Kòmbò Mason Braide, Ph.D.
[Port Harcourt, Nigeria]
In
essence, our headache is how to deliver a simple overview of universal
perception about the role (if any) and impact
of secret societies on good (or bad)
governance in a 21st century setting. In order to shed more light on
our line of reasoning, we will take a brief peep at secret societies in ancient Palestine, the US of A, the UK, the EU,
Japan and Nigeria. Specifically, we will direct our curiosity at the modus
operandi and raison d’être of secret
societies in universities in the US of A, the UK, and Nigeria.
From
all indications, and from the above biblical preamble, the
“holier-than-thou” syndrome has been on for quite some time. Curiosity
and repugnance, evidently sparked up
by ignorance, invariably leads to
the “holier-than-thou” posture. Nonetheless, in the process of providing
adequate illumination about arcane matters, the danger exists that “pearls” may inadvertently be “cast
to swine”, and an escalating back-fire could follow. But then, we have
been advised to “
The
(Home) address of most of my four year old son’s best friends is: http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/.
His favourite cartoon cyber-friends include: Courage
(the cowardly dog), Dexter (of
Dexter’s Laboratory), Officer Dibbles
and TC (of Top Cat), Flintstones
(the Stone Age family from Bedrock City), and of course, Sheep
(In the Big City). My son simply cannot endure the purgatory of living a whole
day without his mandatory buffet of the above menu of cartoon persona, who, for
better or for worse, mould his character, and also balance his diet, especially
at breakfast. Incidentally, I have finally resigned myself to appreciate that
his migration to the Web (for satisfying his craving for those seemingly
appetite-stimulating cartoon characters) was compelled by his exasperation with
the maddening frequency of recycling of cartoon programmes by our local cable TV
service provider. To his tiny mind, his immoderate solidarity, cheers, jeers and
infantile felicitations with the inhabitants of www.cartoonnetwork.com
must go on without let or hindrance, Daily:
7 days weekly, 365 days yearly; NEPA or not; NITEL or not; ISP server failure or
not; no matter the gravity and size
of my electricity and telephone bills!
His
best friend in the cartoon universe is,
Following
his nomination for a ministerial appointment, Dr. Olu Agunloye went through a
most pointlessly puerile screening process conducted by the Senate of the
Federal Republic. Very predictably, he was made to react to the nuisance
of juvenile criminality in Nigerian
universities, polytechnics and other tertiary institutions of learning. The
central theme of their inquisition was
the phenomenon of so-called “cultism”,
a term that is, by the way, simply and absolutely meaningless in standard non-Nigerianised
English. Suddenly, as it were, the Senate of the Federal Republic realised the pain in the neck posed by certain criminal gangs of young adults (like Fryo) that inhabit our
“higher institutions”, as if they were rudely sensitised by the mere presence
of Dr. Olu Agunloye in the Holy of Holies, of their hallowed Chamber of “Ghana-Must-Go”,
Otokotoid horrors and scheming. What
else could be more nerve-wrecking to
our sacred-hearted, illustrious, humble,
honourable and fragile statesmen? Very clever. Very patronising too!
They
“screened” Dr. Olu Agunloye and
satisfied their vacuous egos that he passed their “joke-joke”
test for ministerial appointment to any or all of the following ministries:
Power and Steel; Solid Minerals; and Education; or so they thought. Well, the
distinguished screening wise men of
the Senate were way off the mark. General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo like a
seasoned hunter, jungle expert and world authority in “Government
by Ambush”, appointed Dr. Agunloye to the Ministry of Defence. Ha! Ha! Ha-a-a-h! “Screening” interview my nyash!
The
choice of the theme of secret cults in
the “screening” process was not
unintentional. In fact the general insinuation was that Dr. Olu Agunloye is a
(or was a one-time) “Cap’n”, and was (or is, or could be) a very
active/staunch member of the Pyrates Confraternity. The Senate was applying a
well known Machiavellian ploy by placing their victim on the defensive, by
subtle resort to blackmail, arm-twisting and intimidation, typical of the
practitioners of our very own home-grown, new-wave, diarchic, “nascent”
democracy.
