that would ensure our admittance into the halls of eternal bankruptcy and hopelessness. Achebe told us that Nigeria under Obasanjo is too dangerous for silence.
Achebe took a principled stand in defence of our collective heritage and posterity. He told the tyrants bestriding our corridors of power, that they are not performing, and that under the terms of the social contract, the people reserves the right to ask more of them, than the garbage they are presently eating from this government. His letter was a warning to the vampyrean ogre to get its fangs, off the bleeding flesh of the Nigerian people
The world of reason greeted Achebe’s letter with joy. A Daniel in Achebe’s form, had come to judgement. The tyrant should at least hear once more, the refreshing voice of reason. We were agog with joy because, for so long had the constant cacophonony of sycophantic praise; courtesy of the retinue of lecherous cheerleaders surrounding Aso rock, laid reason prostrate. The truth of Achebe’s stand was there for all and sundry to see. Even the blind and the deaf knew the progressively decaying nature of the Nigerian situation, that drew Achebe’s righteous anger and indignation.
The governement‘s standard reaction, which has been legendarily, a public display of monumental arrogance, suffocating intolerance, and bigotry[viii][viii], was delivered through the government’s squealer, Fani Kayode. Lending credence to our observations here is government’s reaction to Abubakar Umar’s letter to Obasanjo and the reaction of the SSS to Ojukwu’s rejection to honour a spurious invitation.
It was to this that Aluko came with his article, redolent of a myopia, that we have only been forced to witness in the arena of pseudo-scholarship.
An analysis is ad rem here:
As a part of his introduction, he stated as follows
“On October 14, the Federal Government of Nigeria announced a list of 191 receipients of Nigeria’s National Honour, Prof. Chinua Achebe of “Things Fall Apart“ included.
This opening salvo at first sight looks innocent. But subtly sown between the semantic ridges are some conceited insults, that really coloured the bent and ideology of the whole article, as it unfolds. Achebe needs no introduction anywhere. A man whose name has graced the opening pages of almost every modern edition of “Who is Who in the World“ cannot be an unknown pedestrain lost in the middle of nowhere. A man whose works grace every major public library anywhere in the world, cannot be a pin in a haystack. Nobody needs be told that Achebe wrote “Things Fall Apart“, a masterpiece he wrote as a young man at the age of twenty eight.
It is too degrading to introduce him as belonging to his work. Achebe does not belong to “Things Fall Apart“, as to warrant the syntactic contrivance that deployed the genitive preposition “of” to be use for him in possessive thraldom to what was the work of his hand. Rather, “Thing fall Apart“, is simply one among many masterpieces, that was sired by the prolific pens of Achebe. Aluko‘s construction of that sentence reeks with insults, and can only be construed as the benediction that underachievement pays to genius.
The name Achebe, can suffer being described as “Achebe of Nigeria“, with grace and honour. He did not describe Achebe as belonging to Nigeria. Rather, he described him as belonging to a book titled “Things Fall apart“ This is deliberate. Who should belong to the other? The book to the author, or the author to the book? Who between the book and author, enjoys both ontological and epistemological priority over the other? Who came first in being and in time? Achebe or the book, who properly belonged to the other? Here Aluko sought to achieve two things: Firstly, he essays to discredit Achebe’s locus standi, and therefore cast aspersion on whatever his observations are. This is a form of argumentum ad hominem, where the legitimacy of the person is queried and attacked, and once discredited, his words or evidence falls hopelessly into disrepute. Aluko sought to strip Achebe of every legitimacy and right to speak about or on Nigeria, in the minds of his unwary readers. This is to soften and hoodwink the ratiocinative faculties of his readers, for them to lean favourably to other deceitful spins, which follows. Achebe is a true son of Nigeria. He wrote so many works that have drawn great acclaim from the world of literature and scholarship. His name has brought more honour to Nigeria, than all the image laundry project of Obasanjo’s government can ever hope to achieve. He has been at the fore front of so many iniatives aimed at leading the rivers of reason through Nigeria’s aegean stable of dysfunctional leadership. It was to this cause, that he wrote a pamphlet titled the “Trouble with Nigeria“, which has remained a bible to those seeking to cure Nigeria of her ills. Like Soyinka, Achebe is a great African, that is proud not only of his works, but of his roots. He should have been identified primarily with his roots, as is conventional in relation to human beings. His works should have been made to belong to him, in Aluko’s cobwebs, and not Achebe belonging to his book. Why make an author belong to his book, instead of the book belonging to him.? Aluko’s second and most far reaching project by this subtle attempt, is a long shot at historical revisionism and distortion. He is on a mission to embezzle Achebe’s legacy. He tries to subtly fictionalize Achebe, and make him a non-person, but a fictional personality existing on the pages of a novel somewhere. So that in centuries to come, people will be questioning the historicity of Achebe’s existence, the way they are today questioning that of Socrates and even that of Jesus the Christ.
