How Nnamdi Kanu sought to please south-easterners with hilarious propaganda

BY MARVEL CHUKWUDI PEPHEL

Never has it been so clear that with little power, one can turn people’s minds away from the truth. All hail Jubrin of Sudan! The one true messiah who came to Aso Rock to stand in the gap for Buhari, who, rumour has it, had died long ago! I would never have believed people had a propensity to believe such an absurdly entertaining idea.

I come from the East, the said Biafran land, but to believe such an absurd idea provides a reductio ad absurdum that the rigorous years spent in the citadel of learning hang from the precipice of non compos mentis. In a simpler expression seeking disambiguation, it is to be brain-dead on the altar of reasoning. To put things in glorious perspective, Nnamdi Kanu, the Indigenous People of Biafra leader, knows how to strike the gong that moves the legs of “the cripple at the beautiful gate”. While that might be achieving a tenable goal for the Biafrans, it says little about the questioning ability of the populace.

While it is applaudable to seek secession from a country that has failed its entire growing population, the spread of such outrageous propaganda is the worst of a  ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum’, and even Rumpelstiltskin may stamp a foot into the earth for this one. We know the federal government of Nigeria has had its crop of bad leaders, but to ridicule a sitting president to achieve an aim is the greatest height of a daredevil approach. Who is Jubrin if not a mere puppet in the figment of imagination of a man trying to lead his people to freedom?

Where can a president bring a clone from another country (in this case, Sudan) to rule in his absence, even when there is the seat of a Vice President? This is an idea starkly dancing in the strobe lights of incredulity, and seeking an audience with the greatest cheer. But before anyone could say Jack Robinson, people bought the idea and slid it gently into their pockets with a telling beam.

But these are modern-day Hansel and Gretel unknowingly walking into a gingerbread house. I understand that we all crave and demand good governance, but selling ideas worth a shilling to please the diehard, ready-to-jump-over-the-cliff masses is not something the powerful should do – not even in Lilliput. So now I ask the question: “Is Buhari dead again?” For those who believed he died a long time ago, why was he not buried immediately according to Muslim custom? Aha! You see? You believed a propaganda that now screams “I Love You So Much It’s ‘Killing’ us both”.

Or do you still want to say he was exhumed because the only best time to bury him publicly is now? Come off it. There was no Jubrin. It was only a tale told by a man who probably meant well. Some leaders can be storytellers. And all we can do is love them for their entertaining ways. But to believe a tale told as fiction to be true says more about the believer than the teller himself.

And while he has been imprisoned, perhaps not for his wildly tall tale, perhaps for his vision like Old Major’s vision in Animal Farm, we can only hope he gets freed soon enough. But one thing the south-easterners should bear in mind is that just like in the Animal Farm by George Orwell, the secession may not really bring the freedom they’ve envisaged.

Betrayals, like the betrayals of the pigs, might ruin the young nation (which I foresee, for the Igbos do not love themselves like the Hausas). Furthermore, food security may be the bane of the seceded nation. And to the death of our former president, who has truly died (for the first time, and certainly the last), we can only hope that those who bear grudges for his missteps and misdeeds find a place in their hearts to let go and look to a brighter future.

For a man lying on a hospital bed in London, waiting to die, what could your grudges mean to him other than the mere fickle business of the living? And your furies? Nothing but trenchant expressions with a penchant for de rigueur. And while one may have erred, it is simply an ignominious and deplorable act to gloat over one’s demise. And never shall all the boos in this world elicit a single cough from a coffin.

Today, as his body arrives in Daura, Nigerians mourn the death of the former president – we’d hope this happens, in sincerity, from those who might have been wronged. The dead have no ears, and nothing one says could ever matter to them. And even if they do, they would certainly be bothered with living their lives on the other side to the fullest.

And today, with fervour, I can only hope people are escaping the gingerbread house with all the sugar they could ever find.

Adieu, Baba.

Rest in Power, His Excellency, Muhammadu Buhari.

Marvel Chukwudi Pephel is a surrealist Nigerian poet and writer. In 2021, he was invited to the Sixth Chinua Achebe Literary Festival. His short story “Cecilia” was a finalist for the 2020 George Floyd Short Story Prize, and his story “Till The End Of The Moon” was accepted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Arts and Sciences.. He is the author of I, Robert’s Robot And Other Stories.