How about the Other “Mainas” in Buhari’s Government?
Farooq A. Kperogi
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
President Muhammadu Buhari is infamously impervious to, and even contemptuous of, public opinion. That’s why his order to fire Abdulrasheed Maina who was surreptitiously reinstated into the civil service and promoted to the next level in spite of weighty allegations of corruption against him was both refreshing and pleasantly surprising.
Of course, the real, far-reaching surprise would be if the president is able to summon the testicular fortitude to fire the people who conspired to pull off this audacious perversion of justice and civil service protocols.
While it’s gratifying that the president has asked that the issue be thoroughly investigated, the fate of previous investigations of corruption involving people close to the president (such as Babachir David Lawal) doesn’t inspire confidence that anything earthshaking will come out of this.
But maybe—just maybe—the president has now had enough and is determined to salvage what remains of his severely diminished reputation through a full-throated attack on the corruption of not just his political opponents but also of his close associates, which is frankly the sincerest test of his will to fight corruption.
The Head of Service of the Federation, the Minister of Interior, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and other co-conspirators may yet get the boot. Should that happen, I’d be one of the people whose confidence in the president would be restored. But don't hold your breath.
What’s most significant, though, is the fact that Abdulrasheed Maina is not an aberration in this administration. He is merely an addition to a list that is already distressingly long. Let me recapitulate a few names that are going the rounds in Nigerian social media circles.
A certain Louis Edozien who was fired in 2014 as Executive Director at the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) for failure to produce authentic credentials during an audit was reinstated and promoted to the position of Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing in November 2016. NDPHC’s General Manager in charge of audit and compliance by the name of Mrs. Maryam Mohammed who audited Edozien’s credentials and recommended his firing was unjustly fired last year in apparent retaliatory vendetta.
The position of Permanent Secretary is normally the crowning accomplishment of career civil servants, but Edozien isn’t a career civil servant and shouldn’t be a permanent secretary, according to the Daily Trust of October 20, 2017, which said “highly placed officials in the presidency facilitated” this rape of justice. SaharaReporters of October 12, 2017 was blunter: “Mr. Edozien is a friend and business partner to Mr. [Abba] Kyari,” it wrote. “The Chief of Staff's daughter also worked directly under Mr. Edozien.”
Interestingly, although the president reversed the dismissal of Mrs. Mohammed after she wrote to him directly, Abba Kyari allegedly overruled the president and, the woman, who is the mother of orphans, is still unemployed. In many respects, this eclipses the impunity and scandalousness of Maina’s reinstatement and promotion.
There is also the case of a Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court by the name of Ahmed Gambo Saleh who, along with two others, was charged with a N2.2 billion fraud on November 3, 2016. “The defendants are specifically accused of conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and taking gratification by Public officers contrary to Section 10 (a) (i) of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Act 2000 and punishable under the same section of the Act,” according to the Sun of November 4, 2016.
The same Saleh who hasn’t (yet) been absolved from the charges against him was appointed Executive Secretary of the National Judicial Council (NJC) on July 1, 2017. I know it’s technically outside the powers of the president to intervene in issues involving another branch of government, but we all know that the nocturnal bust of the homes of judges, including Supreme Court justices, by Nigeria’s secret police in October 2016 had a stark, unmistakable presidential imprimatur emblazoned all over it.
There is another “Maina” serving as a minister in Buhari’s cabinet. According to the Premium Times of October 26, 2016, Buhari’s Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Usani Usani, “was charged with fraud 15 years ago, after he was indicted in 2000 by the government of Cross River State where he served as a commissioner.” His indictment, the paper added, “is documented in a state government White Paper.” It can’t get any more empirically verifiable than that. Yet the man still serves as a minister in a government that bills itself as an “anti-corruption” government.
The list goes on, but I’ll stop here because of the constraints of space and time. It is ironic that a government with this depth and breadth of love affair with corrupt people has the chutzpah to talk about “fighting corruption.” But the clearest sign that this government is a joke and that it’s “anti-corruption” fight is an even bigger joke came on October 25 when a presidential news release blamed “invisible hands” from the Goodluck Jonathan administration for the Maina embarrassment.
“[S]ome influential officials loyal to the previous government may have been the invisible hand in the latest scandal that saw the return of Maina to the public service, despite being on the EFCC’s wanted list,” the statement said.