For those who may never have known or heard about the ideological battle raging in so many intellectual forums, the historicity of so many figures we take for granted as having existed, are today under serious assault. In Biblical studies, modern scholarship have labelled Adam and Eve as mythical figures that never had any historical existence anywhere. In the history of Philosophy, Socrates has been accused by some scholars, as being a creature of Plato’s imagination; or rather an insturment he used to roll out his philosophy. Even the historicity of Jesus the Christ is equally under attack from many quarters, who view him and Christianity, as the creatures born of the ideologically illicit union, between the epileptically fertile imaginations of Paul of Tarsus, and the collective halluncinatory hysteria of a band of some voluntarily unemployed fishermen, widely hated and depised tax collectors seeking to return to public graces, retired rogues, and prostitutes from the rough extremities of the Galilean countryside; who in their bid to vent their frustrations with a decadent Judaistic establishment, needed to invent a god that would be the rallying point of their renewing mission.
This is the kind of questioning, which seeds Aluko wants to sow today, so that the credit for Achebe’s legacy will germinate to be eternally lost to him, and may some time end up gracing another person, who never dreamt nor laboured for it. Nobody has ever addressed Soyinka, as Wole Soyinka of Kongi’s Harvest, or addressed Aristotle as “Aristotle of Metaphysics“, Rather, he is addressed as Aristole of Abdera.
Thirdly, it is a subconscious by attempt by insignificance to drag greatness low as to make its own infinitesimal existence bearable. Nothing proves this more than when Aluko in feigned modesty played out an ancient psychological trick. The trick is very ancient, yet so very current. When an ugly woman, wants to ventilate her envious exasperation, with a beautiful confrere who gets all the attention, or gossip about her, she starts by posting some wooden apologetics to feigned modesty, saying, “I know I am not beautiful, but..., she should not stuff her beauty down our throats, nor flaunt it to our faces“. Once she sets a trap like this, she is expecting an affirmative feed back from those present, that would chorus some ego massage into her ears. Unless someone who hates her with a passion is present, human beings are naturally inclined in such situations to reward her feigned modesty, with some equally feigned affirmation. One could hear those present suffusing her with exclamations like: “O!, you are beautiful“ or “Who told you that you are not beautiful, after all, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder“ Aluko repeated the same trick in P.2, Par. 6 of the piece we are considering. He wrote:
If I were Achebe. This is being presumptous, since NOT ONLY HAVE I NOT WRITTEN A SINGLE NOVEL, worth reading, I have not written a single novel. But If I were Prof. Achebe.....
This guy myopically wishes to compress and circumscribe the greatness of Achebe within the narrow confines of “Things Fall Apart’ alone, in other to bring him to his level, and take a snipe at him. But thank goodness. The wind cannot be caught in a trap. Achebe is an Iroko that cannot be cut down by the Liliputian darts of detractors. The tallest African in the house of literature cannot be any less than this.
So much for the psychological hermeneutics. Now to the submissions proper.
Suffice it ab intio to note, that quite contrary to what Bolaji would have the world believe, Achebe never rejected any National HONOUR. He wrote it in plain English, that he has recieved numerous honours and awards from successive Nigerian governments on so many occasions, even in spite of the imperfections in the system. Okey Ndibe captured it well. What Achebe rejected was a National HORROR. Bolaji refused to see the wider implications of Achebe’s rejection of this horror. How can a social prophet batten in purchased silence, while his people die of hunger in the streets? How can integrity and rascality be invited to share the same podium? What message then is integrity passing to future generations? That compromising with evil is a virtue? How could Achebe receive an honour from a dishonourable government that has flouted every codes of honour in the social contract? Can a dishonourable entity bestow honour? Can a bad tree produce a good fruit? It is only when yes suffices as answers to the questions above, that the horror that Obasanjo’s government wants to bestow on a man of integrity of Achebe’s calibre, can mutate to an honour. But until then, Achebe rightly told Obasanjo. No thanks. Keep your honour. Chris Ubah is a more qualified candidate than myself! I cannot stand on the same platform with a clique of renegades to receive an empty, sugar-coated symbol, with its meaning and import corroded by the open and dishonourable dalliance of the government, with gangsters.
Bolaji pretends that Achebe’s reasons originates and terminates at the reasons he literarily stated in his letter. Even the stated reasons, characteristic of Achebe’s genius, economized words, but generalized the scope as to include every imaginable vista of Obasanjo’s political buffoonery, and destruction of Nigeria. Achebe chose some signature summaries of the government’s bad will and incompetence, as basis, upon which no man of honour can accept some national HORROR award. He cited the sorry situation of the country under Obasanjo, as well as the Presidency’s engineered and teleguided political instability in Anambra State his reasons.
