02 Nov 2004 |
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| George Orwell’s Animal farm was designed to x-ray the reactions of all manner of social participants, to a progressive degeneration of their society, after they paid a lot to engineer an escape from an imposed dictatorship. At publication, almost everybody was agreed that Orwell was taking a literary snipe at the extravagant historical failure, which Communism bears at the core of its genetic blueprint. Today, anybody that happens across that masterpiece, who is a little conversant with the Nigerian situation, cannot help jumping into the conclusion, that George Orwell was a clairvoyant who looked far into the future and saw Nigeria. It is heart-rending for a people to water the concourse of liberty with their blood, only for that sacrifice to be ruthlessly betrayed, by those charged with carrying it on. Our society could have taken the betrayal in its stride, had it been done once and concluded for all times. Every society is capable of doing that, due to some collaborative operations of its internal dynamics. But in Nigeria, each new political dispensation hatches a recycled breed of old political undertakers and pallbearers, whose sworn duty is to bury Nigeria by instalment. The business of government since Nigerian independence has been the business of betraying all our collective aspirations to good governance, progress and stability. The betrayal continues to be passed on like a relay baton, from one Nigerian inglorious leader to the next. The cheerleaders, political grave-diggers, and social scavengers circumscribing our political arena keep on nibbling away at our hopes, which progressively diminishes by the day. A journey back to a consideration of the Animal Farm, reveals the fact that Orwell’s title for this classic remains prophetic and instructive against the backdrop of the Obasanjo’s administration, which incidentally is the subject presently holding some promise for our consideration. It may be more than a cosmic coincidence, that Obasanjo’s first literary expedition on emerging from the Valleys and Shadows of Kirikiri, was to pen down “This Animal Called Man”. Orwell’s Animal Farm was everything about this animal called man, in a revolution gone awry. In the Animal Farm, a revolution was dreamt by the forebears, who went the way of all the earth, nursing dreams of liberty for their descendants. This liberty was to be achieved through a revolution, and maintained at the price of eternal vigilance. Their yoke at the instance of human masters was strangulating. They craved self determination. Their desires confronted the existential fact, that tyrants have never won prices for benevolence, and neither are men of privilege ever ready to give up their privilege without a fight. They braced up for a struggle. The fought hard for it. They won it. It was a pyrrhic victory. They cast off the human yoke, and sat down to govern themselves. At this stage, Old major who fathered the revolution, was only a distant memory. His bones was resting with his ancestors. Though his views were clear and his ideals attainable, he did not take cognisance of the evil and mercurial and chameleonic viciousness of greed for power. Scarcely was the liberty achieved, than Napoleon hijacked the revolution, which gradually depreciated into extinction at his hands. He sacked snowball, intimidated the cowards and brainwashed the strong into silent senility, in the face of his excesses. One of those he really brainwashed was one of the most powerful animals in the farm, namely Boxer the horse. Boxer grew to view Napoleon as second only to God. In Boxer’s world view and computation, Napoleon was the summary of rightness. whatever Napoleon did was right. Even when “all animals are equal”, which was the fundamental thrust of the revolution, was mutilated by Napoleon with the caveat that “Some are more equal than the others” Boxer sold his reason to propaganda and still held him to be right, against all logic and reason. He was led by the nose as he blindly followed this Machiavellic tyrant, to the end; thus proving once and for all times, that he was really one of the nearest cousins to an ass. Boxer’s stance was an affront to reason. He switched off his reasoning facilities, and allowed Napoleon to think for him and lead him by the nose. Orwell did well to lead us to the fact that when he collapsed in old age and weakness, crushed by the weight of toil, in a life-time of subservient obedience to Napoleon, his remains was fed to Napoleon’s dogs, as food. What a very sorry way to be sent off the existential stage? What a way for strength to be interred in eternal scorn? This proves that any man who follows people instead of principles, in his considerations and actions, will one day be worth not more than dog food. Great men have always know these Boxer’s story is a sorry, but a very didactic one. Boxer was the most powerful animal in the farm. He was endowed with enough potency that could single-handedly crush or maul any challenge to his strength. The life of any animal that dared attract his displeasure, could be history with just a kick from one of his legs. Boxer being a horse is such a strong and