Benders of truth, fugitives from history

By Wole Soyinka

LET me begin by admitting that I re-enter this exchange with the utmost reluctance, the grounds for rational exchange having been polluted by some of the most banal, yet hysterical tracts in recent recollection. A level of degradation of discourse has been plumbed that I never thought possible, certainly not in a society generally acknowledged to be as discerning as ours. We have gone below the Ground Zero of public debate, an all-comer promiscuity that I find personally demeaning.

It may be the entitlement of a political columnist - 'Patriotic Punches,' The Tribune, January 31- to loosely speculate on my motives for focusing on a critical corner of our current political scenario. It is another matter entirely to turn a national issue into an affair of family bias, motivated by a need to bolster some political assignment that my son may or may not have undertaken. In Mr. Femi Okurounmu, it is clear that we have finally plumbed the abyss of permissiveness. His Tribune article, referred to above, and allied posturing deserve nothing but contemptuous dismissal.

However, the nation is passing through a time of critical decisions, and an already suspicious people, traumatised by a prolonged season of misgovernance, deceit and betrayal, may succumb readily to spurious attributions to those who urge hard, as opposed to easy choices.

Hysteria is, by its very nature, contagious, and political hacks such as Okurounmu exist precisely to take advantage of a people's lowered level of immunity to purvey their toxic notions. Where facts exist, and are testable, it becomes a public duty to use them as nails driven deep into the coffins of liars. I do not know under what programme Okunroumu was raised or raises his children, but my children have always been encouraged to take their own political or career decisions, act as independently as possible. To suggest that I subject my own convictions to the boosting of their assignments is a defilement of my family integrity and I urge Okurounmu to keep a respectful distance from that entity.

That it was indeed thanks to Okunrounu's claim that I learnt, for the first time, of this alleged assignment of my son, happens to be true, but is ultimately trite. More to the point is to call his and others' attention to my BBC Reith lectures, Climate of fear delivered in 2003, published 2004, my recent memoirs, "You Must Set Forth At Dawn," first published April 2006, but of course completed at least a year before then.

Even several years further back, in the 1990s, I had produced two works, A Scourge Of Hyacinths and From Zia With Love both searingly centered on the fate of the three young men who fell victim to the inhuman penalties of retroactive laws, an event without precedent in the Nigerian experience. For those who are interested, the first reference will be found in the very opening lecture, A Changing Mask of Fear (pages 2-3, Nigerian edition). My memoirs assess the Buhari-Idiagbon phenomenon in even greater detail - pp. 263-266, Nigerian edition. To translate those clearly expressed views into a direct act of political intervention is the most logical step for any politically aware writer at any relevant moment. Femi Okurounmu's attempt to reduce this to a paternal conspiracy tempts one to respond with a message to his own folk, but I hold his family, not only innocent, but also sacrosanct, only unfortunate to have spawned such a cultural deviant.

I have a duty also to let the public know that this very Okurounmu, as a leading member of a delegation allegedly representing Afenifere and the Democratic Peoples Alliance, visited me in Abeokuta towards the end of last year. Their mission was to urge me to sign, on behalf of our unregistered party, the DFPF, a Memorandum of Understanding with their organisations. I was quite astonished, being uncertain of what they actually stood for, so I asked them to produce their manifesto. This was later forwarded to me.

After consultations within the DFPF, we decided that this was not an alliance into which we should enter. Let me quickly emphasise that there was nothing abnormal in any effort at forging alliances, but it would not be stretching credulity too far to propose that Okurounmu's Tribune intervention is a case of 'bad belle' in reaction to the spurned offer which, I am now forced to conclude, was designed to compromise the DFPF over the arbitrary endorsement of Maj.-Gen. Buhari by the groups represented at that encounter. Enough for the Okurounmu diversion, let us move on to his more pretentious bedfellows.