Aluko against all known rational canons, and in his revised standard version of the truth, simply glossed over the Anambra imbroglio referring to it simply as “...Anambra State, whose governor has been embroiled in local squabbles with Abuja-friendly political opponents of his“ (Cf. Aluko, ibid., P.1, Par.3). There are many ways of telling lies. One is by an outright misrepresentation, another is by silent suppression of the facts, another is equally by diluting the impact of the truth by euphemistically playing it down. Aluko deployed all these various shades and techniques of untruth here.
First and foremost, the Anambra issue is not and has never been a “local“ squabble, in the denigrative and delimiting sense that Aluko imposes on it. This represents a gross contravention of the Nigerian constitution, which has set a precedence unseen and yet to be equalled in the history of politics in Nigeria. It is a national tragedy. If it is a local squabble the way Aluko is painting it, then, why did he mention it at all. He is not on the ground in this local imbroglio. He should have kept mute because it is local. That it received the attention of almost all the world when it exploded, showed how wide its dimensions are. Unless Aluko has been infected with the kind of pretentious myopia and selective perception of the Obasanjo government, I do not see how a treasonable violation of a fundamental section of the Nigerian constitution, could be safely described as a local squabble, without some hermeneutic implications . If some group of individuals could arrange to kidnap a sitting governor, and succeed in that enterprise, and without the credible sanctions of the law been brought to apply, then, the Chief Security Officer of the country has lost every right to that office. We can longer entrust him with our safety.
If we are to follow Aluko’s submission here to its logical conclusion, then George Walker Bush should have treated the destruction of the twin towers on September 11, 2001 as a local squabble, and should have left it at the discretion of George Pataki the Governor of New York and Rudy Gulliani, the Mayor of New York, respectively to tackle, because it happened in their locality. To that end, it could a la Aluko, qualify as a local squabble. But Bush, who knew his jurisdiction and responsibilities well, took an attack on a constituent of his domain, as an attack on the whole of the United States. And pursuant that, deployed the whole machinery at his command; brought the whole monetary, military and industrial might and wrath of the United States to bear on his battle against the terrorists. This fact equally explains why the FBI could come into any state to arrest and prosecute anybody who committed a crime against a statute that is within the jurisdiction of the Federal government. Bush swore to defend the constitution of the United States, and he offers no lame excuse to that end. If it means prosecuting criminals, he causes the machinery of justice to set into motion through the offices of his attorney general. But in Obasanjo’s case, his connivance with these cabal of renegades, makes him frustrate the wheels of justice; as Chris Ubah and his gang walks about in unmerited freedom, threatening lesser mortals by boasting their connections to Obasanjo’s power.
Obasanjo swore to uphold and defend the Nigerian constitution. And section 1 sub-section 2 which is a principal section of this constitution was grossly violated by a clique of renegades, and the man who swore to uphold it, looks the other way, as if nothing happened. How can the Police Force, under the direct command of the Presidency be deployed in kidnapping a sitting governor without the Commander in Chief’s approval, and yet the Inspector General of Police is still retaining his seat?. This shows that the IG is not guilty. He was an agent, simply obeying the instructions of his principal, namely the Presidency. Had the Presidency not sanctioned or approved Ngige’s abduction, one then wonders what the IG would still be doing at his duty post. One wonders what Chris Ubah, the leader of that gang of renegades would still doing, enjoying his freedom, riding with a convoy of battle-ready policemen in sickening flamboyance and criminal opulence, while the elected chief executive was and continues to be denied of police protection at the fiat of the same presidency. This is what Aluko refers to as a local squabble.
Secondly, in the sentence under review, Aluko referred to Ubah as Ngige’s opponent. The fact remains that Ubah was never Ngige’s opponents. Your opponent is ontologically from the other ideological side. The opponents of Chris Ngige are the candidates from the other political parties that contested elections with him. Ubah never stood for, nor was he nominated to vie for the post of a governor in Anambra state. He has never been Ngige’s opponent. They were in the same party. But since Obasanjo unveiled his plan B for Ndigbo, which nominated Ubah as his hatchet man to liquidate Anambra State, Things fell apart between former bedmates. And when things break to pieces this way, enmity is enthroned. Ubah in Aluko’s revisionist goggles, rose to become an opponent, instead of what he rightly is, namely, a public enemy. On another pedestal, the construction of the word opponent is only appropriate where a game holds and obtains, or in a situation recommending some spirit of sportmanship. In Ngige and Ubah issue, it is no games, nor play. It is a war. They want to remove Ngige dead or alive. Identifying them as opponents, is really a mischievous misrepresentation of the situation. The facts still speaks for themselves..
