Watch And Pray, Watch And Prey By Wole Soyinka
I had fully attuned myself to the fact that our Owu retiree
soldier and prolific author is an infliction that those of us who
share the same era and nation space must learn to endure.
However, it does appear that there is no end to this
individual’s capacity for infantile mischief, and for needless,
mind-boggling provocations, such as his recent ‘literary’
intrusion on my peace.
Perhaps I ought to interrupt myself here with an apology to
some mutual acquaintances – ‘blessed peacemakers’ and all -
especially in this season of ‘peace and goodwill to all men’.
Please know that your efforts have not been entirely in vain. I
had a cordial exchange with Obasanjo over the phone recently
– engineered by himself, his ground staff and/or a chance
visitor – when I had cause to visit his Presidential Laundromat
for the first time ever. During that exchange, I complemented
him on making some quite positive use of landed property that
was acquired under morally dubious circumstances, and
blatantly developed through a process that I denounced as
‘executive extortionism’. That obscene proceeding has certainly
set a competitive precedent for impunity in President
Jonathan’s recent fund-raising shindig, editorialized in THE
PUNCH (Dec. 23, 2014) as “Impunity Taken too Far”. So much
for the latest from that directions - we mustn’t allow Handing-
Over notes between presidents to distract us for too long.
To return to our main man, and friendly interventionists, you
may like to note that I went so far as to engage him in light
banter, stating that some of his lesser sins would be forgiven
him for that creative conversion of the landscape – a
conversation that he shortly afterwards delightedly shared with
at least three mutual acquaintances. I promised a follow-up
visit to view some mysterious rock script whose existence, he
informed me, was uncovered by workers during ground
clearing. The exchange was, in short, as good as ‘malice
towards none’ that any polemicist could hope to contribute to
the ongoing season of peace and goodwill. Obviously that visit
will not now take place, any more than the pursuit of vague
notions of some creative collaboration with his Centre that
began to play around my mind.
That much I do owe you from my report card. Perhaps you will
now accept that there are individuals who are born incorrigible
but, more importantly, that some issues transcend one’s
personal preferences for harmonious human relationships
even in a season of traditional good will. The change in
weather conditions sits quite well with me however, since we
are both acquainted with the Yoruba proverb that goes: the
child that swears his mother will not sleep must also prepare
for a prolonged, sleepless infancy. So let it be with Okikiola,
the overgrown child of circumstance.
One of the incessant ironies that leapt up at me as I read
Obasanjo’s magnum opus was that we are both victims of a
number of distasteful impositions - such as being compelled
again and again to seek justice against libel in the law courts. I
felt genuine empathy to read that he still has a pending thirty-
year case instituted by him against his alleged libelers!
Judgment was delivered in my favour regarding one of the
most nauseating only this year, after surviving technical and
other procrastinations, defendant evasions and other legalistic
impediments for nearly as long as his. That leaves only a
veritable Methuselah on the court list still awaiting re-listing
under the resurrection ritual language known as de novo.
Unfortunately, not all acts of defamation or willful
misrepresentation are actionable, otherwise, my personal list
against this newly revealed fellow-sufferer would have counted
for an independent volume of the Nigerian Law Report since
our paths first crossed during the Civil War. My commitment to
the belief in the fundamental right of all human beings NOT TO
BE LIED AGAINST remains a life obsession, and thus demands,
at the very least, an obligation of non-commission among
fellow victims.
I must therefore reserve a full, frontal dissection of Obasanjo’s
My Watch for later, most especially since the work itself is
currently under legal restraint and is not readily accessible to a
general readership. So, for now, let me single out just one of
the most glaring instances of this man’s compulsive career of
lying, one sample that the media can readily check upon and
use as a touchstone – if they do need one - in assessing our
author’s multifaceted claims and commentaries on people and
events. I refer here to the grotesque and personally insulting
statement that he has attributed to me for some inscrutable
but obviously diversionary reasons. In the process, this past
Master of Mendacity brazenly implicates an innocent young
man, Akin Osuntokun, who once served him as a Special
Adviser. Instead of conferring dignity on a direct rebuttal of an
ignoble fabrication, I shall simply make a personal, all-
embracing attestation:
I despise that species of humanity whose stock-in-trade is to
concoct lies simply to score a point, win an argument, puff up
his or her own ego, denigrate or attempt to destroy a fellow
being. However, even within such deplorable species, a special
pit of universal opprobrium is surely reserved for those who
even lack the courage of their own lies, but must foist them on
others. When an old man stuffs a lie into the throat of an age-
mate of his own children - omo inu e! - we can only pity an
irredeemable egomaniac whose dotage is headed for twilight
disgrace.
