Nigeria's Professor of Engineering Ayodele Awojobi

 

 THE BEGINNING

Born in Oshodi, Lagos State, Awojobi’s father, Chief Daniel Adekoya Awojobi, was a stationmaster at the Nigerian Railway who hailed from Ikorodu in Lagos State. His mother, Comfort Bamidele Awojobi (née Adetunji), was a petty trader who hailed from Modakeke, Ile-Ife, Osun State. Between 1942 and 1947, he attended St. Peter’s Primary School, Faji, Lagos.

It was while at his secondary school, the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, that his academic traits began to manifest. Not only was he seen to be gifted in mathematics and the sciences, he was comfortable also in the arts, becoming a member of the school’s literary and debating society. It was during this period that he earned the nickname, "Macbeth": William Shakespeare’s famous play, Macbeth, was to be staged in the school. The lead actor took ill a week before, and so Ayodele was called upon to play the lead role in his stead. It is said that not only did Ayodele master his lines as lead actor, but also the entire play, such that he was able to prompt the cast whenever they forgot their lines.

Ayodele was a straight-A’s secondary school student, while at the CMS Grammar school, passing his West African School Certificate examinations with a record eight distinctions in 1955. He proceeded to the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Ibadan, for his General Certificate of Examinations, GCE (Advanced Level), where in 1958 he sat for, and obtained distinctions in all his papers: Physics, Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. In 1962 Awojobi was awarded his first degree in Mechanical Engineering – a BSc (Eng) London, with first class honours, at the then Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria (now Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria). He had studied there on a federal government scholarship won on the merit of his performance in the GCE (Advanced-level) examinations of 1958.

Continue after the cut

It was said by Akintola Ajai (himself an engineering graduate of the University of London), that when Awojobi arrived at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria, he boasted openly saying that it was his intention to finish the whole course within a period of three years only; an impracticable feat due to the fact that nowhere was the BSc Mechanical Engineering curriculum designed to run less than four years. Ayodele accomplished it in three years just as he had predicted.

HOW HE BECAME A PROFESSOR WITHIN A WEEK

The federal government awarded Awojobi another scholarship in 1962 to study further at the post-graduate level in the field of Mechanical Engineering at the Imperial College of the University of London (now Imperial College London). He completed the course, successfully defending his thesis, and was awarded a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1966.

After a period teaching at the University of Lagos, he returned to the Imperial College London for a research study in the field of Vibration, and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, DSc. He was the first African to be awarded the Doctor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, at the Imperial College London.

The first university to admit an individual to this degree was in fact the University of London in 1860.

The status of the degree has declined, however, because it is not widely understood but in former times the doctorate in science was regarded as a greater distinctionthan a professorial chair. It is in fact a higher tier of research doctorates, awarded on the basis of a formally submitted portfolio of published research of a very high standard.

To have received the award at the age of 37 is significant, more so as the degree is only exceptionally and rarely awarded to a scholar under the age of 40.

On his return from England in 1966 Awojobi enrolled as a lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos, Akoka. His teaching methods endeared him to his engineering students, whose public chants: “Dead easy... Dead easy...”, would often be heard shouted in his direction as he went along the campus grounds. He quickly rose in the ranks among his colleagues and would later become the Head of Department, Mechanical Engineering, University of Lagos.

Awojobi went back to London to study for his Doctorate. He returned in 1974 and was made an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Lagos. However, one week after having been appointed associate professor, the University of Lagos Senate, after receiving news that Awojobi had just been awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc), immediately appointed him professor in Mechanical Engineering, making him the youngest professor in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos and the first ever to be expressly promoted from associate to full professorship within a week.

By nature, Ayodele Awojobi was a teacher. He imparted knowledge at various other levels, even as he contended with his day job as a full-time professor and university lecturer. He envisaged his country as a whole becoming more advanced, technologically – this was exemplified when he refused lucrative offers from commercial outfits for his Autonov 1 invention, he rather preferring to preserve his design for his country's future benefit.

Awojobi’s students stood in awe of him. They told of how he would come to the classroom without any textbook or notes – only a duster. Some recalled that after solving equations, he would say "Dead easy," and that was because he meant it to be so. They were amazed by the way their former lecturer used to derive equations.

"It was nearly impossible to fail Awojobi’s course. This was because, by the time he would take you through the process, he would have simplified it. He was not around many times but he gave us lots of assignments," someone said.

SOCIAL ACTIVISM

He engaged with great educators of his, and earlier generations, such as the late nationalist and Yoruba leader, Obafemi Awolowo (who forwarded several of Ayodele’s educational books), the late activist, social crusader and educator, Tai Solarin, and the once Lagos State governor, Lateef Kayode Jakande, who achieved free education at all educational levels in Lagos State, Nigeria. Jakande believed in Awolowo's visionary ideas about the way forward for the nation, particularly in Awolowo's resounding theme of qualitative and quantitative education across the nation, free of over-bearing school fees.

