by Jimanze Ego-Alowes

And as if the world had not heard him well, Aribisala in a 05-10-13 Punch interview repeated himself. We quote: My grouse with Femi’s father is that he was a thug when he was Deputy Premier of Western Nigeria. In that capacity as a thug, he nearly got me killed, as a child by inciting a mob against me.

One thing is certain with Femi Fani-Power. It is that he is nimble with his mouth and perhaps his pen too. He never lets go the least slight, verbal or written. His responses could be full of bad breath or if written, of acidic ink. Just the other day Reuben Abati, a presidential media workman twitted that Femi is a commentator without sense. And true to type Femi hit back almost on the hour, calling Abati a peasant without breeding. However, something unusual happened.

And in comes Aribisala. Dr Femi Aribisala is a religious writer and journalist. During the Fashola/Obi-Who owns Lagos and deportation brouhaha, he called Femi names. Or rather he called his father. He said the man was a thug. As a consumer of Nigerian news, I had waited in vain to see Femi’s rebuttal on the slur that has been put upon the name of his now questionably famous father. And very unlike a Femi, who never lets go, he apparently found it prudent, and, perhaps, profitable, to keep his peace. He never, to the knowledge of this correspondent, spoke a word to the traducer, Aribisala.

And as if the world had not heard him well, Aribisala in a 05-10-13 Punch interview repeated himself. We quote: My grouse with Femi’s father is that he was a thug when he was Deputy Premier of Western Nigeria. In that capacity as a thug, he nearly got me killed, as a child by inciting a mob against me.

Now our interest is not in the naming of names. We are interested in types and not in the persons. We have no great regard for great men or names, so called. It is the great principles they espouse, if any, that we are interested in. So, rebu, our excitement is not that Fani-Power was a thug or that Femi is the cultured (?) son of a coarse thug? Such things are outside our schedule of worries.

Our interest is in the principle therein. And that is that despite all human precautions, a low and lowly character, a thug, a scoundrel, can turn up at high and mighty offices. We are especially emboldened on this, since we have not seen any attempts by Femi to retrieve whatever he can from his now shattered, hitherto illustrious past? That is, till he rebuts the slur, we hold the truth that Aribisala professes to be self evident. To secure the larger benefits of the Aribisala thesis, we will quickly move beyond the named suspects of father and son. Our point of arrival is and will be on the principles therein.

Our interest in this matter of thugs as governors, leaders, etc., has been long running. We have laboured the best we can to educate ourselves that coup making (and coup makers) are armed political robberies; and that is a form of thuggery. That is whatever a coup maker is, soldier, imam, bishop, buccaneer, business magnet, philosopher, concerned professional, fool, he is also and necessarily a thug.

However, every now and then, readers write in to object. And the feeling is that we are being wild with allegations. How could someone, who emerges to be head of state or unto such other such high offices ever be a thug? Apparently with this unchallenged incidence, of Femi’s father, it is now possible to know that historically that much is feasible and, perhaps, has already happened in a country called Nigeria. Of course, records abound of other countries. Presently, for instance, I am going through the book; The Shadow of the Sun. Written by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the book documents the stories of thugs, some in uniforms, who reigned as potentates or heads of state, etc. under the blazing African skies. Ahiazuwa.

Perhaps, not known to many, the incidence of thugs and other lowly characters, coming up to high office is not a Nigerian freak. It is actually universal. In fact, an office, however high or low, does not ennoble one. If one comes in as a thug or other such low character, one remains that. Offices, however high, do not transform men or materials. The office is a tool to exercise power. So, if you came in as a thug, you remained one and exercised power as a thug.

To worsen matters, if left alone, absolute or dictatorial powers will co-opt a man and madden him with insanity. No man who held absolute powers or became dictator, was ever sane, even if he started as a dove or an innocuous worm. Power, when and if it approaches the dictatorial, the absolute, makes of the holders monsters, in other words thugs.

In fact, this is the key and essential vision of the Western (European and American) constitution making. It is their coming to knowledge that absolute power is madness and can madden even the innocent that led to democracy, to predictable stability. A corollary of this is the crucial knowledge that despite all precautions, inevitably, all manners of low and lowly characters, knaves, can happen upon the highest offices in the land. And some have. It is that, that led to the invention of the concept of delineation and separation of powers.