Once
upon a time, roughly three years ago, this same Senators also “screened”
late Chief Bola Ige (SAN) for a ministerial appointment (in the Power and Steel
Ministry), and actually found it obligatory not
even to bother to ask him any questions at all. Instead, they clapped for him,
gave him a standing ovation, while he took a dignified bow and left, unanimously
confirmed as suitable. For the
records, Dr. Olu Agunloye was Chief Bola Ige’s very able Special Assistant:
both at the Ministry of Power and Steel, and at the Federal Ministry of Justice,
indeed, throughout Chief Bola Ige’s tenure as a minister in the present
government. Suddenly after his death, for whatever it was worth, the revelation
was made, in a rather “holier-than-thou”
manner, that Chief Bola Ige was a member of the Rosicrucian Order. And so what?
Who cares? Fair weatherism!
Specifically,
Dr. Agunloye’s interactions, liaisons and relationships with known Pyrates,
such as Nigeria’s only Nobel Prize-winner, Professor Wole Soyinka, are very
common knowledge. Dr. Olu Agunloye was the pioneer Corps Commander of the
Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) who, in terms of effectiveness and efficiency,
left an exceptional legacy of excellence that has remained impossible to equal.
In spite of this, that legacy was deliberately and systematically eroded,
degraded and bastardised to a point of complete worthlessness and redundancy
after it was speedily relocated to the Nigerian Police Force, ever since Dr.
Agunloye’s forced exit, and the subsequent selective persecution,
witch-hunting, and vindictive retrenchment of several supposed members of the Pyrates Confraternity in the FRSC: Pre-emptive sanitisation of the
Nigerian Police Force. Ha! Ha! Ha-a-a-h! Sanitisation my nyash!
At
any rate, Dr. Agunloye’s performance at the Senate ministerial “screening”
session was, from all indications, and as expected, First-Class. But then, some
pertinent questions materialise:
Ø
What exactly is a “secret society”? Is the definition universal, or
is there a Nigerian version?
Ø
What constitutes acceptable or allowable inter-human transactions and
relationships, within a democratic milieu that supposedly respects basic human
rights like the freedoms of association, expression, belief, and thought
processes, as guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution?
Ø
Does it not sound rather primordial
and even ludicrous, when placed within the wider global perspective of the 21st
century, that the Senate of a supposedly serious minded civilised country
(Nigeria) could brazenly waste precious tax payers’ time, indulging in asinine
trivial pursuits, speculating about issues that should, at best, be taken as
strictly personal, or indeed be relegated to the realm of paranoia, or
metaphysics, or group eccentricity?
Ø
Can the government (Executive,
Legislature and Judiciary) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria supervise, or monitor, or approve
or disapprove of it citizens’ choice of beliefs, or association,
or opinions, or idiosyncrasies without necessarily infringing on their fundamental human
rights, like the Taliban-enforced Sharia in Afghanistan? Is it possible? Are
standards shifting or not?
Ø
What exactly is the big deal
even if it is true that:
o
The President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria, General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo, was/is a member of the Ogboni Fraternity, as per the allusions of the predictable loser of the
1999 Presidential elections.
o
Chief Bola Ige was a member of the Rosicrucian
Order.
o
Dr. Olu Agunloye was/is a member of the Pyrates Confraternity, at UI,
or/and MIT or/and now.
o
US President George W. Bush (Jr.) and his father, while still students at
Yale University, were members of the Skull
and Bones Fraternity (founded in 1833). Similar “old
line American” families and their descendants initiated into the Skull
& Bones Order include the Sloanes, the Paynes, the Perkins, the
Davidsons, the Harrimans, and the Rockefellers.
o
Both Charles (Prince of Wales) and his father, Philip (Duke of Edinburgh, the
husband of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Head of the Anglican
Church worldwide), including many past Archbishops of Canterbury, several
serving and retired clergymen all over the world are Freemasons.
o
Sir Cecil John Rhodes established an under-cover secret
society, in the guise of the Rhodes
scholarship scheme at Oxford University, for the final control of world
power. Former US President William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.