In the fifth paragraph, he stated that Achebe reserves the right to reject any gift, which among other things, “he was not PRIVATELY assured that he would be receiving“. This is a deliberate effort to cheapen Achebe’s principled stand against an odious and brazen celebration of imperial debauchery in the corridors of power. Achebe has never been a man that licks the undeodorized arses of power, for the sake of a rickety piece of ephemeral recognition, as to need being privately assured of a recognition. Achebe has never asked for, nor lobbied for any award or recognition. Obasanjo knews this well. Achebe is not honoured by recognitions and awards, but recognitions and awards honour themselves and raise their profiles by coming to Achebe and identifying with him. This is why Obasanjo wants to launder the image of his executive incompetence on the hard earned reputations of this Iroko. But the perceptual antenna of this great African saw through the phoney posturing. Obasanjo knows that once Achebe rises to accept that award, it is tantamount to a silent endorsement of his civilian dictatorship. He would then feel empowered to continue his aimless oscillations, bovine posturing and tyrannical rampage like a cow in a China shop.
Continuing, Aluko in arrant volte face, started patronizing Obasanjo’s diametrically dysfunctional government, simply because Achebe, a symbol of Igbo excellence and genius rose to challenge his excesses. When Abubakar Umar challenged Obasanjo’s excesses, no word was heard from Aluko questioning his motives. When Niyi Osundare wrote out his scathing displeasure over Obasanjo’s rudderless piloting of Nigeria, and the people’s unrestrained descent into the mires of poverty, Aluko saw no hidden agenda in his criticisms. But when Achebe exercised his responsibility as a social prophet, Aluko found the coarse voice that he lost in the first two cases.
It is the giver-the Nigerian Federal Government-has a great fault here: it should ask before it gives
The Nigerian government mutated into a pretty damsel to be patronized by Aluko, simply because Achebe criticised its excesses, which are so very many. We cannot concede the moral high ground to the Obasanjo’s government, which has overreached itself in battening on the pain and poverty of the Nigerian people; all attempts of whitewashers of history, not withstanding. It beats the imagination into frigid incomprehension on how a government that is dishonour in motion, could muster enough honour which it claims, to confer of recipients. This really floors the imagination.
A word about honour.
Honour embosoms integrity, the blunt refusal to be compromised. It graces character and encompasses unshakable sticking to one’s words which are his bonds. When all these are called home, one realises that Herod the tetrach of Galilee, not minding that he was a phenomenal debauchee, was more honourable than Obasanjo. He promised to give lay the world at the feet of Herodias’ daughter. All the daughter of an adulteress needs do was to ask. She asked for a head. Herod, in obedience to his word, which was his bond, gave it. Obasanjo promised to revive NEPA. Today, NEPA is more of an albatross. He promised to fight corruption, but he presides over a presidency that is a synonym for corruption, and yet this is a man that clad himself with some presumptous moral authority to confer honours on people.
Going further, Aluko stated that he was “quite uneasy about the reasons given by Prof. Achebe”
We cannot be ambushed by surprise here. Fani Kayode was equally quite uneasy about the reasons given by Prof. Achebe. What comes home to a rational and critical observer here, is that these two men share similar characteristics. The fact remains that sycophants are forever shocked into unease, whenever the Truth comes before the tribunes of public opinion. The sycophants are well aware that the truth will strip them naked of their deodorized hypocrisy, and make the world see them for they are. That is why unease will always reign in their hearts. Truth pierces the pretences of the crooked and liberates the errors of the ignorant.
Continuing Aluko wrote:
Everybody of consccience would agree that an award from a Hitlerite regime should be refused. BUT OBASANJO’S ADMINISTRATION IS NO HITLERITE REGIME. As insensitive as it is to public pleadings, as self righteous as it is in its “reform“ policies, as wrong headed as many of them are, are really not designed to KILL NIGERIANS, but merely the result of stubborn people who have imbibed a foreign notion of “reform“ and “liberalization and “privatization“ so tunnel-narrow that they turn every contrary advice into almost instant treason (Cf. Aluko, Ibid, P.2 Par.2)
To this, we react as follows. The comparison of Obasanjo and Hitler’s regime is uncalled for, and superlatively in bad taste. I reside in Germany and have it on excellent authority that Hitler’s regime for the Germans of his time, was far better than almost all regimes that Nigeria has ever produced. Hitler presided over the construction of the first autobahn or what we term express ways in history, in Germany. He initiated and presided over the empowerment of the German people. In his time, Volks Wagen arose as the people’s car that is affordable to even the poorest German. What Hilter did to the Jews, had the support of majority of Germans of his time. Hitler simply was the apogee of a history of persecutions that attended the Jews in their Diaspora since the destruction of Jersualem in AD 70. Hitler was not the first to persecute or kill the Jews. Germany had a terrible history and legacy of Jewish persecution, centuries before the appearance of Hitler.. In Frankfurt for instance, the Jews were confined to ghettoes, that are simply unfit for human habitation, and where victims of superlatively discriminatory policies of state. German misfortunes in the course of those times, were routinely taken out on the Jews, who as it were, became the scapegoats to account for every imaginable German misfortune. In the face of all these, the Jewish entrepreneurialism which knew no bounds and which could never be successfully bottled, broke out of these ghettoes to enrich many Jewish people among whom are to be found the great banking family of the Rothschilds. A visit to the Jewish Museum, in Bornheim, very close to Konstablerwache, in Frankfurt am Main, would apprise any inquirer of our stance here. Hitler had the support of the majority of the German people of his time. They elected him. He did not rig his way into power. He led and they willingly followed him. Hitler was a great demagogue. Without any intent to excuse his unpardonable attempt to exterminate one of the greatest nations of mankind, the fault resides not totally with him. He was being a product of his society, times and climes. What about those who followed him into that, those who obeyed and implemented his orders. They were even more primitively brutal than Hitler himself.
