By Lasisi Olagunju
Hugh Gaitskell became Britain’s Minister of Fuel and Power on October 7, 1947. Soon after taking that office, because there was an energy crisis, the minister told his countrymen and women to save fuel by reducing the number of baths they took. Gaitskell said: “personally, I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less.”
Winston Churchill, who had by then become the opposition leader, heard him and said no wonder the government smelt so badly. He replied Gaitskell on 28 October, 1947: “When ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of His Majesty’s government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour.”
Nigeria is an unwashed country. It stinks. It needs deliverance but won’t get it. The fire we have on our mountain is uncontrollable and unquenchable. At least, it is not the type you kill with thunder claps of anger. Some people demolished their own Wall of Jericho with noise. In case you believe that story and think you can replicate it here, you are wrong. What Kenyans did on their streets and achieved in one day last week, you can not have here. We have enough shock-absorbers and fissions to take all shocks and frustrate all enemies of frustration.
You’ve lately been reading of unbelievable in-your-face sad acts of our democratic government. You’ve heard rumours of expenditures that you would pray were not true. You’ve been watching circus shows on a new minimum wage for public and private sector workers.
You watched the Kenyan parliament with its President William Ruto thoroughly whipped by their angry children. You wonder why our own king and his lawmakers are not as worried about all this as they are concerned about the purchase of new presidential jets. You’ve also been hearing sermons calling for more sacrifices from you, the people. You’ve wondered why it must be you who must always tighten your belt while the pilot eats to explosion.
You are hearing rumours of four budgets in one country by one government in one year. The government wants to operate, in 2024, the 2023 main and the 2023 supplementary budgets plus the 2024 budget while preparing another supplementary budget. You don’t understand? The government wants to eat yesterday’s pounded yam with today’s in addition to a supplementary one in preparation. It won’t matter that some projects and their votes are duplicated in the various budgets. They must appear in all the budgets because they are tagged ongoing. Money here (2024), funding there (2023) make the smart wealthier.
Why are people quiet? What should they say and what will their talking amount to? Felix Adler (1851-1933) was a German-American professor of political and social ethics. In an address to the Society for Ethical Culture of New York on Sunday, 6 February, 1898, Adler spoke on what he called “the wisdom of mute lips”. In the speech entitled ‘The Moral Value of Silence’, he counselled that “reticence should be observed when the likelihood is wanting that what is said will have its due effect.” Those of us who write the ‘rubbish’ we write daily or weekly know that no one who should care really cares. We know that regime-backers’ passion for power or belly won’t let them accept the truth just as the regime won’t. But we also know that truth, even in silence, has its own unique way of asserting its supremacy no matter how long the night lasts.
So, let Kenyans of last week enjoy their Kenya of today. It is not our challenge. Our street is silent and withdrawn because it cannot believe that today has truly manifested itself in worse details than the horrible past. People who should be afraid of the people’s silence are not. They are happy that those who suffer suffer their deprivations in the quietude of their holes. You remember that city, Ègbin (the filthy) with its peculiar inhabitants, in D.O. Fagunwa’s Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmole. We can locate it in today’s Nigeria. The government has made itself smell so badly that no one wants to contest the soup pot with it. Its operatives can have everything – and they enjoy having everything. The filth and the ugliness of their character have won for them permanent residency in our vaults. It didn’t start today.
You must have come across an old August 11, 1956 newspaper story with the headline ‘Nigerian MPs’ pay.’ The story reads: “Chief (S.L.) Akintola, the official leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives, described as a scandalous waste of public money a government motion providing for advances of £800 to each member of the House, except Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, to enable them to buy cars. The motion also provides for a consolidated travelling allowance of £140 a year for each member. The present salary of a member is £800 a year. Denouncing these measures, Chief Akintola said that the financial benefits accruing to members were unduly generous for their part-time service, compared with the whole-time members of the British House of Commons who were paid only £1,000 a year. He said many members had earned less than £300 a year before they became members of the House of Representatives.”
You see that? In 1956 (four years before independence) full-time British lawmakers were paid £1,000 a year. During that same period, part-time Nigerian lawmakers were paid £800 a year. Chief Akintola was lucky. If he says of our Senators or Reps today what he said in 1956, he would be suspended indefinitely from his legislative duties.