When I first read it on a listserv on Wednesday, I thought it was a spoof and let out a burst of deep, loud, hearty laughter. I said it was impossible for this to be true until I read it in respected traditional news outlets. I give up. The battle has been lost irretrievably.
Buhari’s Commendable Biafra Gesture
News that Buhari has approved the payment of pension to ex-Biafran police officers who served on the rebel side during Nigeria’s 30-month Civil War from 1967 to 1970 is heartening. It is little symbolic gestures like this that nurture national cohesion.
National cohesion won’t magically emerge out of thin air because some leader proclaimed that Nigeria’s unity is “settled” and “non-negotiable”—or that the question of Nigeria’s unity had been settled with some rebel leader at a private meeting. Nation-building is never “settled” and is always in a state of negotiation and renegotiation.
Unity is consciously sowed, watered, and nourished by acts of kindness to the disadvantaged, by equity and justice to all, by consensus-building, by deliberate healing of the existential wounds that naturally emerge in our interactions are constituents of a common national space, and by acknowledging and working to cover our ethnic, religious, regional, and cultural fissures.
If Buhari, from the incipience of his presidency, had offered this sort of olive branch to parts of Nigeria that didn’t vote for him, we won’t have the current immobilizing fissiparity that is threatening to tear down the very foundation of the country. But it’s never too late to do the right thing.
Related Articles:
School of Communication & Media
Kennesaw State University
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
Cornelius Hamelberg
Always, the links are only footnotes, if you please…
Black blood,
Red and blue
Et tu, Brute?
Dr Farooq Kperogi too
Dr. Farooq Kperogi,
O Dr. Farooq Kperogi
Please Dr. Kperogi
Why is there so much bad blood flowing
Between you and Brother Buhari ?
As for ethics or the lack thereof in hate speech
Or complete freedom of speech
And those who want to take it away
Without any further delay
Such as Oga Falola cautioning Chidi Opara & Baba Kadiri
About insulting others
This is at least psychologically true of me and you,
reading this:
“We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds…” etc etc true and the implications thereof, etc etc. If some book people or book-ish people such as some Jew-ish people here, over there and everywhere should be quick to say that TS was only talking about literary criticism, about books and reacting to books and not about political jargon or journalese, then here’s a rejoinder from Cornelius Ignoramus taking refuge in his negative capability , his uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, again quoting some book people, agreeing that sometimes life - and that includes political life “is an open book” although, as we all know there’s also much that is secret, even murky, as “ through a glass darkly” and you don’t need any official secrets act to confirm or affirm that.
One would have thought that Kperogi currently far away from home, domiciled in Georgia, USA was referring to his local twit, the very vocal twittery twitter Donald Trump, because, just as some of the book people say, “a prophet has no honour in his own country”;
not that the pussy-grabber has ever claimed that he was a prophet or the Messiah of America, although perhaps it was with Iran in mind, since from Trump’s of view, under Brother Barack Obama the United States of America having suffered the ignominy of defeat, especially having sunk so disastrously low in Iran’s estimation during the Soul Brothers’s tenure in the White House, mindful that Iran instead of fearing some US shock and awe, Iran still contemptuously challenges, belittles, taunts and vilifies the United States as “The Great Satan”.
Ever mindful of that and goaded on by Iran’s” little satan” personified by Israel’s Prime MInister Benjamin Netanyahu and his friends in Saudi Arabia (strange bedfellows),
He Trump has vowed what he has vowed and said what he has said
and all he has said so far is that
He wants to make America “The Great Satan” Great Again - i.e. that The Great Satan is going to be so mighty and powerful that perish the thought - no one is ever going to dream of messing with The Great Satan again, and if they are not careful “The Great Satan” will strike terror into the hearts of the Iranian Mullahs !
He and they who the Iranians refer to as The Great Satan will breath nuclear fire, sulfur, brimstone and nuclear ash into the very nostrils of the Great Ayatollah and his counsellors!
2. That he Donald Trump was going to build another Great Wall of China along the US-Mexican border in order to seal off the United States from Mexico
that he was going to “drain the swamp”
that he was going to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran
that he was going to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
that he was going to,
was going to, was going to
And now that according to the BBC, the US economy is booming - boom boom, boom, bomb bomb bomb
He Trump has declared war on opiates in the United States ! And that’s a positive move Mr. Trump!
Since the other “he” that I’m talking about is the author of the piece that I’m responding to, like the jihadists before him and those who will surely come after him
Introducing a warrior with “testicular fortitude”: Dr. Farooq Kperogi, a real Muslim dude
let me hasten to differentiate between what I and I sometimes maybe sarcastically or cynically refer to as “di buk people”, the well-read -. Iqra ! and you have to have the time to do that much reading, so let me differentiate what Fela calls “the book people” from what Islamists refer to as “People of the Book” - i.e. of the pure gold standard, an honorific title , a respectful reference to those who should have no fear as none of us is going to hell , so I can go ahead and say what I mean to say without fear of “the everlasting bonfire” and not only because it is written in Islam’s holiest book that
“those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whosoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.”
But no, nowadays in Nigerian speak-easy, from some hind quarters in Georgia it’s not even about peanut butter Ex-President Carter who at the age of 93 ( same peer group as Mugabe) is volunteering himself for a peace (dialogue) mission to North Korea. Next he will want to volunteer to go to Iran on the same kind of mission, after the 444 days debacle some thirty six years ago. My only prayer is that Trump does not say - at least not publicly or at the UNited Nations that Iran is a “rogue state” and if they don’t comply with his demands that in the next clash of the two civilisations he will have no alternative than to “totally destroy” the Islamic Republic...
But back home in Nigeria, what does President Buhari want for Nigeria and Nigerians?
All that President Buhari is asking is that Nigerians i.e the senate, the judges, the secessionists, even the book people and the anti-book people of Boko Haram give him a helping hand in the war against corruption.
I wish Baba Kadiri could help me out here.
No, it’s from those hefty hindquarters in the Georgia diaspora that he Kperogi is both disdainful and suspicious and would like us believe that the President of Nigeria is not worthy of honour, although he gives President Buhari a slight benefit of the doubt in this his latest epistle when he says that, “The Head of Service of the Federation, the Minister of Interior, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and other co-conspirators may yet get the boot” - and then alhamdulillah, he (Oga Kperogi) would “be one of the people whose confidence in the president would be restored.”
Otherwise, just look at the choice adjectives that His Royal Highness Prince Farooqi, Her Majesty's Hon.Sanitary Inspector of Big Grammar dares to employ : these two examples of howlers, referring to our dear Brother Buhari, Nigeria’s brave, ex-military general and current commander-in-chief of every Nigerian :
# “President Muhammadu Buhari is infamously impervious to, and even contemptuous of, public opinion” ???
True?
First of all thank GOD for Press freedom in NIgeria. Secondly, it is not necessarily true that President Buhari is one of those who assiduously reads Dr. Kperogi’s “Notes from Atlanta” or,one of those who, suffering from grammatical or lexical inhibitions and uncertainties or the fear of doing the wrong grammatical or wordy thingy , therefore write to Dr. Kperogi himself suffering from lexical diarrhea and despite that asking that doctor for advice on how to exercise personal freedom in using various parts of speech. Indeed , if Brother Buhari was like USA’s twittering President Trump he would then be wrestling in the mud, on some twitter rampage cursing , abusing and bullying everyone who crossed his path - thus demeaning the presidency, even as his not so holy detractors and especially the fanatical holier-than-thou enemy Igbo nationalists among them will want to quote Jesus of Nazareth that it’s not what you eat - the kosher and halal that you eat that defiles you, but the calumny and every other foul word that comes out of your mouth and that includes some of the stinking ink with which some words are written - and those enemies would like to hear their President say, like Lady Macbeth,
“ Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
# “if the president is able to summon the testicular fortitude to fire”
( Brother Buhari “ afraid” to fire anyone proven guilty of corruption ??? Brother Buhari complicit in or an accessory to corruption? Listen to his brother Jerry Rawlings here..
Let me tell you : Even the menopausal Egba women naturally deficient & down in estrogen are proven brave and the men don’t need testosterone from some bulls in Argentina or Viagra some dust from some rhinoceros horn in order to “ summon the testicular fortitude to fire…”
However, if all the “facts” given in Farooq’s testimony are true and if that testimony still rife with speculation , insinuations , inferences , some doubtful deductions made either in malice or in good faith, as is often the case with Chidi , as a social or national service, then the moral rectitude is impressive and this is one of the best critiques yet, that has flowed from Dr. Kperogi pen or keyboard...