The communications guru

In the Communications field, the habit of rational linkages and derivations is standard requirement, even at the most rudimentary level. A capacity for rational proceeding is presumed, so that even inferences are based on plausibility. Only a specialised brand of logic - we'll call it the Haruna Special - would be capable of presenting as rational deductions, several of Haruna's comments on my statements. Mind you, Haruna takes the coy precaution of attempting to cover his backside, admitting the possibility that he "might misrepresent his arguments." Might? For a communications graduate, teacher, and would-be critic, this is simply not good enough. Let's take a look at these pronouncements from the imprecise territory of 'might,' 'maybe,' 'perhaps' etc, since they have been presented for public acceptance anyway. There are several glaring examples but two or three will suffice - at least for now. I may decide, when I feel sufficiently idle, to return Haruna's favour, and dissect his school composition line by line. For now, let us take a ride with Haruna:

"Soyinka wants neither Yar'Adua nor Buhari or Atiku as Nigeria's next president" Let the patient reader note that the only place in which a reference is made to Atiku in my statement will be found in the following:

"Not only did Buhari dispatch his aide-de-camp, Jokolo - later to become an emir - to facilitate the entry of those cases, he ordered the redeployment - as I later discovered - of the Customs Officer who stood firmly against the entry of the contravening baggage. That very officer, the incumbent Vice-President, is now a rival candidate to Buhari, but has somehow, in the meantime, earned a reputation that totally contradicts his conduct at the time. Wherever the truth lies, it does not redound to the credibility of the dictator of that time, Buhari, whose word was law, but whose allegiances were clearly negotiable."

Will the erudite Haruna kindly tell this nation how this corresponds to "Soyinka wants neither Yar'Adua nor Buhari nor Atiku." My statement merely acknowledges, in passing, what is public knowledge, no more. It says absolutely nothing on Atiku's political ambitions.

I have singled out this distortion for special mention not only on account of Haruna but also for the edification of truth manglers like Okurounmu who, in contrast to Haruna, actually proposed that I avoid speaking on Atiku's candidature and thus, implicitly support it. So much for the libertinism of inference.

Between Haruna and Okorounmu, who is right? I have no hesitation in revealing that I deliberately steered away from the embattled Atiku since a dirty war is going on between him and his President, Obasanjo, and I have no intention - either directly or implicitly - of giving comfort to one side or another. That, at least for now, is my determined policy.

Haruna obviously has an agenda however, one that he cannot wait to propagate, hence his attribution of a categorical stance on Atiku, whereas my statement simply ignores the issue.

Here is another, a case of gratuitous pleading that attempts to obscure an accusation that is made by me in plain language: "No one could, in fairness, accuse Buhari of a systematic attempt to discriminate among Second Republic politicians on grounds of tribe, region or religion by jailing them or detaining them without trial." What, may one ask, is the point of this statement when in fact Soyinka had already outlined, in the clearest terms, the discrimination parameters involved, given the following section: "The utmost severity of the Buhari-Idiagbon justice was especially reserved either for the opposition in general, or for those within the ruling party who had showed the uttermost sense of responsibility and patriotism."

So, why invoke 'tribe, region or religion' when Soyinka's parameters for this specific indictment are so clearly laid out - 'the opposition in general, or within the ruling party" This gratuitous introduction of 'tribe, region or religion' is clearly meant to mislead, a private agenda that is already so deeply lodged in the brain of our Communications guru that he fails to notice that nothing in my indictment offers the necessary grounds. We continue:

"As for Ajasin, if Soyinka was honest enough he would have admitted that the elderly man was not the only one Buhari jailed many times over without proof beyond reasonable doubt or detained without trial" Now, let's see who is really being dishonest here. Or could it simply be that the guru Haruna has problem even with the simplest words, such as "only"? We have direct proof here that it is not so much the 'big words' as the littlest, seemingly innocuous ones that have the greatest capacity to mislead, either through ignorant use, or as deliberate distortions of sense. Throw in the simple, ordinary word and its cunning insertion totally distorts the truth. Nowhere in my article did I so much as imply that Chief Ajasin was the only one etc. etc. On the contrary, I mention a number of other names, such as Alex Ekwueme, Audu Ogbeh, so what exactly is Haruna's problem?

As for age, will Haruna kindly name those who were also septuagenarians at that very time? Oh, excuse me, the crime must be in using the big word, 'septuagenarian' instead of 'elderly.' For a man of acclaimed linguistic precision, I must inform Haruna that 'septuagenarian' avoids ambiguity, while 'elderly' is a matter of relativity. Another abuse of the world 'only' occurs in the following Haruna challenge:

"Does it not defy logic for him to say that June 12 is the ONLY (capitals mine) basis for dismissing Babangida's bid for presidency as preposterous?"