Wise people always know that anything that can fester will eventually get rotten. And, it actually got worse for Nigeria immediately after independence. The second republic perfected whatever heist was inadequately staged in the first republic. Dafe Otobo, Professor of Industrial Relations, in his ‘The Political Clash in the Aftermath of the 1981 Nigerian General Strike’ (1982), tells the story: “Typically, the more disadvantaged in society are requested to make sacrifices in difficult times: the legislators and bureaucrats jettisoned all previous (minimum wage) agreements in the name of ‘austerity measures’ after they themselves had stoutly opposed a cut in their pay and allowances! In fact the federal government’s 1981 approved estimates have confirmed that legislators collected a total of 15.1 million Naira as remuneration and allowances for their aides for the year; 450 members of the House of Representatives received 13,673,700 Naira or 30,386 each; and the 95 senators collected 1,462,240 or 15,392 each. Added to these sums were ‘constituency allowances’ which amounted to eight million Naira (18,652 for each senator as against 13,840 for each representative), and then a vaguely titled ‘consolidated allowance’ which enabled each senator to collect another 5,000 Naira and 3,000 for each representative. All this amounted to the tidy sum of 24,925,000 Naira, apart from the 1.2 million Naira spent by all the legislators on foreign travels when only N656,250 was actually approved for the purpose.” Note that one dollar officially exchanged for 61 kobo in 1981.
“What cannot be cured must be endured” is a phrase in Robert Burton’s 1621 book, ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’. Burton says Melancholy is that feeling which “goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit…” As negative as its character is, Burton says the melancholy of the world he lived had “grown to a habit” and so “will hardly be removed.” I recommend continued endurance to our millennials and their Gen Z cousins. They should read our history and calm down. Nigeria’s bald-headed vulture has been in the rains since it was created. They should stop dreaming about its salvation. The rain won’t stop.
Kings and Imams in Yorubaland
Beyond its outer casing of spirituality, the post of Imam in Yorubaland potentially guarantees prestige, power and prosperity. That is why people fight to be Imam as grisly as princes fight to be king.
But when siblings fight to the death, they lose their chest to outsiders. The Yoruba Muslim community is almost always at war with itself. The League of Imams and Alfas of Yorubaland, Edo and Delta in April this year scrambled to douse a fire over who should be their mufti. The mufti is the jurisconsult in Islamic jurisprudence. Two persons were named by two contending power blocs. The league, in a signed public statement in April this year, asked both to stay off the post. There has been some quiet since then. In Ogbomoso, there is a very bad division over the leadership of the Muslim community in the town: the Chief Imam on one side, a section of the Muslim community led by the Aare Musulumi on the other side.
Some Yoruba Muslims are angry that the Soun of Ogbomoso, Oba Afolabi Oloye, a Christian, issued a query to the Chief Imam of Ogbomoso. I read comments from some of them and chucked to myself. When you make someone to hire you, you should expect the day he will fire you. But, everyone conversant with the case knows that the real problem of the Imam is not with the oba. It is a family sore that has festered into a full-blown Muslim-Muslim civil war. The palace originally came in as an arbitrator but because it went about it as Tortoise did while separating a street fight between Shrew and Squirrel, it now nurses a bleeding nose.
Shouldn’t history have been a guide? In all Yoruba towns where cracks among Muslims have occurred, lizards stay put there. Some of those divisions and difficulties date back almost 200 years; some of them still subsist. The secretary of the defunct Muslim Congress of Nigeria, in a July 6, 1950 letter to the colonial secretary, pointed at such unfortunate Muslim-Muslim disputes over imamship in Ijebu Ode, Abeokuta, Ife, Iseyin, Ondo and Ijebu Igbo. G.O. Gbadamosi’s ‘The Imamate Question Among the Yoruba Muslims’ (December, 1972), speaks to that matter and several cases of fights and wars over leadership among Yoruba Muslims. T.O. Avoseh’s ‘Islam in Badagry’ and his ‘A Short History of Epe’ also detail some of those crises and their fractious implications on the early years of Islam in Yorubaland. There is also Toyin Falola’s ‘Islam and Protest in Colonial South Western Nigeria’ (1991).