But so far and in this piece not a word about the atrocious treatment still being meted out to Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu who it appears is still a åpersona non grata at Aso Rock
One last little word, “as inevitable as breathing” and this is about the unmistakable impact Oga Wole Soyinka has had on almost all and sundry - perhaps Chidi will agree with me and with some other ignoramuses and the illiterati that with Mr. Soyinka’s non-fiction prose works as inspiration and antecedent, writing and in some cases speaking too, is the role model of many a Nigerian man of letters, at the highest levels of course exists local exceptions such as the succinctness and the autobiographical charm of our own Oga Falola, our Teju Cole and at the other levels - nothing to show yet in the realm of world literature / science fiction, poetry or prose fiction) a few others candidates such as Kenneth Harrow’s favourite Ikhide Ikheloa and my own unpretentious and sagacious and always ethically edifying/ satisfying always decent Samuel Zalanga as one of the notable exceptions.
Some excesses/overkill now routine, role models gradually evolving into a parody of themselves from, the pious Pius Adesanmi to Buhari meatgrinder Farooq Kperogi (feeling free with the neo-English oral tradition) as if gunning for the Nobel Prize in tortuous wordology.
With The Tanakh (the Holy Bible) for the literary and George Orwell (for the non-literary) as two ideals among many and at an early age much influenced by Dickens all of whose works I read before I attained to both physical and literary puberty , let me just say that I prefer the use biggy words for comic effect. Nowadays ama still Influenced by Dickens and marginally, by e.g the exuberance of Hugh Trevor-Roper's “ Letters from Oxford” // Letters
Here’s some of what I mean, in this FK’s latest piece for example, words that stick you in the eye , slap you in the face or merely stick out like a sore thumb , making you go hmmm ( like one of our doctoral students (from Iran ) now famous and since long ago a Professor in his own right, in his earlier days sitting at the home of our mutual friend Parvez Manzoor from Pakistan and discussing a paper that he had freshly written , the paper that began, “ At the beginning of the end of the last century” at which PM and I laughed and our friend laughed., how profound. Come on ! “ At the beginning of the end of the last century”? Sounds impressive. Like in most rap we wanna hear ebony ebonics such as I last heard on the Urban music network awards to players, you know what I’m saying?
Well, here we have two examples from the FK’s short last paragraph:
# “If Buhari, from the incipience of his presidency…” The incipience of his presidency? What’s wrong with the simple “ at the beginning” or “at the start of “ or even from “day one” of his presidency ? The effect on a student like me is far from comic.
# “the current immobilizing fissiparity” ? Boy you had better reach for your dictionary !
Music of course is another language altogether with not even Bobby Dylan singing about . “the incipience” of anyone’s presidency or “the current immobilizing fissiparity” not even for comic effect. But in legally flexing his big intellectual muscle Dr. F.K is being serious, not facetious…
So, how dare you, he, she dare criticise somebody else’s jazz piano, guitar solo , wordy thing when you, me, he, she has the freedom to swing as in “ it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”
Here endeth.
I leave thee with what I’m going to listen to right now, a program recorded from Mezzo live HD TV: the Raul Midon Trio
Cornelius Hamelberg
Somewhat corrected :
Always, the links are only footnotes, if you please…
Black blood,
Red and blue
Et tu, Brute?
Dr Farooq Kperogi too
Dr. Farooq Kperogi,
O Dr. Farooq Kperogi
Please Dr. Kperogi
Why is there so much bad blood flowing
Between you and Brother Buhari ?
As for ethics or the lack thereof in hate speech
Or complete freedom of speech
And those who want to take it away
Without any further delay
Such as Oga Falola cautioning Chidi Opara & Baba Kadiri
About insulting others
This is at least psychologically true of me and you,
reading this:
“We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds…” etc etc true and the implications thereof, etc etc. If some book people or book-ish people such as some Jew-ish people here, over there and everywhere should be quick to say that TS was only talking about literary criticism, about books and reacting to books and not about political jargon or journalese, then here’s a rejoinder from Cornelius Ignoramus taking refuge in his negative capability , his uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, again quoting some book people, agreeing that sometimes life - and that includes political life “is an open book” although, as we all know there’s also much that is secret, even murky, as “ through a glass darkly” and you don’t need any official secrets act to confirm or affirm that.
One would have thought that Kperogi currently far away from home, domiciled in Georgia, USA was referring to his local twit, the very vocal twittery twitter Donald Trump, because, just as some of the book people say, “a prophet has no honour in his own country”.
