Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The Falcon cannot hear the Falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s earthquake global text buried instanta Joyce Cary’s demented school, and challenged the Author’s Mister Johnson’s depiction of Africans as grunting savages, cannibals “with no language or cultural and historical links to their physical environment.”
The Achebe trans-generic classic was published in 1958. That was the novel that fired the first shot leading to the rise of the African freedom fighters as reviewed by Mpalive – Hangson Msika. In 2008, the Malawian Professor at University of London posited, that Okonkwo in the last climax of the novel “is not buried as a hero, but his refusal to accept the colonial order lying down, commences the resistance that will shadow colonialism throughout its history.” It is Okonkwo’s defiance that emboldens Obierika to utter the first anti-colonial protest. We are told that Obierika, who had been gazing steadily at his friend’s dangling body, turned suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: “That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia, you drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a dog….”
Achebe in his daring transgression, synthesis of the universal and the particular primarily succeeded in humanising the savagery in the African mind. Achebe therefore borrowed the title of his book from the verses of that ethane Irish Poet deleting the savagery epithet that Joyce Cary alluded to the African mind.
That was Achebe in 1958 and here we go in 2016 turning and turning all over in embarrassment as we watch in disbelief over the sad odyssey of our modern day Falcons.
At this juncture, this Column would want to congratulate the comic Minister of Sports for his usual veracity. “We did not expect the Falcons to win the Tournament! He lamented. Consequently, to help us understand the antics of the Characters in this tragic-comedy, we would like to pose some questions.
Who is the Accountant or the Director of Finance at the Ministry of Sports and at the NFF?
Why should such a routine account payable brief, come to attract the attention of the SGF and the Nigerian Minister of Finance?
Why punish these girls for winning? They have to take to the streets for their legitimate demands to be met.
So we are now organising Sports to lose?
The NFF President we understand has budgeted dollars for his CAF campaign adventures for a CAF position next year. Why can’t he pay the girls for his own campaign benefits?
The Minister from Jos has refused to resign and apply to study more Comics at his Jos Theatre and Production Media College. If he is going to stay put, we will refer him to the memorable records of the best Nigerian Military Sports leader, who was the Minister of Labor in-charge of Sports.
Doctor soldier, one time Minister of Labour, in-charge of Sports, General Henry Adefope retired from public service as Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister in 1979. Whatever is Nigeria’s recent gain in international sports, lots of it could be traceable to his imagination, programmes and policies during his tenure as the dominant figure in Nigerian Sports Commission from 1966 to 1975. According to General Henry Adefope, for the information of the Comic Minister who is organising our National Sports to lose, Nigeria Sports from the beginning was built on the philosophy of “total mobilization of the Nigerian Youths.” The philosophy was cushioned on a programmed “supply base” for the nation’s competitive Sports. General Adefope recounted that the programme was enunciated and clearly defined. “Consequently, immediately I was appointed Chairman of the then National Sports Council, I focused on the States, involving a new structure with the following principles:-
1) Developing into virile Association all the major Nigerian Sports.
2) Throwing overboard the “One-Man show” of the moribund National Sports Council and installing an all-embracing Sports Commission.
3) Building an Olympic Stadium in Lagos.
There were other strategic policies programmes of that late Minister. Lack of space will not allow us delve on those.
Meanwhile, all the Senators of Rome, Governors of Rome, Generals without Armies, Emirs, Obas and Royal Fathers, Politicians, mega party thieves are all with us in this blue audience. From one or two of them, we can solve the Falcon debacle. One clean cheque from these African new ‘savages’ in government, will indeed meet the Falcon demand.
My dear fellow citizens, the Falcon cannot hear the Falconer, the center can no longer hold, things have fallen apart.