Ayodele Awojobi became, at one time, the chairman, Lagos State School’s Management Board, out of his concern for ways to better improve the problems inherent in secondary school education in Lagos State, Nigeria. He desired that all his children go to public schools. The older ones all did. Such was his vision and hope that the country would some day attain equitable distribution in the quality of education cutting across different social strata. He authored several books for both the secondary and tertiary levels of education in Nigeria.

His natural propensity to inform, to educate, drove him to become, in the early 1970s, a quiz-master on national television. The quiz-show, Mastermind, consisted of weekly contestants taking turns in isolation on "the hot-seat", whereupon various categories of questions would be thrown at them. Otunba Gbenga Daniel, former governor of Ogun State, Nigeria, was a returning winner and champion on Mastermind for several episodes over; he being in his undergraduate years at the time.

HIS INVENTIONS

While as a lecturer in the University of Lagos, Awojobi successfully converted his own family car, an Opel Record, from right-hand drive to a left-hand drive.

He tinkered further with motor engines when he acquired an army-type jeep and proceeded to invent a second steering-wheel mechanism, adjoined to the pre-existing engine at the rear end, so that the vehicle was able to move in both forward and backward directions with all four pre-existing gears. This gave the hybrid vehicle, which he christened Autonov 1, the ability to achieve its highest speeds at a moment's notice, in the normal reverse direction. He highlighted the advantage this might offer to army vehicles, as an example, that might need to make a fast retreat, in a cul-de-sac or ambush situation.

HIS POLITICS

Ayodele Awojobi, in the wake of the presidential election results that returned the incumbent, Shehu Shagari as President in the Nigerian Second Republic, became very vocal in the national newspapers and magazines, going as far as suing the Federal Government of Nigeria for what he strongly believed was a widespread election rigging. With all his court cases against the Nigerian government thrown out of court, he delved into the law books, himself being only a mechanical engineer, claiming that he would earn his law degrees in record time, to enable him better argue with the opposition at the federal courts.

Recalling his fond memory of Awojobi, Kunle Awobodu said:"One day, Professor Awojobi was in court in one of the Shehu Shagari Versus Obafemi Awolowo political litigation cases. He did not eat that day. I went out secretly to eat but the man refused to eat. He said he wondered where Nigeria was going. When he left the court that day he said he discovered that he was being trailed and his movement monitored and he refused to go home. That was in Lagos then."

He used the universities as a bastion, going from campus to campus to make speeches at student-rallies, hoping to sensitize them to what he perceived as the ills of a corrupt government. Ayodele Awojobi authored several political books over the course of his ideological struggles against a perceived, corrupt federal government. These books were usually made available during his public rallies or symposiums.

Any intention Ayodele Awojobi ever had of entering partisan politics, was revealed by the man himself when he spoke on national television, saying: "At the age of 65, I will have built the infrastructure. There would be very few illiterates in Nigeria when I mount the soapbox. Then, I will go into proper politics".

HIS DREAM AS TOLD IN "JUST BEFORE DAWN" BY KOLE OMOTOSO

In the dream, Mr. Awojobi was invited to a special church service marking the beginning of a week long prayer session for the country. It was on a Sunday. The church was a cathedral along Marina, Lagos. Simultaneously, there was an open air service too at Abuja with both the executive president (then Mr. Shehu Shagari) and his vice president in attendance.

Other dignitaries, ministers, commissioners, etc were present too. A radio communication link was established between the cathedral in Lagos and the open air service in Abuja.

As usual with church services, a song was rendered to start the occasion. It was Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise. Thereafter, prayers were offered followed by bible reading and sermon. The bible reading was taken from Jeremiah 8: 4-17. Then the Bishop mounted the rostrum, offered a short prayer and started to preach to the congregation.

He praised the rulers but condemned the populace in the society for being lazy, complacent, greedy, impervious, lawless and swollen headed. He pitied the rulers for the burden they bear for us all and prayed that the saviour shared in their burden.

After the sermon, the Bishop went outside the norm in such a service by wishing to have a response from any distinguished member of the congregation. Instead of picking any of the ministers and commissioners on seat, he chose Mr. Awojobi.

The latter mounted the pulpit only to inform the audience that he disagreed entirely with the Bishop, describing the rulers as law breakers, smugglers, etc. He accused the ministers and commissioners present of taking bribes.