o
Knights of the Roman Catholic Church zealously aspire to belong to the
elite Opus Dei, a tight-knit mafia-like
cabal of the Vatican.
o
Inner circle members of The
Bilderbergs, the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral
Commission (TC) exclusively admitted from the US of A, Canada, Greece,
Western Europe, Scandinavia, Turkey, and Japan conspire
to politically and economically dominate the world under their “New
World Order”, recently called “Globalization”,
or “Global Union”, or “Global
Economy”, or “Global Order”,
and similar terms. They plan diligently to create an “American Union” (AU)
comprising all of North, Central and South America, including the Caribbean
Islands, by 2005. The AU will function
just like the European Union (EU). They
have invented a new term for an expanded NAFTA, which they call the “Free
Trade Area of the Americas” (FTAA).
The
Council of the Americas, at its Quebec conference in March, 2001, stated very
categorically that it plans to complete the FTAA by the year 2005.
It is obvious that they were really talking about the AU.
o
Many world leaders are members
of the Bohemian Club. They meet
annually at the Bohemian Grove in California, where they worship a giant
concrete owl, as they pace around a sacrificial table in their medieval robes,
chanting ancient pagan hymns. They include central bankers, business syndicates
and cabals, the richest families, and the like.
The
two families that are really in charge of the Bohemian Club are the Rockefellers and the House of Rothschild in
the UK and the EU.
o
One stepping-stone into all of these secret
societies is the Skull & Bones
Fraternity at Yale University. Clearly, the stranglehold that they have on the
US Government, the news media, industry, trade unions, universities,
foundations, the Supreme Court, and several other facets of the financial and
business world is very tight and enormous.
Bluntly
put, it is none of our business, just like we should not give a hoot as to why
someone decides to become a Quantum Physicist, or a member of the Eternal Sacred
Order of Cherubim and Seraphim, or a celibate monk, or an undertaker, or a
comedian, or a nude model, or a “night soil man”, or a snake charmer, or a
belly-dancer: It is none of my business. It is none of your business. It is none
of our business. Period.
The
fact remains that, irrespective of the details of one’s choice of actions,
such actions must be exercised within the framework and constraints of the law,
and without jeopardy to other people’s fundamental rights. Any conflicts that
may arise as a result of the finer details of one’s choice of actions,
thoughts or speech, should be resolved according to the law of the land. What
the law has not bothered to do to date in Nigeria is to come up with an explicit
definition of what Nigerians sheepishly, care-freely and simplistically call “secret
society” or “secret cult”. Instead, we wallow in a miasma of subjective
perception and sporadic sentimental outbursts whenever those issues arise.
Whenever
the issue of “secret cults” in universities and other institutions of higher
education in Nigeria is mentioned or discussed, the innuendo is invariably
expressed about the status of the Pyrates
Confraternity as the precursor to later-day diabolical gangs of campus
bandits, kind of
Ø
The immediate symbolic
reference and subliminal triggers
of the Pyrates Confraternity worldwide
are its logo – the skull and crossed
bones.
Ø
It held (or holds) its meetings at mid-night.
Non-members of this weird gathering of young men do not know what transpires in the nocturnal meetings of the Pyrates
Confraternity.
Ø
Therefore, in view of all of the above, the Pyrates
Confraternity must really be a diabolical
“secret society” in its very
essence.
Ø
And as it is the oldest of such
How
rather simplistic!
Certainly,
the menace of gangs of criminal young
adults (so-called “secret cults”) in our higher institutions of learning
can not be shoved aside. Its nuisance
is real. Nevertheless, in order to address the problem satisfactorily,
it is crucial to get a clear understanding of its dynamics. It is mandatory that
we desist from the usual platitudinous
assumptions and emotionalisms typical
of such analyses. Indeed, Dr. Olu Agunloye gave the distinguished Holy Men of
the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the very key to the solution of
their problem: the aspirin for their headache.