But our Obasanjo is no Hitler. How we wish Bolaji would tell that to the people of Odi or the people of Zaki Biam, or to Massob members. These footnotes attests to Obasanjo’s employment of Hitlerite tactics in Nigeria. He razed Odi to the ground like Hitler razed the Warsaw ghetto. He sacked Zaki Biam, like Hitler sacked the Polish city of Lidicce. He is using the SSS to terrorize Opposition and proscribe some media houses that attracted his ire, like Hitler used the Gestapo to hound oppposition into silence. Yet , Obasanjo’s is not a Hitlerite regime. Let the people of Niger Delta hear that. Quite unlike Hitler, Obasanjo has not built our roads especially in the South East, like Hitler did all over Germany. He has not been able to give us a sense of pride in our country, like Hitler was able to generate among his people( though he deployed it for inglorious reasons). Hitler is an inglorious bastard. But Obasanjo is no better. That is our point here. Gani Fawehimi had on an occasion labelled Obasanjo’s goverment, a wicked government. He knew Obasanjo too well.
To this end, if an award from a Hitlerite regime should in conscience be refused according to Aluko, what has Achebe done wrong in refusing an award from a regime that sports all the features and superlatively qualifies to be a Hitlerite regime? The world wants to know.
The next paragraph was a crude rehash of some wooden illogics. We could not see the connection between rejecting an award from a Hiterlite regime as pleaded by Aluko and Achebe’s reception of national awards in 1961, 1979 and 1983 respectively. Those years may not have been banner years for Nigeria according to Aluko, Achebe saw rooms for improvement. He was optimistic that goodwill coupled with competence can lead us there. He criticised the situation in 1983, with his masterpiece, “The Trouble with Nigeria”. But in Obasanjo’s era, the dalliance and connivance of the government with a a clique of gangsters and renegades, eclipses any room for optimism. What is required is a radical U-turn. That was why Achebe rejected the award at this time and not at those times. There may have been some connivance between Nigerian leadership of those times, and some forces of retrogression. But renegades in Nigeria, boasting its connections to power and attempting to turn a state into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom, have never been more brazen than they are today, under Obasanjo’s watch. When the leaders of a nation conspires to celebrate criminality, then it is siesta time for “all that is good, all that is true and all that is beautiful“, if we are to borrow from Wolfgang Goethe. That was what drew Achebe’s vehemence.
In the next paragraph, he seeks to bolster his enfeebled arguments by resorting to a cheap blackmail and profound miscarriage and diversion of attention. He then unwittingly shed the toga of his presumptous objectivity, which we essayed to point out earlier above. His essay now showed itself for what it is; namely a tribalistic defence of an indefensible position. He then launched a campaign to exonerate Obasanjo his “Broda“ from the consequences of his ineptitude. He started defending Obasanjo his kinsman, against the truth , which his incompetence and bad will forced Achebe to react to. But since one cannot mount a successful defence against the truth, he failed. Hear him.:
After all, In Anambra, it was not Obasanjo that made Ngige call someone as young as his little “broda“ (Ubah) his godfather: It was not Obasanjo who forced Ngige to Okija Shrine, or caused him to sign some documents. It was not Obasanjo that slapped Ngige’s face.
Yes, Ubah may arrogate himself the name of godfather because he most probably enjoys what Ngige had no access to. That is some direct and instant access to the Mafian Don Obasanjo. That was what made him a godfather. PDP houses one of the most crude and faceless cabal of monsters and mafians that Nigerian politics of recent times has never seen. Soyinka called them a “Nest of Killers“, just as any mafia family habours within its ranks. PDP from 1999 to 2003 ran Nigeria like a gangland. This party at all levels bestrode our horizon like a multi-tentacled octopus, feeding fat on every corrupt pie and lucre in the public space. Nigerians learnt that the fear of PDP is the beginning of wisdom. PDP colonized all apparatus of state that should have ensured a credible check and balance on its excesses. With the Balogun of OWU presiding, INEC which was supposed to be independent, mutated into a PDP extension. For one to successfully rig any elections, Guobadia must be bought. And he was purchased by Obasanjo’s goverment. In view of that, anybody who wishes to rig in his state, must identify with the Federal PDP rigging machine presided over by Olusegun Obasanjo. This was what catapulted Chris Ubah into a godfather. He greased the palms of his fellow PDP thugs, with his ill-gotten wealth, and the magic key to all doors in Aso rock was handed to him. That was what Nwabueze Ngige lacked.