An atmosphere of total discomfort descended on the Bishop, church workers and the congregation. Layreaders were itching to switch off the radio link and were eagerly looking up to the Bishop for a sign to that effect. This was intended to avoid any embarrassment to the presidency. The Bishop was ruminating in his mind on whether to stop Mr. Awojobi.

Suddenly, Mr. Awojobi said that, I quote:
I have the list of the corrupt practices of our ministers and commissioners, senior civil servants, all those who are supposed to take care of the society through the institution of the state. And I intend to read the list and say against each name what he or she has done,unquote.

Mr. Awojobi brought out a piece of paper and was trying to unfold it. But this action infuriated the Bishop and forced him to stand up, move swiftly towards Mr. Awojobi, then whipped off the list from his hands. In an attempt to recover the list, he was pinned down by three aids of the Bishop, and then bundled from the pulpit to outside the church. That was the dream.

HOW HE DIED

His immediate younger brother Engineer Busola Awojobi claimed his brother was struck with juju when he went along with a bailiff to Akure to serve Chief Omoboriowo the then deputy governor to the late Chief Adekunle Ajasin during the legal battles of the Ondo State governorship in 1983. " Immediately he (late Awojobi) was sighted, one of Chief Akin Omoboriowo’s supporters came around and shouted this is the man. He was then attacked physically and spiritually as he was hit with juju and his illness started from Akure till he died on 23rdSeptember 1984", Busola said.

Expatiating, he said his brother died fighting for a just cause and for Nigeria to change positively but was misunderstood. Busola referred to the Alhaji Shehu Shagari vs the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo political legal tussle. According to him, his elder brother fought and argued the 12

2/3(twelve-two-third) of which Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) declared Shagari to have won the states to become the president in 1979. "My brother also fought and filed litigations during the late Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin (when he was the governor of Ondo State) and Chief Omoboriowo’s legal tussle. My late brother Professor Ayodele Awojobi took it upon himself and accompanied the bailiff to Akure, to serve Omoboriowo the election petition papers and it was there they struck him with charm and his illness started."

On whether his late brother suffered mental illness before his demise, the younger Awojobi corroborated the story. "Well, his illness started from Akure when Omoboriowo’s supporters hit him with charm. That is exactly where the problem started. When he got back to Lagos things started going wrong with him physically and mentally."

Ayodele Awojobi died in the morning of Sunday, September 23, 1984, at the age of 47. His death made headline news in most of the national newspapers for days following. He was survived by his wife, Mrs Iyabode Mabel Awojobi (née Odetunde), and children.

At the Ojokoro cemetery in Ikorodu lies the remains of the erudite scholar with these epitaphs on the marble stone:

"HEREIN LIES " THE BELOVED AYODELE OLUTUMINU AWOJOBI 1937 – 1984. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PHD) UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS . HE DENIED HIMSELF AND HIS VERY OWN. HE LIVED FOR OTHERS, FOR STRANGERS AND FRIENDS ALIKE , FOR HIS COUNTRYMEN AND FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF HUMANITY THROUGH SEARCHES, RESEARCHES AND EVOLVING SOLUTIONS. SUNRE O OMO KUN-KUN KE KE . RIP.

Apparently following the footsteps of their late brother, many of his siblings are engineers. Professor Ayodele read Mechanical Engineering , his younger brother Yinka Awojobi read Electronics Engineering, Busola his brother read Civil and Structural Engineering from University of London too. The late Professor Awojobi’s son Ayodeji read Mechanical Engineering from UNILAG and is now in London where he read Aerospace engineering . His (Ayodele) last born, Folayemi Awojobi studied Mechanical Engineering from UNILAG. 

Usually every year till date, a tribute or two in Ayodele's honour would be published in the form of an article in a national newspaper, such as the one published by The Nation on November 5, 2009, entitled "Tribute to Ayodele Awojobi". In October 2009, the governor of Lagos State Babatunde Fashola dedicated a statue of Awojobi at Onike Roundabout, Yaba, Lagos, in a garden named after him. On September 23, 2010, Birrel Street – a prominent street in Yaba Local Government Council Area – was renamed "Prof. Ayodele Awojobi Avenue", a further tribute to Awojobi's memory.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Nation Archives, Just Before Dawn

The Damning United States Corruption Report on Nigeria

The United States government’s recent report on the role of the government in the proliferation of corruption in Nigeria offers a fresh and undeniable insight into why graft is so deeply entrenched in the Nigerian system. If the government that should stamp out corruption is now actively protecting corrupt individuals, then no amount of posturing will produce results.

In a detailed and frank assessment that could only be described as stating the obvious, the report, entitled, “Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government,” confirmed the often-stated view that the efforts of the anti-graft agencies are deliberately stymied by the government of Goodluck Jonathan. The allegation of deliberately emasculating the anti-corruption agencies brings to mind reports last year in which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission confessed that it was broke. 