He
told them very eloquently and insightfully that, in seeking an effective
resolution of the dilemma of juvenile
criminality in Nigeria’s so-called “tertiary institutions”, a more
multi-dimensional appraisal, a more holistic view, less cliché-ridden
generalisations, a less pedestrian and tunnel-vision methodology and a less
“holier-than-thou” posturing must be applied. The limitations of the
Nigerian condition, and the various quirky signs of our social dynamics,
conveniently codified as the “Nigerian Factor”, must all be incorporated in
the assumptions, evaluations and recommendations, for addressing the matter
optimally.
In
other words, the observed aberration of premeditated
juvenile criminal deviance, alias “secret cults”, in Nigeria’s
universities, polytechnics and even
colleges of Education (formally, Teachers’ Training Colleges (TTCs)) cannot be
conveniently distanced from similar cases of premeditated middle-aged, or menopausal,
or geriatric criminal deviance prevalent n the wider Nigerian society. Any such
distinctions are simply acts of wilful and selective
amnesia. The pot can not call the kettle “black”.
Definitely, a snake cannot give birth to a lizard. You cannot plant yams and
reap mangoes! Or could it be, as a friend of mine repeatedly reminds me that,
“every society must have to contend
with, or accept an inevitable and irreducible minimum dosage of hypocrisy
for its good, and for the preservation of the sanity of its members.”
One
cannot help chocking with laughter at the mere thought of seeing the same Senate
that has consistently applied thoroughly Machiavellian cloak-and-dagger type “caucuses”,
coordinating intrigue manoeuvres,
operating on the fringe of absurdity for the better part of its lifetime,
habitually and routinely extorting blind
allegiance, dogmatic partisan loyalty, fanatical master-slave interactions
with their followers, disciples and chosen “political
sons”, also having the brazen impudence to talk about “secret cults”. Imagine the same political “Godfathers” of all manner of cantankerous Area Boys, Area Men
and Area Madams, (the new breed, re-groomed, high-flying, revamped, and reworked
former Area Boys and Area Girls, now) “party
faithfuls”, appearing shocked by
their very own mirror image as reflected in two or three hopelessly short-changed
generations of Nigerians, unfortunate enough to be following their lucky
generation. The same Senate, some of whose members overtly resort to pure diabolism,
blackmail, and fetish intimidation
(still swearing and taking blood oaths
on coffins and in cemeteries
in this day and age!) for the recruitment,
and engagement of their close
political associates and disciples.
The
same Senators, most of whom are bona fide and committed members of ultra-secretive
exclusivist and parochial “inner
caucus” political, or/and religious, or/and spiritualist, or/and social,
or/and business organisations and/or real or imagined mafias
like those of Kaduna, Ijebu Igbo, Langtang, Port Harcourt and Minna. Some of
them, alumni and operatives of the Babangida School of
coup-plotting, influence peddling and political manoeuvres (so-called IBB Boys);
some of them, in the Abacha School (so-called Abacha Boys), and some of them,
OBJ boys, remotely controlling formerly penniless
gubernatorial, and other political aspirants, from time to time manufacturing
strange “consensus” candidates,
designing and “fixing” political
machinations, defining political correctness and “enforcing”
group allegiance.
These
same buriers of whole live cows and rams, regular participants in some of the
most clandestine late midnight policy-modifying meetings and clause-smuggling
collaboration at various hideouts nationwide and worldwide, including regular “consultative
meetings” at Aso Rock Villa in Abuja, in Mecca, in Rome and in Jerusalem,
under the cover of prayer meetings and Holy Pilgrimage. The very devoted clients
of consultant priests, babalawos, prophets, mullahs, overseers, marabous, Holy
Ghost Fire Prayer Warriors, magicians, hierophants, alfas, “casters and binders” of metaphysically robust curses and
enchantment. Voodoo politicians talking about “secret societies”!
Ha!
Ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho! Very, very funny. Very much like the intrigues of General
Specific and his
Now,
please loosen your seat belt, and kindly log on to http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/.
Click on, or select “Sheep In the Big City”, and enjoy the jokes, maybe,
until Easter, when we will once again be reminded of the incident at the “Last
Supper”, when the Shepherd told
his flock, The Original Twelve:
Sheep
In The Big City!
(This
is the end of Part1 of a series to be continued …)