well endowed animal. So much so that measure of strength in speed bears his name: horsepower. In the farm, boxer was the major crane that dragged all the stones uphill for the construction of the windmill. Even when others tired out, he kept at his detail, supplying his strength, to achieve the tasks at hand. But most unfortunately, he was not well endowed in the mental department. There, he was hopelessly retarded. To this end, he was effectively neutralised as a challenge to Napoleon’s excesses. Even when others paused to think, he refused to use the head on his shoulders. He kept on excusing his ratiocinative laziness with the refrain: Napoleon is always right. I hope Mr. Fani kayode is listening. Nigerians were under the military jackboots, which reached its unholy apogee in the duo of IBB and Abacha. The yoke was simply strangulating. We dreamt of liberty. We dreamt of a Nigeria flowing with milk and honey. We had the right to that dream. To assure us of this right, nature blessed our land with enough largesse to finance this flow in a turbulent dimension. But we could not attain these dreams. It was sabotaged and in danger of being compromised out of existence, by the succession of rapacious juntas, that turned Nigeria into some lawless fiefdom. We needed a revolution, as we cannot achieve that without a fight. June 12 availed us the rallying song. We fought for a revolution. The gods fought alongside us. On June 8, 1999, the villain was conquered. He lay gasping for breath and for life, atop some imported prostitutes. We were on our way to shaking off tyranny and the military yoke. Abiola and Kudirat that gave us the rallying cry were at this stage, distant memories. Their bones‘ like Old Major’s were resting with their ancestors. Elections 1999 saw our revolution come to fruition. The dreams of the democrats was on its way to being realised. But PDP hijacked our dream. Obasanjo rigged out all other honest voices, and became president. In 2003, he hijacked state power himself. Since then, our dreams have degenerated into some fractured synaptic meanderings, that is the stuff of nightmares. NEPA, which he promised to resuscitate is still extorting money from Nigerians, forcing them to pay for the darkness that NEPA so very generously generates. Corruption which he swore to tackle, bored its way into the presidency. The refineries that he promised to reawaken, slumbered deeper into decay and dysfunctionality. Nigerians kept slipping into the miry pit of irreconcilable poverty. Then came Fani Kayode. This man may have been one of the most endowed men in Obasanjo’s kitchen cabinet, as to be made the mouthpiece. But like Boxer above, he has switched off his reasoning faculties. In his world and computations, Obasanjo, like the Orwellian Napoleon, is always right. He has abandoned the ability to reason, and rendering his head, nothing more than a hat rack. Obasanjo is always right, even when he farts in the kitchen, he remains right. Even when he fiddles while Nigeria implodes on itself, Obasanjo is always right. To effectively man his detail, he became a liar. He has a veracity issue, and is incredibly unbelievable when he spins his cobwebs of lies. If this was his only endowment, it could have been manageable. He tops it off with throwing tantrums and name-calling. That is the man, that was detailed to defend Obasanjo’s excesses. If one is incompetent in image laundering, he should at least do his client the favour of not soiling the image more. But our Fani-Kayode seems to be allergic to decency. Experience has proved that the apart from flaws in their character, and weakness of their psychological balance, the only other, single most dangerous plague ever to afflict tyrants, is the plague of sycophancy. Many a tyrant are personable, good-natured men on the personal level. But once in power and surrounded by a coterie of sycophantic praise-singers and cheerleaders, they are irredeemably doomed. Historical instances abound to bear us out here. Herod met his tyrannical waterloo in the adulterous bosoms of Herodias. Herod would not have brutally beheaded the forerunner of the Truth left on his own, despite his oath to give Herodias‘ daughter whatever she requests as emolument for electrifying the royal audience attendant at the imperial birthday. The story had it that he was deeply troubled. But the fear of Herodias viewing him as a coward who cannot fulfil his promise, made him sidestep all prodding of conscience and good sense, to order the murder of an innocent man. Sycophants capitalize on the psychological needs or inadequacies of their victim to prod or urge him onto his destruction. They make ample use of the tyrants fears, anxieties and pleasures. It was probably this manipulative brew, that Herod bowed to. It is like an impotent man, bowing to demands of his mistress for fear of being taunted with his impotence. That was why John the Baptizer lost his head to the daughter of an adulteress, at the orders of the tyrant of Galilee. Pilate would not have abandoned an innocent man to the capricious wiles of his detractors, left on his own. When Jesus, in answer to one of his questions, to him that his kingdom is not of this world, we were told, that