The US report said, in Nigeria, “Massive, widespread and pervasive corruption affected all levels of government and the security forces.” While alleging that judges were not left out of the massive corruption ring, the report accused the Jonathan government of not implementing the law on corruption effectively, thus deliberately allowing “officials (to) frequently engage in corrupt practices with impunity.” 

These are, possibly, what the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, saw when he cried out that the President’s “body language” encouraged corruption...

In one of such reports, the EFCC Secretary, Emmanuel Adegboyega, told the Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics, Financial Crimes and Anti-Corruption in December last year, “We (EFCC) have been complaining that no money has been released to us for operations. As of now, we don’t have up to N2 million. If we can afford to pay salaries this month that is all.” For an agency whose functions are defined by the number of arrests and prosecution of corrupt individuals across the country, how can those functions be effectively discharged without money for legal fees and travel expenses? How can they be motivated if salaries are not paid?

Interestingly, one of the other cases of corrupt practices the US report cited was the curious state pardon granted a former Bayelsa State governor, Diepriye Alamieyeseigha. Aside from his conviction for treasury looting and money laundering, Alamieyeseigha, who is still a wanted person in the United Kingdom, served time in Nigeria and also had his tenure as governor truncated, paving the way for Jonathan, then his deputy, to replace him. The state pardon implies that the former governor, who, as an ex-convict, could not occupy public office, whether appointive or elective, can now do so. Indeed, Jonathan has nominated him to the ongoing National Conference. That is a dangerous signal to the outside world for a government that professes commitment to fighting corruption.

In a similar damning report last year, the then US Ambassador to Nigeria, Terence McCulley, reportedly told the Nigerian government to demonstrate more courage and conviction in its crusade against graft, insisting that it was the only way to “send a clear signal that the country is indeed committed to good governance, to the security of its citizens, and to its rightful place as a significant actor on the global stage.”

Unfortunately, corruption has been identified as the major reason for the arrested development in the country. It is responsible for reduced public spending, which results in huge infrastructure deficits, especially poor roads, lack of electricity, inadequately-equipped hospitals and low quality of education. It is also fingered in the pervasive insecurity in the country, low quality of governance and general poor standard of living.

Under the current administration, corruption has become particularly daring, even more than anytime before. Even when the President stated clearly his readiness to fight corruption, the government had been less than convincing in its manner of handling corruption cases. For instance, after ordering a series of probes into stolen oil subsidy money in which the country lost more than N2 trillion, an amount far in excess of Nigeria’s capital budget for this year, nobody has been convicted more than two years after.

Faced with brazen and self-evident corruption case in the purchase of two cars for N255 million for a former Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, it still took the President four months to reluctantly ask her to resign. He initially set up a committee to investigate a straightforward case, apparently to find a way to avoid sacking the minister.

Indeed, the US report went far, but only to the extent of the period it covered, which was 2013. Since the beginning of this year, there have been allegations of missing funds, meant for the Federation Account, and for further distribution among federal, state and local governments. But, for alleging that about $12 billion – later $20 billion – had not been accounted for, the Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi, was placed on suspension and a forensic audit ordered later. Why the hurry in suspending the CBN governor instead of investigating his allegations first? The government says the suspension will pave the way for the investigation of allegations of financial recklessness against the CBN governor.

Although both the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the government said only $10.8 billion was unaccounted for, it is still a huge sum of money. Only a fraction of that money can build the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the East-West Road and the Second Niger Bridge. It is money that could have staved off the prolonged university teachers’ strike that nearly cost the institutions a full academic session.

However, if we have a government that is responsive to constructive criticism – a government that means well for the people – the report is an opportunity for the Goodluck Jonathan Administration to act by taking firm, honest and decisive steps to rid Nigeria of the perennial tag of one of the world’s most corrupt nations.

The government owes the people a duty to tackle corruption boldly by adequately funding the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission. Besides, corrupt individuals should never be allowed to go scot-free; that is the only way to stem the tide of impunity in the country.

Source: Punch Editorial

   

Professor Wole Soyinka's Keynote Address, Delivered During the Opening Ceremony of the Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014 titled, Republic Of The Mind And Thralldom Of Fear.

