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16 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021<br />
You’ll regret losing your land to invaders (1)<br />
IF your education has left you<br />
incapable of defending the land that<br />
your ancestors acquired and preserved for<br />
you and your future generations, then you<br />
are beyond pathetic; you are worthless! In<br />
Igbo, a fool is often described as efulefu or<br />
ofekhe (Abiriba); a person who has lost the<br />
sense of what makes him “the son of his<br />
father”.<br />
Before the White man came, we had our<br />
own templates for raising young men and<br />
women into strong adults well-equipped<br />
to sustain their inheritances. In Abiriba,<br />
we had the ikpu uzu and ije uzu, which was<br />
eventually copied by other Igbo groups and<br />
became what we all know as the Igbo<br />
entrepreneurship mentorship system. You<br />
served your master, learnt his trade,<br />
leveraged on his experience and contacts<br />
and (expectedly) benefited from his reward<br />
when you were ready to set up your own<br />
shop.<br />
You also moved systematically from the<br />
lowest level of cultural initiation and strove<br />
to attain the highest. Through all this, you<br />
acquired the ability to understand the<br />
culture, defend the land and preserve it for<br />
the future generations. This was what<br />
defined your social stature.<br />
The coming of Western education was<br />
meant to confer an “additional brain” to<br />
the African. It was not meant to displace<br />
his traditional sense of belonging or rob<br />
him of his manhood. But unfortunately,<br />
that is exactly what it has done to many of<br />
us, especially those from the southern parts<br />
of Nigeria.<br />
Education gave us certificates and we<br />
headed off to the nearest urban area<br />
developed by the British colonialists<br />
because of the jobs that used to be<br />
abundant. There were also limitless<br />
opportunities for commerce. Urban<br />
dwellers enjoyed power and water supply<br />
and modern amenities which were not<br />
available in the rural areas. With the<br />
massive embrace of education, the urban<br />
areas filled up.<br />
The jobs dried up, the amenities which<br />
government could not expand became<br />
dilapidated, and millions of unemployed,<br />
poverty-stricken people became trapped in<br />
urban slums. Even today, people are still<br />
drifting to big towns like Lagos, Abuja and<br />
Port Harcourt.<br />
Virile young people abandoned the<br />
villages to the weak and elderly who survive<br />
on subsistence agriculture. The fertile lands<br />
with almost year-round rainfall were no<br />
longer cultivated. The richly-endowed<br />
southern people rendered themselves<br />
vulnerable to a punitive “food blockade”<br />
by the North!<br />
Climate change and self-imposed<br />
instability has been steadily driving the<br />
northern population southwards in the past<br />
20 years. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong<br />
or strange about this. It is a natural human<br />
instinct to move towards the greener<br />
pasture. Once upon a time (between the<br />
1950s and 1980s) the North was once<br />
considered by many people in the South as<br />
a greener pasture. Many people migrated<br />
northwards to earn their livelihood. That<br />
is why many people from the South had<br />
their birthplaces in the North.<br />
The problem, therefore, is not that<br />
Nigerians of northern extraction are<br />
drifting southward. When this migration<br />
started, nobody complained. Northerners<br />
came into the towns and villages as lawabiding<br />
citizens and took up honest,<br />
menial jobs. They mended shoes, hawked<br />
water, operated commercial motorcycles,<br />
worked on the farms and construction sites<br />
and generally performed the grunt tasks<br />
that southern youth now believe they have<br />
become “too big” to do. Minor ethnic<br />
skirmishes apart, we have cohabited quite<br />
What we now have is<br />
no longer mere<br />
migration; it is an<br />
armed invasion of our<br />
