WHEN TINUBU HAPPENED TO SOYINKA: The Parable Of Startling Ideological Somersault 4
By Rev. Fr. John Odey.
Part 4
In his book, The Desert Is Fertile, Helder Camara wrote: “We live in a world where millions of our fellow men live in inhuman conditions, practically in slavery. If we are not deaf we hear the cries of the oppressed. Their cries are the voice of God. The pleas of those who have no voice and no hope are the voice of God. Anyone who has become aware of the injustices caused by the unfair division of wealth, must, if he has a heart, listen to the silent or violent protests of the poor. The protests of the poor are the voice of God.”
Helder Camara was the Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in North-East Brazil. Nigeria is an unjust fatherland. Hence, the tragic situation that took place in Brazil some 49 years ago has also been happening in Nigeria. Most of the political hawks and predators who call themselves our leaders have consistently compelled millions of their fellow Nigerians to live in subhuman conditions, practically in slavery. The wave of the injustices inflicted on the majority of Nigerians by the few political villains who have hijacked the country and control our destiny is so strangulating that our own version of Helder Camara, Bishop Matthew Kukah, on Sunday, April 17, 2022, declared that corruption is the only thing thriving in Nigeria. And to make matters worse, while corruption lives and thrives, he said, “Our individual hearts are broken. Our family dreams are broken. Homes are broken. Churches, Mosques, and infrastructures are broken. Our educational system is broken. Our children’s lives and future are broken. Our politics is broken. Our economy is broken. Our energy system is broken. Our security system is broken. Our roads and railways are broken. Only corruption is alive and well.”
I wish to add that corruption is the only thing thriving in Nigeria because his Siamese brother, injustice, has been enthroned as the emperor ruling the country. It is injustice that nurtures the growth of corruption. Dethrone injustice and enthrone justice, the incidents of corruption will be reduced to the barest minimum. Kukah’s true but devastating description of the wicked and despicable situation in Nigeria was delivered ten months before the 2023 elections. Nigerians had been systematically disillusioned with Muhammadu Buhari administration and were yearning for a positive change quite different from the type of change through which Buhari bulldozed his way through to become the president of Nigeria.
All along, I have been making references to the awful role that the police, the army and the DSS teamed up with Tinubu’s thugs to play during the 2023 elections. Until now, I have not mentioned the even more awful role that the mass media, with particular reference to the public broadcasting media, played during the elections. The mass media is said to be the watchdog of the society. And among my people, it is said that whenever the watchdog barks it plays a double role: First of all, it lets the owner of the house know that there is some sinister intruder, possibly a thief, lurking around and that he should get armed to defend himself and his household. Secondly, the watchdog lets the intruder understand that the owner of the house is on the alert and that his intrusion, if not checked, may prove fatal and become the end of his reckless adventure. In the final analysis, the barking watchdog may end up saving both the owner of the house and the thief from harm.
For more clarification, I will recall here what happened before the 2007 political elections. Prof. Patrick Wilmot is a Jamaican Political Sociologist who taught in Ahmadu Bello University for 18 years. As a result of his radical views which put pressure on the conscience of Nigeria’s ruling class he was forcefully repatriated in 1988. Eighteen years later and before the 2007 election, in November 2006, he delivered a paper at the biennial Africast Conference in Abuja. In that paper, he clearly highlighted the role of the mass media with particular reference to the broadcasting media. After he had given a brilliant history of the broadcasting technology, he said: “The scientific method has strict rules and procedures to ensure integrity and nature itself imposes limits which prevent manipulation and deceit. If you fake science it will not work and you will be found out and disgraced.” In view of the ethical values of the broadcasting media and the great sacrifices made to realize it, he contended that it would be a great disservice for anybody to use it for trivial or sinister purposes: “Just as you cannot transmit by distorting the technical specifications of the equipment, you should not transmit to the citizens the twisted propaganda of tyrants.”
