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In ancient Greece, a bald-headed
man had his bath and applied oil on his head one afternoon and left his home
for a walk.He had not moved more than ten metres from his house when a very big
tortoise fell on his unprotected head.He died instantly.Within seconds, the town
was thrown into serious confusion.What was most confusing was that tortoises have
no wings and therefore cannot fly.The elders of the Town had an emergency
meeting.They decided to go and consult the oracle of Delphi to know which god
to appease for the unprecedented disaster. A philosopher gave an answer to
the puzzle.
The philosopher told the elders
that they should not go waste their time in Delphi that no god was
annoyed that would require to be appeased.He said the carnivorous eagle was to
blame. He told them that eagles like the meat of tortoise but because of the hard
shell, they pick tortoise from the ground, fly high into the sky and leave the
tortoise to crash on a rock.With the tortoise's shell shattered, the eagle could
conveniently eat the flesh.The shining bald head of the dead man was mistaken
for a rock by the eagle.
I try at times to compare the above
story to the story contained in the GREAT PONDS by Elechi Amadi. Where, unknown
to the communities in dispute over the ponds,the influenza that claimed
many lives in 1918 was responsible for the deaths in the communities rather
than the oaths they took.
A few years ago in Benin City, a
lunatic in the night climbed a high-tension NEPA pole apparently to commit
suicide. He stayed till the early hours of the morning without touching any
wire.Those who saw him first raised an alarm that a wizard that was returning
from the witches’ coven was hanging on NEPA pole because certain forces had
prevented him from getting home.It took the intervention of the T V stations in
the Edo State capital to convince the people that the man was a mentally sick
person who was actually residing in the neighbourhood.
In the 80s, the late professor
Lambo as the Vice-President of WHO visited the University of Athens medical
school with some of his colleagues.As they toured the departments, a Nigerian
medical student asked the late professor what he would suggest he specialises
on once he graduates. The kind and simple late professor told him "I would have
suggested psychiatry because that is my field, but today’s Nigeria will require
many cardiologists." Nigerians he said are now dying in large numbers from
heart-related diseases. But beacause the average Nigerian is paranoid, they
attribute those deaths to witch-craft and other customary-beliefs.
Some years ago, a popular artist of
the NTA Benin programme-“HOTEL DE JORDAN” died in his sleep.Those suspected to
have been responsible for his death were close relatives,co-artists and
co-tenants.It was however a known facts that the artist was an unrepentant
abuser of alcohol.Avery well known professor of law died in her sleep recently
in Lagos.While the causeof death may be purely pathological, I am sure accusing
fingers are pointed at certain direction.
The Edo State commissioner of
Information was found dead in a hotel room in Benin City. He had died on Friday
but the corpse was discovered on a Monday.From the time he was declared missing
till the time he was found dead, the issue had raised a lot of political
dusts.The PDP had accused AC of having kidnapped the commissioner and wanted
him produced within 48 hours or AC will face the ugly consequence.Taking
into consideration that the Election Petitions Tribunal of Edo State had
delivered judgement in favour of AC a week earlier and the late commissioner
was very critical of the judgement, it was a foregone conclusion that he was
murdered by the opposition party.
Because of the political nature of
the case, the IG ordered a full investigation..The family of the late
commissioner dismissed the result of the post-mortem as a cover-up because they
believed someone murdered him.The younger brother of the late commissioner who
was present during the IG’s press briefing told the IG that his brother had
just returned from a country in Asia where he had gone for medical check-up and
said he was not sure his late brother had any pathological problem.The IG told
the brother that as an engineer he was not knowledgeable in medical issues. A
month later,a chieftain of PDP in the State was found dead in a hotel room.This
time around at Bins hotel along Ekewan Road in Benin City but almost under the
same circumstance as the commissioner.
The reality of this thesis is that
the eagle killed the ancient Greek, the influenza of 1918 killed those who died
in Amadi’s fiction (THE GREAT PONDS), the man who climbed the high-tension NEPA
pole was mentally sick and the late commissioner and the PDP chieftain in Edo
State had a heart-related disease.
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Authors 
Posted by Robot| 11.05.2008 22:25