Soyinka: For Jonathan's Sake-- On the Road

By

Nduka Uzuakpundu

ozieni@yahoo.com

An unnecessary, if clearly, unmerited attention is, currently, being paid to Dr. Goodluck Jonathan – the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And, from all indications, this dubious furore is far less likely to change even if – in a manifestation of the traits of goodness and mercy that have trailed Jonathan’s odyssey on the rough train of Nigerian politics – he ends up wearing the utmost crown. For more than two months when President Umaru Yar’Adua was in Saudi Arabia receiving medical treatment, almost everyone – including the barefacedly opportunistic elements at Aso Rock and the opposition camp – wasted both time resources on Jonathan and his new status as Acting President. At a time like that, shouldn’t every Nigerian have been praying without ceasing – in consonance with Biblical injunction – for the speedy and reassuring recuperation of Yar’Adua? By paying unmerited attention to Jonathan, was it in realisation of the spiritual fact that such prayers would never be answered, in the first place, by the God of Jonathan because, in spite of the choking number of churches in the country, all manner of iniquity – including corruption, pettiness and destructive political conducts – are still on the rise? Could the God of Jonathan have refused to hearken to such entreaties for the fact that the churches, especially the ones being run by the so-called born again(st)  Christians are fronts for dissemblers, Holy Willies and characters who are decidedly worse than Judas Isacriot – and are sure never to make Heaven? And any Christian Nigerian who prayed for the good health of Yar’Adua may have done so, almost glibly, because there has, over the years, been an unrelieved erosion of faith in the Church and the Bible.

The Yar’Adua-Jonathan saga is the first time, in nearly fifty years of Nigeria’s political history, that almost everyone focused on the mundane: the urgent, constitutional need for the transfer of power to Jonathan. And so, the impression seemed: “What does it matter if, in far away Saudi Arabia, Yar’Adua breathes his last?” The indecent haste with which those who were behind the campaign for the transfer of power to Jonathan went about it was as though they never recognised Yar’Adua as president. In every move they made, there was a naked streak of insensitivity. In fairness to the characters concerned, the running string in their cause was not dictated by faith. But, again, it’s doubtful whether the caring and loving God of Jonathan – that invisible, but ever merciful spirit – who has guided his mysteriously odyssey – more than a decade on, on Nigeria’s rugged political terrain, is in support of the hairless hypocrisy and malice shown to gentle Yar’Adua. But to focus more on the mundane issues issuing from the Yar’Adua-Jonathan saga, it’s true – as rights activist, Barrister Bamidele Aturu has said – that the constitutional crisis makes for a compelling reform. And, if the matter is deftly handled by the Senate, it may be the last of its kind in Nigerian politics. Thus, no longer shall there be a constitutional lacuna, as to who’s in charge at the country’s helm of affairs, into which political philistines would craftily want to exploit.

For the likes of the (Acting!) President of the West African Bar Association and ex-guber candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP), Barrister Femi Falana, the peaceful, pro-Jonathan marches in Abuja and Lagos were occasions to brighten his long-standing pro-democracy profile. The skippers of non-governmental organisation who melted, like ice cream, into the marches, did so in the dubious expectation of having a story to tell their gullible foreign donors. But when he elected to take an active part in the Abuja march, for instance, in a well-thought-out support for Jonathan, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka did so for countless reasons. Take a familiar one: he saw death – of which he’s the brightest scholar in the Orwellian Republic of Pigs – laying what was potentially a revolutionary ambush for the Nigerian democracy and what ought to have, long ago, been a Jonathan Presidency. And as he marched through some of the streets of Abuja, Soyinka, who, in his wonted stubbornness sloughed the bangles cast on him by more than Biblical three score and ten, prayed that may the road never turn out, in Punic faith, be the famished one that would devour the Fourth Republic “without gastronomic options!” Take another cogent reason: the proudly unshackled, ex-political prisoner in Soyinka knew full well that faced with the incipient tyranny, political injustice and rape of the constitution being marshalled against Jonathan – a subject from across the Niger – pretending that the man in him has kicked the bucket would be the surest disposition to draw, with a touch of poetic justice, the wrath of history.

