It was my final Wednesday at The Guardian. I was about to deliver the final punch in an argument that seemed to be going nowhere – when suddenly the door opened and in trooped a motley crowd from some alien bush, wearing frowns and bearing palm fronds and green leaves.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I called out. “Where do you think you’re taking all that garbage to?”
“We had to pass the anti-SAP crowd massed at the gate,” they said. “If you don’t have a green leaf they rip you apart.”
“That has nothing to do with us,” I said in my most pontifical baritone. These gatecrashers have to be told.
“Did you think you were coming to a Feast of Fools? This is the Editorial Board of The Guardian. We don’t fool around. How dare you interrupt when we’re pronouncing on matters of national policy, strategic as well as constitutional?’
“Oh come off it,” said a burly fellow, evidently their leader. “All you guys are good for is post-mortems. You can’t influence policy. You have no access to decisions before they are made.”
Now I was roused to righteous fury. I glared at the intruders. A few looked familiar; the rest were ghostly presences from a dimly remembered past. I dropped my distorting eye-glasses. Ah. Just a bunch of colleagues from upstairs and down, plus a stranger or two! They crowded every inch of the boardroom.
“We came to wish you tough luck,” said the burly fellow. “Tough luck yourself,” I replied. “Mr. Chairman, before this rude interruption I was about to sum up….”
“For a man about to retire,” the fellow interrupted again, his lips curled in mischief, “you sure do look like an IMF chicken heading home to roost.”
“Idiot!” I shot back. Na your mama be chicken! And a stool pigeon to boot!”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” called the soft-spoken Elder Statesman. Whenever he spoke the jungle fell silent. He smiled that fatherly smile. “By the way, Jemie, he said, deliberately straying to other matters, “I notice you’ve changed sides again.”
“You mean my seat, sir?”
“Thrice in 18 months. First you were on the left, then you moved right, and now you’re back on the left.”
“It’s shifting cultivation, sir. Our people say you can’t watch a masquerade from one spot. You’d be shutting yourself from a world of experience and opportunity. A most unwise proceeding, sir.”
“Opportunity? Sheer opportunism!” said a colleague on my left. “You reap on both sides, you’ll pay on both sides too when the time comes.” He was grimly serious, but I was enjoying myself too much to bother.
“I make it a policy to change position from time to time,” I went on. “Variety alone demands it, sir, if nothing else.”
I could see from the foolish grin on the faces of the newcomers – the popular side, shall we say – that I was getting through. I put on my melodramatic monk-hood and spread my arms in a priestly gesture. “Nigeria, my dear brothers and sisters, is the world. It is the greatest masquerade of all time. I should certainly drop dead should I ever encounter, in this my limited edition of time-on-earth, a spectacle more wonderfully turned out, more mesmerising and awesome than Nigeria!’’
“Yeah, gotta to move with the times,” said a young whipper-snapper from downstairs.
“You had not permission to speak,” the burly brother rebuked him. “I brought you fellows here to be seen, not heard. Look and learn. Be present while history is being made. Listen to great minds discuss ideas!”
“Hear, hear!” the mocking crowd chorused.
“I think they already learned all they needed,” said the chairman who, by the way, loves to trade silly jokes, passing back and forth hilarious little scribbles in the midst of disquisitions the most serious on matters on which the fate of the nation hangs. Like one time, when we were dissecting the bureaucracy’s penchant for staging Operation Show Your Certificate, I confessed to him (in a little note) that I never got a First School Leaving Certificate and I was worried about it. And you know what he scribbled and tossed back at me? It isn’t too late to get one, O.J. And it shouldn’t cost you as much as some people say they paid for a forged PhD certificate. I don’t think. Just imagine that! I don’t think. Just imagine that!
The editor was waving at the crowd from downstairs. “These young fellows all want to emigrate,” he complained. “This one is going to Japan for three months; the other to America for six months; and that other fellow to Britain for a year. I ‘ll be damned if I let you all go!” The Tall Member, who had had his nose buried in the papers all morning, finally looked up and was about to throw in a word in defence of the young people, when one of the part-time legislators from Moniya Cattle market constituency of Ibadan, intervened.
“Aren’t you the reactive agent who provoked a crisis last week at out sister media-house?” He was pointing all five finders at a young man in a corner half-hidden by the standing-room–only crowd. “You try any nonsense here and we”ll teach you to fish in troubled waters.”
“Now, now, be careful or you’ll run foul of the Unwritten Code,” I warned.
“Oh yes,” said a member on my left. “Self—criticism is anathema to the Nigerian press, When another media house or journalist errs, however flagrantly, it is the duty of all others media houses and journalists to remain silent – or else vigorously to defend the offender, in violation of all commonsense.”
This is going to be fun, I thought. Time to throw a spanner in the works. “Self-criticism will only encourage the government, ever so eager for an excuse, to repress the press.” I said. “The press, after all, is no different from the other professions, all of which go to great lengths to cover up their errors and protect themselves.
“Hear! Hear!” said one of the Elder Statesmen. “But when it comes to freedom to publish as they please, the press claims a special place, an absolute right that no other person or agency has under the constitution!”
At that moment the door opened, and in came five buckets of fried chicken and ten cartons of beer. Now you’re talking! Courtesy of who? The Editorial Page Editor, the Editor, the Director of Publications, and the Three Wise Men (the Consultants). Great!
I poured two glasses. Raised one: To those who went before… Raised the other: To those left behind… Ladies and gentlemen, a toast to The Guardian’s Editorial Board!…
Professor Jemie, a scholar, poet and journalist, is former Chairman of The Guardian Editorial Board. This article originally titled ‘Valedictory”, was first published in The Guardian on June 4, 1989, on the eve of his departing the newspaper.
