Thinking with You Niyi Akinnaso niyi.tlc@gmail.com
Just last Sunday, April 29, 2018, I encountered three different bands of them on my usual trail, moving in and out of farmlands along the roadside, mowing down crops and all, and dumping their dung on the roadway. On all three occasions, traffic came to a standstill on a normally light-traffic roadway. Who dare move, when their guards looked stern with AK-47 ominously poised dangerously across their shoulders?
They were the herdsmen and their cattle, the joint entity that Prof Wole Soyinka referenced in his lecture as the now “familiar fixture on our national landscape” (in the forests; on farmlands; in villages; on school and university land, including their experimental farms; in urban spaces; and even on personal lawns and orchards). The occasion was Elizade University’s second Convocation Ceremony, heralded on Thursday, April 26, 2018, by Soyinka’s convocation lecture, titled, “Tending the Tree of Commencement.” True, the tree is the leitmotif of the lecture, herdsmen and their any-plant-for-consumption cattle formed a complementary refrain.
The tree, as we shall see, was used as a symbolic representation of “life”, which cattle, their herders (possibly fronting for unknown cattle owners) and Boko Haram terrorists wish to destroy, much like ruthless dictators, destroying or seeking to destroy human life in their desperate bid to hold on to power.
For the immediate community of Elizade University, the lecture was memorable in more ways than one. First, it was yet another indication of the young university’s drive for excellence. Soyinka’s presence was a symbolic endorsement of the achievements to date of the university’s Founder and Visitor, Chief Michael Ade-Ojo, OON; the Chancellor, Gbenga Oyebode, SAN; the Chairman of the Governing Council, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede; the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof Yemi Fadayomi; the indefatigable Registrar, Omololu Adegbenro; the Deans of the various Faculties, including Prof Kole Omotoso of the Humanities; and the graduating 105-member class of 2017.
Second, in the words of the Founder, as Chief Ade-Ojo is known around campus, the second convocation ceremony, accentuated by Soyinka’s encompassing lecture, capped a year of peace and remarkable progress in the life of the young university. Compared to the events leading up to the maiden convocation, what happened last week added an extra gloss to the value of peace as a condition for development and progress.
No doubt, it was the prevailing peace that spurred the Founder to announce during the convocation that he would embark on three new projects for the university, namely, (1) the Faculty of Engineering building; (2) a befitting Auditorium, which will also house lecture halls and a performing arts theatre; and (3) a new Hall of Residence for 300 to 400 students.
Interestingly, it is quite possible to read Soyinka’s convocation lecture as the promotion of peace on the university campus and the nation at large. Here’s how. Noting the luscious forest surrounding the EU campus, Soyinka wants the herdsmen to leave tree and plants alone so that farmers can plant and hunters can hunt without fear of AK47 killers. It was in this vein that he recalled BISROD’s painful experience of losing over a million young shoots of commercial trees on his farm to cattle, of course, with the herdsmen looking on. The experience reminded me of the mowing down of Adekunle Ajasin University’s experimental farm, not once but twice, by cattle.
Soyinka also wants dictators in the mould of Arap Moi to leave environmentalists like the late Wangari Maathai, Nobel laureate for Peace, to plant their trees without intimidation. He wants power mongers in the mould of Idi Amin to leave the universities alone to award their degrees according to established principles and procedures. He wants freedom fighters and social justice advocates like the late Winnie Mandela to be free of suffocation by tyrannical overlords. Soyinka’s roving mind again showed up as he cast a number of other African leaders in the tyrannical mould, including Muammar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Jacob Zuma, and, of course, our own Sani Abacha, whose demise or ouster illustrates the transient nature of power, which they failed to recognise at the height of their tenure.
Moreover, Soyinka wants freedom of choice to reign for those like Leah Sharibu, who said “No”, even when faced with the choice between freedom and who knows what? It was in this context that Soyinka recalled Nelson and Winnie Mandela, who also refused to give up the struggle when faced with the choice between freedom and other hard choices.
His focus on the three women was not a mere feminist excursion. Rather, it was Soyinka’s acknowledgment of the trauma and inhumane treatment to which Nigerian women had been subjected to, not least by the marauding herdsmen, who killed, maimed, and raped women, adult and children alike. And who can forget the trauma experienced by the Chibok and Dapchi girls in the hands of Boko Haram insurgents?
Why is the tree relevant in all these cases? Soyinka argued that trees are both utilitarian and symbolic objects, especially in our part of the world. Listen to him: “A tree is a tree is a tree is ancestor is deity is pointer is sanctuary is market is human destiny…long before the birth of ideologies sacred or profane, humanising or dehumanising … the tree has stood as a protean symbol for community and spirit … It is that tree of vast, near comprehensive identification with the humanity that atavistic forces are seeking to destroy.”
To drive home his point about the ritual significance of trees, Soyinka cited the felling of the tree of Emotan in colonial Benin, which nearly caused a revolt, until the colonial government replaced it with a befitting statute. We all recognise the economic value of trees, shrubs, and grass as timber, shade, food, etc.
Of particular relevance to his lecture is the instinctive appropriation of trees also as a metaphor for exceptionally courageous, rock-steady individuals-sticklers of principle who would never waiver under threat, even to their own lives. Such is the case with the three women in his illustration.
The need to learn from these historical cases led Soyinka to castigate policymakers who foolishly expunged history from the curriculum. More or less in the manner of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to Chuba Okadigbo, Soyinka had a potent warning, if not a curse, for the offenders: “Those who wish to mortgage the historic sensibility of future generations, their ability to contextualise as well as understand their present and recast their future, feel free to earn the malediction of their misaligned offspring”.
So, against the above backgrounds, Soyinka commended the graduating class of 2017 at Elizade University to the generational tree of commencement, as they completed their course of studies only to commence another set of tasks, another course of studies, a job, or whatever.
In the final analysis, there is a lot to learn from Soyinka’s lecture, not just by the graduating class but also by politicians, policymakers, social activists, and more.
On my part, I cannot but reflect further on Soyinka’s account of the transformation of nomadic herdsmen, which also recalls my own experience, growing up in the 1940s and 50s: “The ‘once familiar fixture’ has metamorphosed into the deadliest menace this nation had ever known. Its members are armed, not with sticks and sheathed knives as formerly, but with weapons of mass elimination. They are connected to the outer world, not by the old transistor radios, but by mobile phones. Their very comportment has changed”.
It is high time they were contained so that society can safely tend the tree of commencement.
END
nigeria about 48million at independence and 57 years later,hovering about 200million. massive population goes with poverty. too many tribes and tongues means no cohesion [tower of babel as allegory]. No tribe so far has secured prima-dona status so internecine strife/rancour is order of our nation/politics[no growth/massive corruption as no one in charge]. Right now Nigerian tribes fighting for pecking order—Boko Haram/ Fulani herders are potent weapons in population control towards achieving No.1 status for a tribe/cowering other tribes into towing the line in hope of establishing a pecking order for Nigerian Tribes. Sardauna has assured that Koran will be dipped into the Atlantic sea[Bight of Biafra?]We need 80 million to make this nation grow—-culling becomes necessary. Boko Haram/Fulani herders and sponsors know what they are doing. Some powers very high up aiding and abetting them. Remember Britain culling seals for eating too much cod in the Cod wars episode!!Cheers!!