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THE DEATH OF A TOWN CRIER
EKIKO INYANG

A REVIEW OF INTERVENTIONS I, BY WOLE SOYINKA
BOOKCRAFT, IBADAN, 2005

It is as though we are assembled in a town hall, listening to a funeral oration by Wole Soyinka. His friend, Bola Ige, the Attorney-General of your country, has been assassinated!

Bola Ige, your assailants invaded your home just when the country was about to celebrate Christmas and muffled you up to death. Only to attend your funeral and pollute ‘‘the register of condolences with the abomination of their names.’’

 Little would you think of the biography of your country’s watchman of justice. But no! He was ‘‘a town crier.’’ Would you tell me you never did hear his voice, once? Even as he went about ‘‘decrying injustice’’ with a vision of that which was ‘‘the harmonizing of diverse communities.’’ They knew him everywhere, even beyond our lands. You would say, “No wonder, he was inducted into the International Law Commission of the United Nations.” You must’ve seen him once in a synod of the World Council of Churches, a position which he used to battle against “the iniquities of Apartheid South Africa’’.

Soyinka rubs his emotions on almost every strain of words written in this essay. But they seem to proceed, you might say, from much thinking. ‘‘And still, they killed him,’’ he writes. ‘‘Why?’’ Soyinka asks you. ‘‘Why did they kill this man whose battlefield lay solely in the realms of ideas’’ he asks you again? But you couldn’t just do anything!

Since his assassination was one which was political, you may not regard him differently from the pie-brain politicians under whose bullets he fell. Did you? Not until now that you are informed that he was a “communicant at the altar of the Arts,’’ just to ‘‘renew himself’’from the blind obsession that comes with politics. Since his own politics wasn’t of blood but of reasoning.

After all, it appears that we must accept to bid farewell to the departed. That’s what Soyinka does as he closes this essay: ‘‘Farewell. Walk tall among the ancestors,” he tells comrade Ajibola Ige.

As if to stir you into mutiny, as did Antony to the Romans after his oration on the assassination of Caesar, so would Soyinka’s second essay “Dancing on Ige’s Grave.” But to be honest, even if you have the impulse, would you march into the sanctuary of the PDP stalwarts, the ruling party Soyinka accuses of Ige’s death, and tear them to pieces? Avenging the death of your slain minister of Justice? Like the Romans over Brutus’s dagger on Caesar. ‘‘I am convinced, beyond any further doubt, that there exists within the ruling party, a nest of murderers.’’ Don’t you think so? Soyinka incites you with this fact which is strongly supported by the heroic treatment lavished on the prime suspect, a member of PDP. While in prison custody, he contested and outrightly won an election into the highest legislative body of your country.

You are so surprised because it is never said that the ‘‘candidate’’ for once did campaign. How come, you may ask, even as he was ‘‘pronounced victorious in the very home town of the victim,’’ Bola Ige? As you are yet to recover from this political miracle you see the prime suspect Iyiola Omisore together with his psychopathic supporters proceed to dance on the victim’s grave! Only for the president of your country, General Olusegun Obasanjo, to say that, an accused person is presumed innocent until found guilty. Can you swallow that, if you look at the spirit behind the president’s citing of that legal rule and not the rule itself?

You’re only reminded of Omisore as one whose history is recorded with violence. Once, he assaulted Bola Ige by removing Ige’s hat from his head right in the royal presence of the Ooni of Ife. And afterwards told the whole world that Ige was “very lucky that it wasn’t his head,’’ and you didn’t do anything about it. Neither did you, Ooni, criticize this impudence in your palace.

Yet, Nigerians, you saw how the PDP went ahead to endorse Omisore as the only qualified person to represent his constituency at the highest law making body of your country. You may ask, ‘‘what manner of a genius’’ is this man? Is it that the party would’ve collapsed had he not been elected?

Some of you were fed bread with a naira note stuck into it. This broke your resistance. You were even mindless about how cheaply you were bought over. For the poor, mostly, were ‘‘bribed’’ and the ‘‘die hard antagonists’’ were brought into “submission” by use of violence. After all, you must’ve thought, “What does it matter if I trade a vote for a loaf of bread rather than receiving nothing at the end of their tenure?” Forget all they preach about conscience and fill your stomach with what you’re offered presently.

Later you would, although INEC would’ve helped by disqualifying some of these ‘‘uncultured’’ politicians. It only troubles your mind when you remember that today, Omisore’s a lawmaker! He’s even the ‘‘chairman’’ of a very important committee in the house. Even Sani Abacha’s propagandist, Wade Nas, says in an interview that ‘‘any law made with the input of Omisore would have the imprint of blood.’’ Did you hear that? Or is the shame brought upon by Ngige and his godfather Uba in your country, not fresh in your memory? A place where a ‘‘mercenary’’ can stand as a candidate in an election. And INEC, before the eyes of the world would “award certificate’’ to this candidate who’s a cheat? You must’ve been thinking very little of INEC by now.

Soyinka concludes Interventions I with a postscript “Not Yet Judgment Day!”

From Omisore’s assault on Ige to the ‘‘ambiguous remarks’’ offered by the Ooni of Ife on the issue and then to the eventual assassination of Ige. Afterwards you’re taken down all the way through the ‘‘melodrama’’ and puppet game between one lawyer, Festus Keyamo, and the ‘‘alleged fugitive,’’ one Olugbenga Adebayo (alias Fryo). The wife of the slain Attorney General has a ‘‘heart attack’’ in the court over the several dangerous lies told by a witness. And then, she dies a few hours later. Followed by this is the death of the chief prosecutor who slumps in London. Isn’t the whole thing becoming mysterious to you? Then as expected, Omisore is acquitted on health grounds and quickly resumes office as a lawmaker. ‘Fryo’, too, is equally left a freeman. The case file is shoved under the shelf. The matter’s ended!

But remember: ‘‘a verdict has been pronounced… justice has yet to be served.’’

EKIKO ITA holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.