at that stage, Pilate was strongly disposed to release him, and he sought ways to do this. But when the sycophants, who knew their job tightened the belt, Pilate gave in, and cowardly abandoned an innocent man to the extremities of human wickedness. The sycophants reminded him that he can only qualify to view himself as a friend of Caesar, when he condemns a man of whose innocence he was convinced of. Had he been convinced otherwise, he would not have sought to absolve himself of the guilt of the man’s death by washing his hands. Pilate in his career as a Roman Procurator, has had so many people hanged, crucified or even beheaded, but how many of them, had he publicly performed a ritual of absolution, absolving himself of the guilt that would issue from the man’s death. Had he been convinced of his guilt, he would not have hesitated to condemn him. He knew the guy was innocent, that was why he sent him to Herod, for him to do the dirty job. The House of Romanov under the headship of Tsar Nicholas, due to a crosspollination of factors allowed the sycophantic smoke of Rasputin to catalyze and facilitate the fall of the Russian empire. So is Obasanjo today. The sycophants have refused to tell him that his critics are not the problem. They have continued to deceive him into believing that the others are the problem and not him or his government. His court jesters have kept closing his eyes to the Shakespearean fact, that the “fault is not in our stars, but in us that we are underlings“. Sycophants like Fani Kayode have made it a part of their job to perpetually lie to Obasanjo either about the incompetence of his government or its bad political will, in relation to Nigeria’s problems. For Fani Kayode, Obasanjo is always right and Nigerians should go to hell, if their situation tells them the obverse. In this vein, we make bold to affirm, that despite Obasanjo’s many flaws, that Fani-Kayode and his likes remain the most dangerous affliction of that government. These men who possess an alternate reality from what is real in the Nigeria they preside over, are hell bent on blinding the man who mostly needs to know, from knowing what obtains in the socio-economic pigsty he claims to be governing. In recent times, Fani Kayode has established himself a garrulous nuisance and some dangerous annoyance; a real affront to decency and official demeanour. Sometime ago, Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, wrote an open letter to Obasanjo, articulating his anger at the way of conducting the business of government under him, and what seemed like his sworn duty to liberalize poverty among the Nigerian masses. Umar called Obasanjo’s attention to the geometric and unrestrained descent of Nigeria into hopelessness under his watch. Hardly had Umar finished than, Fani Kayode rose to call Umar unprintable names, accusing him of simmering in his stew over his inability to secure political contracts or appointments from the government. Instead of the government addressing the fundamental issues raised by Umar, which most unfortunately is the view of ordinary Nigerians, it went into name calling, and verbal abuse. Fani Kayode told the diplomatic world by that single stroke that diplomacy and sycophancy are parallel lines that can never meet. A few days back, Chinua Achebe, the tallest African in the House of literature and one of the greatest cultural ambassador ever to come out of Africa, rose like the classical Lord Poseidon, from the depth of responsible silence, to explode his stiff and undiluted disappointment with the rudderless and aimless oscillation of the isle of his birth around the craters of disaster. His words, constructed with the most clinical of lingual and verbal hygiene native to a genius, essayed to speak uncommon truth to raw and naked power; which is a dangerous undertaking to say the least. He wrote to protest and register his dissatisfaction with the Nigerian situation of today, which under Obasanjo’s watch is still too dangerous for silence. Hardly had Achebe finished, than Fani Kayode took up the offensive, proving himself once more a more dangerous sycophant than people ever thought he was. He launched his senseless tirade on a man whose name remains a synonym for distinction. He took the issues to a level where his consolidated stupidity became so glaring as to be repulsive. The government panicked. The world listened. For the first time in years, an oracle spoke some home truths to rugged and crooked power. In fact , Never in the history of human government, has so few paragraphs, raised so much insomnia and pervasive indigestion in the corridors of power. That is the genius and power that throbs in the deepest recesses of Achebe’s heart. Its effect on the psyche of Obasanjo and his horses is the equivalent of a psychological mushroom effect. Achebe’s anger was distilled and was well delivered. It was like a nuclear payload targeted at the heart of the matter. Achebe is a man who does not make noise for the fun of it. This man has a name which rings a bell in all circles. When he talks, the world listens. By his letter which stringed together a few words in an explosively direct manner, Achebe once and for all broke the deluded