Kanu: A parody
Nnamdi Kanu’s hot air reminds one of Adolf Hitler’s historic rebuff of that Brito-French ‘appeasement’ policy (under the Munich Pact) signed by Europe to avert a Second World War -which the German Furrher’s land grab was about to cause. And although the Pact had ‘bribed’ Hitler with the choicest part of Czechoslovakia which he had claimed was Germany’s, Hitler was still not appeased. He wanted the ‘whole’ and not just a ‘part’ of it. And his eventual invasion of Poland would soon prove the futility of the ‘appeasement policy’ as an effective tool for the pacification of warmongers in order to avert war.
And like Hitler, we saw that Kanu was also belligerently ‘mutinous in peace’, -insulting all and rebuffing all entreaties to moderate his irredentist demands and to submit to the rigours of the due democratic process.
Ironically the one who claimed ‘victim’ in the aftermath of that Military’s ‘show of force’ had always been on an ethno-centric verbal ‘show of force’. He was announcing lethal weapons he intended to use to annihilate us all; and he was glorifying –like Hitler did the Aryan race- the Igbos as having a divine Judean right to kill us all and to inherit the vineyard. Pity, Kanu was to be out-shown, by a non-venomous ‘dancing python’, even in the very ‘show of force’ that he had originally provoked.
And like Hitler, Kanu too had arrogated to himself the prerogative to re-draw Nigeria’s borders and to carve out a preeminent Biafra as a nation with a Judean mind that will not be averse to future land grab. South-ward he had his mind on Bayelsa, and Rivers states to the open sea. And up North he had added Benue as icing on the cake of a possible future conquest to the heart of a greater Nigeria. In fact the way he was sniffing Kogi, it was a matter of time, Kanu would find a recessive ancestral gene to link it to the ‘land of the rising sun’. For a man who had traced the Igbo ancestry across two races, it would be even easier to do so within the black race.
Revolutionaries would say ‘give us liberty or give us death!’ but Kanu would say: ‘give me Biafra or I’ll kill you all!’ And you wondered, if he was this mightily strong, shouldn’t he have just taken Biafra off the map instead of demanding that we give him? Besides, as he was this violently ‘mutinous in peace’, would you not have thought that Kanu should be mightily ‘bold in war’. But no; even before the beagle of war was blown, and the alarum of battle sounded, the man whose ‘sneeze’ had allegedly given ‘cold’ to the ‘zoo’ he called Nigeria, had already fled. Kanu had caught the ‘courage’ of the ‘cowardly dog’. Or as the Hausas would say: ‘yaa ari ta kare’! to prove that he is after all a coward.
If I had not known -on and off line- many detribalised Igbo friends, colleagues and acquaintances, who are true to one Nigeria, and who believe that the Igbos need ‘all’ of us no less than ‘all’ of us need the Igbos, I would fain have said without fear of contradiction: ‘scratch every Igbo man and you’ll find a Biafran; or scratch every Biafran and you’ll find an IPOB man’. And as I do not intend to miff the feelings of these true Igbo brothers of mine, I will not also agonise over the anguish it may cause others.
Kanu loved the language of war. And he loved the prospect of battle. And why not? –because ‘having nothing at home, nothing can he lose’. Thus he had presented to the nation a fait accompli: ‘head, we go to war; tail, we go to war also’. A Hobson’s choice it was: to ‘draw’ the sword first against the enemies of state, or to wait to pull the shield to defend after we have been wounded. But the army did neither. It did not strike, and it did not wait to be struck. It did only what it had to do, namely a ‘show of force. Because ‘there is no virtue, they say, like necessity’; and ‘Strong reasons, always make strong actions’. The army had rolled itself out as a moving ‘caveat gladiatus’, and the body language was legible: ‘gladiator beware, you are about to perch on the lips of a lion!
But then they said that the army was aggressing an ‘innocent’ citizen, Kanu who was ‘only going about his lawful business’ -threatening ‘death’ and ‘destruction’ to all and inciting ‘tribes’ against ‘tongues’, religion against religion! They were not ashamed to ‘apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief’. They said that the army had no right to a ‘show of force’. That it is ultra vires its constitutional powers so to do. Besides, they also accused the army of applying excessive force: using a sledge hammer to kill a ‘fly’.
So now the big ugly King Kong, Kanu, who was egged on by kith and kin to drop the bomb on us all, suddenly was now an ‘innocent David’, with only a ‘catapult’, a ‘pebble’ and the ‘finger’ of God, to fight the accursed, Goliath. And poor despised Goliath was said to be guilty of the offense of ‘overkill’ by merely brandishing his ‘tendons’ and his ‘biceps’-to an opponent who was ‘one with God’, with a ‘catapult’ and a ‘pebble’ to boot!’
But in truth ‘war takes all vantages’; and it is the reason they say: ‘ten to one is not necessarily an impeach of valor’? The army has the right to kill ‘fly’ with a sledge hammer if letting that ‘fly’ be can lead us all to Golgotha. Besides, did jurists not say: ‘silent legis, inter arma’ –that the laws are silent amidst the rumbling of arms. ‘When heaven weeps’ the question is asked, ‘does not the earth overflow?’ Or ‘If the wind rages, does not the sea wax mad?’ So did Kanu not call for a downpour? Yes, he did! But has it even showered yet? In truth it has only drizzled’! Yet they say that the gods are wicked -sending the ‘drizzle’ on a man who had called for a ‘downpour’. What would the gods have been guilty of if they had sent forth Kanu’s request for a downpour?