ancestral lands!<br />
well.<br />
But right now, the situation has changed<br />
to land grabbing by means of war or<br />
conquest! What we now have is no longer<br />
mere migration; it is an armed invasion of<br />
our ancestral lands! In the past five years,<br />
there has been a steady influx of strange<br />
people masquerading as “herdsmen” into<br />
the South with assault weapons. Many of<br />
them are not Nigerians. For six weeks,<br />
around this time last year, most parts of<br />
the country were forced into a lock-down<br />
to minimise the spread of the coronavirus.<br />
The lock-down was so fierce that some<br />
governors closed state boundaries to<br />
prevent the influx of people.<br />
While the rest us were forced to stay<br />
indoors, thousands of food, cattle and<br />
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cement trailers and trucks were used by<br />
some faceless powerful individuals to bring<br />
hundreds of thousands of youth into the<br />
South. As soon as they were disembarked<br />
from the trucks they were herded into the<br />
nearest forests! We saw them live on several<br />
viral videos. There were also rumours that<br />
some of the trucks contained assault rifles<br />
and ammunition.<br />
The security agencies who were<br />
mobilised to implement the lock-downs<br />
betrayed their assignment by allowing<br />
these unknown elements through their<br />
control posts. Some governors found<br />
themselves having to struggle with superior<br />
officials up the hierarchy of our political,<br />
military, police and security agencies who<br />
were bent on forcing through the armada<br />
of strange arrivals. State task forces on the<br />
implementation of the lock-downs were<br />
now clashing with the “authorities” who<br />
were obviously playing the double game<br />
of imposing a lock-down and facilitating<br />
the drafting of these strangers down South.<br />
Within a little time, we began to see the<br />
morphing of the number of “camps’ in the<br />
southern forests. These strangers had set<br />
up settlements made of the typical thatched<br />
round huts usually associated with the<br />
people of the Sahel. In the South West,<br />
reports had it that about 150 such camps<br />
had been identified. Another report also<br />
had it that no less than 350 such settlements<br />
were isolated in the South East with its tiny<br />
tranche of landmass! The situation is not<br />
different in the South-South where<br />
“helicopter drops” have been reported.<br />
The Federal Government, whose Ruga,<br />
Water Resources and Cattle Colony<br />
policies had been firmly rejected<br />
throughout the Middle Belt and South, is<br />
now preaching that Nigerians have the<br />
constitutional right to “settle anywhere”,<br />
which is a pathetic lie. Miyetti Allah and<br />
other interest groups even claim that the<br />
whole of Nigeria is a property of their<br />
ethnic group!<br />
We continue this next week.<br />
Soyinka 'blunders' again!<br />
By EKANPOU<br />
ENEWARIDIDEKE<br />
THERE is a towering aromatic<br />
blunder in the air. As before, ever<br />
and always - like ‘Abiku’ the<br />
perpetually irrepressible troubler of<br />
the Nobel Laureate’s creation -<br />
Soyinka, ‘the perpetual<br />
dramatist who tends to dramatise<br />
on every grammar of his own<br />
manufacture’, has blundered again.<br />
This is the first time Akinwande<br />
Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, born<br />
July 13, 1934 at Abeokuta, has<br />
blundered and unashamedly<br />
admitted he has actually<br />
blundered. General Sani Abacha<br />
and his cohorts must be in a derisory<br />
jubilant mood over the fact that the<br />
literary legend hitherto thought<br />
flawless has at last openly admitted<br />
his blunders. So even Soyinka<br />
blunders too!<br />
Wole Soyinka is my father - my<br />
literary father. This literary<br />
fatherhood is a fortified formation<br />
created of my own volition, seduced<br />
by the voluptuous features/physique<br />
unveiled or shed in his writings:<br />
drama, poetry, prose, essays,<br />
