KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

Arise, O rude compatriots!

M. O. Ené
December 20, 2001

ENGLAND: LAST CENTURY 
When I arrived Britain late last century to begin a postgraduate program, there was no culture shock. It was my second missionary journey. I had schooled and ajala-traveled all over Europe. After the preliminary registration rituals, it was time to rest my head. I had some dough. Hotel was the last resort. I wanted a simple but decent bed-sit. The first number I called was it. The lovely lady offered to pick me up. It was a walking distance. I travel light. I simply strolled down the campus hill with wheeled Samsonite.

We watched telly that night over tea and biscuits. I laughed along noblese oblige as she enjoyed "Coronation Street." Or was it "Eastenders"? One of those endless ethnic British soap operas. Next day, I opened a bank account, got some pounds sterling, and bought meself a telly with teletext ("close captioning"). "Putting up Appearances" was on with Richard and his overbearing wife, Mrs. Hyacinth Bucket. Oops, please pronounce as "bouquet!" I was hooked. I still watch reruns on PBS. News time, Zainab Badawi was talking to me. On ITN News, Trevor McDonalds was firing on all cylinders. And there was Moira Stewart on BBC 1. I was home away from home. I sat back and got me a pint of lager.

"THE PRIME MINISTER IS A LIAR!" 
Headline: "The Prime Minister is a liar!" It resonated from the House of Commons, the British Parliament. This was before television cameras beamed into the chamber. The PM was Tory's Mrs. Margaret Thatcher. The accuser was opposition Labor's Mr. Neil Kinnock. It was not a gentlemanly statement; some said "economical with the truth" was better. I believe he later apologized when the Speaker so demanded. I loved Mr. Kinnock, freckles and accent and all, though I still disliked the Labor Party because of what its 1960s leader Mr. Harold Wilson did to Biafra.

Mr. Kinnock eventually ran Maggie the Milk Snatcher out of power. Her replacement, Mr. John Major, was no match. A Brixton-born chap who lost out to a female Jamaican immigrant in a bus conductor job but made good in Jos, Nigeria, as a banker, Major was there for the taking. But he is English; Neil is not. Johnny won. By the way, the story was told of a certain lady who threatened that she would poison the tea of a famous British politician, were he her husband. The politician looked at her and politely responded: "Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it." Insult met insult.

NIGERIA: THIS CENTURY 
I was not a great fan of General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd). Nonetheless, those who liked, if not loved, him believed the man needed some "brushing up." Remember Tony Ukpabi Asika, the Ajie of Onitsha, then Administrator of no-vanquished southeast. He reportedly encouraged General Gowon to send Obasanjo out for further training. Recall that Obasanjo recommended Asika to Gowon in 1967. Many more people have reacted to Obasanjo and his unfortunate utterances variously, from Wole Soyinka to Nigerian cyberliterati community now daily deconstructing his brain, mind, and personality.

Obasanjo himself has not helped matters. He never misses an opportunity to diss both his superiors and subordinates. His peers are equally fair game. He reportedly said he made it to the top while Awolowo the Yoruba legend longed for just one day; that Zik of Africa minimized to Owele of Onitsha while he soared from Omo Egba to "Mr. Nigeria." Look who is talking: He surely made it up there, twice; but, with the way things are shaping up, the Aare of Oyo (not yet Ona Kakanfo) would be blessed if he returns to "Farmer of Ota."

"YOUR PRESIDENT IS RUDE!" 
Since the passing of Rawlings era, Kofi my buddy never misses any opportunity to engage me in my-county-is-better-than-yours debate. He knows that I am running out of things to say about Ghana. My last triumph was the now FIFA-squashed Odiligate, which afforded me the opportunity to catalogue all the handouts we had doled out to Ghana, including Shagari to Liman and Abacha to Rawlings. Last night, he looked me in the eyes and said: "Your president is rude!" I swallowed hard, cleared my throat, tried to formulate a quick response… nothing. He flashed an admit-it-I-am-right smirk. I deployed shakara (braggadocio) response and retorted: "You dey craze?" But that only made it worse; he said: "See, so now I am senile? This is becoming a Nigerian culture!"

Our President could do with more diplomatic dialoguing. I was taken aback when he dug into General Sani Abacha. I was taught to respect the dead. It does not stop me from writing about his reckless regime, but the man is dead. Oh no, not to Obasanjo. The only time the President's loose tongue stays in his mouth is when misguided Muslim airheads dish out violence to fellow citizens. During the Kaduna killings, he found time to condemn the Aba retaliation, but he simple marveled at the level of destruction in Kaduna. In one of his frequent flights abroad, violence erupted Kano. The President said he was not worried. Then he tried to lay it on Governor Rabiu Kwankwanso, never on the hoodlums and hooligans masquerading as guardians of the Qu'ran. I wonder why!

PROFESSORS 
President Obasanjo does not like intellectuals. Continuing the long reign of Nigerian heads of state without formal four-year university degree, he is an icon of what is wrong with our educational system: It is just not taken seriously. Read President Obasanjo vowing to fight University professors over their incessant strikes: "The university teachers are ungrateful. …. You all know what university teachers do to female students. Don't tell me you don't know so I have decided to fight ASUU and God will fight them too." [Vanguard, Tuesday 4th December 2001]. What sort of public persona talks like this? Reuben Abati was right: On Sunday, December 16, 2001, in "Obasanjo, secession and the secessionists," he wrote: "President Olusegun Obasanjo has a bad way of making a good point and a good way of making a bad point, always."

