Refflections
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(IN THE background, echoes of either Atilogwu dance or music or Celestine Ukwu’s Ijenu or still, Ikenga music as Yohanna sits in a ponderous state, waiting with his head in his palms. Obviously in a languid state and rather withdrawing into pensiveness as the music grows louder and louder and the figure of Nnamdi looms in silhouette on a hidden corner of the stage. Feeling the overbearing presence in his subconscious, Yohanna rises and suddenly kneels, trying to grab the edge of the immacute white trousers of Nnamdi’s Agbada unsuccessfully.)
Yohanna: Nna anyi, Kedu Sir. No moment can be more humbling, even in a semi real state such as this. I have yearned to behold your great sight, great champion of African and Nigerian nationalism. Great founder of numerous newspapers upon which our search for independence stood.
Nnamdi: Ah thank you son. Only one of them. Much behind the true founders; Macaulay, Nkrumah, Toure, and so on. Thank you.
Yohanna: So much inspiration from so much
humility in awesome greatness. Ah, the Great Zik of Africa. Father of Af- rican journalism.
Nnamdi: Again, just one of them whose company I was most honoured to keep. Welcome nwam. You know so much.
Yohanna: Not really sir. So much to cover. So much to learn. This is a great privilege which I shake up to cherish and relish. The radical fight- er. Founder of Zikism; the Socialist/ Zikist Movement.
Nnamdi: Ha, that one. I have been much abused for many uncom- pleted causes. Including Zikism, which grew out of me, out of my hands…like fire in the dry Savannah.
Yohanna: They tell us your lib- eralism was too broad, too urgent, for the constraints of socialism which your disciples fomented.
Nnamdi: Zikism without Zik they called it. Zik without the move- ment. Our search was too diverse, much broader than the leftist strug- gle of the Mokwugos, and his friends, the radicals; the actual Zikists, who were impatient with us, our gradual approach, which they found too slow, too gradual.
Yohanna: That was why they said you abandoned the cause
Nnamdi: I was not part of it. I had broader, more urgent ideals. We had the struggle for independence to contend with. Anyway, the move- ment had its uses, its foundation for the revolution of the future—which never came, had not yet come while we lived
Yohanna: Party politics based on the tribes; the ethnic nations killed it or postponed it. We still await the revolution
Nnamdi: We pray for your gen- eration for the transformation but not the way you go on.
Yohanna: Many of these are who still feel that our departure from the national scene—from one of the founders of the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons to ethnic politics
Nnamdi: That is kind of you. It was more brutally put; descent from Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha. They forgot I rose back to contest the Presidency
Yohanna: You were first Presi- dent of the Republic. That would do
Nnamdi: I wanted to be elected President, not appointed. But it is all history now. The future is all yours to manage and to harness. But I fear…
Yohanna: As you have always
done, even in 1964 after the rigged elections and the violence which you feared would make the Congo experi- ence a child’s play if not arrested. The fear of violence overrunning our pol- ity due to power grab still looms on our political horizon
Nnamdi: I fear still, but I know the nation can still become great. It can still make it as the hub of Africa’s rise to greatness in world politics. I believe it can. I strongly believe it can, if your politicians seek the nation more and seek self less…
Yohanna: Thank you sir for that belief in us, even as our leadership be- comes more and more visionless and less patriotic … ( As Yohanna kneels to kiss his feet, Nnamdi slips by and vanishes and the music swells and at- tains a raucous crescendo, Fade)
Meanwhile, Yohanna rises slowly after a loud snore which came like an earthquake. He is still in a dreary, half-awake state. The sky opens in his mind’s eye. Four masquerades emerge wearing the figure of Obafemi, Ah- madu, Zik and Aminu. A tongue for each of them breaks into narratives, following Yohanna’s unconscious promptings.
(Next week’s excerpt is on the late Murtala Muhammed)
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