lectures, his oratorical prowess,<br />
fluidity and seductive phonological<br />
proficiency. And again, of my own<br />
volition, I have just dismantled this<br />
formation hitherto built on filial<br />
literary allegiance and love - a<br />
sudden dismantlement occasioned<br />
by Soyinka’s recent blunders!<br />
For a mind-bogglingly morbid<br />
portrait of a nation as one of<br />
paedophiles, assassins,<br />
anthropophagi, marketers of human<br />
parts, crisis-profiteers, ritual<br />
murderers, religious hypocrites,<br />
tainted government functionaries,<br />
promoters of development stasis ,<br />
hunters of visionaries, pathological<br />
promoters of infanticide, homicide,<br />
terrorism, pathological promoters of<br />
arsonists, pathological haters of<br />
intellectuals and reformers and<br />
pathological scapegoaters of<br />
religious crisis as a camouflage for<br />
gold-mining in Zamfara State - a<br />
great nation like Nigeria for that<br />
matter! Soyinka merits<br />
dismantlement and expulsion from<br />
my republic as my literary father.<br />
This I have already done as the only<br />
distinguishable patriot in a great<br />
country called Nigeria where the<br />
welfare of the citizens is always<br />
speedily given a royal priority<br />
The Niger Delta is still<br />
an abandoned child full<br />
of scalding tears of<br />
underdevelopment<br />
attention - a radiant reality which<br />
Soyinka does not bother to know in<br />
his boundless, unremitting<br />
vituperations in his recent artistic<br />
creation called Chronicles Of The<br />
Happiest People On Earth. From<br />
1960 and beyond when Soyinka<br />
patriotically offers as rituals for<br />
societal reordering, re-orientation,<br />
re-direction and transformation his<br />
own babies of imaginative<br />
procreation - undaunted by the<br />
glaring risk of accusatory jabs and<br />
poisoned arrows of infanticide and<br />
homicide disparagingly deposited at<br />
his doorstep - A Dance of the Forests,<br />
The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong<br />
Breed, The Road, The Lion and the<br />
Jewel, The Interpreters, The Man Died,<br />
etc.etc. - his consistent critical dance<br />
is always anti-establishment whose<br />
murderous institutions are always<br />
poised to silence his stentorian voice<br />
of vision with every opportunity<br />
corralled or commandeered.<br />
Imaginatively procreative<br />
continuum of the anti-establishment<br />
critical dance of the Nobel Laureate<br />
is a normal expectation of his<br />
believers, but the Soyinka we know<br />
seems to have gone AWOL on this<br />
noble and commendable path -<br />
only sadly shaping ominous path<br />
out of his hitherto glorious noble<br />
path. Could this be that lionised<br />
Soyinka we know whose words and<br />
oral renditions could seduce Holy<br />
Mary and Helen of Troy into noble<br />
relationship?<br />
The Niger Delta is still an<br />
abandoned child full of scalding<br />
tears of underdevelopment. From<br />
the 1950s till now, Chief Harold<br />
Dappa Biriye, Major Isaac Boro,<br />
Ken Saro-Wiwa and High Chief<br />
Tompolo had megaphoned the<br />
developmental backwardness of the<br />
Niger Delta to the Federal<br />
Government of Nigeria whose<br />
present response - after series of<br />
failed interventionist developmental<br />
organs created - revolves around<br />
NDDC and the Presidential<br />
Amnesty Programme.<br />
NDDC is in the grip of a ‘mafiad’<br />
systematic suffocation. Contractors<br />
with proofs of job-completion are<br />
denied payment. This deliberate<br />
non-payment of contrctors can be<br />
located in the deliberate nonpayment<br />
of the canalisation project<br />
professionally carried out in<br />
Akparemogbene River in Burutu<br />
Local Government Area of Delta<br />
State - a commendable canalisation<br />
project taken on by a competent<br />
contractor in 2019 but the contractor<br />
is yet to be paid a kobo by NDDC.<br />
What about the Amnesty Programme<br />
now administratively captained<br />
some nautical miles away from the<br />
ideal course where only competent<br />
