Refflections with Olu Obafemi SMS only:08033341157, omoajon@yahoo.com
IN the next couple of weeks, Reflections will berth of dream shores of some heroic figures, some of our past nationalists and political personages—Aminu Kano, Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe. It will come through snippets and sequences of dreams from the head of Yohanna, the protagonist of my recent play, Running Dreams…It is my unorthodox tribute to some of the architects of modern Nigeria.
Yohanna rises slowly after a loud snore, which came like an earthquake. He is still in a dreary, half-awake state. The sky opens in his mind’s eye. Four masquerades emerge wearing the figure of Obafemi, Ahmadu, Zik and Aminu. A tongue for each of them breaks into narratives, following Yohanna’s unconscious promptings. (Dancers and singers accompany each masquerade).
Yohanna: Welcome Mallam sir. You died first, except of course for Sir Ahmadu, your old rival who was killed by unnatural means. And you were the youngest of the surviving ones. They said it was because you were a rebel. (Aminu’s mouth broke into a hilarious roar of laughter.)
Aminu: They said so? Walahi. How old was the Prophet before he left this sinful world? How old was Anabi Isa? I think it is how well. Ask the talakawa, the teeming masses of peasants. Ask those who inherited NEPU and became a big party after all, even if some of them, I am told have become renegades, joined the remnant of what we rejected. Ask those who started with us at the Jami’iyyar, the cultural group we later turned into NPC, the dominant elite party of the First Republic in the Arewa. That was when we left it and formed our own party of young progressives, which you called rebellious. These were young radicals who formed NEPU. Habi Raji Abdallah from Okene was with us although he later joined Zik and was jailed. Magaji Danbatta, Abba Maikwaru, Bello Ijumu of the Okun nation. They were with me. We gave an alternative voice to the suffering people. We lost seats but we fought on. Yes, Ahmadu did not like us but he was a gentleman, God-fearing, he let us be, even though he set up Maitama against me and he won the parliamentary seat. But we were no rebels. We opposed the ethnicity and feudalism of the Fulani elite and native authority rule.
Yohanna: Yes sir. I read your story and your famous, radical dicta. You brought up Islamic ideas on equity in your campaign trains during the First Republic. Many talakawas trouped in after you and your message of giving a platform to the Kano commoners and migratory petty traders. They joined and manned your NEPU party. You sought to use politics to create an egalitarian Northern Nigerian society. You backed these actions up with many memorable quotes.
Aminu: Thank you, thank you. I am happy that there are youths who read up the history of our little effort—before your government cancelled history from the schools. But, which quotations are you talking about? You know it’s been a long time since I left your world which has grown worse, even worse than the world of the NPC, which we opposed?
Yohanna Thank you sir. We remember your ideas and keynote statements with pain and nostalgia, given the death of dreams and ideas in our society today. Yes sir. You said that the shocking state of social order as is at presently exists in Northern Nigeria is due to nothing but the Family Compact rule of the so-called Native Administrations in their present autocratic form.
Aminu: Gaskiya. Are the Local governments of today any better, tell me, young man?
Yohanna: Yes, but only in structure, not in practice. They have grown more roguish. Then sir, you said because of this vicious and unscrupulous administrative system, there is today in our society an antagonism of interests manifesting itself as class struggle, between the members of the vicious circle of the Native Administration on the one hand and the ordinary “talakawa” on the other.
Aminu: Haka ne. The social discontent of today, the creation of an idle mass of youth called Almajiri, is the outcome, and the meaningless wars on the streets, the mindless killings in the name of hatred for Western education!
Yohanna: Haka sir. Whose products of wars they relish and depend on. And they supply the politicians with their army of thugs to fight political and religious wars. That was why you went on further to advocate the abolition of class conflict through the emancipation of the “talakawa” from the domination of these conduits, by the reform of the present autocratic political Institutions into Democratic Institutions and placing their democratic control in the hands of the “Talakawa” for whom alone they exist.
Aminu: Hm, Aboki nan. Only that nothing really has changed in that direction. Power is still in the firm grips of the corrupt elite, in spite of NEPU and PRP.
Yohanna: Painfully true sir. But you paid your dues. You and your colleagues in the First Republic—even the Sardauna and his party.
Aminu: Nagode. I have a lot of respect for Ahmadu, but we stand on different platforms.
(Cutting him short on the emergence of his own tongue from Yohanna’s head, the Sardauna spoke, slowly, with dignity.)
Ahmadu: Thank you, but I have my own tongue, my own voice, even though I was cut down brutally before I had done half of what I wanted to do. No excuse. I will do the same things that I did before, may be, with benefit of hindsight, I could do them differently.
Yohanna: (In total awe and reverence, with clench salutary fists) Ranka dede sir. I never guessed you would be coming. I never met you. I was not even born before the soldiers struck and brought things far back.
Ahmadu: No you were not, you could not have been. What you know is through your present dream state. Dreams have their limits. But you jolted me with your knowledge and your exchange with Aminu.
Yohanna: Thank you sir. You must feel disturbed in your immortal realm with the wreckage that has been done to your dream of a thriving north within a federation—especially since you were so misunderstood as being uninterested in a united nation.
Ahmadu: Allah Sarki. I believed and still believe in a workable nation. But I saw that the North, uneducated and undeveloped, was in no position of equality to compete and thrive in a nation whose South was far in advance of us. I needed to work. I needed to build education, build infrastructure, roads, pipe-borne water, hospitals, trade and business. I needed to create wealth and autonomy for my people so that the nation’s business can make sense to them and they can find themselves in it.
(He fades while Yohanna was still full of questions. Fade out with a soft Dan Maraya tune.