How Not to Earn Fame in a Country: Post- Conclusion

 

VIRTUE and vice and vice and virtue are the concerns of writers everywhere in the world. Every writer in every country writes about them in every way, in every manner, in every style he can and wishes to adopt in his composition. But this is not easy for the writer – be he a poet, novelist, playwright, autobiographer, biographer, folklorist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and columnist

The reality of writing underscores this. No matter how knowledgeable the writer may be or is, no matter how seriously devoted he is to his subject or undertaking, he always encounters realities that injure or try to injure or amputate or try to amputate his desires to compose his compositions. The gleaner was in this situation before he embarked on “How not to earn fame in a country.”

He had more than several subjects to choose from when the deadline for his column was almost going to pass him by. In order not to be held to account he was going to settle for a subject that might not do justice to his real artistic image. It would be better for his column not to come out than for him to be the author and columnist of encomiums of untruth.

Let me spare my readers and audience the details. But I was very much concerned with what would profit my image, honour and the realities of my readers’ imaginations. I did not in any way want to be like our hollow senators in the hollow chamber. I should say not much on this.

Yet I surely should say this: A reader, an ardent reader of this column in the good person of the remarkable scholar and poet Owojecho Omoha, plucked me from my dilemma’s tree and birthed for me “How not to earn fame in a country.” He supplied nothing else. But I knew without presumption that he fancied my column on “Natasha as worthy rebel.” Of course, what the gleaner said in that essay was most true, and it is still most true. I followed it up with “How not to earn fame in a country” in which I tried to tell our compatriots not to be deceived by persons whose pictures, raw and un-raw, tell us what and who they are not. My encounters with simple Nigerians I met in this column’s line of duty, and others outside its line of duty – who retorted as they did through chats and calls spoke so well about how not to earn fame in your country my country our country.

Do we have politicians, political office holders and the judiciary to give us listening ears and courageous hearts more daring than Samson’s?

Now let the gleaner quote verbatim the ever innovatively radiant Professor Ibrahim-Kano who has what I may call real knowledge of the Natasha issue and those things concerning the daughter, woman and wife of destiny who shall, barring the unforeseen, fulfill her undiluted destiny.

“Prof. TA, I’ve observed a kind of castration complex in many of the senators in regards to Natasha. Most of them simply hope that such a beautiful spectacle or the Cleopatra figure never passes by their sight. Natasha’s women colleagues, the Iretis, etc. hate Natasha under their breath un-fathomably. I read an interview by Ireti on the Natasha issue.

The venom, the spite, the jealousy in her words, and syntax were quite shocking. There’s a certain phallic myth, which Akpabio must have believed, that if a man has a faltering phallus, he would get an instant cure once “it” sees a dashingly beautiful woman.

The Russian blood in Natasha must have made the Nigerian phallic cold like the harshly cold Russian winter! Freud has argued that although Beauty appears threatening, society (and men and women) cannot do without it. Nietzsche argues that the Greeks were beautiful and built beautiful architecture because they were cruel and glorified the Cult of Suffering. In the cosmic scheme of things, Natasha is fated to suffer because she’s beautiful and sexually very attractive. Any glamouriously, exotically beautiful woman in a hall full of wrinkled and detemuscent men must surely suffer from malice and hateful schemes. One solution for Natasha is for her to be very ugly and less attractive. This she can do by drinking the Hemlock, just as Socrates did more than four thousand years ago.”

Do I say something to the regularly regular radical scholar Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano here and now in my own un-common radical bent? No, no, no until his “friendly psychoanalytical deconstruction” of my “Natasha articles” spews from his penile pen that is a stranger to detumescence or the detemuscent spirit.

We all must expect it, I mean his PA (his Analytical Deconstruction) in the right frame of our expectations and imaginations – individually and collectively speaking. As for Natasha “drinking the Hemlock”, this is certainly an impossibility which the Akpabios cannot goad our destined would-be first female president to commit herself to do in or out of humour.

Musatafa Yusuf-Adebola who wrote to me from Canada should have his words shown here in full. Our readers and audience should find them greatly pleasurable as well:
“You did say, Oh poetic and prophetic columnist that time will expose what really is. For now it looks like Mrs. Natasha’s matter took pages from the popular book, One Week, One Trouble by Anezi Okoro. Every week there will be a new twist. Since last week’s article and the ones before it, just as it was dying down, the recall process took place and some people’s daddies and mummies were publicly showing their children.

“How not to speak in public in Nigeria 101: Roforofo.” Without doubt, Natasha will be one of the most talked about this year (and years to come); even Omokri will be jealous of this attention (despite his shenanigans). Oh! I forgot Alhaji Atiku just talked about the Senate President having a womanising attitude in a yet to be published interview. This matter nor go end o until dem do di correct thing o. But we are watching.

Because beneath the drama are fundamentals of democracy being tried: (1) INEC’s recall process (if it scales through for her, Dino Melaye will confirm something for us); (2) Senate’s House Rules versus the Constitution; (3) Women supporting women’s rights or fights; (4) All sinators are not equal in their sins. In all, Nigeria has lost.

Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has rightly rubbished Nigeria’s image in search of justice (denied her so far) with various headlines describing Nigeria’s Senate. And the conduct of Dr. (Mrs.) Ezekwesili has reminded men of their fears of how women get away with murder. In addition to all these, the judiciary is taking a real hit as never witnessed before. Finally, men will double down with respect to their chauvinism, rightly or wrongly.
Oh prophetic columnist! Your prophecy is taking us to what is not difficult to imagine any longer.”

The gleaner will give his Canada-based steady reader this one sentence: Everything in the quotation is apt to move the passions of our compatriots, and beget concernment in us all – as the emerging would-be first female president weathers her storms as an eagle delightfully soars and soars in an intense stormy storm with her distinct talents and talons divine.

I hope IBK the IBK will talk and speak again sooner than later! Deconstruct the gleaner. We all, including Mustafa Yusuf-Adebola, are waiting for the waitable, IBK’s waitable, on Natasha they cannot conquer, Natasha whose fame is her well-earned fame.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.