I have a cloud of sadness within me as I speak. It has to do with an absence, a non-event which, both as a product in itself and as the product’s fate, could easily stand – among similar testimonies – as symbolic of the mission of this gathering, and a number of others like it, at least in all societies which value the exertion of the mind and products of the imagination.
Before I state what that non-event is, I wish to emphasize very strongly that this is not meant as an indictment of this Book Fair of which I consider myself a part, having been with it – albeit marginally - from its very inception. That would be grossly misleading. My remarks represent a personal wish, generated by the nation’s current crisis of existence, and extend beyond this present location and time, even though they do take off from there. They are a continuation of a discourse on which I embarked years ago - and formed part of my BBC Reith Lecture series – CLIMATE OF FEAR. That discourse was nudged awake quite fortuitously when I visited the London Book Fair three to four weeks ago, where the issue of censorship resurfaced. In any case, this absence I speak of, paradoxically, constitutes an integral part of the story of the Book, narrating the predicament of much of humanity in scattered parts of the world – and on so many levels, both specific and general.
For us in this nation, that predicament is hideously current and specific. We are undergoing an affliction that many could not have imagined possible perhaps up to a decade ago. In a way, both that product, and its absence are simultaneously instruction and consolation. On the one hand it brings home to us the price that others have paid – and still pay - for complacency, timidity, evasion, and/or failure to grasp the nature, and multiple guises of the Power drive. The obsession to dictate, dominate, and subjugate. On the other hand, it consoles us, in that painfully ironic way, that others have been there before, and many more are yet lined up to undergo – if I may utilize an apt seasonal metaphor, this being the Easter season - many more unsuspecting nations and communities, currently insulated from a near incurable scourge, are lined up to undergo the same Calvary.
To the product then: It’s just a book, but then, more than ‘just a book’ - written by Professor Karima Bennoune, an Algerian presently teaching at Berkeley University, California. And the title? YOUR FATWA DOES NOT APPLY HERE. It is not a work of fiction. It is a compilation – with commentary and analysis of course - of experiences of individuals - men, women, young, old, professionals, academics, entire families and others – among them her own father. It is a record of unbelievable courage and defiance, yes, also of timorousness and surrender, of self-sacrifice and betrayals, of arrogance and restraint, intelligence and stupidity, fanaticism and tolerance – in short, a document of Truth at its most forthright and near unbearable, the eternal narrative of humanity that illustrates, the axial relation between the twin polarities called Power and Freedom which, I persist in pointing out, stand out as the most common denominator of human history.
I feel sad that through this absence, Africa north of the Sahara could not meet and speak to Africa South on Nigerian soil, console and instruct us through a shared experience, one from whose darkness one nation recently emerged and into which the other is being dragged by the sheer deadweight of human mindlessness. It is such an important book, one that has a sobering relevance – does one have to reiterate? – for this nation. It is not quite over yet for Algeria by the way. Only yesterday I read in the papers that eleven soldiers were ambushed and killed by forces of identical mental conditioning to the ones that are currently traumatizing this nation. We can only hope that Karima Bennoune does not have to drastically update her account through a resurgence of a traumatic past. So much on the product itself.
Now comes the question: what would have been the effect of that title on most of us, seeing it displayed in one of the bookstalls of a participating publisher? Let’s begin from there. Even before we have opened the cover, what impact does it have on us, the local consumers? This is not a rhetorical question – what is it in the title itself that guarantees in advance that the average viewer would instinctively approach it with some trepidation? This is a familiar battle ground for thousands of affected writers, and constitutes the phenomenon that I wish to drag into this specific context, seeing that the book is available through all the normal sales channels elsewhere, and has been reviewed extensively in numerous media. It leads inevitably to the question: have we been shortchanged, albeit through circumstances too convoluted to go into here – in an environment to which such a history is excruciatingly pertinent?
One should not cry over spilt milk, yet one should never let an opportunity go to waste to recoup one’s losses wherever possible – even in divergent directions. In this case, as I hinted earlier, the very absence forms part of our literary mission. I consider this work of such relevance that I am persuaded that it should be made compulsive reading for everyone in leadership position in this nation, beginning from the President all the way down to local councilors, irrespective of religion, and community leaders. I intend to adopt Professor Bennoune’s book as entry point into the interrogatories for the very contestation that is summed up in the title of this address – “The Republic of the Mind and the Thralldom of Fear”. I intend to pose questions such as: should such a work constitute a contentious issue in the first place? Is our world now in a condition where a work that may – repeat – may – explore and narrate unpleasant histories is approached as an instant minefield for its handlers? Is any interest group, as long as it is sufficiently vociferous, reckless and dangerous, entitled to bestride and menace our world once such a minority decrees even factual history unpalatable or unflattering? Do we now instinctively make assumptions of negative responses on behalf of such a minority? Does anyone possess a right of imposition in the first place? What does that mean for any community?