If Soyinka – a product of a wild Christian – was the only Nigerian who actually prayed for constitutional rectitude and political justice in sympathy with Jonathan, the reason is, perhaps, this: Jonathan is like the late playwright and environmentalist – Mr. Kenule Saro-Wiwa – who must never be cheated by death, especially in a civil dispensation. Thus, it does seem that Soyinka was the only one driven, in Shakespearean parlance, by “a common good to all”, who marched through the streets of Abuja, in a selfless appeal to death – in the interest of Jonathan and the Fourth Republic. By the Abuja road experience, Soyinka is persuaded that he’s driven home the imperative of constitutional reform – not necessarily in sympathy with Jonathan or anyone who may, in future, be as nakedly positioned in the blizzard of dirty, conspiratorial politics of recent times, but, as well, a need to have a genuine constitution collectively given to the country by every tax-paying Nigerian. It’s understandable what ignoble crisis the current 1999 Constitution – a relic of the 20th Century – foisted on the country by the rifle, has caused. The peak of the constitutional reform, by Soyinka’s estimation, would be a Sovereign National Conference. That would be an occasion to ensure, inter alia, that a future Jonathan transits to the Presidency – almost effortlessly, and without malice.   

For Soyinka, the Jonathan cause is like a peaking glory after the scornfully treacherous experience he had in the Biafran and Ogoni politics. He failed in the ’60s and ’90s primarily because, against his famous, if opaque, quill, his unblinking opponents, who were trained agents of death, were proudly and inflexibly armed to the hilt, with every imaginable instruments of his favourite subject. His foes, who later shed the costly blood that was Biafra, knew that he was virtually alone in a morally glorious campaign. They probably felt that Soyinka, who was almost the age of Jesus Christ, before Judas Iscariot struck, must not be given the singular credit of holding back the carnage across the Niger – in recognition of his opaque quill being mightier than the rifle. If Soyinka had succeeded, not only would he have expanded the theatre of the English playwright – Edward Bulwer-Lytton – but he would have, as well, taken a first leap on a dangerously famished road to being a sire of Wangarai Maathai. In that event, there, perhaps, would have been less of a compelling need for the opaque lines or rhymes – not even the dance in the forest – on the road to glorious ’86. And why has the same death been so nakedly disdainful of Soyinka’s well-intentioned intervention for common good? Could it be because death is the opaque face of the Supreme Being which Soyinka, in spite of his honest obsession with it so as to broaden the frontiers of humankind’s understanding of the universe, there’s a limit which he can’t just breach? If that’s the case, does it translate to telling Soyinka to his face: “In vain your mundane toil to unmask the spiritual!” One other reason that seems to be gaining currency in the Orwellian Republic of Pigs as to why death has been scornfully disdainful of Soyinka’s well-intended political intervention – as in his effort to sheathe the daggers that were eventually drawn to effect the battue that was Biafra is this: Soyinka is a bundle of irreverence and hubris. If he had bowed to the clearly sublime African philosophy that inspired one of his finest lines crafted in soy ink – “Son, may you never travel when the road is famished” – by slaughtering a rugged billy goat, with a prominent goatee, as a sacrifice to the goddess of the Niger, his experience would have been pleasantly tidy. If the Euro-centric Soyinka of the Biafran battue’s eve had not forgotten his roots, it does, in retrospect, seem that he wouldn’t have been a tenant in Kaduna or Calabar. Still, the question in the turbulent late ’60s was whether Soyinka’s lone, youthful, famous, but opaque quill would have had the tidy anodyne to the riotous, constitutional crises of confederation, unitary system of government and the vexatiously inconclusive position of the Jonathans in a milieu (still) bestridden selfishly by Wazobia.

JONATHAN: A SOYINKA-AKUNYILI-LED COLLOQUIUM

BY NDUKA UZUAKPUNDU

It must be by an unforced exit of President Umaru Yar’Adua, followed by a steely, tidy constitutional construct, so that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan can, ultimately, wear the tantalizingly close crown. For every well-meaning Nigerian – including Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka – there’s hardly any known personal cause, except a general, democratic good, why the politically less ambitious zoologist should not be the next pilot. But as Jonathan transits, at a guardedly measured pace on Soyinka’s unfamished road, there’s beginning to spring an interesting earth-quaking development right from the depth of the dirty, corruption-ridden politics of the present moment: Jonathan as an index of a long-delayed genesis of minority presidency in Nigeria, and the making of history by Jonathan as Nigeria’s first Acting President. It’s a Jonathan behind whom are Soyinka and Professor Dora Akunyili – amongst countless others.

By insisting on a constitutional transfer of power to Jonathan, Soyinka and Akunyili, for instance, weren’t making any shallow or opportunistic statement like: “All the Orwellian pigs in Nigeria eagerly yearn for Jonathan!”  The closest approximation of what Soyinka and Akunyili did, at different forums, in the interest of the Fourth Republic is, perhaps, this: “When evil men combine, the righteous ones must speak out or take up arms so as to shield the rest of society from an impending darkness.” For the evil men, who had wanted to ‘kill’ Jonathan in the shell, by their obviously opaque and unconstitutional conducts, Akunyili’s intervention – that Jonathan should be crowned – was one embarrassment too much; more so for the fact that she’s a woman. Add the truth that Akunyili went about a pro-Jonathan campaign with a touch of a crusader. For the same evil men, that brief moment when Akunyili shone – Soyinka thinks she’s still refulgent in the Nigerian political theatre, as a representation of constitutional uprightness – was a most trying time for them to start assessing the brand of politics she stood for.