Said? Where? Since Haruna's discourse is based on the demands of scholarship', would he kindly provide chapter and verse for that confident attribution? The trouble with Haruna is, at base, a lack of understanding between 'being free to run for president' and a call to the electorate to reject this or that candidate. For Haruna, the two notions are constantly conflated.

So much for comprehension, or academic rigour. At no time have I proposed that Buhari is not entitled to stand for election. I urge the electorate simply and forthrightly to reject him and I outline the reasons why. The glaring elisions in Haruna's presumed defence, and/or sentimental attempts at deodorising the past, cannot wish away historic facts. Such a transparent subterfuge to shift the focus of contention is as puerile as it is futile.

Apart from the abuse of 'only,' it is a matter for regret that one who claims communications - that is, media training - should exhume a rank misunderstanding of a statement that I made with regard to Babangida's bid to return to power, when both my own correction and the corrective interventions of others - The Guardian columnist, Rueben Abati, Shehu Sani, among others - had long buried the erroneous, panic responses.

That is one measure of the insubstantiality of Haruna's supposed defence - to resort to lies. Yes, that simple four-letter word - lies! Since Haruna advocates a respect for facts, he should know that there is something known as 'primary source'. Where a statement is taken out of context, it is mischievous and dishonest to insist on secondary sources as the basis for authority. The rash of baseless responses over that statement merely reflected a nation's anxieties. The panic, almost neurotic responses were, to tell the truth, a reassuring barometer of the nation's alertness to danger. They were frankly reassuring, and should have sent very strong warning signals to Babangida. He failed to heed them, and eventually came a cropper.

You cannot teach an old dog new tricks, or perhaps we should recast that more generously and advise that old dogs, versed in the tricks of one trade, should at least attend refresher courses before embarking on others. Having failed even to master the basic tricks of the trade - comprehension and transmission - the guru now pretends to other 'tricks' that are outside his competence. Haruna needs to read more, and broadly. To spend time on his attempt at a simplistic secondary school or communications training exercise is to dignify a long-winded, presumptuous, and juvenile distraction.

If Haruna ever takes his turn at the power roulette, he should proceed, if he so desires, to ban all words of more than one syllable. I recommend that he begin with the word 'monosyllable,' because it uses five syllables to define a word of only one.

This should be the end of commentary on this non-issue except that, in the name of learning, the careless invocation of George Orwell as 'authority' should not be allowed to stand. Alexander Pope's cautionary line comes readily to mind: 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' If our neophyte must look to George Orwell for some authoritative relevance, I would recommend the quote from that author's Animal Farm, a quote that was placed in the mouth of the prize pig, Napoleon (I think, it's such a long time I last read Orwell): 'All Animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.'

Instead of embarking on the grand distraction over literary styles, Haruna should engage his mind on the implications of that warning and its relevance to the present electoral race, applying it to the militricians and their clones. What is at stake at this moment is simply that question: Are some animals always to be considered 'more equal' than others?

While on the subject of 'authorities' I feel obliged to confess that there is a trait in some of our would-be polemicists that I find difficult not to despise - and that is the lack of courage for one's own diatribes. To cite an authority on substantial issues, even in a half-baked and misapplied manner (poor George Orwell!) is one thing. To resort to similar 'authoritative' bolstering for common abuse is what one expects to find in a fishmonger's market or in a war of words between two street prostitutes - 'ay yes, only yesterday, Caroline already said that you are this sort of person, this proves it.'

That Mohammed Haruna requires the authority of Ali Mazrui to utter some derogatory remark is only a reflection of a lack of self-confidence, even an admission of a lack of conviction. I have uttered worse things about Ali Mazrui, and I did not dig into other people's bags of invectives to pronounce them. Stop hiding behind the smutty skirts of others. Find your own insults and back them up with facts (not inventions or distortions of course!) - that is what I would regard as honourable conduct, worthy of respect.

Balarabe Musa Still Hallucinating

Haruna's hollow advice on factual rigour would acquire real substance if served on his camp follower, Balarabe Musa, who baldly claims that I founded, financed and sustained the Oduduwa People's Congress. This astonishing declaration, for which not one shred of oral or documentary evidence can be cited, nor one witness to my involvement produced, an attribution that is so easily refuted, seeing that the founders of that organisation are so much alive, is the mark of a lack of political integrity that has left many of us in despair about the real motivations and goals of Balarabe Musa. If Musa has any political self-respect left, he should produce hard evidence, name witnesses, or else publicly apologise.

