One does not need to do a dramatic survey of our country to know that it is a place where supreme evil thrives.
Perhaps we should state straightaway that a trip to other historical and geographical environments outside ours may help to elucidate our focus/concern here.
There is hardly a country in this our crazy world where there is no evil.
One form or the other of evil is everywhere in this or that country; in fact, this has always been the case and will be the case sempiternally or till sempiternity.
Very recently, and the matter is still brewing like a smoking storm, we learnt of the horrifically brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian dissident journalist and Washington Post, U.S. columnist in Istanbul, Turkey.
A smoking saw sawed him to nothingness after he was violently forced to breathe his last air in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Instanbul where he was conned into.
What was his offence? Khashoggi, who Time Magazine has, among other journalists, just announced as its “person of the year,” was a compellingly frank and nicely brutal critic of his country’s tyrannical fanatic universally known as MBS, initials of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Of course, tyrannical fanaticism has polluted our world. It has always done so.
There are several examples to cite in this wise. But I will only cite one instance to end the digression.
It was a stupid colonial case; a stupid colonial case familiar to many a student of what has gone into African colonial history as Belgian Congo.
Patrice Lumumba (1925-61), Congolese statesman and first prime minister of Democratic Republic of the Congo (now Zaire – 1960) was assassinated in 1961 mainly on account of his anti-colonial steadfastness – which spoke volumes of the loveliness of the colour of Africa’s courage and its rising sun. Lumumba’s body was never found.
Smoking acid consigned it to the grave of nonexistence.
Jamal Khashoggi’s case compels us to recall the just cited one of supreme evil in colonial Congo of the wicked Belgians who epitomised the whole unwholesomeness of Saudi Arabia in Instanbul. Jamal Khashoggi’s body will never be found.
Journalists, columnists, beware! Nigerian journalists and columnists must hearken even as they possess the intense desire to practise with candour and courage their trade and art within the framework of their sacred duty and commitment to truth and the public.
But we are still kind of lucky here. Ours may be a country where supreme evil reigns in our age, our real age of insensitivity.
Ours may be a country of reptilian presidency, all cold and dry feeling and reason, but we are still lucky so far, as our journalists and columnists still use their respective languages of thought to express, in verb-tenses, the peculiar peculiarities of our country in the present time without experiencing the peculiar demerit of reptilian fanaticism; but this luck may not last for long.
We must urgently learn and perfect the art of shoulders-and-back-watching. We must neglect nothing in wrenching ourselves free from what is to come.
A prophecy? Take it how you will, but don’t be damned.
If all is well or not well, our society will enter soon a real period of decadence which only might end when our human existence disappears. Next year is crucial for us, for our country.
The substance of this I must keep in abeyance. But a hint of the addition to the supreme decadence that shall soon be our lot was given us two Sundays ago.
Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu created what I wish to call a scene of debauchery when some big personages of our politics visited, on his invitation, his Catholic ministry’s organized bazaar.
The important persons who are more than important persons included Peter Obi, vice-presidential candidate of the once-upon-a-time inglorious Peoples’ Democratic Party, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, current governor of Kano State, who allegedly received five million dollars gratification from contractors, and Hope Uzodinma, Imo State APC gubernatorial hopeful of the Oshiomhole faction.
The latter two august politicians did not flinch when the almighty Mbaka commanded them to give what certainly is not God’s to his ministry.
They did not flinch to give what they gave because they are psychically/psychologically troubled men. They are emotionally troubled men who needed the assurance of the all-powerful seer to calm their nerves.
The Muslim governor wanted badly the spiritual charm of Mbaka to save him from the clutches of his political detractors, whether or not he is guilty of the bribe allegation against him.
Uzodinma, on the other hand, wanted Mbaka’s holy mouth to make it possible for Okorocha to share tea and cakes and ices with him after all that transpired between them.
In other words, once Mbaka uttered the words and incantations he must utter he, Uzodinma, would prevail over Okorocha and the force of crisis would turn into the stream of tea and cakes and ices – meaning the stream of collaborative gubernatorial victory drinks, doughs and candies.
Whether Mbaka is real or not real does not matter to the desperate politicians who must benefit from both Mammon and mammon.
After all, ours is a society of supreme evil that we have witnessed in many a church/ worshipping place in the land.
Now, the other politician of real political clout and economic means declined to do what his colleagues of a rival political party did. Peter Obi refused to swallow Mbaka’s bait hook-line-and-sinker.
And he refused to be cowed or conned by the omnipotent Mbaka’s prophecy of political failure, defeat and doom in next year’s presidential election.
Whether or not we accept Obi’s politics, his radical rejection of Mbaka’s open-church crunch debauchery and the bauch beam of the Catholic Reverend Father’s presidential electoral prophecy had demonstrated that the odds are that Obi is not power-drunk or power-mad.
The encounter has proved decisive: many are aghast at Mbaka’s conduct and have questioned rightly his priestly conduct, viewing him as not different from yahoo boys who want to “hammer” and are “hammering” by all means in this country of supreme evil – where a presumably psychasthenic boy recently in Edo State murdered his mother and thereafter made love to her in the ghoulish hope of becoming stinking rich. What an offensive-smelling weed of a son!
My chief concern here must get home. Ejike Mbaka has the right – if he so desires – to con or dupe his gullible clients or to try out his slanders in his sermons – but at a price: he must face our country’s rule of law if and whenever he is found out.
But nobody must assassinate him for his conduct, political views, acerbic expressions and political prophecies, whether they are very nice or not very nice.
Indeed, the press report of the failed attempt on the Catholic priest’s life must be condemned in no ambiguous/equivocal terms.
If killers, assassins or terminators go after priests, pastors and prophets and send them to cemeteries, it would negate the spirit of our democracy. But you never know with fanatical politicians and their cohorts especially in a country of “endemic corruption” and supreme evil such as ours where journalists and columnists of truthful bent and courageous courage are “the permanent heroes of [our] age.”
So we must beware; they must beware. We don’t want any of our permanent heroes to be Khashoggied (or Dele Giwa-ed).
Next year will be tough for all our courageous journalists and columnists of profound argument and dangerous truth. Watch your back before you crumble into dust. Let the odds be with you all the time.
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