I pose these questions because my increasing conviction is that our space of volition and equality of choice is rapidly collapsing under internal relationships based on fear and domination, on dictation and imposition. This is not the view of this speaker alone. Both Egypt and Tunisia, one after the other, are solid proofs that this shrinkage of space is an obsessive project by the assiduous cultivators of the realm of thralldom, and we have seen how it is answered in both instances. My business here is not to urge the adoption of the solutions pursued in either nation, or indeed Somalia, but to point out an existing agenda of control, manifested in different ways and degrees, and consequently drawing unpredictable responses.
But quickly, that question, are the people themselves sometimes collaborators in the shrinkage of that space of choice, that space of freedom? This, indeed, was the disquieting issue that triggered off the London discussion, catapulting the Nigerian predicament to the fore. We must be honest in our answers. When we look into the demands and impositions by one section of society upon another, coldly and analytically, we find that, very often, our instinctive assumptions are totally divergent from the actuality of relationships between such groups. We find that we have conceded what was never at issue, or else can be argued and clarified through mutual exchange. We find that sensitivities are often exaggerated, or else unnecessarily indulged. It is a lazy intellectual habit, one that is born of a timorous attitude for frank and honest dialogue. Mutual respect is built by clarification, not by avoidance or unjustifiable concessions, which is an attitude of condescension, a patronizing approach that is not only disrespectful but unhealthy.
To begin with our immediate community here in Nigeria as testing ground, let us consider the ‘People versus Boko Haram.’ Boko Haram represents the ultimate fatwa, of our time. It has placed a fatwa on our very raison d’etre, the mission, and justification of our productive existence. I do not think that this claim is in contention. The next question is: does the Boko Haram fatwa remotely represent the articulated position of the majority of moslems in this nation? My reading over the past few years is an unambiguous NO! Again and again the declaration that those words represent in Bennoune’s title is the very manifesto with which the nation has been inundated by moslem intellectuals, politicians, community leaders quite openly in their pronouncements on Boko Haram. ‘They are not true moslems’ has become the persistent mantra from North East to West, all the way southwards across the Niger. Grasping the nearest such declaration to hand, only two days old, the governor of Osun state, a moslem, declared in categorical terms:
A visibly angry Osun State Governor called on Moslems to rise against atrocities perpetrated by the fundamentalist group in the name of religion. In his own words:
“We must protest seriously against the sycophants who hide under religion to perpetrate evils in our land; it must be done nationwide. We reject everything that Boko Haram represents. Our religion rejects everything these evil characters project in the name of islam. We must not be silent, because Boko Harm represents evil.”
Now what does that mean, this exhortation that has been echoed by Emirs, islamic scholars, islamic councils, politicians and lawgivers etc. The least that the intimately connected people of the book – publishers, teachers, thinkers of all faiths can contribute, is to exploit opportunities such as this market of ideas – to spread the word in all possible forms, most especially where an example is provided through the histories of those who failed to rally the mind when encroachment on the space of ideas was still in infancy. What these voices now proclaim, somewhat belatedly, is simply that the edicts of Boko Haram – in short, its fatwa’s - are worthless and unacceptable to the rest of society. Bennoune’s book, the string of words that makes up the title, is the charter of rejection that the Algerians, as a people, flung at the murderous fundamentalists as they battled for over ten years for their freedom. It represents a collective challenge for the rest of us: to go beyond even the contents of the work and actualize its lessons in our lives. To do less is to concede that the will of Boko Haram is the will of all humanity.
Why else are we gathered here? Boko Haram anathemizes books, destroys books and destroys their institutions, but we are here, in a surrounding of, and celebration of books. Yes, indeed, a Book Fair is itself a statement of rejection of Boko Harm’s fatwa. It is an implicit yet overt gesture of contempt for the delusions of grandeur of that movement and its homicidal avocation. But then, a Book Fair owes itself the full complement of what renders it – itself . Its mission, as an instrument of enlightenment, must not be compromised by the diktat – implicit or overt - of whatever makes no disguise of its contrary mission and manifests itself as an enemy of enlightenment.
An army that remains in the barracks even when assailed by enemy forces is clearly no army at all, but a sitting duck. We cannot recommend that we all sign up and join the uniformed corps as they make their rescue sorties into caves and swamps in the forest, not only to destroy the enemy but now, primarily, to rescue our children who were violently abducted from their learning institutions to become – let’s not beat about the bush, let us face the ultimate horror that confronts us, so we know the evil that hangs over us as a people – to become sex slaves of any unwashed dog. Those children will need massive help whenever they are returned to their homes. To remain in denial at this moment is to betray our own offspring and to consolidate the ongoing crimes against our humanity. There is no alternative: we must take the battle to the enemy. And this is no idle rhetoric – the battlefield stretches beyond the physical terrain. We are engaged in the battle for the mind – which is where it all begins, and where it will eventually be concluded. And that battlefield is not simply one of imagination, it is one of memory and history – our histories, what we were, and a consciousness of the histories of others - what happened to them in the past, how they responded, and with what results.