By now, they may have recalled – that is if they’re honest to themselves – that it was the same Akunyili who led the recent Brand Nigeria campaign.

And so, that was the good, pro-Jonathan Akunyili, who’d just acted in keeping with the slogan of Brand Nigeria Project. She’s one of the many good people in the great Nigerian nation. It would have been most unfortunate had the man – no apology to Soyinka – in Akunyili, who had just led the Brand Nigeria Project, been silent in the face of the conspiracy against Jonathan. The same evil men, against whom the man in Akunyili acted, may have felt that the embarrassingly truthful tongue of the Information and Communications Minster would not have offended, in such a saucy manner, in a political theatre dominated by men, had the merchants of illegal drugs had their way.

Had Akunyili been evil, she won’t have been alive to lead the Brand Nigeria Project, still less conduct herself in tune with the spirit of the same project, by offering a muscular, political support for Jonathan. But as lucky Jonathan looks forward to wearing the crown, any time soon, he’ll do so with a unique touch of the first President of Nigeria to emerge from one of the countless minority areas of the country.

Soyinka, one suspects, may disagree, in that the heart of the oil-producing Niger Delta, whence Jonathan springs, has – since the days of the late playwright and environmentalist, Mr. Kenule Saro-Wiwa – ceased to be a minority area. A region that oils the Nigerian political wheel, but for sheer bad leadership and conspiratorial politics remains criminally underdeveloped, ought to have a compellingly influential say in the affair of the country.

A Jonathan’s spring whence springs the wealth of the Nigeria nation ought, still, to spring Nigeria’s representative at the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Such an area that has the potential of shaping – and shaking global economy, one agrees with Soyinka, cannot, rightly, be regarded as a minority den.

The same Niger Delta, for giving Nigeria a fixed presence in global politics ought, further, to spring, regularly, Nigeria’s permanent representative at the United Nations, ambassadors to such leading democracies as Canada, the United States, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, France and, amongst others, Australia. The Niger Delta is a region that should have long had a better than Ibadan, whence sprang the Nobelist. To hell with the hocus-pocus called Federal Character. Down with the shenanigan called zoning.

According Jonathan’s spring a well-deserved international recognition does not foreclose the morally justified, fixed captaincy, henceforward, of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources by its indigene.

Still, it appears Soyinka is less sure of Jonathan’s identity. Yes, this is the lucky man who is about to make history as Nigeria’s first president from one the minority areas, but Soyinka asks; “Who’s Dr. Goodluck Jonathan? He asks, in the first place, because he suspects that the enemies of Jonathan may want to satisfy the same question by saying that the zoologist is not a Nigerian. Otherwise, by what reasoning does he bear a foreign name! What’s the meaning of Jonathan! Does the porous 1999 Constitution say, without a shadow of doubt, in the famous Section 145, that a Jonathan, in place of an Ebele, should be made the Acting President? Soyinka, on his part, points out that, in nearly half-a-century of his active involvement in Nigerian politics, Nigerian leaders from the Azikiwe-Tafawa Balewa era to Yar’Adua all had easily identifiable Nigerian names. The only exception was Chief Ernest Shonekan – not that he hadn’t a first Yoruba name, but he preferred “Ernest” in gratitude to all that he has gained from the capitalist behemoth – the United African Company (UAC) – which he once headed. But in case Jonathan intends, intends to satisfy Soyinka, he’s constitutionally free to change his name to Dr. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida  (alias Maradona), so that he can feed every Nigerian, who has supported him on the unfamished road to the Presidency, with the milk of human kindness that springs, naturally, from the famous structural adjustment programme (SAP). Alternatively, he may opt for Dr. Buhari Idiagbon, so that he can, with a brawny constitutional backing, bring back Decree No. 4 (of 1984) as a sign of gratitude to the press.

Akunyili disagrees. She thinks the best name is Dr. Abacha Gowon so that, with the boiling spirit of Ate, he can make political prisoners of all those who had wanted to prevent the time of life of his presidency. In a colloquium that was aired, world-wide, on radio and television, by satellite, from Ibadan and Leeds, Soyinka has the final word: “For her historical heroism, Akunyili (alias Brand Nigeria) ought to be crowned Nigeria’s first female Vice-President.”