Not that the pussy-grabber has ever claimed that he was a prophet or the Messiah of America, although perhaps it was with Iran in mind, since from Trump’s point of view, under Brother Barack Obama the United States of America has been suffering the ignominy of defeat, especially having sunk so disastrously low in Iran’s estimation during the Soul Brothers’s occupation of the White House, and mindful that Iran instead of fearing some US shock and awe, Iran still contemptuously challenges, belittles, taunts and vilifies the United States as “The Great Satan”,
Ever mindful of that and goaded on by Iran’s” little satan” personified by Israel’s Prime MInister Benjamin Netanyahu and his friends in Saudi Arabia (strange bedfellows),
He, Donald Trump has vowed what he has vowed and said what he has said
and all he has said so far is that
He wants to make America “The Great Satan” Great Again - i.e. that The Great Satan is going to be so mighty and powerful that perish the thought - no one is ever going to even dare dream of messing with The Great Satan again, and if they are not careful “The Great Satan” will strike terror into the hearts of the Iranian Mullahs !
He and they who the Iranians refer to as “The Great Satan”will breath nuclear fire, sulfur, brimstone and nuclear ash into the very nostrils of the Great Ayatollah and his counsellors!
In the meantime, the holy men of Iran are sure repose in “ a hawla wala quwwata illa billahil aliyyil azim !”
2. That he Donald Trump is going to build another Great Wall of China along the US-Mexican border in order to seal off the United States from Mexico
that he is going to “drain the swamp”
that he is going to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran
that he is going to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
that he is going to,
Is going to, is going to
And now that according to the BBC, the US economy is booming - boom, boom, boom, and as McCain sang, bomb, bomb, bomb
He Trump has just declared war on opiates in the United States ! And that’s a positive move Mr. Trump!
Since the other “he” that I’m talking about is the author of the piece that I’m responding to, like the jihadists before him and those who will surely come after him
Introducing a warrior with “testicular fortitude”:
Dr. Farooq Kperogi, a real Muslim dude !
Let me hasten to differentiate between what I and I sometimes maybe sarcastically or cynically refer to as “di buk people”, the well-read -. Iqra ! and you have to have the time to do that much reading, so let me differentiate what Fela calls “the book people” from what Islamists refer to as “People of the Book” - i.e. of the pure gold standard, an honorific title , a respectful reference to those who should have no fear as none of us believers is going to hell , so I can go ahead and say what I mean to say without fear of “the everlasting bonfire” and not only because it is written in Islam’s holiest book that
“those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whosoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.”
But no, nowadays in Nigerian speak-easy, from some hind quarters in Georgia it’s not even about peanut butter Ex-President Carter who at the age of 93 ( same peer group as Mugabe) is volunteering himself for a peace (dialogue) mission to North Korea. Next he will want to volunteer to go to Iran on the same kind of mission, after the 444 days debacle some thirty six years ago. My only prayer is that Trump does not say - at least not publicly or at the United Nations that Iran is a “rogue state” and if they don’t comply with his demands then the next clash of the two civilisations is just round the corner and he will have no alternative than to “totally destroy” the Islamic Republic...
In the meantime, back home in Nigeria, what does President Buhari want for Nigeria and Nigerians?
All that President Buhari is asking is that Nigerians i.e the senate, the judges, the secessionists, even the book people and the anti-book people of Boko Haram give him a helping hand in the war against corruption.
I wish Baba Kadiri could help me out here.
No, it’s from those hefty hindquarters in the Georgia diaspora that he Kperogi is both disdainful and suspicious and would have us believe that the President of Nigeria is not worthy of honour, although he gives President Buhari a slight benefit of the doubt in this his latest epistle when he hopes that, “The Head of Service of the Federation, the Minister of Interior, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and other co-conspirators may yet get the boot” - and then alhamdulillah, he (Oga Kperogi) would “be one of the people whose confidence in the president would be restored.”
Otherwise, just look at the choice adjectives that His Royal Highness Prince Farooqi, Her Majesty's Hon.Sanitary Inspector of Big Grammar dares to employ : these two examples of howlers, referring to our dear Brother Buhari, Nigeria’s brave, ex-military general and current commander-in-chief of every Nigerian :
# “President Muhammadu Buhari is infamously impervious to, and even contemptuous of, public opinion”
True?