You may find this piece of history from Gbadamosi (1972: 236-237) to be of interest: “In Iseyin in 1941, the office of the Chief Imam became vacant, and a dispute arose as to the succession. A very vocal section of reformers were unwilling to allow the Naib, Afa Busari, to succeed. Afa Saminu of Oke-Ola quarter was preferred by and large for his learning and other qualities. Controversy raged. In the attempt to resolve this issue, the local ruler, Aseyin (of Iseyin) acted and proclaimed another person (Afa Mustafa) as Imam. He had him turbaned, and claimed a rightful appointment. The other side challenged this and reported the matter to the Alaafin and Council.” They also petitioned the Senior Resident asserting that “the question of the selection of a Chief Imam ought not to have political influence…” The Resident “found that Afa Saminu was more popular with the people than Busari (36 v 16) but the Aseyin still insisted on his third candidate. As a compromise, the office of Deputy Noibi was offered Saminu” but his supporters argued that it was not customary among Muslims “that after the Chief Imam, there should be a deputy besides the Ratibis of each individual quarter who are deputies over whom the Chief Imam is alone superior…” The historian reports that “so, both sides had their own Imams and the two original factions prayed separately” amidst “abusive songs and parades.” The above shows how long the journey of rifts has been for the Yoruba Muslim.
Back to Ogbomoso. You would think that it would always be true that what founds a town rules the town (ìdá’lùú ni ìsèlú). In November 2021 when he was appointed as the Chief Imam of Ogbomoso, Dr Taliat Oluwashina Yunus Ayilara went online and announced the process that made him the number one Muslim in Ogbomoso: “About a month ago after the demise of the late Imam of Ogbomoso, I was beckoned by my family to fill the position. After a long process of screening, I was appointed today, 11th November, 2021 by the Soun of Ogbomosoland as the 13th Chief Imam of Ogbomosoland.” There is a video online that shows him being installed as Chief Imam, not in the central mosque, but inside the palace – which makes him a chief of the Soun. There is a video showing where the Imam describes his office as an extension of the palace and mis-defines himself a staff member of the oba. Ancient Romans were very deep thinkers. They had a maxim for a situation like this: “volenti non fit injuria” – meaning, “to a willing person, it is not a wrong.” You cannot knowingly and voluntarily submit to a relationship and cry blue murder as a result of the result.
For the king, the Ancient Romans again. They said “Injuria non excusat injuriam” – a wrong does not excuse a wrong. I strongly think the Soun should not have allowed himself to be led into the dark hole of querying the Imam. He should have continued to watch the show but monitor the temperature to avoid a ruptured vessel. The oba’s status as a pentecostal pastor politically disqualified him from directly moving against the Imam. Even if he was encouraged to take that step by opposition Muslim leaders in the town, Kabiyesi should have known that in Yorubaland no one helps another to discipline their child and gets praised for it (bá mi na omo mi kò dé inú olómo). In religion (whether Islam, Christianity or Ìsèse), it is very resentful seeing an outsider, a competitor, holding the whip against ‘our own’. We say you don’t chase a problem-child into the mouth of a tiger. Issuing that query was ill-advised and I believe the king must have realized the error.
If you’ve ever studied how leaf becomes soap, you would understand why Islam and the Yoruba traditional leadership are the proverbial soap and its cover-leaf. Islam is historically more than a religion in Yorubaland. Because the religion came in there hundreds of years before Christianity, the relationship between the leadership of Muslims and the oba in every community has always been deeper than outsiders can imagine. Dada Adelowo, in his ‘Imperial Crises and their Effect on the Status of Islam in Yorubaland in the 19th Century’ (1982), says so much on this.
The Imam in every Yoruba town, is, essentially, both a religious leader and a high chief. He participates in the administration of the town under the leadership of the oba who may or may not be a Muslim. But, this relationship notwithstanding, should an oba be involved in the choice and installation of a religious leader – especially an Imam? The person who would settle a quarrel, should he be located in the structure of the rift? (Eni tí yóò pa’rí ìjà, won kìí ròó mó ejó). Successive Soun (of all faiths) have been appointing successive Chief Imams for Ogbomoso since the very beginning which has been put as the year 1818. The history of that arrangement is an interesting read in communal unity, amity, appreciation and mutual respect. But times have changed. Even if there is a law that empowers obas to make religious appointments, should such not be amended to avoid the kind of incongruity and tension and insults we see in Ogbomoso?
The making of the Ogbomoso convention, with the tradition that enables it, obviously did not envisage a future that is today. Critical sections of the society are seeing not an oba querying his chief; what they see is a pastor seeking to sanction an Imam. It is awkward, cannot be explained. Muslim leaders need to quickly work with the traditional leadership in all communities where such arrangements subsist for amendments. The obas, themselves, should initiate and encourage that change. It will insulate them (the kings) from avoidable insults and insubordination.
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