Abdul Mahmud: The Lion which sought freedom, got killed on a Wednesday

There was something profound about last Wednesday and the way it broke free from the reins of Tuesday to dawn on our collective consciousness.

This one-of-a- kind Wednesday, filled with the plot and subplot of the tale only a clever storyteller tells by moonlight, captured the story lines of what many could only have imagined or what only the oracle could have foreseen or foretold.

The Wednesday didn’t wait for light to shed itself of the black remnant of night, neither did it wait on itself, for those who usually set forth at dawn to keep time with their destinies or connect to the helpers of their destinies nor wait on those “who set out with thoughtlessness and end in despair”, before it broke the news of the goddamn goats that broke into the yam barns of our last season’s harvest to feast on our yams.

The breaking into yam barns and the eating of yams, once the practice of a culture that symbolizes the end of one season and the beginning of another season of planting and of latter harvests, now transposed into governmentality, fit into the legal definition of theft: “the physical removal of an object that is capable of being stolen without the consent of the owner and with the intention of depriving the owner of it permanently”.

The inimitable Fela Anikulapo simplified this jargon this way: “somebody don take something wey belong to another person”. Here, there is no definitive way of describing “BREAKING” barns and “EATING” yams beyond the binary of the pen and the gun which Fela Anikulapo brilliantly described in his song, “Authority Stealing”, and for which the pen is the most sinister tools.

Hear him: “pen get power, gun no get. If gun steal eighty thousand naira, pen go steal two billion naira”. Of course, Wednesday didn’t tell or render its tale in the manner in which Social Media commentariat made sense of the two billion dollars arms deal scandal as THE FEAST OF GOATS.

That the commentariat weaved goats and yams into the Wednesday tale to illuminate the nature of stealing and the inscrutable power of impunity makes the power of discernment profound. As they say in this part, let’s leave the matter of stealing and eating of yams for Mathias!

Of course, too, Wednesday also presented an interwoven storyline of a certain lion that escaped from the Wild Life Park in Jos. This is how the Vanguard newspaper online of Wednesday December 2, 2015 reported it as a breaking news: “A lion has escaped from the Jos Wild Life Park on Wednesday.

According Mr John Doy, the Acting General Manager, Plateau Tourism Corporation, the lion escaped at about 8am while it was being fed. Doy said that the lion, which had been caged since 1972, slipped through the gate of the cage when it was opened for routine feeding.

The animal is still within the vicinity of the park but our fear is that the Park is not fenced. We are struggling to recapture it, but we want members of the public to be vigilant, he said.

The Acting General Manager said that he had already informed all security agencies to come to the Park’s assistance. Mrs Naomi Cishak, Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) confirmed news of the escape but said that the office has not been officially informed. “We have been officially informed but we are aware of the incident that’s why we have not deployed our personnel there”.

This news report raises three worrying issues. First, it implicates the Park’s poor culture of safety and animal management practices. Why was the lion allowed to keep vigil at the gate of its cage and at the very moment of its feeding? Practice-consistent with global best practice-should ordinarily have taught the keepers the risks that are attendant to opening gates when a voracious beast is nearby. Didn’t they learn from NatGeo Wild?

Second, the risk of having an unfenced Wild Life Park in the middle of a heavily populated city like Jos makes the Plateau state government looks stupid. What if the lion had broken the wire gorges of its cage under the cover of night and strayed beyond the Park without the keepers knowing?

Third, and finally, the attitude of the spokesperson of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps speaks volume. So official communication with the Corps is the only possible way of requiring it to respond to public security threats?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has done tremendous work in the documentation of lions in the Nigerian wild. In 2013, the Union placed the number of lions in the Kainji Lake National Park (32) and the Yankari Game Reserve (2) at 34.

Though, there is no current figure on the number of lions being held in our zoos; but considering the now established findings that the Nigerian lion is an endangered specie, the figure must be very low. Fair enough.

What isn’t fair in the circumstances is the way our zoos are managed to secure endangered species. One doesn’t need to stretch one’s imagination to discern how poorly managed our zoos are.

A country that struggles to provide the basic necessities of life for its citizens would invariably find it difficult to provide tender loving care for its captive beasts. The point I make here is this: the way government is organized as a criminal enterprise makes life harder for ordinary citizens and hardest for those animals locked inside the many zoos dotting our landscape.

If year after year we suffer the consequences of the looting of our commonwealth by elected public servants who inflict violence on public trust, consider those caged beasts. To presume that the managers of our zoos aren’t criminally dubious as those who fleece our resources is to pass every woman giving birth in a labour room off as a virgin.

Corruption is deep in our country and because it has acquired a top-bottom character, it is very possible that those we have charged to manage our zoos also purloin resources meant for the care and upkeep of our captive games.

The Jos Wild Life Park is my focus here. Do a simple Google search on how Dariye, Botmang and Jang managed the funds of that state and you would appreciate the condition of the lion.

For a lion that lived in its cage for forty-three years without any reported incident as the one that eventually led to its death, something could have made it to slip through the gate when it was opened for its feeding.

Beyond what I have already expressed, these questions demand answers here: was the lion bored of its cage? What condition was it kept? Was the lion desirous of a company that it sought one beyond the confines of its cage? Though there are no ready answers to these questions, I can only make simple conjectures, even if not factual, of the trigger.

There are two plausible conjectures what exploring here: first, the lion is what it is: a beast, the king of the jungle that is not subject to human restraints, though they are often sadly restrained by men and women of power who keep them as games in their private homes and by poachers and trophy hunters, that is free, unhindered by its nature, to pursue its interests in the wild.

To cage the lion is to tame and deny its natural freedom. So, when the lion slipped through the gate into the unfenced park, it was seeking its nature and freedom beyond the restraints of men and women. Second, the lion reminds me of the fearsome Baroka, a character in Wole Soyinka’s ‘The Lion and The Jewel’, who roared and pitched his feline wits and hunger for the delectable character, Sidi.

Lakunle, the urbane and suave character, who, as an antithesis of Baroka, didn’t stand a chance in the struggle to win Sidi’s heart. Something more alluring than freedom must have beckoned the lion. Perhaps it wanted a free roam on the plateau with its beau, Sidi.

The lion sought freedom and found only the harmattan-beaten grasses of the open park, hemmed in by gun-toting marksmen and snipers.

The lion desired the gentle roars of a lioness in heat and it was served bullets. They killed the lion on a Wednesday when it should have been corralled and tranquilized.

——————–

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

Article written by Abdul Mahmud

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail