In the Forest of a Thousand Faithless Oath-Takers

That the end might be near for status quo in Nigeria showed in Pat Utomi’s recent call for township youths and civic organizations to rise up and check the naked rapaciousness of “elected” local government officials in northern Delta State. I did a double take and wiped my eyes to be sure that I read the author’s name right. What could have finally driven the usually calm, analytical, and, let’s face it, staid, Professor Utomi to call for a rebellion? A business school professor agitating for popular uprising? Yéè pà! May God save us all. What will be left for the rabble rousing, all knowing literary critics to do!

I will return to Utomi later in this piece and first address my main instigation and talk about the faithless oath-takers of Ogun state. (http://www.huhuonline.com/news396.html) Since the possibility does not exist that a literate Nigerian living on the face of this earth has not read the unseemly details of the oath-taking (and betrayal) allegations between Governor Daniel of Ogun State and a section of the state legislature, the facts need not be rehashed. These comments will only address the symptomatic implications of the faux scandal.

The proper place to begin unwrapping a serving of moin-moin is the flat end. We should start with those Ijebu people. The governor and photo-documenter in chief is Ijebu. The legislator singled out for humiliation is Ijebu. While the name of the town is disputed, both parties agree that the events took place either in some Ijebu town or an Ijebu forest. What is it with these Ijebu people, I yelled at my computer screen. I learned while growing up that the person accused of theft should not, for any reason whatsoever, transport chickens under his agbádá. If these Ijebu politicians want to validate an ethnic slur or stereotype, they should do it right. But these are not cultured people. They have no faith in anything honorable. They seize the ancient practice of “ìmùlè,” empty it of significance, hold on tightly to the empty shell, and turn themselves into caricatures of a caricature as they pretend to be swearing oaths. They fail to realize that a blindness that is committed half heartedly always creates trouble. If you want to swear to an oath, do it right, discretely and without an extraneous party like the camera.

At any rate, the problem is not with oath-taking. The problem is faithlessness. People took blood oath in the past to bind themselves to the eternal sanctions of the earth, the guarantor of the firmness beneath our feet and without which humans will not stand erect. The earth does not die (ilè kìí kú), sincere oath takers believed. It does not fade either. It may be overused. But with time it regenerates. It was also believed that dying permanently is certain for those who swear faithfully and then willfully break their freely pledged obligations. Earth’s constancy troubles the conscience of such fickle minded or criminal minded individuals till it reaches an unbearable level. Of course, death rarely came immediately to traitors. That is why it was common knowledge that only childlike foolishness will make a traitor think that the worst is over just because he or she is not killed instantly at the moment of betrayal. The earth is patient. Its justness does not waiver. Who will not end up in the belly of the earth?

Ogun state politicians tied corn cobs around their waists and willfully joined the company of chickens. If these were not faithless oath-takers, they should not need photographs. According to a friend with whom I shared my exasperation, shouldn’t the act of oath taking be enough? But these caricatures of caricatures needed, took, and preserved photographic evidence of their private exchanges because they did not believe in each other, blood-oath or no blood-oath. They knew they were violating their own conscience. They knew they were doing something immoral. They knew that the immorality is not in the oath itself. They knew that the source of their trouble is the evil they agreed to do to the resources of the people of Ogun State. They knew that the greed that brought them together might also entice some of them to betray the oath. They knew that the oaths are invalid because their sworn obligations are insincere. These are the reasons they needed photographic evidence to serve as a more “truthful” witness, and a more effective deterrent, than swearing on the blood of innocent domestic animals. It would not have mattered if these people had sworn on the blood of Jesus Christ or on the grave of their long gone ancestors. They are simply not people of faith.

