In Praise Of The Icon

By Wale Adebanwi

The Norwegians are right. A hero, they insist, is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer. That Norwegian minute may be a month, a year or even longer; it may require courage and strength or meekness and perseverance; it may necessitate the capacity to suffer the gravest deprivations and humiliations; it may compel digging into the inner recesses of the mind to produce strategic vision and tactical repositioning; or it may, in fact, oblige one to stand his ground even when the tide pushes everyone else in other directions. Whatever it requires, that minute is long enough to define the man or woman and that definition separates the ordinary person from the one who is adored and celebrated.

You could capture heroism - or any other name given to achieving a social or economic feat - in a collection of epigrams. Even though there is nothing epigrammatic about the challenges of heroism in actual life, many have captured its dimensions in veritable quips. Oscar Wilde, the Irish genius, would understandably have his own word on what it means to be at the top of the social ladder in achievement. The man had insisted that he was unlike any other genius, in that he recognised his own genius first and forced the world to acknowledge it while he was still alive. In the Wildean “world of implications”, greatness is captured in “simple” terms. “I have very simple tastes,” insisted Wilde. “I am always satisfied with the best.”

There is a correlation between heroism - call it achievement, accomplishment, social courage, leadership and whatever else – and the social conception of “the best”. Whether in terms of a seemingly simple, but actually daunting, social task of saying “No” to tyranny, or in the lyrical challenges of musical accomplishment among a posse of new age musicians and singers, whoever will stand out must be the one who is regarded as being the best representation of that act – in this context, either of saying “No”, or in rendering the verses of the age in the most danceable tones. Where an Adekunle Ajasin would be asked to take a bow in the first instance, TuFace, the music icon with a handsome face, would step out for the other.

Ajasin and TuFace cannot be more dissimilar from each other. The one, now late, was the ageing, self-denying, disciplined patriarch of the democratic struggle; the other, a young, dazzling singer whose essence is incomplete without the easiness of virtues that defines the world of glitz. Where Ajasin, though physically frail in his last years, but unyielding in his convictions, is celebrated for his capacity to say “No”; the adulations of Idibia are based on his post-modern banalities captured in his popular “yes o!” What the dissimilarities suggest then are that heroism or accomplishment can be expressed and are expressive in different ways. What makes a Segun Odegbami, the “mathematical” genius on the field of play, a hero in Nigeria’s soccer history is not the same as what makes the recently departed mathematics genius, Professor Chike Obi, a perpetual feature on our national template of heroes.

This magazine, in celebrating the icons in the last 15 years of its existence as a cultural institution that has related to, reported on – and sometimes misrelated to and misreported on, one must admit – these icons, in a sense, is no less heroic itself. TheNEWS magazine, at a point in the history of this rather unfortunate polity, was a definition in the social enactment of heroism. Young men and women, some in their early 20s and others in their late 30s, gave their all so that their country could be free. They sacrificed their comfort, risked their lives and sometimes even lost their lives, in standing up to a military cabal that was (in)famous for its zoological instincts. When General Ibrahim Babangida readied his Army to wage war on his country and destroy every institution of value, the editors/directors of TheNEWS and their staff stood firmly as a collective bulwark against the run-away autocracy of the Babangida regime. When he was succeeded by the goggled Infantry General who mistook the city for the jungle, these gallant men and women rolled out the cultural tanks against Abacha’s murderous gang. By the time Abacha collapsed on the laps of Indian prostitutes, as the popular imagination insists, the one who lost his life in the struggle against Abacha’s tyranny, Bagauda Kaltho, and the others, including the jailed, the bruised, the deprived and the self-sacrificing in this cultural institution, combined to represent some of the noblest justifications for our freedom as a people.

Against this backdrop, this institution, being itself an expression of the greatness of Nigerians as a freedom-loving people, despite regular setbacks, is capable of recognising and celebrating excellence and greatness. This is particularly so in a society where “honour” has been so scandalously cheapened that even the socially - and politically - damned regularly find their names on top of the list of national “honour”.

Here then is a list of those who are truly deserving of honour. They are no saints. Nothing in the recognition of their excellence and accomplishment presumes that total innocence. Errors have been committed; challenges have been faced by these people. They have faltered in some respects; they have even failed in some contexts. But what has redeemed them is their capacity to stand up every time they failed; to persevere in the face of the greatest odds and to do things better every other time. Samuel Beckett, the late Irish playwright, captures this capacity to stick-to-it in this charge: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In Beckettian terms, therefore, the icons here have failed better than the rest in the last 15 years.