My dear colleagues, there may be hundreds of soldiers out in the forests of Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, but this battle is very much our own., primarily ours, and we should display as much courage as those who are dying in defence of what we value most, as writers, and consumers of literature. At least I like to believe so, to believe that nothing quite comes quite that close to our self-fulfillment as the liberation of the mind wherever the mind is threatened with closure. This is what is at stake. At the core of this affliction, it is this that is central to the predicament of our school pupils wondering through dangerous forests at this moment through no crime that they have committed. We sent them to school. We must bring them back to school.
Why did this nation move out of its borders to join other West African nations to stop the maniacs whose boastful agenda is to cut a bloody swathe through communities of learning, of tolerance and peaceful cohabitation? What does a united world say to the agents of heartbreak and dismay when religion powered mayhem is unleashed against innocent workers gathered at prime time in a motor park to resume their foraging for daily livelihood? It has happened before – let us not forget that, by the way! What, in short, do Book Fairs say as we learn of the steady, remorseless assault on the seminal places of culture, ancient spiritualities and book learning. We have not so soon forgotten the destruction of the monumental statues of Buddha, the historic monuments and tombs of Timbuktu, her ancient manuscripts - repositories of islamic scholarship that pre-date the masterpieces of Europe’s medieval age? The true moslems, the authentic strain of the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, pride themselves as people of the book, hence those lovingly preserved manuscripts of Timbuktoo, treasured and tended through generations of moslems. In such circumstances, whose side do we take, when children are blown up and slaughtered in their school dormitories, their teachers and parents hunted down for daring to disobey that phillistinic fatwa that forbids learning? Do we remain in our barracks? And I am not speaking of military barracks!
For it has not just begun, you know. We are speaking of the prosecution of a war that, four years ago already, was already galloping to its present blatant intensity. That it has attained the present staggering figures that numb our humanity with the abduction of female pupils to serve as beasts of burden for the enemy, does not disguise past failures, self-inculpating silences, and even tacit collaboration in places. Try as we might, we cannot insulate ourselves from the horrors to which our children are daily exposed through a fear to undergo, even for our own instruction, the vicarious anguish of others. First, it is futile, the ill wind currently rattling our windows will shortly blow down the flimsy structures we erect around our heads. Symbolism is all very well and - yes indeed - no one should underestimate the value of this symbolic enclave whose mandate we shall be acting out over the next seven days. The palpable products – albeit of words only – that emerge from within this symbol however is what constitutes the durable product, reinforcing morale and conveying to the maimed, the traumatized, the widowed and the orphaned, the suddenly impoverished, displaced, the bereaved and other categories of victims a sliver of reassurance that they are not abandoned.
And why should they feel abandoned in the first place? Why not indeed? Permit me to impose on the leadership of this nation a simple, straightforward exercise in empathy. I want you to imagine yourself in a hospital ward, one among many of the over a thousand victims of the latest carnage in Nyanya – do remember that the actual dead and wounded are not the only casualties – I could refer you to JP Clark’s Casualties for a penetrating expression of the reality of the walking wounded – however, let us take it step by step, let us retain within the territory of physical casualties – imagine that you are one of them, on that hospital bed. You find yourself in the role of playing host to the high and mighty. You are immobilized, speechless, incapable of motion except perhaps through your eyelids. The guests stream in one by one, faces swathed in concern – local government councillors, ministers, legislators, governors, prelates, all the way up the very pinnacle of power – the nation’s president. They even make promises – free medical treatment, habilitation, etc etc. They take their leave. Your spirits are uplifted, you no longer feel depressed and alone.
Considerately mounted eye level on the opposite wall is a television set, turned on to take your mind off your traumatized state and provide some escape for the mind in your otherwise deactivated condition. A few hours after the departure of your august visitors, you open your eyes and there, beamed live, are your erstwhile visitors participating in chieftaincy jollifications a few hundred miles away, red-hot from your sick-bed. A few hours later, the same leadership is at a campaign rally, where the chief custodian of a people’s welfare is complaining publicly about an ‘inside job’ – that is, someone had allegedly diverted his campaign funds to unauthorized use. That national leader then rounds up his outing with a virtuoso set of dance steps that would put Michael Jackson to shame.