First of all thank GOD for Press freedom in NIgeria. Secondly, it is not necessarily the case that that President Buhari is one of those who assiduously reads the Nigerian press and social media or Dr. Kperogi’s “Notes from Atlanta” or one of those who, suffering from grammatical or lexical inhibitions,uncertainties or the fear of doing the wrong and criminally grammatical or wordy thingy , and who therefore write to Dr. Kperogi himself suffering from certain forms of lexical diarrhea and despite that asking such a doctor for advice on how to exercise personal freedom in using various parts of speech. Indeed , if Brother Buhari was like USA’s twittering President Trump he would then be wrestling in the mud, on some twitter rampage cursing , abusing and bullying everyone who crossed his path - thus demeaning the presidency, even as his not so holy detractors and especially the fanatical holier-than-thou enemy Igbo nationalists among them would gladly quote Jesus of Nazareth, that it’s not what you eat - the kosher and halal that you eat that defiles anybody but the calumny and every other foul word that come out of our mouths and that includes some of the stinking ink with which some words are written - and those enemies would like to hear their President confess , like Lady Macbeth,
“ Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
# “if the president is able to summon the testicular fortitude to fire”
( Brother Buhari “ afraid” to fire anyone proven guilty of corruption ??? Brother Buhari complicit in or an accessory to corruption? Listen to his brother J.J Rawlings here..
Let me tell you : Even Egba women are proven brave and the men don’t need testosterone from some bulls in Argentina or Viagra dust from some rhinoceros horn in order to “summon the testicular fortitude to fire…”
However, if all the “facts” given in Farooq’s testimony are true and if his testimony still rife with speculation , insinuations , inferences , some doubtful deductions made either in malice or in good faith, as is often the case with Chidi , as a well-intentioned social or national service, then the moral rectitude is impressive and this is one of the best critiques yet, that has flowed from Dr. Kperogi pen or keyboard...
But so far and in this piece not a word about the atrocious treatment still being meted out to Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu who it appears is still a åpersona non grata at Aso Rock..
One last little word, “as inevitable as breathing” and this is about the unmistakable impact Oga Wole Soyinka has had on almost all and sundry - perhaps Chidi will agree with me and with some other ignoramuses and the illiterati that with Mr. Soyinka’s non-fiction prose (and by God’s grace he is not a liar) is often inspiration and serves as an antecedent, his writing and in some cases his speaking too, is the role model of many an aspiring Nigerian man of letters. At the highest levels of course exists local exceptions such as the autobiographical charm of our own Oga Falola, our Teju Cole, Chimanada etc and at other levels - nothing to show yet in the realm of poetry, other fictions ) a few others candidates such as Kenneth Harrow’s favourite Ikhide Ikheloa and my own unpretentious and sagacious, ethically edifying/ - - it’s called civil courage, satisfying, always decent Samuel Zalanga as one of the notable exceptions.
Some excesses/overkill now routine, role models gradually evolving into a parody of themselves from, the pious Pius Adesanmi to Buhari meatgrinder Farooq Kperogi (also feeling free with the neo-English oral tradition) free ‘lancing, like me, gunning for the Nobel Prize in tortuous wordology.
With The Tanakh (the Holy Bible) for the literary and George Orwell (for the non-literary) as two ideals among many and at an early age much influenced/ impressed by Dickens all of whose works I read before I attained to both physical and literary puberty, let me just say that I prefer the use of biggy words for comic effect. Nowadays ama still Influenced by Dickens and marginally, by e.g the exuberance of Hugh Trevor-Roper's “ Letters from Oxford” // Letters
Here’s some of what I mean, in this FK’s latest piece for example, words that stick you in the eye so that you begin to cry, slap you in the face or merely stick out like a sore thumb , making you go hmmm ( like one of our doctoral students (from Iran ) now famous and since long ago a Professor of Persian Literature in his own right, in his earlier days sitting at the home of our mutual friend Parvez Manzoor from Pakistan and discussing a paper that he had freshly written , a paper that began, “ At the beginning of the end of the last century”, how profound. Come on ! “ At the beginning of the end of the last century”? Sounds impressive. As in most rap we want some ebony, ebonics, such as I last heard on the Urban music network awards to players, you know what I’m saying?
Well, back to those two characteristic examples from the FK’s short last paragraph:
# “If Buhari, from the incipience of his presidency…” The incipience of his presidency? What’s wrong with the simple “at the beginning” or “at the start of “ or “ from day one” of his presidency ? The effect on a student like me is far from comic.