The would-be executioners of Dora Akunyili, the NAFDAC czar, may have mistaken her headgear for her skull, but they were incapable of scaring her away from her passion to make Nigeria a more liveable society by ending the scourge of fakery in the items that Nigerians have to use, whether it is drug or water. With her steely resolve, passion and drive, not to talk of her teenage enthusiasm, Akunyili has redefined womanhood in public life in Nigeria. It is because of the efforts of her likes that there is still some hope for this sorry polity. Nuhu Ribadu may be cooling his feet, as they say, in Kuru while his traducers celebrate their victory over legal rectitude to corruption that he represented. But nothing can take away from this policeman his measured success in making the corrupt uncomfortable. Some would dismiss the anti-corruption crusade he ably led as a failure principally because the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was unable to investigate, let alone prosecute, the man who, many allege, is the grandfather of corruption in contemporary Nigeria, but such accusations either deliberately, or ignorantly, ignore that contradictions are central to the resolution of deep social crises in the post-colony. Ribadu, as it has been proved in the messy and disgraceful way in which the new occupant of power removed him from the Commission, was, at the end of the day, an appointee of the President. That the man, despite this serious limitation and the attendant “sovereignty” of corruption in Nigeria, was able to become a scourge to the corrupt and criminal in our midst meant that the argument against corruption has been pushed further.

Courage, Mary Anne Radmacher posits, does not always roar. Sometimes, courage is only a quiet voice. The Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, may be the symbol of all that is conservative and conserving, but as the paramount king of the Ijebu, this man has defined dignity for the traditional institution in modern times. While some other traditional rulers became traditional ruin-ers in the late military era by asking some people to “try their best” in the subversion of popular will, Oba Adetona tried his best to ensure that the Nigerian Army would not pulverise the people it was established to protect.

Gani Fawehinmi became the “Senior Advocate of the Masses” long before the inner caucus of the Bench and the Bar, which was immune from the popular struggle for a better society, conceded his Senior Advocate of Nigeria to him. He has taken a different route from Adetona. As someone said, for the likes of the man popularly called Gani, you cannot test courage cautiously. To paraphrase Robertson Davies, Fawehinmi is an extraordinary man who became even more extraordinary because of the extraordinarily terrible conditions that he confronted in using the law as an instrument of social justice.

Between a Chinua Achebe, who, when things fell apart under President Olusegun Obasanjo struck the fumbling and irascible president with the arrow of God, and a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, despite the generational, and perhaps, veneration-al, differences, there are lots to compare. A commitment to be the best of literary traditions that makes the one the patriarch of the African novelists makes the other an international literary laureate. Adichie is not only an announcement of young literary excellence, she is a demonstration of the immense possibilities of her generation.

Between the money-making accomplishments and patriotism of a Mike Adenuga and the Episcopal achievements of a Pastor Enoch Adeboye; between the self-effacing sacrifices of the late Chima Ubani and the millennial gallantry of the late Kudirat Abiola; between the Marxian commitments to social reformation of a Balarabe Musa and the philanthropy, induced by social vision, of an Alfred Rewane; between the jocular genius and path-finding stand-up comedy of Ali Baba and the persistence against all odds of a Kabir Yusuf; and between Ken Saro-Wiwa’s commitment to minority rights in an egalitarian society and Wole Soyinka’s supreme multi-faced exertions in the cause of human liberty and justice, we can write a version of the history of Nigeria in the age of TheNEWS.

But no one seems to define these past 15 years as Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola does. He was the symbol of what this magazine came to define as “A Date Forever”. From the crucible of conservative politics and problematic social engagements, this generous man was extracted, and extracted himself; he then launched himself completely into the service of changing the dark and disappointing history of his country and continent for the better. On 12 June 1993, Abiola was given a national mandate to give hope to the people. The Generals and their horde, already sworn into bastardy, swore that that hope would be realised over their dead body. They seized Abiola and all those allied with him, a Beko Ransome-Kuti here, and a Femi Falana there, and many others, and herded them into jail. At other times, they took instruments of violence purchased with the people’s money and unleashed it against the people. When Abacha perished and hope was renewed, a conspiracy yet to be fully revealed ensured that Abiola also died a few days later. A particular manifestation of the possibilities of a new Nigeria was interred with Abiola’s body. The man died so that the government of the people, by the people and for the people would not perish on Nigerian soil. When Moshood Abiola’s name is mentioned today, no one needs to check the dictionary to understand what it means to be a hero.

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