How many of my readers know Friedrich Nietzsche, German philologist and philosopher, born in 1844 and died in 1900? My answer is a straight- forward one. Not many of my readers know Nietzsche. Not many of our readers know Nietzsche, who I have cited here more than a number of times.

Yet I won’t vouch that more than many of our readers know Nietzsche and my allusions to him in as simple a manner as possible in order to make them follow and appreciate the wondrous man of letters born to shake our humanity and drive sense into it in a manner that should appeal exceedingly to humanists and even non-humanists as well.

And I remember to dwell on him now, the one and truly one who detests the superfluous not because I really want to do so at this material time. In fact, I am not really dwelling on him now. Yet he is on my mind now because the Supreme Spiritual Masters of Merit, including the Sehaji, the Living Spiritual Master, among us in this country where much of the mental and moral climate has witnessed bankruptcy that cannot delude our critical sensibilities, implored me to do so. Nietzsche’s thought was visionary and prophetically prophetic.

This is one aspect of his thought. The other facet of his thought was intensely and passionately critical and was never short of ominous warnings. He indeed was a critic who gave his age time and again merciless diagnoses that were unconventional to the uttermost without superfluous sensations. His age ignored him to its peril.

In addition to what I have stated about the Spiritual Masters of Merit and their nod to me to do what I am doing, our politics that is seriously eroding our light, humanity and humanistic traditions is compelling me to assert Nietzsche in my thought today – seriously speaking. I refuse to be deluded that all the elections we have just had will take Nigeria your country my country our country to where it should or ought to be rightfully and as ordained.

Let us take, for example, the fate that has just befallen Binani, the popular APC woman governorship candidate in Adamawa State who right from the beginning of the governorship election in that State was heartlessly and cruelly plotted against by the warriors who did not want a woman in the government house of Adamawa. When she was coasting home to victory in the initial gubernatorial election, the election was wickedly said to be inconclusive by the heartless masters and warriors of the electoral game.

If the election result had been called in her democratic favour, she would have gone down in Nigeria’s history perhaps as the country’s first democratically elected woman governor. (My friend Dr. Wale Okediran in his faraway place outside Nigeria must be licking the wound his disappointment has inflicted on him on the turn of events).

In the supplementary election which has been declared against her after presumably one of her soldiers on the opposing official side had bravely called the election in her favour, we saw her fellow democratic companions and warriors in jubilant mood. Without much ado, she accepted her triumphant triumph and gave a victory and acceptance speech to her supporters and fellow Adamawa compatriots. In fact, their brave heroine is already in court and rightly so to rough out and reclaim her democratic triumph.

Or didn’t the INEC chairman tell contestants to go to court, to the judiciary-less judiciary, to battle out their denied or stolen or aborted or kidnapped victory?

Those who claim that Adamawa Resident Commissioner, who did what he was not supposed to do by declaring that the brave Adamawa heroine won the gubernatorial election are economical with the truth. All kinds of things and allegations without any evidence, solid or un-solid, have been coined, mounted, mountained, mouthed and peaked against him.

Is he worst in that INEC of scoundrels and monsters who now want to use him to shine in the vain hope that we will forget their hollow and hideous undertakings? But I am waiting to hear what the man will say once he starts to sing. Clearly, he is on the wrong side of the INEC power block or the Adamawa heroine and her companions could not play the ball the INEC power block wanted them to play.

Or perhaps the INEC power block merely came out to deny their fellow brother of war to deceive us that the Commission at least still believes in the modesty of democratic honesty and generosity. (I already have given this hint above). The INEC right wing can say that to the marines! The Resident Electoral Commissioner in the news that is hotter than hot news may not have read rightly the lips of his masters or he read their lips rightly but decided to be a turncoat because to be a turncoat at the material time was the best thing for him to do as a player of games of democracy Nigerian style!

Speaking seriously and very seriously, I must quote Nietzsche: “What is good? You ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: “To be good is to be what is pretty and at the same time touching.”

Binani and his little and un-little girls and many soldiers who are not warriors that are warriors are no strangers to the wickedness of our democracy that is no democracy and its arrogance of its hollowness. Zarathustra in Thus Spoke Zarathustra would not find me disagreeable here. Binani and her APC stalwarts of un-uniformed soldiers and warriors must unite and invent their peculiar Adamawa language to fight in court this democracy: “Everything about it is false, it bites with stolen teeth. Even its belly is false.” Thus spoke Afejuku who is quoting Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

The PDP and the LP should beckon to one another to “love peace as a means to new wars.” Thus spoke Zarathustra. But they will be too envious of one another and the bitterness in their cups of democratic politics will keep them apart and apart. I have evaluated them as they have evaluated themselves. Now what am I saying? What have I said? I don’t know. I am too pained to be deluded by the Nigerian condition that has deluded us over the years.

The more I study the condition the more I hear the “distant rumblings” of “volcanic eruption” threatening our epoch. Nietzsche is here on my mind still talking to me and warning me to warn you all, to warn us all in a language I do not clearly grasp or understand. This explains the zigzag of my thought that illustrates the zigzaggedness of Nigeria.

I say this with a hammer in the hope that we shall escape an inevitable calamity. How contradictory I have been! How bewildering I have been! And how contradictory and bewildering is this country their country your country my country our country! Those who don’t have ears we give them ears to hear! Our judiciary-less judiciary should hear, hear and hear even with borrowed ears. Other matters of bad and tragic odours I leave out here deliberately and keep in my solitude and its voraciously voracious appetite parenting my tranquility.

Heed the teachings and warnings of Zarathustra. Heed the teachings and warnings of the columnist who is a columnist and a columnist, a disciple who is more than a disciple.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.