Victor C. Ariole

Dr Okay in his article compared Osinbajo to EzeUzu, great blacksmith who abandoned his trade for lesser trade that brought him to ignominy. Okay missed the point that, even when yam farming is seen as the greatest of all farming by the Igbos they still believe that, when you see what is greater than yam farming dispose the entire yam barn and go for it.

READ ALSO: Osinbajo, Ambode for Ikeja Golf Club’s 50th Anniversary

Indeed like Sigmund Freud noted, fixation and regression set human psyche to aberration and the behaviour of such aberration is what appears to be seen in their queer libidinal attitude somehow admitted as sexual orientations. Growing above such fixation and regression had been the problem of some Nigerians who still wield power and create the semblance that others are following blind people hence impossible to see the light. So, great thinkers, not stagnated EzeUzus, are needed to break that fixed mindset and seek for what is greater than yam in this era of knowledge industry.

Osinbajo is not a blacksmith; his trade as known is the defence of the ‘desperate’ when in desperate situation wielding the weapons of evidence like attested by Asiwaju who said that when all seem lost in battle for his sustenance in governance Osinbajo provided the evidence for survival and it worked.

EzeUzu’s tale is a great myth that pervade most African terrain, agreed; and it is mostly what the Keitas thrive on. Keitas are the kings of the Mandigos or Mandikas in the Malian Empire; empire of goldsmiths. Like the Mandingos, like the rest of Nigerians sharing space with the Fulas, Fulanis. Peuhl, Pulahs or Fulfudes. Constraints and limitations must be observed for survival of all.

In Nigeria, throwing the towel like Okay insinuates for Osinbajo is like committing collateral damage nay suicide affecting other Nigerians. Osinbajo like acknowledged by Asiwaju must act like the carrier of the bag of evidence where the ‘ofo’ is hidden and must be testing evidence upon evidence till a greater evidence that could bail the Nigerians is allowed for the ofo to surface. Note , roaming with cattle and sheep is obsolete evidence for economic survival; it is like archaic yam farming; it is also like EzeUzu trade that blows his eyes out of the fire emitted to sharpen or brighten metal; it is also the trade of the marabouts you read in the book of El-Rufai, the accidental civil servant; all are fixated and regressive tendencies retarding Nigeria.

Nigeria is suffering from fixation and needs total exorcising of all pieces of evidence that make it not to see greater pieces of evidence that can propel it to greater heights. In acting capacity the teacher of evidence clearly proved that but it seems it is not enough to let the ofo out of the bag. Going back to poto poto that made EzeUzu look like a pig as the wife and children could not recognise him, all, in order to return to the uzu trade in a greater demeaning process.

The truth which Nigerians are yet to understand is that in the search for nationhood, which Nigeria is yet to attain, what obtains in the cosmogony of the Fula or the Fulfude or the Peuhl remain a great test of a great people like it is seen in Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Niger and Cameroun. Again both the PDP and APC candidates that are either going to emerge as President in the forthcoming elections are, all , personalities in aberration in that cosmogony and are expected to advance evidence that could prove that the biblical saying of ‘the rejected stone turning to be the cornerstone’ is valid for Nigeria also.

Related News

See how Camara Laye, in his DRAMOUSS, describes that cosmogony that has River Niger still clogging their umbilical cord linking Futa Jalon. Insect is the allegory of a rich personality there. Frog is the allegory of the intellectual there. Snake is the allegory of the king there. It is like Camara was contrasting the EzeUzu of Okey in that description as Camara sees in the goldsmith also a sculpture who is not only exercising an artisanal trade but uses it to be a witchdoctor, a priest as well as the current marabout that can kill or keep alive humans or even change them from insect to snake as he goes on plying his trade of forming, deforming or reforming metals with fire. In that cosmogony EzeUzu is an intellectual that is unshakeable but can shake others. To them EzeUzu can jump from land to water and remain unscathed. It is like a group of sages who never intend to be ‘snake-the-king’ nor ‘insect-the-rich’ but decide the fate of both.

So, kingmakers or group of marabouts are expected to wake up and provide great evidence that could change the Nigerian narrative as the teacher of evidence goes on harvesting pieces of evidence. It must not be in regressive or fixated state of archaic EzeUzu.

Though Nigeria is for all but some still see it as a strange land and as the Igbos say, if you venture out of your own god’s enabled domain and you go on there to swear in the name of their own god, you would have no protection and you would be like a lizard that strayed far from the safety of trees that could enable its escape when preyed upon by other animals that can’t climb a tree. Nigeria is still an explorative expedition like the moon is to the West, threaded with caution; notwithstanding their charting it with anxiety for either human progress or retrogression.

Isn’t it quite paradoxical that Nigeria is still culturally uncharted for a navigable nationhood after 58 years of self-rule? Once again, Osinbajo is not a regressive EzeUzu; he could be a surveyor helping the charting business with known evidence for possible unfolding counter evidence that enable nationhood quest.

So, whether PDP wins or APC wins in the antithesis spinning of a Nigeria in the quest of nationhood, Osinbajo remains part of the evidence carrier and the ofo that enables a renewed EzeUzu to renew his trade is still in the bag waiting for the opportune time.

READ ALSO: Democracy and nationhood

_______________________________________

Ariole is a professor of professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Lagos