My Take By Mohammed Adamu
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A few weeks back when I wrote ‘What are they doing to my friend Lamido?’, I lamented my virtual sibling inability to critique my brother and benefactor, the Chief-Servant of my state Niger, and the Talba of Minna, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu.
Even now, that reason has not changed. What has changed was my narrow nepotist perspective on the rationale that the best way to demonstrate love to a brother is not to reproach him. At least you can admonish him. Which I hope to do. In a maze of metaphors. And maybe now I appreciate Mohammed Haruna’s difficulty in the days of former Governor Kure -his kinsman. I had thought that what I perceived back then as ‘silence’ from him on the goings-on in Niger, was neither professionally ‘golden’ nor ethically ‘silvern’. In fact in an unpublished piece I wrote and which I only circulated to elders and stakeholders of the state, I had alleged that my namesake’s ‘silence’ was inescapably colluding. I held this view in spite of knowledge I had, he had done an earlier ‘warning’ piece: ‘A Word for Kure’; -which I had dismissed as merely masturbative of his brother’s administrative misdemeanors. And maybe it was in deference to my innocent cynicism that Malam Mohammed Haruna then did a more bashful sequel, ‘Another Word for Kure’, -alas which elicited an instant, tactless Government rebuttal in an advertorial laced in quite unsavory language.
And now poor cheeky me, I can’t even do a title on Talba loaded with as much imperative as Haruna’s on Kure. Like: ‘A Word for Talba!’ Yet ‘Beware Talba’ isn’t bad enough. Though on a second thought ‘what does it really matter whether you warn a brother or simply admonish him? In the realm of fatalism or predestination it is the same ten and two pence! Because the chick that is destined to crow, neither a torrent of cats nor a downpour of kites will sup on! Calpurnia did warn her husband, Caesar: “Do not go forth today!” But the Roman Swarder’s male ego was sure to retort “Caesar shall go forth!” Nor would he hear plea to read the plot-revealing-‘note ’ given to him by a plebian especially because he said it “touches Caesar nearer”. The genuine instincts of ‘Servant-leadership’ prodded Caesar to say: “What touches us ourself, shall be last served”. And to the slaughter, Caesar went! Because ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ were fatally at work already. In the end neither the ‘warning’ of his wife nor the fetish ‘counsel’ of soothsayers could save the man literarily famed as ‘more dangerous than danger. Caesar fell! And “what a fall”, as his grieving friend Mark Anthony would say at the funeral of Caesar.
I may be in doubt about many things on the Niger, but I am certain I do not want to have to use Mark Anthony’s metaphors, even of heroic ‘fall’ at the political grave yard of my brother, Talba. And which reminds me, of a piece I did way back in 2002: “America, their America”, where, in my shrill, inconsequential moral suasion against America’s deployment of ‘righteous might’ on Iraq, I used a famous quotation by James Brice in his ‘Modern Democracies’: “Men (stand) on the edge of stupendous changes, and (have) not a glimpse of even the outlines of those changes; not discerning the causes that were already in embryo beneath their feet; like seeds hidden under the snow of winter, which will shoot up under the April sunlight”
In 2003, it was political winter time for the dominant South-West Alliance for Democracy, AD. Because its governors became over-indulgent in victory. They stood languidly ‘on the edge of stupendous’ electoral ‘changes’ -and did not have ‘ even the glimpse of the outlines of those changes’; until Obasanjo’s garrison PDP soon swept them off the then ‘Wet Wet West’. In fact in retrospect, an irony-laden story was recounted much later, of an overindulgent AD legislator, driving on a muddy senatorial road grandiosely in his senatorial motorcade, splashed red mud on –guess who? -a motorbike, ferrying the poor PDP candidate who was later to bury the distinguished ‘electorally’ in a six-feeter political red earth grave.
And because political ‘clocks’ are usually faster than geologic time, now it seems the political winter times have gone full circle and the frosty bad political weather that choked the AD, is here again. This time for Obj’s PDP. Which is about to inherit the wild, wild winds of the wild, wild West! Meaning that ACN is almost certain come 2011, to reclaim AD’s once-stolen political heirlooms! Because as they say ‘in politics as in other things, what goes around usually also comes around’. Or to paraphrase Lane Kirkland: ‘although it is true that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, the converse is also true that those who remember especially it’s good times, may not know when they are over’. The politics of the South-West is gradually becoming practically definitive of the inconstancy of everything except the phenomenon of ‘change’ itself.
The political winds in my state, Niger are eerily blowing; the clouds gathering; and by God I hear, the plot is thickening. I have chosen the title: ‘Talba: Beware, The Gathering Storm’ in reminiscence of the foreboding words of the Soothsayer to Caesar: “Beware the ides of March”. It will soon be political harvest time. If what I hear is anything to go by, I should say to my brother, Talba: ‘look to your tilth!’ Beware the political ‘ides of March.’ What I see on the political firmament of Niger is either the democratic clouds of the gods congealing into bloody electoral anger or maybe the swarms of famished political locusts about to descend for an early harvest. Either way Talba, the signs are politically ominous. Look to your tilth, brother.
Yes ‘what goes around comes around’! But on the Niger it is not only what went around in 2007 –namely ANPP- that is about to come around in 2011! Even Tinubu’s ACN is now no longer sated with the wild wild votes. The Party is not only retributively up and swinging in the troubled West, it is stealthily creeping up North like a thief in the night. And Talba dear, the worry is not the Western masquerade coming on the Niger! Or the people begining to open their ‘kyaures’ and their ‘asabaris’; the worry is that they are beginning to hum a welcome song. Soon they will be chanting: ‘egungun, egungun…’
And the bigger masquerade, Buhari’s CPC, although he is as strangely new as the morning dew, that masquerade is the thriller and it is the killer! It has got its own intoxicating rhythm and a disturbing political hemorrhage uniquely its own. Like Shylock, it is ambling quietly in bated breath and waiting patiently for its political pound of flesh. Nor is its faithful and loyal Rock of Opposition, ANPP’s David Umaru, without the ferment of ancient electoral grudges. No one should lull you to sleep, brother, that this house is divided.
Yet all these disparate political energies do not worry me, Talba. Nor am I unduly moved by the common spirit that runs through them; namely the Spirit of the Political Avenging Angel himself, Buhari. What bothers me is the three working together. Nor should you ever be deceived they can’t. In political game theory, nothing is impossible. Already the magnetic field of Buhari’s political appeal in Niger state is swiveling centrifugally in the new CPC without for once losing its centripetal origins , -the ANPP. And as they say in Hausa: ‘kere na yawo, zabo na yawo’, soon it seems the CPC political orbit will trap the ACN space shuttle. A coalition of this three tendencies come 2011 is what I fear for my brother, Talba. It’ll be like the political melting of three molten magmas. Nothing short of a volcanic eruption will result!
Talba should ‘Look to his tilth!’ It’s been three and a half years; what is there on the political farm brother? Is it enough for an agricultural trade show or just for a food bazaar on the corner? If the harvest is worth the ‘invest’ my brother have no political goose pimples. If not Talba, I suggest you doubly prepare, brother: either for political victory or for a possible electoral martyrdom!
If I may give my brother a clue: this war will not be won by rousing a war cabinet; but by assembling the receipts of your report card, brother. Disable the enemies; before the political Zulus on the Niger start singing the Boar songs.
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