(tundeodes2003@yahoo.com)
Although the laws of the jungle are written in cold blood, they are laws, anyway. The animal that obeys the laws of the jungle is less likely to fall quick prey to the prayer of the predator. But the same cannot be said of my beloved country, Nigeria, and its totem, the eagle.
I went through the pictures of more than 60 species of the eagle and I never saw an all-red eagle as depicted on the Nigerian Coat of Arms. Our eagle is strange and sick. Nigeria’s laws are like the powerful tiger and the lion in a storybook. Nigerian laws bare their fangs against the unstoppable shedding of innocent blood by the police and fellow felons across the land. They snarl at ineptitude. They roar against nepotism and maul corruption – all inside the ineffective book called the Constitution.
I wish to keep my sanity. So, I’ll hasten to the jungle where existence appears safer. In the jungle, class dwarfs chaos; symmetry displaces cemetery; law and order walk ahead of murder. In this jungle of life, I wish to engage the tiger, the king of beasts; and the eagle, the lord of the skies.
God has a valid reason for putting man in charge of creation. But man has no valid reason for putting the lion in charge of the animal kingdom. The lion must have earned the King of the Jungle title in the eyes of man who sees the mane as crown and the roar as authority. But the real king of the jungle is the tiger.
Man is spiritually, mentally and physically equipped by God to tame the elements and conquer the wild, but the lion is not so equipped to sit atop the hierarchy of the animal kingdom. Science has long revealed that the lion ranks second to the tiger in terms of strength, ferocity and agility. Man really has a way of muddling things up, anyway.
Speaking to her secret lover in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, the female protagonist, Juliet, asks a rhetoric question: “What is in a name?” To the love-stricken Juliet, there’s nothing to a name. But the rivals of the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, know better than to believe that there’s nothing to a name. They know that the word, bolt, means lightning. Defenders, who have the burden of playing against the greatest football player ever, Lionel Messi, know what it means to face a merciless lion. I also remember Nigeria’s lethal striker of the 60s, Thunder Balogun, and the fabled shots of his left foot. I think there’s so much to a name.
Is it the same God who made the tiger that made the eagle? I do not know. The Nigerian eagle was hatched on October 1, 1960. The American Tiger was whelped on December 30, 1975. After birth, both the eagle and the tiger enjoyed great childhoods with parents doting over them, nurturing both for the great futures that lie ahead.
Both the tiger and the eagle had great talents. The tiger showed prodigy for hitting balls into holes on lush green woods, just as the eagle glided over her vast territory consisting of limitless human and mineral resources. For both children, success beckoned as months rolled into years and years rolled into possibilities. Both brought joy and hope to their expectant generations. They brought wealth, too.
In the nuclear American family system, Tiger was introduced to golf by his father, Earl Dennison Woods. The retired US lieutenant colonel taught his cub golf and predicted in 1995 that his son would win 14 majors. The son, last week, surpassed the prediction of his late dad, winning a 15th major in a most dramatic fashion at the Augusta Masters tournament in Georgia, USA.
Like the Nigerian eagle, Tiger is from a rich mix of racial and ethnic heritage with a father who was of African-American, Chinese and Native American descent. His mother, Kultida, is of Thai, Chinese and Dutch descent. Indeed, it is believed that it was Kultida that passed on to her son, the mystical ideals of Buddhism – an eastern religion that teaches great lessons in human suffering and existence. Just as the Nigerian eagle broke new grounds early in life, Tiger was the youngest and the first man of colour ever to win a masters’ tournament. The extended African family system meant the eagle was bred by parents and elders in the neighborhood. But the dog that will get lost won’t heed the whistle of the hunter, just as the eagle set for destruction won’t hear the falconer.
Success has a slender body that breaks too soon, says a proverb popularised by the late Ola Rotimi. Success soon entered into the heads of the eagle and the tiger. Prodded by erratic parents and a wayward society, the eagle soon lost its way in the skies, flipping and flapping in the stratosphere. The tiger too lost control of his testosterone, mounting countless tigresses in the heat of the woods, and at the risk of his family, fame and fortune. And both the eagle and the tiger tumbled down like Solomon Grundy.
Since creation, it was natural for tigers to have multiple sex partners. Mating was intense, wild and unrestricted. Then Man came with his knowledge and outlawed multiple mating, forcing the tiger to control his titanic libido futilely. A woman may forgive her philandering husband for crossing the marital line of fidelity a couple of times. I don’t know a woman who can forgive a husband sowing loads of wild oats into more than a hundred ladies. So, the wife of the famous Tiger, Elin Nordegren, wanted out of the marriage, and she got it at the Bay Circuit Court in Panama, Florida, on August 23, 2010, after being married for five years. She got a $100 million divorce settlement out of Tiger’s net worth of over $600 million in 2010, excluding endorsement deals.
For nine years, Tiger never seemed to get round his fall from grace to grass, plummeting from the apex of world golf down to number 1,193 in ranking. He was also fettered by a chronic back injury that defied cure. Tiger’s world was shattered. But he never gave in to the challenges though many wrote him off and advised him to retire. He never gave in to depression, drugs or alcohol. Being the king of the jungle, the tiger trudged on, his olive eyes seeing what was invisible to the ordinary eye. Soon, the lines on the golden fur of the tiger began to fall in pleasant places. The aching spine soon received healing and Tiger came back into the woods, shooting up his net worth to $800 million as of December 2018. But Tiger wasn’t done yet. He needed to reclaim his crown from the lion. He waited, patiently – sheathing his canines inside a powerful, white-whiskered mouth, pouncing on the greens of Augusta and crushing a pack of younger golfers to claim the $11,500,000 prize money.
Despite being the King of the Skies, the eagle has not taken its destiny into its hand like the tiger did. Years of serial abuse and corruption by parents, elders, friends and neighbors have left the eagle broken. Who will heal the eagle? When will the eagle take its pride of place in the comity of nations and lead the black race? The world is waiting; waiting for our listless eagle to flip-flap its wings and show some signs of life. The sun is still out and the sky is very clear. Our eagle, get up and fly!
Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com mailto:tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
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