# “the current immobilizing fissiparity” ? Boy you had better reach for your dictionary !
Music of course is another language altogether, Italian opera? Certainly not Bobby Dylan singing about “the incipience” of anyone’s presidency or “the current immobilizing fissiparity” not even for comic effect. But in legally flexing his big muscle Dr. F.K is being serious, not facetious…
So, how dare you, he, she dare criticize somebody else’s jazz piano, guitar solo , wordy thing when you, me, he, she has the freedom to swing as in “ it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”
Here endeth.
I leave thee with what I’ve just been listening to right now, a program recorded from Mezzo live HD TV: the Raul Midon Trio and now the same Mezzo it’s time for Keith Brown trio featuring Baptiste Herbin
Chidi Anthony Opara
Could the "Chidi Opara" be me? If yes, when? Where?
CAO.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Chidi,
As long as you are sure of yourself, you are OK with me.
There’s the God says : Here are the laws concerning evil speech, Lashon Hara and there’s the baseless hatred that bedevils us all ( Race-ism, tribalism, moneyism, big finance and high culture great family status-ism, chess champion of the world, many forms of arrogance including big-brainism, little brain wants to do as Chomsky and Einstein, “Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!” not to mention the inferiority complex which wants to tell the senate that his bare-assed grandfathers were “kings”, believes that he is more educated than the illiterate prophet and if possible would like to speak Quranic Arabic better than him :In short Sinat Chinam exemplified in the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. culminating in the destruction of the second temple…
I’m sorry. You are right. Perhaps, Oga Falola did not single you out to chide you, personally by name.
But you may also look at this way : Didn’t Oga Falola caution all of us about insulting one another?
And doesn’t “ us all” include dear you, dear me , dear Baba Kadiri - or does “us all” only mean Nigerians, not Bi-Afrans, Owerris, and Schumachers ?
Maybe, I don’t remember Oga Falola’s exact words but I do remember this little tittle-tattle between you and Oga Falola and Chidi, you started it :
Chidi “ Association of Nigerian Authors(ANA) is presently valueless, partly because of the watery authorship credentials of most of its contemporary leaders.”
Oga Falola : Chidi: You recently complained about the tone of conversation. But review your sentence below: a broad tarnishing of everyone in an association without supplying evidence.Do please respect our colleagues. I was their Keynote Speaker when Prof. Remi Raji was President, and they all take the ANA very seriously. They have raised money to build on their space at Abuja.
TF
There was also this missive from Oga Falola to you :
Oga Falola’s exact words: , 1, 2.
3. I don’t like anyone to use what I am associated with to abuse or insult any one.
And in signing off Oga Falola appealed to you thus:
So, Oga Chidi, you, too, should be an agent of change.
TF
Now, if you were not my brother and friend, I could insist that I was writing some kind of poetry, a political poem or even conjuring a few magic words in the name of hate speech or free speech in which the personal names mentioned are symbolic, like the title of one of Amatoritsero Ede’s poetry collections, Globetrotter & Hitler's Children
“ Is this the dagger that I see before me?” Don’t take it for real. For simplicity’s sake, as a connoisseur of poetry, what would your objections be if you woke up one morning and read in the Melbourne Times a “poem” which began
Chidi Opara & Kadiri Baba are siamese twins
Joined together at the hip by the sign of the beast : “ &”
At the confluence of the two tributaries the river Niger,
At her sweet mouth they melt & meet
One from the east and the other from the west meet,
To be joined together for ever and separated never.
Or
Like Jacob and Esau ( two nations in one womb )
Wise up!
Like Kehinde & Taiwo ( one nation)
From the subterranean womb of the Great Naija Nation,
Baba Kadiri and Chidi Opara
these iconic twins are individual persona
One is Yoruba the other Is Biafra, their mother, Nigeria
You get the drift…
Here’s an album from Angola: Duo Quro Negro ( from 1972)
Listen to “ Blackground
and the lyrics of Iemanja
Chidi Anthony Opara
Anyway, you can compare me with any fellow you feel like. I have over the years, developed thick skin for insults.
CAO.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Chidi,
There’s no point in explaining to him that an electric pole is not the same as a tree
or cautioning a monkey not to read poetry, simply because he will never understand, but you shouldn't be afraid of trying to compete with him when it comes to climbing up a tree simply because he will leave you still trying to catch up with his behind…