For Fubara, a sincere prayer

Juju maestro, Ebenezer Obey, has a message for people who make money in their dreams: work hard or face hunger. Truly, even those who have made it in life, those who in Chinua Achebe’s words have their kernels cracked by a benevolent spirit, need a reality check. As our people say, the world is fickle (aye fele). For Martin Amaewhule, speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, life couldn’t be grander at the moment. Validated by the Supreme Court, Amaewhule has been barking orders at the mortals down below his high horse of arrogance: the state governor, Siminalayi Fubara, the chair of the state electoral commission, etc. The orders carry the same timeline: 48 hours. And the same threat. But the speaker might want to press the pause button, because anyone rejoicing at a court judgment in Nigeria is like the man who made money in his dream: he must work hard or come into poverty. And this is because, these days, the courts operate by the principle of adalu (mixture).

Adalu is the Yoruba maize and beans pottage, and the name literally means mixture. Now, in Yoruba wisdom, you can never validly complain of finding stones or other unpleasant material in adalu, a delicacy traditionally hawked in the neighbourhoods. The reasoning is simple: the seller plainly told you what she was selling (adalu/mixture), so how can you complain about the contents? And so, court judgments being adalu, you can wake up tomorrow and find illegality where you once thundered legality. Over to the erudite lawyer, Olisa Agbakoba, famous for declaring the current apex court the worst in his 45 years of legal practice. Agbakoba said two years ago: “I have lost a bit of confidence in what the courts have been doing lately. There was a time you could say oh, on the facts and the law, this is the likely outcome; today you cannot because there have been all kinds of silly decisions. The silliest was that concerning the President of the Senate, who in order to become Nigeria’s president rushed off to buy the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and that meant he did not take part in the senatorial primaries.” Here’s the Bard of Avon speaking in Measure for Measure: “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” That summarizes the River State tragedy.

Around the world, evidence is rife that those we call judges/justices aren’t a holy breed delivering the oppressed from their task masters. No, they are game players who reason like the waves of the sea: shifting, troubled, dangerous. I will obey any judge; what I won’t do is love or value them. They lost that right long ago, issuing terrible, ridiculous judgments that will make even the grand old Lucifer, the lord of lies, to flinch with envy. I mean, how do you address people who catapulted the fourth-placed athlete in a race to number one, minting chaos in the affected land? How do you describe people who meddle in things that do not concern them, speak like politicians, and strengthen political bandits in their desperado voyages? These wigged politicians are adept, like the Yoruba would say, at mixing luru (miyan kuka, baobab leaf, a Hausa soup) with isapa (Roselle/red sorrel), a delicacy of the Oduduwa household; they are masters of dissimulation who hardly inspire any sense of justice. I know enough about Nigeria to realise that hardly any court judgment is about justice; everyone does what they like, when they like and how they like.

Yes the oppressors have tons of money looted from a long-suffering populace, and at their ready service you find ill-bred publicists abusing their grandparents’ age mates to earn more bags of money with which to drink and whore themselves to death. It is a death sentence—the death at least of morals and a life after the present assignment—to work for haughty clowns. It lifts you high up in the clouds and lacerates your memory, till you forget the cotton head of age and call your grandfather’s age mates fools. It unmasks your entire career as a farce, putting whatever good you have previously done in the tray of coincidence. I am well bred and will not speak for oppressors. No, not even when they flaunt money like the horse-riders of yesterday, the village moneymen who in the local proverb do not cease behaving like brutes. A fool and his money are soon parted, and whiskey and whores are the cause. You see, when you work for clothed lunatics, you become ethically and morally unclothed, looking like sour soup. In the end, you have no profit.

Fellow Nigerians, have you seen how a state governor is being treated like a house boy just because of the depraved lusts of an ex-governor? How can it be right that a man who had his own time in Government House unchallenged by anyone would now throw the same state into chaos just to build a power path towards the presidency? How can an ex-governor control a state that has a sitting governor? Please let no one tell me about a verdict by adalu kings, the masters of dissimulation who call evil good and good evil. On what sane planet does a speaker bark orders at a governor? Are we all supposed to be silent because of money?

Hear constitutional lawyer, Professor Anthony Agbazuere: “The Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction over local government elections. The first panel to sit on such matters is chaired by a magistrate, and the highest appellate body is the state High Court. Just as National Assembly election cases terminate at the Court of Appeal, local government election disputes do not reach the Supreme Court.” Well, remember the law of adalu. Somebody, in future, will in fact argue that it is the apex court, which just gave a carte blanche to state lawmakers to do whatever they please with the people’s mandate, that in fact ought to conduct LG elections!!

This week, Mr Amaewhule, drunk with his apex court validation, tore Governor Fubara to shreds for going to church and quoting the Bible. In a video shared by Symfoni TV, he stated: “He walks up to the church and kneels down and asks them to pray for him. He will start quoting Philippians Chapter 3 and other verses of the Bible.” Amaewhule is querying Fubara’s faith. Even if he was sent the errand of a slave, why not deliver it like a freeborn? Does a speaker of a house of assembly have to descend so low? Amaewhule kept railing at the “govono”, his rage barely disguised. Mr Speaker is suggesting that Fubara is a hypocrite and he is the genuine Christian. Alright, His Holiness Bishop Speaker!

My prayer for Governor Fubara: May God deliver you from wicked men. I hope the Rivers people are taking note of the desecration of their land and the erosion of its symbol, and will stand by their governor through thick and thin. Governor Fubara, from the get go, has been treated with utmost indignity by the puppets of a parrot. Stay strong, brother.

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