Now, contrary to the illusion of non-Westerners, especially Nigerians, no American/Western president/prime minister, is or can be Caesar at home. He is specifically rendered impotent at home. The great vision is to avoid the lone chance of a scoundrel turning up president and taking the manifest destiny of an America into a bend. So, to fight against thugs, having a free reign, killing innocent little kids, like Aribisala as he then was, or his American equivalents, an American president, the most powerful in the world, is tied up at home.

Even before America, the French, who are officially the founders of the concept of equality, freedom and fraternity had come to such knowledge. Perhaps, we’d be doing just fine to quote one of her finest guiding minds, on the matter. “We can only think of Plato and Aristotle in grand academic robes”, Blaise Pascal begins. “They were honest men, like others, laughing with their friends and when they diverted themselves with writing their laws and politics, they did it as an amusement. That part of their life was the least philosophic and the least serious; the most philosophic was to live simply and quietly. If they wrote on politics, it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic asylum; and if they presented the appearance of speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew that the madmen, to whom they spoke, thought they were kings and emperors. They entered into their principles in order to make their madness as little harmful as possible.”

Here lies one of the basic differences between the development that is Europe and the underdevelopment that is Nigeria. European scholars have critically theorised and fashioned constitutions based on man, as he is and not on man, as they hope he will be. So, the success of Europe, as a great territory, is the logic of building with and from the truth; one of which is that power never sanctifies, never beatifies. And that in sufficient numbers, since most of us are, those who often make it to power are demagogues, knaves, thugs and what not.

Tragically, however, European/American neo/colonialists, who believed and theorised that their home leaders were or could be thugs and madmen, exported them or their historical personae to us as quintessential men, as haloes and heroes. For instance, while many Nigerians still speak of Napoleon/Alexander the Great, Albert Camus a key visionary of modern Europe justly calls them thugs, which they were. Even Tony Blair, who often struts around Abuja as an export or even international hero, is a certified liar and villain in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. But it pays the European economy to have such ambiguity and duopoly. Their junkies are our historical heroes.

In the end, it is our scholars, who ruined us and are to be blamed the most. The scholars, who should have been our educators, our guides themselves were blind and blinded by their greed for office, for power, not in the word but power in the world. So, the question is, what manner of scholars are these men?

In the end one is left with no other options but to alert the nation that these men, touted as scholars, who served thugs and made the nation victims of their greed are themselves thugs and or lovers of thuggery. And worse, they were profiteers of thuggery.

One of the cleverest tools of these scholars in deceiving us is their invention of the logic of eminent persons. It is the old logic upon which kings and ancient thugs elected themselves and their heirs unto being eternal robbers against our common will. Summarily put, the logic of eminent persons, which is a draw down from its superior, His Excellency, means that the king and his officers, that is, these professors and other sundry characters can do no wrong. Eminence is in their very being and they lend it to whatever it is they do, including robbing the nation.

Now, the great fault line. It is upon the logic of eminent persons that our constitution is being written. That is, it is upon the delusion that the office beatifies the criminal, the thug who gets there. This is the reason a billionaire trader, who is based in Abuja or Lagos, will want to rush down to Anambra, Imo States to be governor.

If, however, we recognise that knaves, demagogues, incontinent professors, fools, as much as the rest of us, may make the high offices and make our constitutions to take cognisance, we can assure as follows. The first is that sanity will return to the act of governance. This is especially so since there will be little that will be profitable, either emotional aka ego, or materially in being one. Consequently, the spectre of money-miss-road billionaires, abandoning their town warehouses and shops, to come to the provinces and monetise/invest in politics, as to steal more, would be a thing of the past. Politics is interesting and crowded as hell in Nigeria because it is still seen as a heroic thing. Actually politicians are men, who, having nothing better to do, beg fellow citizens to hire them in one role or the other. There is nothing particularly distinguished in being a beggar, either of people’s votes or of charitable person’s coins. In fact, if Fashola will let us, we do canvass we deport all Nigerian politicians and other beggars. What is your suggested destination? Mine is hell. Ahiazuwa

 

——————————-

 

Read this article in the Sun Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.