I was seated in my usual place looking for network when the owner of the bar slotted Fela’s Original Sufferhead into the music box. For the benefit of those who didn’t know, the album was released in 1981.
It is a great disappointment that the record is still relevant today!
Isn’t it?
I then looked back into our history purposely to exhume the records of our social critics. The best I can say is that we are not being sincere with that phrase in our national anthem which says, the labour of our dead heroes will not be in vain.
OK, let’s look at some of them.
The atheist, Tai Solarin was the founding proprietor of Mayflower School, Ikenne. He was asthmatic. He had a bag of his asthma drugs ready for his frequent arrests by government agencies. He spoke the truth to government and they felt it wasn’t his business.
Ayodele Awojobi became a professor of mechanical engineering before becoming forty years of age. He was so brilliant that he designed a vehicle that had two steering wheels. One in front and one at the back. The vehicle did not need to reverse or turn round.
The mal-governance that was the order of the day forced him to be a perpetual litigant. He later became a law student possibly in a bid to fast track his various cases.
Gani Fawehinmi believed every issue could be solved through the law courts. He therefore used the legal machinery to attempt to solve all problems. He was a very generous man. He also languished in many police detentions or prisons.
Beko Ransome Kuti was a medical doctor. At a time, he was the chairman of Lagos University Teaching Hospital’s resident doctors. He later became the chairman of Nigeria Medical Association, Lagos Branch. The military were then in power.
They appointed him to chair the board of LUTH. However, the appointment never lasted. When the doctors went on strike,the chairman was at the forefront.
The struggle was his life.
Fela! Mmm…
In one of the books about him, he confessed that he couldn’t count the number of strokes of the cane he received from his father, the Rev. Canon Israel Oludotun Ransome Kuti.
When he became a man, he was to receive much more from the so called authorities. Dehumanisation as typified by beatings, detentions, imprisonments, police and army raids, etc. It was during one of the attacks, in 1977,that his Kalakuta Republic was burnt. The most painful aspect is the fact that his seventy eight year old mother was thrown out of one of the windows of the two storey building.
The mother, a nationalist in her own right, later died from the injuries she sustained from the incident.
Wole Soyinka, a playwright and a poet is a professor. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1986. For him, justice is the first condition of humanity. And he has been walking his talk.
He was said to have held up the radio station in Ibadan after an election. He was also accused of replacing the prepared speech with his own which he read.
He was imprisoned for twenty months during the civil war because he went to the Eastern Region. Not only that, he wanted to organise a third force presumably to prevent the shedding of blood.
He had to escape through a smugglers’ route on an okada in the days of the goggled one who had put a price on his head.
He has proved himself to be a nemesis of dictators!
One could go on and on.
In his days, Gani founded a political party. Most of us didn’t vote for National Conscience Party because it didn’t distribute money.
Even Fela founded a party, Movement of the People. That one didn’t scale through the registration process.
My conclusion is that we are our own problems.
In the first instance, we haven’t been able to pick quality leaders because of selfish reasons. Second, we have the false belief that government positions are reserved for the haves.I beg to differ. Let’s be watching out for reliable people amongst us. When it’s election time, we should vote them in.
Another thing is that the center is too powerful. If we can empower the states and local governments at the expense of the center, states will begin a healthy competition in terms of internally generated revenues. Luckily for us, apart from the good soil, there is no state in Nigeria that is without one mineral resource or the other.
Not until we do these and more will our heroes past rest peacefully!!!
032817