PDP, as the truth is, wrecked Anambra state for good measure, under the most inglorious tenure of one Mr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju. To this end, Anambrarians unanimously rejected that Stealing Conglomerate, which PDP has come to represent in their eyes. Nobody voted for that party in the 2003 elections, which Obasanjo stole, right from the mutilation of the Electoral Act 2001, through to the primaries, and to the elections proper. People voted massively for APGA. Had yours sincerely not been a part of the European Union Field monitors of that election, we would have reached INEC’s conclusion. The European Union report, which Obasanjo and Jerry Gana criticised, as Okonjo Iweala and OBJ are now doing to the Transparency International’s 2004 Corruption Index Report, detailed the massive irregularities and electoral fraud that was witnessed in Anambra, Enugu, Rivers, Edo and some other PDP states. Chris Ubah, with his Aso Rock connection, engineered the emergence of Ngige as PDP’s flagbearer. He recreated on the local scene, what was Obasanjo’s major forte at the national level; namely, election rigging. PDP lost Anambra State, as the votes made clear, and as Ubah most recently confessed at the World Igbo Congress, held recently in the USA. But Ubah brought the money, which was used in bribing the police into silence, as well as in bribing INEC into doctoring the results, which saw the emergence of a hopeless loser being declared the winner. Guobadia, under the instructions of a PDP presided over by an Obasanjo, who crapulently desired a second term in office, like a junkie craves drugs, rigged the elections in favour of Chris Ngige, over and above the man that won it; namely Peter Obi. Yet Aluko is exonerating Obasanjo. Chris Ubah is a godfather only at the good pleasure and convenience of Obasanjo. This posture informs his position on the Anambra imbroglio.
Secondly, Ngige going to Okija shrine, as stupid as it sounds today, belonged to the recommended prospectus and rituals for political rookies in Nigeria. This is what an political aspirant in the Nigeria parlance must fulfil to be a made man. Obasanjo has not told us the pacts he had with the Northern cabal, and the covenants he entered into pursuant to that pact, and with what those pacts were sealed. That Ngige went at all, if that is the case, flows from the basic premise of the whole story; namely, that Ubah was a godfather. And Ubah is a godfather in PDP on Obasanjo’s good pleasure. Apart from Obasanjo, Ubah can do nothing. That is the central fact that Aluko is battling to deny. But since primitive denials of pristine truths are bound to fail, he failed.
Aluko battled on albeit, so very unsuccessfully to extricate Obasanjo from the webs spun by his inordinate crave for power. After innundating us with this congenitally compromised and untenable rigmarole, he nose-dived to convict logic by affirming the summary of a fact he essayed to deny. He wrote in conclusion of that paragraph as follows:
“...If Obasanjo is to be BLAMED, it is because he has WITHDRAWN Ngige’s SECURITY DETAIL-which I guess is being ably provided by MASSOB
This is really a confession of guilt. The guilty must always convict themselves with their lying tongues. It is inevitable.
Obasanjo’s withdrawal of the Security details of a State Chief Executive, is here so very sarcastically treated by Aluko, in obedience to some primitive nepotistic cravings. Hope for Nigeria is gradually drowning.
Withdrawing Ngige’s security detail graphically paints Obasanjo’s complicity in the whole saga. It is the corpular connecting all other pieces of this puzzle. It is the summary of the presidency’s connivance, which Achebe so very excellently articulated. Ubah acted because, there was some power behind him, and supporting his scandalous indiscretions. He can afford to slap Ngige, because Obasanjo would shake his hands for doing that. It is a disgrace and stands to the eternal discredit of Obasanjo’s government, that it could so shamelessly choose Chris Ubah; a thug and a consolidatedly ignorant and illiterate one for that matter, as its pointman in Anambra State. It then stands to reason that Obasanjo is a thug. This is simply following the logic to its conclusion. Thugs of identical plummage, flock together.
Another atrociously stupid posture adopted in the course of the saga, was the inability of the Federal government to rise in defence of the constitution, which Ubah’s democratic atrocity devastated. Obasanjo’s government has up to this very day, failed to prosecute the Anambra coupists. Yet it is prosecuting Al Mustapha for an alleged coup, which was nipped allegedly in its embryonic stages, yet, those who planned theirs and had it successfully executed in Anambra State, are walking the streets, still boasting their connections to corrupt power.
Aluko just skimmed over Obasanjo’s criminal complicity here. How can a president, blatantly and with impunity, disregard the orders of a court of competent jurisdiction, in selfish worship and service to his vindictiveness. Yet he mouths the mantra of fighting corruption. Is this not hypocrisy in excelsis?
Then to the crux of his arguments. He opined as follows:
Lord knows how I criticize this administration, but I will not refuse an award from it based simply on its palpable inability to move the nation forward. I could refuse one if I felt that I had done nothing particular to deserve it ( Maybe someone has“bribed“ on behalf, or was bribing me with it), or had nothing since the last award( particularly since Achebe had reveived four national awards earlier) or that of all the gamut of awards (GCFR, GCON, OON, etc), the one given to me was too lowly for me. I could refuse it if my suggestions to move the nation have been deliberately and flagrantly snubbed and ignored-as the have, with the world as my witness.
A deconstruction of the above submissions, reveals it as a puerile circumlocution bereft of all factual basis, in relation to its application. First and foremost, Aluko should know that there exists nothing for him to refuse or accept here.Nothing was offered him as to set his faculties of choice in motion. He can indulge his imagination. He has a right to that. His writings on the web has unfortunately not earned the plaudits and attention of the award committee. May be when he gets to Achebe’s age, something may come. Though doubts could be legitimately entertained here. Achebe is being honoured today, the world over, as a reward for the works of his youth. Things Fall Apart flowed out of his youthful pen, when he was only twenty eight. Aluko is unfortunately no more a youth.
Secondly, Aluko has proved to us that he will accept an award from Abacha and Mobutu Sesse seko, if they offered him one. These are men who made an extraordinary effort to send their countries to primitivity. These are men who presided over illegitimate governments that stole their countries blind. These were monumental kleptocrats. Today, Abacha’s record is gradually bettering that of Obasanjo. Our economy is a basket case. Lives and property are as insecure as insecurity itself. Nigerians are now feeding off garbage heaps quite oblivious of Ibrahim Mantu’s denials. Corruption has consummated his marriage to our society. Violence, instability and crime are now the major hallmarks of Obasanjo’s presidency. His presidency has witnessed more assassinations than Abacha in his majestic wickedness could ever contrive. Aluko has told us that he will accept an award in conscience from a regime that is doing its possible best to move the nation BACKWARDS. This flows from the fact, that nothing in nature is stagnant. If you are not moving forward, then you are moving backwards. There exists no midway here. Any government that fails to move the nation forward, has succeeded in sending the nation backwards to primitivity. So if this does not constitute enough reason to reject or refuse an award in Aluko’s computation, one wonders the ethical parameters he patronizes in his considerations.
Aluko is gradually rigmaroling back to an inescapable truth. He will reject an award, when someone gives it to him as a bribe. The fundamental objective of a bribe is to initiative or elicit an action or inaction from the recepient. We make it bold to say that the government was bribing Achebe with that award. They want to secure an assurance of his constant silence, to Obasanjo’s rape of the Igbo nation, in particular and Nigeria in general. To effectively gag him, they cannot buy his conscience with money. They felt that since Achebe is an intellectual, that offering him a bribe that massages his intellectual ego, would do the job. But these guys were poor students of Achebe. If they ever read him, they would have realised that he is a man of integrity. And writing about integrity in “The Trouble With Nigeria” he said that Integrity connotes a blunt refusal to be compromised. His reputation is not a casino for political gamblers and undertakers. He towers above such pedestrain considerations. The heights he attained does not just happen by chance. He did not just wake up to become a great man It is a product of strict discipline. He applied himself strictly to his tasks and his character was refined in the process. To this end, he cannot afford to compromise this jewel in subservient craving for an ephemeral nonsense.
Furthermore, Aluko will reject an award if his “suggestions to move the nation forward have been deliberately and flagrantly snubbed and ignored- as the world would be his witness. Well, Achebe advise on how to move this nation forward has suffered all of the above-listed mishaps. They have been deliberately and flagrantly snubbed and ignored. Is the world not his witness? Of course it is. It is a pity that Aluko neither saw this nor acknowledged it. It is really culpable
In 1983 Achebe x-rayed the Nigerian situation in simple, readable and unassuming manner, and offered some suggestions of far reaching insight and implication on how to move Nigeria forward, which is superlatively valid today as it was then. It was laid down in an Eighty eight-paged document, with the title “The Trouble With Nigeria“. I wonder what more one requires from this genius. This masterpiece, which should be a part of the intellectual diet of every Nigerian, and should be a part of the General studies curriculum, in our colleges and universities, contains pragmatic and workable suggestions on how to make Nigeria work. We have read enough of this little Opus Magnus, to know “quite clearly (that Achebe’s) patriotism is not going to be easy or comfortable in a country as badly run as Nigeria is. And this is not made any easier by the fact that no matter how badly a country may be run there will always be some people whose personal, selfish interests are, in the short term at least, well served by the mismanagement and the social inequities. Naturally (like Fani Kayode) they will be extremely loud in their adulation of the country and its system and will be anxious to pass themselves off as patriots and to villify those who disagree with them as trouble-makers or even traitors. But doomed is the nation which permits such people to define patriotism for it[ix][ix].
Obasanjo has persistently disregarded the suggestions of this book. He has flagrantly continued in his 3rd term in office, what Achebe criticised him for in his first tenure as a military Head of State. The world is a witness to the fact that Achebe spoke long ago and was disregarded. To this end, he reserves the right to reject that award as to make the deaf government of Obasanjo wake up from its slumber of self-delusion.