A little window into Balarabe Musa's political irrationalities is easily opened. Two or three years ago, on the invitation of Shehu Sani's civic organisation, I visited Kaduna. Among the organised activities was a special session with some other democratic leaders. In the middle of that encounter, a figure whom I did not recognise entered the hall and took his place at the 'high table' separated from me by just two other guests. Behold, it was none other than Wada Nas, the man who had done his best to hound the democratic opposition movement to death with, of course, especial virulent attention to this writer, even to the point of incitement to extra-judicial elimination.

Who had invited Wada Nas? Not the organisers, it turned out. It was Balarabe Musa who had acted on his own and for his own murky motives. There will be time to comment further on Balarabe Musa's own conduct under the Abacha era, but it is useful here to identify what company he kept, and to what lengths he was prepared to go to rehabilitate and sanitise such company even to the point of gate-crashing at a clearly democratic gathering.

Buhari is a very different kettle of fish from Wada Nas but, in his own interest, he should beware of undiscriminating sanitation squads as personified in the Balarabe Musa of our nation.

Tony Momoh and the Retroactive Gospel

History is sometimes just. If it were not, it would not so handily place on offer an analogy on a platter of sense to apply in the education of another respondent who, by coincidence, was a former Minister of Culture. The analogy I wish to propose for the unscrambling of Tony Momoh's mind over cultism is a physical structure known as the National Theatre, a concrete, palpable entity that carries no risk of misleading readers by abstractions.

Pay a visit to that structure today and you encounter a monument to the legacy of decay, indifference, dereliction of responsibility and wastage over which Momoh presided over a number of years, as did a namesake of Mohammed Haruna, the General. Now, that is a real and tangible barometer of the fate of innovations, not a speculative and jaundiced look backward into an era where it sometimes appears that all was exciting, fresh and challenging.

Yes, history does look in both directions - past and future - and it is not sparing in its mission of indictment. To falsify history or invoke it falsely is often to find oneself impaled on the meat hook of its judgment. Momoh - in company of many others - alas, finds the tandem of originality, time and decay too difficult to grasp, so let me offer him the National Theatre as guide. Just who is responsible for what has today become a purulent boil on the Lagosian landscape? Is it General Gowon, the ruler who authorised and allocated funds for it? Or perhaps Chief Anthony Enahoro who, as Minister of Culture at the time, recommended and oversaw it through construction? Or should we look instead at the successors to Yakubu Gowon, and the successors to Chief Enahoro?

It so happens that the National Theatre is not to my personal architectural taste and its suitability for the Nigerian environment was, from the beginning, very much in question. Similarly Tony Momoh is within his right to repudiate the very notion of a campus fraternity either in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world. That is his privilege. What is unacceptable and dishonorable is for him, a lawyer and communications man, to promote, simply for temporary political relief or support the falsification of the organism that was initiated in Ibadan in 1953.

Momoh is particularly unfortunate with his timing, as one of the seven initiators, Ikpehare Aig-Imoukhuede, a pyrate to the last, died only two weeks ago. I intend to respond to Tony Momoh in defence of his memory, and of course on behalf of the diminishing survivors of that group that was later dubbed 'The Magnificent Seven.'

Tony Momoh is a much-traveled man. He cannot deny the existence of campus fraternities all over the world. Similarly, just like the first fraternity at the University of Ibadan, there are identical structures just like the National Theatres all over the world. These theatres continue to serve the purpose for which they were built, are regularly renovated and maintained, are culturally productive and economically viable.

In such places, Ministers of Culture come and go, but the structure remains intact, brimful of vitality. Today, the National Theatre smells wood rot and mildew, equipment has broken down and or disappeared, the roof leaks so badly and the electrical wiring so viciously exposed in places that one of my actors was nearly electrocuted during the staging of KING BAABU. As for corruption scandals, the National Theatre has fared no better than other national institutions.

So once again, sticking to this analogy that can be grasped even by a simpleton, who shall be held responsible? General Gowon and Enahoro on the one hand, or Obasanjo, Shagari, Babangida, plus Tony Momoh, and their ministers who presided over the ensuing rot and decay? Who is responsible for turning the National Theatre into a disgrace of the very word 'national' or theatre?