tranquillity under which the Obasanjo’s misgovernment luxuriates in self delusion. One could recall that this was the kind of stupidity that informed Ezra Tobechukwu, the SSS spokesman, who referred to Ojukwu as a coward for refusing to honour the SSS invitation to be killed in Abuja. Tobechukwu’s is rank stupidity because, it takes courage to say no to the SSS to its face, knowing full well the kind of semi-efficient kill machine that the SSS had been in the history of Nigeria. A friend of mine that was a visitor to the Abacha SSS gulag, told me that these SSS guys could kill a goat in a way that will make God himself charge them for cold-blooded murder. A man who can stand up and tell a brutal killing machine to its face to take a hike to hell, may have so many other flaws which cowardice is not a part of. The above is the rank stupidity that informs the sycophantic postures of special advisers to our leaders. The tyrant could only be salvaged if he is able to keep sycophants at bay, or if he discovers himself and serves the people instead of his ego. Philip of Macedon, the Father of Alexander the Great, was a great king and revered ruler of his people. He discovered that he is human first and lastly a king. To this end, being human, he is mortal like every other being. He asked himself a la Kennedy, what he can do for his country and people, and not what his people can do for him. To effectively banish sycophancy from his courts, he appointed one courtier, on full salary for this job. He knew that one day he shall be no more, and to this end, his principal preoccupation became, what he can leave behind as a lasting legacy that will outlive and outlast him. The appointment of this courtier with his job detail, which I will describe shortly is to make him not to lose his focus or fall for the fatal juice of sycophantic eloquence, in all that he does. The job of this courtier is to be the first to greet him as he comes from his bedchamber, with these words: “Remember, Philip, One day, you shall die“. This morning information became a guiding light that kept him within humane bounds, as he spent himself for the betterment and welfare of his people. Obasanjo’s first term could be forgiven and termed a period of reconnaissance. But his second tenure is simply writing itself into history, as an irredeemable disaster. I wonder if our leaders at all levels care at all what the judgement of history will be on them, and their stewardships. To save himself, Obasanjo should as a matter of urgency relieve all those Aso rock sycophants of their posts, starting with Fani Kayode. This guy has really outlived his usefulness. He is now a positive risk, a political liability for this government and an accident waiting to occur. He like Rasputin of old, has continued to taint the poor image of Obasanjo’s government with more opprobrium and scandal, emanating from his brainless insults. He has nothing to offer except bickering and insulting voices of genuine concern. Obasanjo should know that Nigeria today under his watch is really too dangerous for silence. And one may not be wrong, if we ask permission of Achebe, to include Fani Kayode as a member of this small clique of renegades, openly flaunting its connections to Obasanjo, seemed determined to turn Nigeria-our homeland, into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. All men of good will are appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence and connivance of the presidency. This is because, if the presidency is not the author or does not connive with Fani Kayode, in his inglorious job of pillorying our real and patriotic heroes, it should have issued a retraction long ago. But the government did not do that. It remains the author of those words as far as we are concerned. The voice is Kayode’s, but the words are Obasanjo’s. Fani Kayode who feels that Obasanjo is always right, should well read and apprise himself of the plight of the Orwellian Boxer. He was fed to dogs. History has shown that dangerous and garrulous sycophants, depart ingloriously and are fed to dogs, both metaphorically and actually in so many cases. They can never escape it. It is their portion and cup, and they cannot escape drinking it to the dregs. Joseph Goebbels, the short, partially disabled rabble-rouser and propaganda minister in Hitler Third Reich madness, ended up poisoning his posterity out of existence, that no direct seed of this man, walks the earth today, before shooting his wife and himself to hell, and topping it off with having their remains barbecued into oblivion by servants who obeyed his last wishes. Rasputin the debauched lecherous sycophant in the House of the Romanovs, equally met a not too pleasant exit out of life. His death was a measured cocktail of poisoning, torture and drowning, suffered at the hands of Royals exasperated with his evil influence on the course of Tsarist policy. Boxer received no sympathy from the ruthless tyrant he spent his life and health serving. He was fed to Napoleon dogs. This is coming, Fani Kayode will one day be fed to Obasanjo’s political dogs. That is the price to pay for desecrating reason, and insulting honour.
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