READ MORE:WHEN TINUBU HAPPENED TO SOYINKA:The Parable Of Startling Ideological Somersault.
WHEN TINUBU HAPPENED TO SOYINKA:The Parable Of Startling Ideological Somersault 2
WHEN TINUBU HAPPENED TO SOYINKA: The Parable Of Startling Ideological Somersault 3
Broadcasters have a bounden duty to tell the people the truth. To this effect, Wilmot frowned at the flimsy excuses often given by broadcasters when tyrants use them wrongly to achieve their mischievous aims, that they only obeyed orders to distort facts and figures and feed the public with lies in order to spare their skulls and to get their salaries and feed their families. If ever such excuses were acceptable anytime in recorded history, their tenure ended long ago in Germany when the apathy of German citizens allowed Adolph Hitler and his men to kill six million Jews. Insisting that broadcasters have no alternative than to live up to their professional ethics of telling the people the truth, he reminded them that they have a choice. They could work in a supermarket, in a bank or take up any other profession. But as long as they choose to do a job where truth is the measure of professionalism, they must resist evil no matter the cost to their lives. He said:
“You cannot offer the excuse that you tell lies to feed and house your family because by lying to defend a disastrous government you sacrifice the future of your children and grandchildren. Doctors, architects, builders and other professionals have codes of conduct as well as professional competence, violation of which leads to deaths and collapse of buildings. Doctors, lawyers and engineers can be sued or jailed for professional malpractices. But when broadcasters and other journalists and intellectuals lie they threaten whole societies with collapse. The privileged in our societies steal our resources and gorge themselves on luxurious foods until their bellies threaten to explode. Then they run to Europe or America to get ‘tummy tucks’. But they never ask plastic surgeons to violate the principles and practices of their professions by using bread knives instead of scalpels to cut their bellies open. Why then should they ask broadcasters to violate the tenets of their profession by becoming praise singers for incompetent, visionless, murderous and corrupt leaders? How will the African citizen feel when the broadcaster presents him with a fantasy political world, which contradicts everything he or she sees, hears, feels or smells?” In conclusion, Wilmot rightly pointed out that the primary mission of broadcasters is to tell the people the truth about their country and about their leaders, “to de-colonize the minds of the rulers so they do not treat the people worse than their imported farm animals, and the minds of the people so they no longer accept the condition of slaves.”
Today, one of the greatest calamities of our nation is that the radio and television houses which were built with public money to serve the public interest have been converted into megaphones of the ruling class, the president, the governors, their wives and their retinue of hangers-on while most of the nation’s broadcasters have been turned into partisan scoundrels who sing the praises of the pirates in power even as those pirates embark on a mindless rape of the country and of democracy by violently and most unconscionably rigging elections in order to keep looting the country dry.
It is to be acknowledged and appreciated that while the federal and state radio and television houses built with public money to serve the public interest were hijacked by Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his gang and turned into instruments of deception and brazen distortion of facts and visible realities, the independent media houses, particularly the Arise and Channels Televisions, took the bull by the horn and have been fighting gallantly to save Nigeria and Nigerians from the machinations of Tinubu and his vicious gang.
It is also consoling to recall that on March 28, 2023, at the end of her monthly general meeting, Afenifere, the Pan-Yoruba socio-political and economic organization, issued a communiqué which was signed by their Leader, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and their General Secretary, Chief Sola Ebiseni. In the communiqué they resolved as follows: 1. That based on the lawful votes at the presidential election available to them through credible sources, Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, won the election. 2. That to ensure equity, fairness, national cohesion and peaceful corporate existence, an Igbo man from the South-East should be the president. 3. That Afenifere condemned in the strongest terms, the campaigns of calumny and acts of ethnic violence deployed by some politicians and their hired criminal gangs against the Igbo, particularly in Lagos State, where the election was made to appear like an inter-ethnic war between the Yoruba and Igbo.
