Lekan Sote (lekansote@yahoo.com)
The most public aspects of this King Babu are his absent-mindedness toward his responsibilities, and his fastidious attendance to details about things that affect his person, his family, political friends, and his ethnic constituency. To him, what touches us shall first be served, contrary to Julius Ceaser, who thinks otherwise.
It may seem contrary too that a man is at the same time goofy, appearing not to know what he is about, and is yet adroit, with a keen sense of detail, about things that concern him. Those who are versed in literary figures of speech, say this is an oxymoron.
Anyway, King Babu is unlike Wole Soyinka’s creation, assembled from character flaws of infantile Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic and sadist President Idi Amin of Uganda, both reported by the devilish Western media as enamoured of human flesh, kept in the refrigerator, ahead of supper. You can believe this to your detriment.
This is King Babu of Wakanda, by the Niger. He has no scruples promoting only his own, after he has indulged the more daring of his own, who employ every impunity to harm significant others who share the same geographical and political space, but not the ethnic bloodlines, as they do.
Even when the social media is awash with stories and photographs of his kinsmen being clandestinely transported in droves, during a lockdown, across states’ boundaries, while hiding in the hollows of cement mixers, petrol tanks, and containers affixed to articulated vehicles, in the manner of the Trojan Horse, King Babu is unperturbed. Maybe he is happy about it.
When King Babu’s kinsmen are shipped like African migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Southern Europe, but accompanied by large caches of arms and live ammunition, King Babu doesn’t talk. Maybe it is true that his kinsmen and their arms are being strategically positioning for what the future victims fear is an advance party to coming mayhem.
Some busybodies are wondering why this new influx of able-bodied, but unskilled, young men into another part of Wakanda, especially when the Okada commercial motor bikes and the Marwa commercial tricycles have been banned or restricted in those regions.
As King Babu is comfortable with that aspect of Wakanda’s Constitution, which guarantees freedom of movement, he seems oblivious of the other aspect that restricts movement of individuals where public security, public safety, and public health, are threatened.
He found it very convenient and expedient to impose lockdowns and curfews on regions that serve as economic hub of Wakanda, but turns a blind eye to his kinsmen who observed the communal prayers after the Ramadan.
King Babu will not like to be reminded that even as he had no qualms locking down the seat of power of Wakanda, he needed to ensure compliance with the restrictions that he graciously imposed on interstate travels. Maybe all animals are not equal.
When locking down some parts of Wakanda, he switches to the unitary mode of governance, but when those from regions of his ethnic group flout the restriction orders, he remembers that Wakanda is a federation.
Some bad people say he suffers from deliberate forgetfulness, or selective amnesia. Those who look at things in a more positive way say he has selective remembrance. Remember the back-and-forth between those who think a glass cup is half empty, and those who insist it is half full. Well, let that be as it may.
There is a raging argument going on in the kingdom, over King Babu’s resolve to never wear a nose mask, not even for the camera. His disdain for nose masks came into sharp relief when his former boss as Chief of Army Staff, General Theo, visited him in his Household Rock official residence.
Whilst his former boss observed the required protocol of wearing the nose mask, King Babu, as is his wont, was pointedly sans nose mask. People are now wondering whether King Babu doesn’t believe there is such a thing called coronavirus.
More mischievous people think he just wants to impress his once-in-a-while telephone caller, America’s President Donald Trump, who has made not wearing a nose mask a cardinal state policy so that CNN journalists with caustic tongues will have no opportunity to ridicule him.
But generous people contend that King Babu does not wear nose marks because he is smarter than most people, who inhale both the poisonous carbon dioxide and the irritatingly foul smell that they just exhaled from their nostrils, and is trapped in the nose mask. You can see that King Babu is smarter than his subjects, whom he must want to be killing softly under their own breath.
Some even come up with a political explanation: King Babu needs to demonstrate that he is as fit as a fiddle, after he providentially overcame the many illnesses that plagued his first few years in office. This, they argue, is a ploy to convince Wakanda that he is good to run beyond his immediate term.
But no one is willing to swear to that. These things are only in the realm of speculation, and cannot be verified. Somebody has thrown up his hands in resignation, saying, until then. Another has put it slightly differently. He says, let’s wait and see. Those deft in the use of the English language say both are saying the same thing. It may well be so.
Maybe if you join the two phrases, to read, “Seeing is believing, but until then,” you may get a better perspective on what these mischievous people are insinuating about a honest-to-God man, whose admirers call, Mai gaskiya, the incorruptible.
If you don’t get it, maybe you shouldn’t worry. King Babu may not really like to tarry too long in the Household Rock. He may be eager to spend his last days in a place called Dar-es-Aura, in company with his grandchildren, far removed from the cacophony, feints, and skulduggeries of politics.
Back to the story of the young lads who defy the lockdown order, and continue to move across state boundaries, whilst King Babu is playing pretend. Those who have watched the movie, Hotel Rwanda, say there is cause to worry.
They recall how people of one ethnic group imported pangas, or machetes, that they intended to use in cutting up compatriots who are of the other ethnic stock. These fellows also used state machinery to import guns. Maybe there is an answer for the cautious, who query the movement of men, and what seem to be war materiel, moving clandestinely in the dead of night.
Well, this King Babu, an oxymoron of artless innocence and artful dodger, should conduct an open investigation to explain these movements, and swiftly halt the movement to give assurances of safety to compatriots that are not of his own ethnic stock.
As you can see, this King Babu is not the same as Wolé Soyinka’s King Babu. Someone says he is King Bubu. Some very daring individuals offer something like King Buha! But that is not a very comfortable invention. It’s too close to the name of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), the President of Nigeria.
Please remember that this story is about King Babu of Wakanda, by the Niger. Resemblances to circumstances and characters in Nigeria exist only in the minds of the foolish.
– Twitter @lekansote
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