administrators very much at home<br />
with the agitation nitty-gritty of the<br />
region were usually appointed when<br />
it began in 2009. It is today the<br />
capital of discordant songs as<br />
regards the course it is being piloted<br />
by the privileged hands. Is Soyinka<br />
not aware of these weird happenings<br />
in NDDC and PAP? Why the silence,<br />
Soyinka?<br />
I thought Soyinka’s vocal cords<br />
would assume stridency and<br />
deafening decibel over the visible<br />
storm threatening NDDC and PAP<br />
but suprisingly, he has chosen<br />
professional silence over and above<br />
weird occurrences that keep the<br />
interventionist development bodies<br />
convulsed. Soyinka appears not to<br />
be bothered that NDDC and PAP are<br />
dancing fractionally away from the<br />
known rhythm of development of the<br />
people for whom they are created. Is<br />
Soyinka afraid of NDDC and PAP?<br />
Strikingly, in Delta State the<br />
mantra that dwells on the lips of the<br />
people is that of Governor<br />
Ifeanyi Okowa as the road master -<br />
referentially echoed as a responsive<br />
critical appraisal of his development<br />
projects - and the Deputy Governor,<br />
Kingsley Otuaro, around whom<br />
development theories revolve in their<br />
variety - ‘Otuaroism,’ ‘Otuaro-<br />
Singaporeanism,’ ‘Otuaro-<br />
Intellectualism’, ‘Otuaro-Ruralism’,<br />
‘Otuaro-Philanthropism’ and many<br />
other allied development theories<br />
society can lean on for<br />
transformational progression.<br />
Governor Okowa’s mantra as the<br />
road master activated by a vision<br />
to finish strong, and Otuarosim and<br />
its allied development theories<br />
formulated can be given<br />
investigative thrusts for extraction of<br />
the truths in these phenomena<br />
distilled as materials to inspire and<br />
trigger off a chain of devleopment<br />
thrusts because Okowa’s<br />
developmemnt mantra, and<br />
Otuaroism and its allied<br />
development theories constitute a<br />
magical developmental compass<br />
when constructively mangled.<br />
As regards imaginative and<br />
constructive mangling of Okowa’s<br />
mantra and Otuaro’s ‘Otuaroism’<br />
and its allied development theories,<br />
no writer on earth can do this better<br />
than Soyinka but in Soyinka I only<br />
see infectious disinterest and<br />
dismissive glares. Is anything<br />
the matter O Soyinka, the giant of<br />
Literature and activism? Is anything<br />
the matter with Soyinka the<br />
untainted voice of vision in the<br />
society? That Governor Okowa and<br />
Deputy Governor Otuaro are<br />
politicians may constitute the<br />
mitigating basis for Soyinka’s<br />
disinterest and analytical<br />
dissociation from the activities of the<br />
two personalities. What about the<br />
activities of King Alfred Izonebi?<br />
King Izonebi is of the world of<br />
Soyinka. King Izonebi is a<br />
philosopher, gifted musician who<br />
anchors the music revivalism<br />
movement through which he hopes<br />
to revive the ancient traditional<br />
Ijaw songs produced by old<br />
musicians of the dead years.These<br />
ancient but great songs - timeless<br />
in their didactive value and appeal<br />
- are faced daily with extinction. This<br />
king Izonebi has laboured to revive<br />
most of these dead songs for mankind<br />
and he is still at it. The music<br />
revivalist movement of King Izonebi<br />
ought to have rung a bell of high<br />
decibel loud enough to attract the<br />
creative sensitivity and sensibility of<br />
Soyinka. Even on this music<br />
revivalism matter alone, which is the<br />
domain of the Nobel laureate, he<br />
gives off professional distance and<br />
silence like bats upon BIA branches<br />
in Oyangbene town whose clanging<br />
voices are never heard when it<br />
is dawn. Is Soyinka at war with the<br />
talented Ijaw music revivalist called<br />
King Alfred Izonebi of Bayelsa and<br />
Delta states of Nigeria?<br />
Continues<br />
online:www.vanguardngr.com<br />
•Enewaridideke, a poet, wrote<br />
from Akparemogbene, Delta State.<br />
C<br />
M<br />
Y<br />
K