Or did Kanu not insist on a whirlwind? Even though what he has reaped so far is a mere storm in a tea-cup? And what would the gods have been guilty of if they had sent a hurricane?
But now we can see that ‘every cloud, truly, engenders not a storm’. Because the man who once spoke of ‘death’ as though he was the maker of ‘life’, now claims he is an apostle of non-violence and an advocate of unarmed struggle. He has denied preaching violence and he has repudiated the claim that his mob was armed.
Who will deny that their complot was to see that the blood of the ‘innocent’ manure the earth; and that ‘peace’ was banished to go sleep with the Turks and with the Tartars. So that disorder, horror, fear and mutiny inhabit us all; and this once peaceful land of ours now becomes the ‘field of Golgotha’ and the ‘graveyard of dead men’s sculls’.
But true Nigerians -Igbos, Yorubas, Hausa-Fulanis and the rest- seem to say in unison, now: ‘no more the thirsty entrance of this soil shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood; no more shall trenching war channel her fields, nor bruise her flowers with the armed hoofs of hostile paces. The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, no more shall cut the nation by its hip.
Let truth be told: Biafra is a high hope for a low heaven. Such tiny speck of interlocked piece of earth; half the size of my little Niger State, is beneath the merchandising prowess of these self-acclaimed Judeans. Who will buy from who? And who will sell to who?
And if truth be told, leaders and elders of Igboland, spiritual as well as temporal, have proved but one thing to be true, that they are like that proverbial ‘ewe’ which because it is so hard of hearing that it ‘will not hear her lamb when it baes’, it is not expected that ‘it will ever answer a calf when it bleats’. In his rage and in his fury; in his wrath, and in his madness, it is the elders of the East that have allowed Kanu’s little fires to grow into a conflagration .
For, as they say, the wiseman’s folly is anatomised always even by the squandering glances of the fool. The East is in dire need of leadership –culturally and politically.
They called it Operation ‘Python Dance’. And I thought that they should have called it Operation ‘Panther Dance’ –as in: lion, tiger or leopard; cougher, puma or jaguar. Because although I know neither ‘pythons’ nor ‘panthers’ to be dancers by inclination, nonetheless panthers with their sprightly legs and swag-able waist are more suited to dance than pythons can. But maybe I am only fixated with the rhythmic waist-swag of Mophasa’s son Simba in that cartoon ‘The Lion King’, when in the company his adopted family he sings and dances to ‘ha-ku-na-ma-ta-ta ’.
But what pythons do very well besides dancing metaphorically in make-belief military ‘show of force’, is grow monstrous appetites and eat humongous preys that dare to underestimate their capacity to predate. Like their cousins -‘anaconda’ and ‘boa’, (nicknamed the ‘constrictor’), pythons are non-venomous. Meaning from birth, they have no ulterior motive to harm the world; and that unlike other venomous snakes, they harbour neither malice nor prejudice to others. But, like all other animals, they have to fulfill the purpose for which they are born into the world: to eat, to sleep and to procreate.
And for that they are blessed with a size and strength that no one dares to mess with. Even as they seem slovenly sloppy and docile, pythons stretch and constrict preys larger than their body width into a pathetic roll of snacky sausage –often horns and all.
In the feasts of pythons almost every carefree creature is a potential prey –from as cantankerous as wild boars to as audacious as humongous crocodiles. Man or beast, all is meal that comes to the python’s belly. The French born British writer Hilaire Belloc, in ‘More Beasts for Worse Children’, put this quality in flowing verse when he said “I had an aunt in Yucatan, who bought a python … and kept it for a pet. She died because she never knew, these simple little rules and few –The snake is living yet.”
But in their ‘patience’ and not in their rapacity are pythons and panthers famed. Said American writer Jack London, in ‘The Call of the Wild’, “There is a patience of the wild…. that holds motionless for endless hours the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade”. Yet pythons are even stealthier than panthers. To pythons exclusively belong ‘coils’ and ‘constriction’. And to both pythons and panthers belong ‘ambuscade’ and ‘suffocation’. To pythons too exclusively belong ‘beguiling’ and ‘camouflage’. Panthers are swift, sprightly and deadly. Pythons are docile, sloppy but lethal. Pythons are soldierly, panthers are mercenary.
Man has lived with pythons for thousands of years. He treats them with both fear and reverence. Those who take them for granted are the most likely to meet their doom. Coming from a mythical giant serpent in Greek mythology, the python is worshiped as a ‘protective spirit’. Only those who deny its spiritual mojo are exempt from the cover of its grace. The python’s dance is metaphorical –announcing that although it comes in peace, it is able also to war. The python’s dance is not physical. It is in the mind only of the giddy trespasser who may have to be taught the lesson of life.
Beware the tiny little python’s ‘head’. If you think that it cannot nip an ant, wait until the proverbial ‘camel pass through the eye of this needle-like head’! In that little head are extra normal rows of teeth, visible only to the circumspect. Not to the arrogant bombast who may be doomed to be the ‘camel’…!
QUOTE:
But now we can see that ‘every cloud, truly, engenders not a storm’. Because the man who once spoke of ‘death’ as though he was the maker of ‘life’, now claims he is an apostle of non-violence and an advocate of unarmed struggle. He has denied preaching violence and he has repudiated the claim that his mob was armed.
By Mohammed Adamu