The photographic record shows that the oath takers know what is right but refuse to do it. They probably understand the essence, the underlying principle (we might even say “science”) of sincere oathing. Oath taking binds its partakers to freely undertaken ethical and moral obligations. The oathing act is enough evidence and record because the constant earth will do the rest. Faithless oath-takers like the one we have in Ogun state know that the earth will have nothing to do with their untoward schemes. (One even claims that he is coerced into taking the oath.) Hence, they need a mechanical witness. To them, the camera is the impartial arbiter and not the earth. You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the dog. If machines are more trustworthy--one of them is an engineer!--then embrace them and leave organic oaths alone.

The faithless oath takers of Ogun state do not fear the earth because their gestures of solidarity and loyalty are empty from the beginning. They are not perceptive enough to know that oath taking is a means of managing the movement of time. Individuals bind themselves with oaths today to help them recognize themselves and their acts in the order of things tomorrow. No right thinking person swears an oath only for the sake of today, as those Ogun state politicians apparently did. The essence of oath taking flows towards the future. Faithful oath taking assumes that tomorrow will come. For genuine oath takers, tomorrow is the principle of the yet to come, the principle of anticipation, of renewal, of goal setting, of introspection, and of speculation. The picture I saw online depicted abjectness and absence of dignity. The nudity contains no spark of renewal. Imagination is absent. Fecundity fails to appear. That naked man is not about to procreate life. The figure in that photograph is bereft of the power of anticipation and all the principles that tomorrow signifies. The person depicted in the emblematic picture is incapable of availing himself the simplest gesture of sovereignty.

A self-fulfilling diabolicness operates in false oath-taking: approach the oathing ceremony without faith and then go out to violate all the pledges made. The faithlessness attains self-fulfillment in that nothing sworn to is intended to be upheld. One ex-governor said he took his bible to the oath-taking ceremony and refused to mouth the words dictated to him. He spoke of the bible, perhaps unwittingly, as if it were another talisman, as if carrying a bible to a shrine absolves his stark faithlessness. And this person walks the face of our country’s earth with confidence, boasting about his faithlessness: he said he appeared at the shrine but only murmured his oath because he did not believe in the words he was told to repeat. Does this person think we are brainless? The polity ruled by these oath takers is doomed not because they swore to something. We fear doom because these people lack faith. Their words and acts are empty. The well being of our collective future shall remain in doubt for as long as these faithless fellows rule. We need to sincerely believe in something.

It is in this context that I read Pat Utomi’s call for youths to take traditional measures against thieving local government officials as an attempt to make the young put faith in some institutions of rectitude. Of course, Professor Utomi is a devout catholic and will not traffic in blood oaths. But the old civic organizations that Utomi believes can be revamped to serve as conscientious checks on reckless local politicians derived their authority on communal compacts that had moral, and many times physical, measures of suasion. No one dared to embezzle the electricity fund of my home town in the 1970s because the whole town knew where the town association treasurer’s homestead is located. If he tried it, orò will “eat” up his family. Today, people like the faithless Ogun state politicians and the faithless bible-thumping ex-governor of Anambra state have demonized orò-like institutions. We should not even talk about the ògbóni. Is it the poro society we should call upon? Unfortunately, the salvation seeking christians, speaking about my own home town, have splintered into ineffective little cells. In my home town, no sanctuary grander than the ageless Anglican church, the stately Catholic church, or the majestic Central Mosque will be built in the near future because the community has split up into tiny spheres controlled by an army of not so faithful clerics. At any rate, we have denigrated township unions as tribal and clannish associations.

Pat Utomi’s agonistic call will not be heeded. An aged alsatian, experience and wile notwithstanding, is never a match for a young, bloodthirsty predator. The predators have taken over. The faithful, aged alsatians of the township unions are no match for them. The majority of this country’s elite watched quietly, some of them conjuring a million justifications, as that ferocious, capable, and fearless watchdog, Nuhu Ribadu, was disgraced and chased out of town. That Ribadu oozes faith, no person can deny. If I can paraphrase Obierika, Okonkwo’s alter ego in Achebe’s classic, it looks like in Nigeria today we stand in the growing compound of the faithless to point at the ruins of the homestead of the faithful. When a business management professor is as outraged as Pat Utomi, things are surely falling apart.