That is all I ask of you: to undertake a simple exercise in human empathy, asking the question – as that victim, what would you think? How would you feel? That is all. Would you, playing back in your mind the reel of that august visitation, would you feel perhaps that the visit itself was all a sham, that those sorrowing visitors were merely posing for political photo shots, that the faces were studiously composed, their impatient minds already on their next engagement on the political dance floor? Or would you feel that this was a time that a nation, led by her president, should be in sackcloth and ashes – figuratively speaking of course? That there is something called a sense of timing, of a decent gap between the enormity of a people’s anguish and ‘business as usual’? And do let us bear in mind that that dismal day in Nyanya went beyond a harvest of body parts, of which yours could very easily have been part, there was also the dilemma of two hundred school children, some of whom could very easily have been your own – vanishing under violent conditions. Would you think that perhaps, in place of the dance floor, a national leader should have been holding round-the-clock emergency meetings on the recovery of those girl children, mobilizing the ENTIRE nation – and by entire, I mean, entire, including the encouragement of volunteers, for back-up duties to the military, demonstrating the complete rout of the prolonged season of denial, the total transformation of leadership mentality in the nature of responses to abnormalities that are never absent, even in the most developed societies.
If anyone requires contrasting models of simple, common sense responses - not even the responses of experts, just leadership - then look towards South Korea. That tragic ferry disaster that overcame schoolchildren on an outing was not even a case of deliberate, criminal assault on our humanity. It was a human failing, probably of culpable negligence, but not part of a deliberate act of human destabilization. It was a frontal, in-your-face assault. Study the nature of leadership response in that nation! Today’s media carry headline banners that nearly two hundred children remain missing. Even if it were twenty, ten, one, is this the time for dancing? Or for silent grieving? What is the urgency of a re-election campaign that could not be postponed in such circumstances? Will the yardstick of eligibility for public office be the ability to dance to Sunny Ade or Dan Marya? The entire world regards us with eyes brimful with tears; we however look in the mirror and break into a dance routine. What has this thing, this blotched, mottled space become anyway? It is a marvel that some still wave a green-white-green rag called a flag and belt out one of the most unimaginative tunes that aspires to call itself a nation anthem. It has become a dirge - that is what it is - a dirge, and what we call a flag is the shroud that now hovers over a people that are even incapable of the dignity of self-examination, self-indictment, and remorse, which would then be a prelude to self-correction and self-restitution, if leadership were indeed attuned to the responsibilities of leadership.
To sum up, one would rationally expect that the leadership mind, belatedly applied to cautionary histories such as YOUR FATWA DOES NOT APPLY HERE, will courageously attune itself to an altered imperative that now reads: YOUR FATWA WILL NOT APPLY HERE. This would be manifested in a clear response to the enormity of the task in which the nation is embroiled. Not all national leaders can be Fujimori of Peru who personally directed his security forces during a crisis of hostage-taking – no one demands bravura acts of presidents. However, any aspiring leader cannot be anything less than a rallying point for public morale in times of crisis and example for extraordinary exertion. Speaking personally now, my mind goes to the lead role played by President Jonathan in this nation in the erstwhile campaign to ‘BRING BACK THE BOOK’ an event at which we both read to hundreds of children. So where are the successors to those children? The reality stares us in the face: Among the walking wounded. Among the walking dead. In crude holdings of fear and terror. Today, we shall not even be so demanding as to resurrect the slogan BRING BACK THE BOOK – leave that to us. It will be quite sufficient to see a demonstrable dedication that answers the agonizing cry of: BRING BACK THE PUPILS!
Emperor Nero only fiddled while Rome burned. There is no record of him dancing to his own tune. There is, nonetheless, an expression for that kind of dance – it is known as danse macabre, and we all know what that portends.
~ Wole Soyinka
Wongi's Notes:
1. Thraldom: Definition ~ The state of being under the control of another person. Bondage. Slavery. Servitude. To be intellectually or morally enslaved.
2. Origin: A thrall was a slave or serf in Scandinavian lands during the Viking Age beginning in c.793. Norsemen and Vikings raided across Europe. They often captured and enslaved militarily weaker peoples they encountered, but took the most slaves in raids of the British Isles and Slavs in Eastern Europe. The thralls were mostly from Western Europe, among them many Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Celts. Many Irish slaves were used in expeditions for the colonization of Iceland. The Norse also took German, Baltic, Slavic and Latin slaves. The Vikings kept some slaves as servants and sold most captives in the Byzantine or Islamic markets. The slave trade was one of the pillars of Norse economy during the 6th through 11th centuries. Thralls were the lowest class in the Scandinavian social order and usually provided unskilled labor. The Viking slave trade slowly ended in the 11th century, as the Vikings settled in the European territories they had once raided. They converted serfs to Christianity and merged with the local populace. The thrall system was finally abolished in the mid-14th century in Scandinavia.