Buhari and Fayose’s song of the spirits

IT is to the eternal shame of the forest if the elephant eats and is not satisfied. The forest should be ashamed unless it lacks shame. President Muhammadu Buhari’s plane is permanently parked somewhere in London. So what? Nigeria is not an ordinary country that can be poisoned with potions of poverty. The president of Nigeria is not the president of that arid country called Niger Republic. In that country, living from hand to mouth is national portion. You said the plane ought to have just dropped the president and returned to Abuja. You forgot Buhari is our president, not the president of a cooperative society somewhere in Mushin. Our king is the elephant, the one who moves and his Villa moves with him. The elephant is not that ordinary being with an air of ordinariness. Nigeria has a history with footsteps of a past of giant morsels and heavy faeces. Wherever we land, the world notices us. Our scent (and stench) of opulence never misses the nose of the earth. Nigeria does not fail to hoist its flag anywhere it lands, whatever the cost. That plane in that London airport is our national pride, a clear statement that golden trips are not the exclusive preserve of the oil sheiks of the Middle East.

You are angry because the president’s plane counts days in a golden port in London and the parking bills are piling high as Mount Everest. So? What is wrong with that? Is it your money? Do you pay tax? A truly big man does truly big things. Nigeria is the giant of Africa. The president is the country; he deserves the best money can buy. If the president is not the person in London with the NAF 001, who else would? But you are like Governor Ayodele Fayose – you complain per second. What really can your complaint amount to? The king is the elephant, you are that creeper standing in his way. You have forgotten that obstructing plants must follow the elephant to its destination. Tell your hunter to stop aiming his catapult at the mountain. Even the hunter’s father never snapped his magic fingers at the king of the jungle.

Fayose must be the most frustrated opposition figure in Nigerian history. Nothing aches the village teacher more than beating a tearless pupil. The Ekiti State governor has Buhari as a major project. He warned us against electing him in 2015. We ignored him. He attacks the president daily, the presidency everyday ignores him. And some days ago, he climbed the mahogany of the village square with the alanteere song. Alanteere is the dirge from the dutiful who polishes the homestead to perfection and thereafter needs a bath. He has to choose between doing it at home (as suggested by his father) and going to the stream as counselled by the mother. He goes to the stream and tragically meets Oluweri, the water spirit. He meets three other gods – one, a hunchback, the second, a cripple and the third, deaf and dumb. Fayose sang of the king going to the stream to bathe and getting stuck there with the spirits of the depths. He sang as if the president won’t come back from the London stream after this long medical bath. He said the president was on life support where he is seeking health. Fayose’s song was riddle in the ears of the market – buyers and sellers pretended not hearing him. It was needle in the ears of the president’s men. Everyone appears inured to Fayose’s noise. But APC boss, John Odigie-Oyegun promised Thursday night that “the appropriate people will answer him at the appropriate level and at the appropriate time.” That was after he described the Ekiti strongman’s politics as not meant for decent people. That promise should scare every bard who has plied his trade of insults into the realm of unforgiving spirits. But this governor answers a personal oriki that casts him as partaker in meals meant for the gods. He won’t be bothered and won’t stop complaining that the president is ill and is abroad.

We are the forest and it is our duty to feed the elephant to its satisfaction. We cannot whine now about the cost of treating an ailing president. The elephant does not eat millipedes and centipedes. Earthworms are food for miserable fishes dwelling in shallow waters. The president of Nigeria deserves the very best money can provide. The elephant eats kingly meals of the forest. When the elephant is sick, the forest feels the pangs; even the moon responds by wobbly orbiting a sickly star. We are very sick. That is why this king’s treatment is in heavenly realms. You cannot treat the elephant’s illness with herbs and roots meant for the kangaroo. No. It has to be with the best caregivers anywhere they reside. Should it then be in London? Why not? Is London no longer the capital of the world? Find out, it is still that Garden of Eden where all sovereigns renew their strength to serve their people better.

And a lot of thanks to the president’s spokesman, Garba Shehu. He saved a lot of souls from unnecessary online wars over the location of the jet. It is in London. Parked and resting, crew and cockpit. If you like, continue to count the days it is spending there. We are counting too. But it is not true that the parking gulps £4,000 per day. Ordinarily, it shouldn’t be more than a paltry £1,000 every morning. You can reconfirm from Google. So, how much really, in specific terms, are we spending on this treatment project? Google can’t help you here. You may have to take your own flight to London and ask the medicine men. They have the records. When is the president leaving that chamber? Why are you in a hurry? Should the groom become a drooling giraffe stealing a furtive glance at the bride? Easy! When the Elephant enters the forest, the rumbling of the jungle will announce his arrival. And after this cup has passed, what again for us? Did you get the notice in Garba Shehu’s concluding sentence? I read his fingers as he dropped the hint: parking well and staying long abroad did not start with Buhari – and it won’t end with him.