D.O. Fagunwa, the pioneer Yoruba novelist, was a compulsive
moralist. I suspect that he may have exerted some influence
on our garrulous general, resulting in his pupil’s tedious,
misapplied and self-serving deluge of moralizing. It seems
quite likely indeed that the ghostly, moralistic hand of Fagunwa
reached out from the Great Beyond, sat his would-be
competitor forcefully before a mirror and bade him write what
he saw in that image. I invoke Fagunwa because, at his
commemorative colloquium in Akure in August last year, I
drew my audience’s attention to a remarkable passage in
Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare. The passage had struck me during
translation and stuck to my mind. I found it uncanny that the
original creative moralist, Fagunwa, had captured the
psychological profile of a being whom I have been compelled
by circumstances to study as an eerie creation, yet this was a
character Fagunwa was unlikely to have encountered in real
life at the time that he produced that work.
The section comes from an account of a visit to the abode of
Iku, Death, the terrifying host to Olowo-aiye, the narrative
voice of the adventure. Iku, the host, had been admonishing
his guests through the histories of seven creatures who were
not permitted a straightforward passage to Heaven or Hell, but
were subjected to admonitory punishment at the halfway
house to the abode of the dead. The most horrendous tortures
were reserved, it would seem, for the last of the seven such
‘detainees’, and I invited my audience to ponder if they could
identify any prominent individual, a public figure whose life
conduct seamlessly fitted into Fagunwa’s portrayal, which went
thus:
“The seventh…. is not among those who set out to improve the
world but rather to cause distress to its inhabitants. It was
through manipulations that he attained a high position. Having
achieved this however, he constantly blocked the progress of
those behind him, this being a most deplorable act in the eyes
of God, and rank behaviour in the judgment of the dwellers of
heaven – that anyone who has enjoyed upliftment in life
should seek to be an obstacle for those who follow him. This
man forgot the beings of earth, forgot the beings of heaven, in
turn, he forgot the presence of God. The worst kind of
behaviour agitated his hands – greed occupied the centre of
his heart, and he was a creature that walked in darkness. This
man wallowed in bribery, he was chairman of the circle of
scheming, head of the gang of double-dealing, field-marshal of
those who crept about in the dark of night. With his mouth, he
ruined the work of others, while he used a big potsherd to
cover the good works of some, that others might not see their
attainments. He nosed around for secrets that would entrap
his companions, and blew them up into monumental crimes in
the eyes of the world. He who turns the world upside down,
places the deceitful on the throne, casts the truthful down –
because such is a being of base earth, he will never stand as
equal among the uplifted.”
My co-occupants of the High Table, in side remarks, and those
who came up from the audience afterwards to volunteer their
answer to the riddle, without exception named one individual
and one individual only, even as I remained non-committal.
Indeed, one or two tried to put up a defence of that nominee,
and I had to remind them that I had named no one! Fagunwa
wrote largely of the world of mongrelized creatures but, as I
remarked, his fiction remains a prescient and cautionary
mirror of the society we inhabit, where beasts of the forest
appear to have a greater moral integrity than those who claim
to be leading lights of society.
In this season of goodwill, we owe a duty to our immediate
and distant neighbours: CAVEAT EMPTOR! Let all beware, who
try to buy a Rolex from this indefatigable watch peddler. His
own hand-crafted, uniquely personalized timepiece has been
temporarily confiscated by NDLEA and other guardians of
public health but, there is no cause for despair. Such has been
the fate of the misunderstood and the envied, avatars
descended from the heavens before their time, the seers, and
all who crave recognition. Our author invokes God tirelessly,
without provocation, without necessity and without
justification, perhaps preemptively, but does he really believe
in such an entity? Does our home-bred Double-O-Seven
believe in anything outside his own Omnipotency? Could he
possibly have mistaken the Christian exhortation – ‘Watch and
Pray’ for his private inclination to “Watch and Prey? This is a
seasoned predator on others’ achievements – he preys on
their names, their characters, their motivations, their true
lives, preys on gossip and preys on facts, preys on
contributions to collective undertakings…..even preys on their
identities, substituting his own where possible. Well, hopefully
he may actually believe in the inevitable End to all vanities? So,
let our Great Immortal, the Unparalleled Achiever, Divinely
appointed Watchman even on the world that is yet to come
remember Fagunwa’s Iku, the ultimate predator whose
visitation comes to us all, sooner or later.
Chei! There is Death o!
http://saharareporters.com/2014/12/24/watch-and-pray-watch-
and-prey-wole-soyinka

Wonderful piece....