Aluko in his willful blindness failed to ask Obasanjo why he has persisted in dyfunctional incompetence despite all remonstrations of reasonable men, as to warrant and attract Achebe’s displeasure. He is simply harping on Achebe’s refusal to accept some crowns of horror, to divert attention from the hopeless ineptitude of his kinsman.
To do this effectively, Aluko states that Achebe should not have said anything at all with the announcement of the award, or simply confined himself to stating that there is nothing to celebrate in the present-day Nigeria. What an unadulterated piece of trash. This guy is recommending silence to a master of his art, in the face of tyranny. Aluko lied to himself here. He, in his bid to at least ventilate his bottled dissension, tied himself with the ropes of conceit. Aluko must have heard of Soyinka, who stated in the clearest terms that “The man dies in him who keeps silent in the face of tyranny“. Achebe is a man. He cannot keep silent, even if Obasanjo’s praise singers, continue their redefinition of patriotism, to accomodate their sycophancy.
Secondly, Achebe is not interested in any office that Obasanjo has to offer, as to knuckle subserviently or bow at the altars of his pleasure, before telling him some home truth. Achebe’s stock in trade is the best interest of his country. As a social prophet, posterity would never be kind to him, had he soiled his name or allowed his character to be defamed by being associated with the horror that Obasanjo was dishing out. Achebe needs not offer any personal advice to a tyrant whose ears were blocked by conceit and arrogance. Achebe gave him the shock therapy which is what Obasanjo really needs to wake up from his coma.
Aluko prescribed a quiet piece of advice from Achebe to Obasanjo, which Obasanjo and Fani Kayode will twist to present that he is asking for some political crumbs like they did in Abubakar Umar’s case. He equally claimed that Achebe has access to Obasanjo and should have gone to him personally to offer him his advice. Well, we would not spend time on that as that is only of conjectural import. Hearsays are not admissible in rational evidence. To that end, Aluko in this instance, like always has carried his presumptions and the products of his imagination far beyond the frontiers of reason. Moreso, Obasanjo needs no advice from Achebe on what to do. His retinue of special advisers salaried to do that job, should be enough.
Aluko concludes his inveterate spinnings by stating that he wonders why Achebe should blame Obasanjo, since he enjoys a conjectural access to him. If this was legitimate queries of a mind who wished to know, we would have offered some help. But this flows from a posturing inspired by arrogance and a blunt refusal to face the truth for what it is. Aluko is simply attacking Achebe’s stand because Achebe is an Igbo man. One is equally hard pressed to find no reaction from Aluko, when Niyi Osundare, who equally enjoys a conjectural access to Obasanjo rose up to write against his misgovernment of Nigeria. The same applies in the case of Abubakar Umar.
Conclusions
Aluko has shown us that he can somersault in random variousness to the promptings of tribalism, as against truth and objectivity. All we have to record for posterity here in this conclusion is in the form of a question. Who loves Nigeria more? Achebe, or Aluko and his likes?
If truth be told, Achebe is one of the greatest of Nigerian patriots. In Chapter 5 of the trouble with Nigeria, he wrote his heart out.
Who is a patriot? He is a person who loves his country. He is not a person who says he loves his country. He is not a person who shouts or swears or recites or sings his love of his country. HE is one who cares deeply about the happiness and WELLBEING OF HIS COUNTRY and all its people. Patriotism is an emotion of love directed by a critical intelligence. A true patriot will always demand the highests standards of his country and accept nothing but the best for and from his people. He will be outspoken in condemnation of their short-coming without giving way to superiority, despair or cynicism.[x][x]
That is a fitting conclusion. Aluko should go find cheap games to shoot his liliputian darts at. Achebe towers over his pettiness.
[xi][i] Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free-Market Democracy breeds Ethnic hatred and Global Instability, London, Arrow Books, 2003, P.33
[xii][ii] Achebe, Chinualumogu, The Trouble with Nigeria, Enugu, Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1983, P.43
[xiii][iii] See Obi Nwakamma, Abati’s Revisionism and Distortions of Nigerian History, http://www.usafricaonline.com/obinwaka.igbohater.abati.html, See also Chuks Iloegbunam, Abati and other anti-Igbo bigots
[xiv][iv] Aluko, Bolaji, The Barbarous Acts of Okija, http://www.nigerianmuse.com/essays/?u=okija.htm
[xv][v] Abati, Reuben, Ohaneze and The Shrine at Okija, The Guardian 8 th August 2004
[xvi][vi] Cf. http://allafrica.com/stories/200410110440.html
[xvii][vii] Naijapolitics@yahoogroups.com, messag
[xviii][ix] Achee, Op. Cit. P.18
[xix][x] Achebe, C, Loc.Cit.
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Last Updated (
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Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh 
Posted by Robot| 24.04.2008 20:19