Similarly, on March 26, 2023, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, the erudite professor of political science and former Nigeria External Affairs Minister, wrote a petition to President Muhammadu Buhari about the fate of the Igbo in Lagos during and after the elections. The title of that petition alone speaks volumes: Petition against Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu for making incendiary comments and hate speech breeding Yoruba supremacists and causing tribal attack against Igbos in Lagos and across Nigeria.” In the petition Akinyemi stated in clear terms as follows:
“Bola Ahmed Tinubu has never hidden his hatred for the Igbos. Asiwaju’s unrepentant penchant for unhealthy rhetorics about the Igbo is largely responsible for reported killings suffered by persons believed to be Igbos on Saturday 18th March 2023, evidences abound of persons who are not Igbos but suffered the same fate as Igbos for ‘resembling’ the Igbos.” He then asked Buhari: “Is Asiwaju above the law? I don’t think so! Should a man with so much of embarrassing allegations not be cleared before the privilege of Presidential Immunity will be bestowed on him?” The following is what Akinyemi recommended that Buhari should do to ensure the survival of democracy in Nigeria:
“Immediate sacking of Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the INEC Chairman and appointment of another. Asiwaju must be put under house arrest same way you have with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, till due diligence is done and clearance from the narcotic offence is gotten, as it must never be heard of, that anyone with tainted character is given the leadership of the most populous black nation in the world. In the circumstance, I submit this petition in my personal capacity as a patriotic Nigerian to invite/arrest, interrogate and after investigation, if necessary, charge the individuals connected to the racial discrimination and terrorism witnessed in Lagos State to court for their conduct which led to incitement and pogrom against humanity.”
Afenifere’s statement and Akinyemi’s letter were written and made public long before Tinubu was sworn in as Nigeria’s president. In addition to President Buhari, a copy of that letter was sent to the Attorney General of the Federation, the Inspector General of Police, the Director General, State Security Services and the Director General, National Drug Law Enforcement. But both the Afenifere statement and the Akinyemi letter meant nothing for any of these men who will certainly claim to be whatever they are in the service of the nation and for the good of Nigerians, when in reality, they have all teamed up with Bola Ahmed Tinubu to destroy Nigeria. But what is more startling is that Soyinka refused to take into consideration what Afenifere and Akinyemi said and chose to embark on a mission to convince the world that Peter Obi lost the presidential election while Tinubu won it.
Before I conclude, here is a review of what Prof. Patrick Wilmot told us, Nigerians, 17 years ago: The silence and the apathy of the Germans allowed Adolf Hitler to kill six million Jews. When people tell lies for whatever reason to defend a disastrous government they sacrifice the future of their children and grandchildren. When broadcasters, journalists and intellectuals tell lies to cover up evil men in power they threaten whole societies with collapse. All of these are happening in Nigeria currently. Bola Ahmed Tinubu is systematically and gradually destroying Nigeria and the Wole Soyinka of the global fame is not just watching. He is giving him unwavering support.
Here we are. Telling the world that a man who has proved to be a looming disaster in words and actions, and who did not win the presidential election, is the person that the police, the military, the DSS, the INEC and the judiciary have imposed on more than 225 million Nigerians as their president tells the whole story of how injustice and corruption reign supreme on the land. It is a big challenge on the integrity of our nation’s intelligentsia. For a man who is a living lie, a disaster not waiting to happen but a disaster already happening to Nigeria, to be parading himself as the president should make our intellectuals at home and abroad to recoil in shame. Tinubu as the president of Nigeria is the barometer through which the integrity of Nigerians can be measured and evaluated anywhere in the world. It is a bad omen. That Tinubu succeeded in happening to Prof. Wole Soyinka, our Pride and the Pride of the black race, as he happened to the mass media, the police, the army, the DSS, the INEC and the judiciary is the tragedy of all tragedies. My sympathy goes to the younger generation. Those of us who are 70 years of age and above have had our own fair share of life on earth.
To Be Continued in part 5