While the primary purpose of power may not always be to corrupt, it should be admitted, privileges and perquisites of power, most specifically across enclaves of “black destiny”, may tumble down quite overwhelmingly to enforce unwitting disavowals of sanity.
There are always options even in this, and, as briefly adverted here, the coin may turn out to have more than just two sides! On one side of the bloc are those who could and often do choose to look entirely away from, pretending not to see, the rots as do prevail, and engage in other things, possibly trusting the tidal wave of error would soon roll away, to pave way for rationality – what people sometimes agree is ‘common sense’ – in the corridors and bedrooms of power. These are not always sitters on the fence, the reader should know. In muted or agitated exchanges across informal gatherings – office settings, living quartres, beer parlours/relaxation joints, and the houses of God, they can be the habitually vociferous variety, railing against officially packaged and distributed misdeeds in acerbic lampoons.
But, coming into the open – locations from which the media/third eyes and ears can access the critics and critical contents – to deliver diatribes is ever outside their operations. Fully aware of enormity of wrongs that go on, this clan – call them moderate critics of the ‘left’ – do often evince only pretended equanimity, just to keep their peace! They are everywhere, and can be everyday people! To use the street idiom, they only know and see evil, they don’t ever ‘talk’ it!
There is another family of deaf, dumb and blind of life’s happenings, especially in the arena of politics and public policy deliveries. They are individuals whose demeanours or placidity are never challenged by dominant events, whatever their obtuseness! Here are those who studiously mind their businesses rather than lose their peace or commit to any cause/course outside ‘self’! We address a world of humans whose existence is oblivious of everything, anything happening around and about them, and whose prime concern remains their personal professional engagement and micro-worries.
How is inflation tugging at the economy and tearing the people, and why is government not doing things to ameliorate austerities? Why is government not properly handling the criminals and their feats and foists? Why so many ‘this’, why so many ‘that’? These special humans don’t ask such questions, and the answers are therefore to them irrelevant! Here, nothing is wrong about anything – the world is peaceful, we thank God! Expressed another way, they are individuals who don’t know or see evil, and don’t ever ‘talk’ it! Their class is neither on the left or right, or even at the centre; they belong nowhere! The stoics are classless!
The most popular camp in the socially desirable category are left-wing inhabitants – ones who frequently endow scientific eyes upon the land and so-called land owners, and in their openly conducted surgeries, they habitually throw caustic comments on policies and executive fiats perceived as unwelcome in their consequences. Often threatening to bring down the heavens on perceived architects of peoples’ terrible fate, these are a clan frequently dismissed as “doomsday prophets”.
They are the readily agitated individuals who assess public misconducts – errors of omission and/or commission – of whatever nature as undesirable, and seek adjustments through criticisms. They are pen or foot soldiers who are wont to assail the establishment with queries like ‘Where is justice in so and so policies? How and why are the roads this bad and misshapen? And precisely as they war against the offices, not particularly the officers, through their outbursts, they have been targets of state-sponsored repression.
There are centrists too – a band that belongs neither on the left or on the right: they argue both positions, but don’t take sides. They are often the disagreeable block of sophists who have perfected the art of laying the issues so well that no one would know where they stand! To them, government is doing well and bad same time. Rather than coming hard and clear, they do satires and burlesques, and make blatant evil quite tolerable in their misplaced parodies!
Oh, a brainwave: I remember the AGIP too, yes – camp of any government in power! They are the least popular though, people whose entire lives revolve about defending noxious charges of power, whatever these. They apply criticisms only as ploy to attract attention, not really to elevate country or change anything. They are ready hirelings and willing complicitous tools who trade reproaches as means to self-actualisation – appointments, preferments, sponsorships, others.
Applying pretense as procedure, what they say is never what they mean, and vice versa. Too worldly to be principled, they are end-time adventurers who drool unrelentingly. You know them, much as I do!
There again are those who criticise as of nature, however well an administration is performing, and there are individuals that must wax plaudits for executive/assembly members who have gone overboard and broken records in the extremeness of their illogicality. They can be here for a while and the very minute following, they are there, doing and saying the opposite, and they shift grounds on flimsy excuses. It is their calling anyway, a means through which they eke daily survival. They are pipers very willing to sing and change tunes to favour whatever side is ready to pay a higher bill!
I almost forgot the ones who shifts sides based on their assessment of conducts. They support leaders only so far as performances are positively connected to peoples’ aspirations. They change tunes immediately the leader reverses on honour!
A phase there was in our Nigeria when such task of dissecting events was met with terrifying outcomes. As wonted of despots, it is their dark side that must be blackened out, perhaps even a thick concrete slab mounted on a decay oozing repulsive odours that were their conducts. But the urge for critics, especially of the ‘left’ stock, is to promote this same side. The titans clashed, and daily media relays harvested the debacle: The News headquatres have been shut, its editors on the run; Gani Fawehinmi, arrested, moved to Gashua Maximum Prison; Force Headquatres have invited so, so, and so for interrogation; Dele Giwa parcel-bombed in his Ikeja home! Indeed, Nigeria’s democracy journey has been fraught with challenges, not least a perilous landscape for those who dare to speak/write the truth.
Journalists, human rights activists, and social critics have found themselves in the vortex of intrigues and crosshairs of powerful interests. Some of these, aside Dele Giwa, including Kudirat Abiola, Bagauda Kaltho, Alfred Rewane, Chris Igbokwe, Godwin Agbroko, Abayomi Ogundeji, Jesse Aruku, Emenike Ibe, among others, paid the ultimate price! Their assassinations, which remain unresolved still, continue to signal a phase already recorded as ‘dark’ in the annals of the country.
But times of tyranny are not necessarily referent of reigns by despotic autocrats who openly and unrestrainedly commandeer citizens away from their rights. Even, such can be periods in which the citizenry is simply corralled into multidimensional lacks – economic, social, health, educational, governmental, security, a condition of insanity that must be tolerated and endured, period in which deception games are played up across media houses and political campaign grounds in alluring sophistries.
Indeed, when quislings turn leaders, paid pipers turn hirelings! Indeed, corridors and bedrooms of power are settings where so-called ‘common sense’ remain ever scarily scare and uncommon! To declare devotion to conscientious punditry at such times and places is vicarious puritanism, and may be condemnable in a world wherein ‘darkness’ is fad and wrong right! Whichever point people camp, history does records, a process which cannot be doctored! Regardless the extremeness of depravity across entire spectrum, the world continues to watch, posterity shall endure still.
Salawudeen, essayist and polemicist, wrote via: [email protected]
