When madmen issue ultimatums

“Who taught this King to be so wise? These daily presents are getting to be too heavy a charge on my exchequer now.”

That was the notorious 18th century Oyo Basorun  (military leader), Gaa, complaining about Alaafin Abiodun, a man whom at the height of his power he had enthroned in order to disgrace and kill like he had done to many others, but who had wearied him with daily obeisance and the customary gifts he (Gaa) was forced to part with. The king was “wise” because he worshipped the Basorun, ordinarily a mere appointee. In height Abiodun towered over Gaa but he daily kissed the ground at his (Gaa’s) feet, yet this eventually would not stop the haughty Basorun’s date with the gallows. Down and out, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi pleaded in his Samuel Doe moment: “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”. Gaa made more desperate pleas after his capture. When he issued many ultimatums and killed as he fancied, he didn’t know that he had mental disease. But he learned when the gallows closed in.

Of these men, Fuji lord Sikiru Ayinde chose Doe to capture the power of retribution. He sang of the head of a whole country slaughtered like an animal: “Ka p’omo eeyan bi eni peran, odidndi olori ilu, atunbotan le ri yen o.” Think about it: if you had asked Doe during his visit to Ronald Reagan on August 17, 1982 how he would wish to depart from this market, he would no doubt have spoken of old age and a golden casket. The man that The Gipper addressed at the South Portico of the White House, saying “It’s been a pleasure to welcome Liberian Head of State Samuel K. Doe on his first visit to the United States. It’s especially fitting that we should be meeting this year as the United States and Liberia celebrate 120 years of diplomatic relations,” suffered a fate worse than that of the elephant, on whose death day different varieties of knives typically surfaced in the memorable days gone by. At least the elephant was usually silenced before being butchered. Today, diminutive demons drained of strength through expired alcohol and lepers who will never be hosted by a councilor’s apprentice speak as if the skies pay them rent.

At the height of his power between the 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler, King of Aryan superiority, made many insane boasts: The Third Reich would last for a thousand years, Germany would become the dominant world power, The Nazi Party would eradicate communism and other perceived enemies of the state. In Volume 1, Chapter 11 of his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler wrote: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not a people… They are a people of robbers… They are a people of blood-suckers.” The man who sanctioned the description of Jews as rats and snakes would elaborate on this theme in a speech on January 30, 1939: “If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations of the world into a world war, then the result will be… the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Adolf Hitler issued many ultimatums: it did not stop him from suicide via cyanide. He ended his miserable life to begin the real journey of tears.

Lieutenant-General Oladipo Diya was sentenced to death by firing squad by a middling Malu in April 1998 and on that day when the ethnically unbalanced military government thought it had finally achieved its long-desired cleansing of the headache race, the demon who presided over state affairs must have drowned himself in women and wine–although let no one forget the Bard of Avon’s thesis that wine fuels the desire but takes away the performance —fully satisfied that he held the world in his pouch. But he died the death of disgrace less than two months later, some say after another orgy with transnational whores. The condemned man lived a quarter of a century after that terrible day, six more years than the man who pronounced the verdict.

 If anyone begs the masters of today, may his sun turn into thick darkness. No one begs a child not to contract leprosy: the case is closed so long as he can dwell alone in the thick forest. The motherless child needs no warning not to take a wound to the back. When ogulutu (lump of earth) strays into a river, it calms down even by natural choice. Cults high or supreme have no say on such issues: they cannot rush to judgment in aid of their bedmates. Nightfall will surely come bearing dreaded disease, far beyond the mental horizon of Mbuyiseni Mtshali: it’s called retribution. Proverbs to gown wits writing for a bottle of whiskey. Soyinka in his elements (in Madmen and Specialists): “Rem acu tetigisti.”

Nigerians have a tag for senseless moves: werey dey disguise. Some directors of companies have not read a book in 20 years.  Some restaurants betray no trace of change in 30 years: still the same boring old cuisine that condition forces patrons to wolf down in a flight of haste. IK Dairo, the Osun-born master of memorable lines, spoke of directors without offices or work places.  The problem of Nigeria is madmen with pots of money.

Strange things are happening: madmen issuing ultimatums, aided by cultists and years of corruption without comeuppance. Of course, madmen and women fill the length and breadth of this world but most of them are clothed. Confined to their Plato’s cave, they spend long hours disputing daily with their demons, plotting evil against sane people. By their boasting you will know them. Through brute force, they oppress sane people, recreating society in their lunatic image. I hear that madmen have pens and do sign documents. This tragedy will have many acts and many scenes. They will be so disgraced they will lace their bottoms with disgrace.

Here’s a scene from Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory: “He knelt down beside the dog and tried to take the bone away: the dog growled and snapped, showing his teeth. The priest laughed and said, ‘You are a fierce creature, aren’t you?’ He tried again, but the dog was too quick, and the bone was too precious.” A priest “dragging” a bone with a dog, yes. In Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, the pompous politician, Koomson, is forced to crawl through a filthy latrine, a potent metaphor for his moral decay and the corruption that pervades the Ghanaian society. Armah writes in Chapter 9 of his great novel: “The smell was the first thing, and it was overwhelming, a mixture of urine and excrement and sweat, the stench of corruption…He went down on his hands and knees…He crawled forward, his hands and knees sinking into the soft mess, and he was aware of the smell all around him, and the darkness, and the soft, wet, yielding mess beneath him.”  The corrupt politician confronts his own mortality, his symbolism as a cesspit to the Ghanaian society. Like in Achebe’s A man of the people, the madman must confront his own littleness.

Said Beatrice in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah: “This world belongs to the people of the world not to any little caucus, no matter how talented…”

“And particularly absurd when it is not even talented,” said Abdul.

Exactly. Proverbs to rivers of misery.

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