Retroactivism - that's the problem. The retroactive mentality that places blame, not on those who destroy what others have built, but on the builders. The retroactive spirit operates in many directions - it was a fatal tributary of retroactive conditioning that snuffed out the lives of three young men. No one is surprised that that landmark crime carries no weight in the minds of the likes of Tony Momoh, ardent apostle of the retroactive gospel of criminal culpability.

Were Tony Momoh in power, would he perhaps attempt to legislate that all members of the original fraternity be deemed guilty of the crimes of splinter and mimic bodies, the promoters of arson, acid attack, rape, general mayhem, political thuggery etc. and sentenced retroactively to death or social ostracism?

But for that retroactive mentality, a former university graduate, a trained lawyer, experienced journalist, and Minister of Culture and Information would not so brazenly enlist himself in the ranks of those who persist in traducing a totally guiltless organisation that eventually pulled out of campuses over two decades ago, disgusted by criminal mimic bodies and their protection by Tony Momoh's society, but continues to distinguish itself in many public spirited undertakings within the Nigerian society and overseas.

If Momoh wishes to find out who are the real cultists of society, those whose example corrupted the collegiate ideals of campus fraternity, he does not have far to go. Even if he is too young to remember the Owegbe cult in his own part of the country, he cannot so soon have forgotten the lethal Otokoto Cult. And of course, most notorious of all, the recently exposed cult of the Okija shrine remains a yet undetermined issue.

Let him, as I have done quite a number of times, notably at a lecture delivered at the Okada University two years ago - where Mohammed Haruna now miseducates students - in Tony Momoh's own state, call for a release of the register of the Okija shrine, and see the prominent names that adorn those pages. Former Inspector-General of Police Tafa Balogun has that register somewhere; Momoh, the born-again anti-cultist should urge Tarfa to hand it over to the media.

Tony Momoh is not ignorant of the culture of fraternities as an integrated aspect of university community, that it has produced presidents in other lands, nurtured philanthropists, Nobel Laureates, human rights activists etc. Lacking, however, material grounds on which to base his championing of the retroactive general, Momoh chooses to pick up the sordid baggage of lies where many others have dropped it, some with grace and remorse for past misrepresentation, others more reluctantly, as may be expected of a drug fiend from his or her addiction.

Tony Momoh attempts to resuscitate an ancient travesty of truth, in order to obscure public perception and recollection of real life, of undisputed actualities and the ramifications that such realities may hold for the future.

Yes, our former Minister of Culture is indeed living proof that history does matter, and is understood, even by the ignorant, to matter. Momoh is another commentator in need of education, and I recommend to him my collection of essays/lectures in the Bookcraft series - Intervention IV - A People in Denial. Never was a title more apt, even though the context is different. Tony Momoh and others like him are in deep denial, some as a result of genuine conviction in a cause, others, like Tony Momoh, with a calculating eye on new opportunities. I respect and can dialogue with the former. The universal birthright of History and Truth should not be bartered for the soggy mess of political opportunism.

Momoh is wrong, by the way, in claiming that the young man who once held up a radio station has changed. I happen to know that young man, and can guarantee that he has not changed - certainly not in that respect. Repetition is however boring, and predictability is a defect in political intelligence. Different circumstances dictate different responses and strategies must evolve with the realities in which society exists.

An End to These Distractions

Finally, to the core issue. Let all those who are now clamouring for the return of a militrician to power, and one of proven despotic antecedents, recall their error of 1994. Remember those who invited Sani Abacha to take over power. In private meetings and on the open pages of the media, they called on him to come to the nation's rescue, convinced that he would 'do what was right.' Some were genuinely convinced of this and acted disinterestedly, others were already lining up for the spoils of office.

Even after four years of despotic terror, musicians played for Sani Abacha urged him to declare himself a candidate for election. One young operator, leader of the YEAA movement, swore he would commit suicide if Abacha failed to heed 'the nation's call.' That young man is still to fulfil his pledge.

In 1999, Theophilus Danjuma swore that if Olusegun Obasanjo, another 'militrician', was not elected to office, he would proceed on exile. Ask Danjuma what view he holds today of Obasanjo's candidature. Today, similar voices are acting out the same script, as if it is newly written.

Ah well, there is always the Danjuma option. Rolling a boulder up the mountain, watching it roll downhill to bottom, then rolling it up again might be all right for Sisyphus in legend - some of us are beginning to weary of negative mythologies that translate themselves, with human collaboration, into contemporary life.