I was the general-secretary of an ASUU Chapter. I fought some of the problems the President echoed, especially the issue of handouts and professors who won't pocket penile protrusions properly. But, here is the president of a country; there are better ways of saying certain things. If the minister of education had made such a statement during my tenure, ASUU would have asked to see his or her big backside. But I like the sensible response from ASUU: Like learned men, they simple asked the president to stop behaving badly and to act like a statesman. Good response. Case closed.

PROFESSOR SAM ALUKO 
Professor Sam Aluko is a renowned professor of economics. He chaired the National Economic Intelligence Committee in Abacha's rogue regime. After an analyses of Obasanjonomics, the man declared without mincing words that Abacha's government was "obviously better" than that of Obasanjo in terms of the management of the economy. I disagree, but what do I know. Obasanjo threw caution to the wind and labeled the man "senile." Aluko fired back: "Who is President Obasanjo to say that I am senile? I am not senile. He is a soldier. He can only talk about his profession. He is not an economist to judge a fellow economist. …. But I am not surprised that the President hits back at me. As a soldier he is used to the command structure and he has been hitting at his subjects and everybody because, to him, nobody criticizes a soldier." [Vanguard, December 4, 2001]

Even if Pa Aluko has an aroma of Alzheimer, which he hasn't -- thank God, why would Obasanjo go down and personal on such a national icon of accomplishments? Come on, the man is a professor emeritus; he has a son who is a renowned professor. Assuming he is senile -- which he is not, and he has made that abundantly clear, so what! Why didn't the President stop and think that this man is the father of the only bone fide Yoruba PDP senator, which gives him a modicum of political home base in Oduduwa Republic? Then again, Obasanjo is Obasanjo. And this is no decent democracy; it is a dictated democracy.

IKEMBA CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU 
President Obasanjo zeroed in on the Ikemba Himself with "irresponsible rascality" and brain-surgery recommendation. We are talking of General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who when last we met here in New Jersey still called Obasanjo, himself an ex-general, "my friend." A good soldier should know to respect his superior. To this day, Benjamin Adekunle still salutes Odumegwu-Ojukwu and calls him "my oga," even though he won't stop reminding you that Odumegwu-Ojukwu failed him in practical warfare exam or something, but he beat the man's army in Port Harcourt a few years later. Fair enough, a man can always beat his chest -- superior firepower or not, mercenary or none.

Assuming Ikemba said what was attributed to him, so what! A man is entitled to his opinion. He has done much more than Obasanjo to keep Nigeria one, talk less of the party-pooping clown called Harry Marshal or flip-flop Martin Okeke of Odenigbo club. Forget that Obasanjo inherited Adekunle's 3rd Marine Commando and bulldozed into Owerri like he was cave-busting the Taliban-backed Al-Qaeda. We easily forget that then Colonel Odumegwu-Ojukwu stopped the first coup cold in the North, where it had succeeded. Two, he resisted the second coup, insisting on absolute respect of military hierarchy. In both cases, Obasanjo's Yoruba kinsmen were to be installed in power. None of these has anything to do with Ndiigbo whatsoever. All that is now history. One of these days, Obasanjo is going to pick on a walking mud-hauler. A drunken pussycat has not met a mad fox.

VULGARITY IS NO VALOR 
I bet that if President Obasanjo were subjected to half of what President Bill Clinton endured during Monicagate, he would snap and engage in fisticuffs, as Jerry Rawlings once did with his deputy. It is not beyond a president who has flogged a law-enforcement officer publicly. What Obasanjo must do is think outside the khaki mindset. He must avoid becoming what Archbishop Desmond Tutu called "a cartoon figure of the archetypal African dictator." He needs to recruit and retain an attack dog that would do his insulting and mud hauling. Mr. James Carville did an excellent job for Clinton. Mr. Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio hosts are doing just fine for President George Walker Bush.

The President is entrenching a culture of crudity. When the he-goat chews, the kids watch. Rivers Mr. Harry Marshal just joined the chorus with "the cry of a madman" jibe at Ikemba. [Harry Flays Ojukwu over Secession Call (ThisDay, 12/20/01)] Obviously, after a brief incarceration by Governor Peter Odili, he still has some fight left in him. In January 2001, Minister Ojo Maduekwe called the Igbo quest for presidency "idiotic." He is entitled to his opinion, but he could have put it better and addressed the semantics without labels. Recall that Maduekwe had labeled the southeast governors' call for confederation "politics of rascality." Now fourth-commandment fouler and junior Defense Minister Mrs. Modupe Adelaja, nee Adesanya, followed with labeling of ex-Biafran soldiers "traitors" and Ndiigbo "buyers and sellers." Retorted a lady: Well, they buy and sell and keep the economy wheel unclogged, not seize and street-party all night long! In “Ohanaeze Leaders Flay Minister's Statement on Biafran Soldiers” (ThisDay, 12/20/01), Hon. Mr. Justice Eze Ozobu weighs in with regrets of Dupe's duplicity in felling the iroko bridge of East-West handshake with her foul-mouth flippancy ("Ojionuegbuoji I"), treacherously dumping AD for PDP to become a file fetcher for General T. Y. Danjuma (a cardinal crime of political prostitution) and disobeying her parent in the process (a serious sin of no pardon in paradise). Now, could the REAL DUPE… oops traitor… please stand up!

CONCLUSION 
No serious writer has publicly stooped low, even when Obasanjo's love life has enough materials to keep supermarket checkout rags busy for four years. Besides the gossip columns that occasionally zero in on the First Lady and private whispers here and there, mainstream press has so far stayed above ground. So the President should not step into political sty to haul dirt. He should be the president of all. He must respect the office of the presidency. Or else, one of these days, someone is going to step into the mud, look him in the eyes, bend down, scoop a handful, and the culture of crudity would come full circle. Those who gather ant-infested woods invite lizards for a feast.

Everything else is embellishment.