By Obi Nwakanma
The lethal cladding of extreme power could blind, and constrain a man, so much that he might fall into the ditch, and still think himself powerful. Wise folks know this. So, they handle power and its claddings with extreme care.
I would like in that sense to caution Dr. Rotimi Fasan, columnist and colleague at the Vanguard, whose recent take on the renaming of streets bearing Igbo names in Lagos, leaves sour tastes on the mouth. I will try to stay in the bounds of collegiality, but I should remind Fasan that our calling in the humane letters demands a broader, clearer, sober, gentler regard for truth unconstrained by provincialism or the kind of deadly and empty self-regard, that is so writ large in his column, this past Thursday. He titled it, “Who Are the Bigots?” Dr. Fasan should take a very hard and steady look at the mirror, and his answer might stare right back at him.
In 1994, when I began writing the “Orbit” column on the Sunday Vanguard, there were three of us who gave that redoubtable editor, Fola Arogundade, High Blood Pressure: Alhaji Animashaun, was wise, direct, and stubborn. Dele Sobowale was methodical and unflinching, and I was brash, young, and idealistic. The three of us stirred the steeds on the Sunday Vanguard. It kept readers coming. Add to that, the lovely and ageless editorial cartoonist, Dada Adekola, whose ‘Sarge’ series, with its savage humor took satire to its finest heights. We did not always agree on certain finer details, but we did always agree on what mattered: that injustice had no tribe or class.
I became very good friends with the late Bisi Lawrence, and quaffed many a beer with him at the Canal, because he was a memorable raconteur; and he told me many stories about “good old Lagos” – the cosmopolitan Lagos, that we all loved. I can bet my last farthing that Dr. Fasan is a JJC to Lagos. And that is the trouble: those causing troubles for Lagos are not the real Lagosians like my dear old friend, Toyin Akinosho, with his roots in Ebute-Meta’s Vaughan Street. Toyin could tell the story of Lagos, because he is a real Lagosian: joyful and cosmopolitan.
The Lagosian was like the Owerri man: life was about simple pleasures to be lived in pleasurable dissipation. It didn’t matter that half of the property stock of Ebute-Meta was owned between L.P. Odumegwu-Ojukwu and Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani. Toyin’s story to me, of the character, Simple, the immaculate dandy of Vaughan street is one I have been trying desperately to capture in fiction. Toyin Akinosho himself actually deserves a street named in his honour for his solid contributions to the cultural life of Lagos. That’s the point of these things. Naming is memorial to a redoubtable moment in the life of the city. It is part of the biography of the city.
To erase the names that have marked a city is like burning a book, or a library, or a museum. And just therefore imagine, changing the name Charlie Boy’s Bus Stop, to Olamide Badoo Bus-Stop, by some JJC, who became Chairman of the Bariga Local government by licking the hind of whoever runs the JCO. I mean the Jagaban Cartel Organization. And who, by the way, is Olamide Badoo? I had never heard the name until this current hoopla. Okay, that is on me. But Charly Boy? Well, truth be told, there was no Lagos as we know it, without Charles Oputa, popularly known as Charly Boy. Next to Fela Kuti in Lagos, Charly Boy Oputa was the other big thing. He was an icon of that city that never sleeps. He was most certainly one of the factors that made Lagos sleepless. Charly Boy’s Bus-Stop did not come from thin air. It was earned.
It was the imprint of lived and activist life, defined by Charles Oputa’s immoderate presence in the cultural life of the city of Lagos. He was a mentor, and protector of the vulnerable and marginalized youth of Bariga – the so-called “Area Boys,” whose lives were “beatified” in drama by the playwright, Wole Soyinka. They were the ones who called Charly-Boy, “Area Fada,” not the government of Lagos, or of Bariga. They were not all Igbo, or Yoruba, or Hausa, or Ishan, or Nupe, or Fulani, or Igala, or Edo, or Itshekiri, or Idoma: they were Lagosians, united by a common experience. Charly-Boy’s Bus-Stop was not even given by the Bariga Local Government: it was named by the people themselves who found that the easiest means by which you could find direction in that part of the city was to stop by the most identifiable marker of that part of the city: the home and club house of that memorable icon of the city of Lagos: Charly Boy. There is nothing anybody can do about it: it remains Charly Boy’s Bus-Stop. Threat or no threat.
This is why I find the following statements by Rotimi Fasan inimical to truth and reason. First, Dr. Fasan, it is the duty of all enlightened citizens to consistently challenge the authority of state officials who misuse the power invested on them by the public. The renaming of streets bearing Igbo names in Lagos is misuse of power. The Igbo are in Lagos, are part of Lagos and are not going anywhere, unless at their own accord. Secondly, yes, it is within the remit of the Bariga LCDA to name streets.
But that remit does not authorize them to act in a way that is openly discriminatory and that deviates from the rule of law, which is what invites chaos and disorder. All enlightened citizens must be capable of reading meanings into the actions of elected public officials, and challenge the authority of state, in order to protect civil liberties, individual and group rights, and the rule of law. That is the point of a really good education. Public officials are not always right.
The erasure of longstanding Igbo names on the streets in Lagos is a pernicious act of ethnic chauvinism, which abridges Igbo citizenship rights, and rightfully invites recrimination. I am satisfied however, that this act is the work of that revanchist arm of the Yoruba – often isolate and provincial. I feel gratified, readingthe enlightened half of the Yoruba who rose to condemn this, because they too understand that they are settlers in Lagos. The man from Ede is as much a settler in Lagos, as the man from Ohaozara, and are afforded the same rights under the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as Nigerian citizens and residents of Lagos.
I have made the point elsewhere, that Lagos is not a Yoruba city. I do not need to give further elaboration here. Lagos is an Atlantic city. It drew settlers from across the world who have built and given it its character as a global city. It was not even founded by the Yoruba. In fact, the Edo have greater claim to the origins of the city. I have also hinted on the story of Eletu Odigbo. He was not a Yoruba man. He was Akara-Igbere. “Akara” actually means, “of the line” or “of the lineage” of the Igbere. The Igbere were Abam warriors – mercenaries who followed Orhogbua of Idu, to settle the war camp they called Eko. Abam warriors were the mercenary soldiers of the Idu (or Benin) Kingdom.
To this day, you have a place in Lagos called “Idu Umu Agbo” (Idumagbo) – the original settlement of the Agbo clan of the Igbere – mercenary soldiers and traders, who with their Aro partners, came to settle and trade, and provide armed services in Eko, from the 16th century, at the height of the slave trade. Lagos was not a Yoruba city. It was a service and embarkment post of the slave trade at the Bight of Benin. In fact, to this day, you still have a branch of these Igbere adventurers settled in a place still called Igbere in what is now the Republic of Benin. Lagos was a town of adventurers, just like Plymouth town, or even Bonny, a place from where the famous Irish woman pirate, Anne Bonny got her name.
Of course many Yoruba slaves, captured through the Yoruba civil wars were transported in large numbers from inland Yoruba country, to the coastal town of Eko or Lagos for embarkation into slavery. As I try to emphasize, those who want to erase the Igbo, or drive them out of Lagos are revisionists, and are making a power play. The Igbo and folks from other ethnicities living in Lagos must never take the bait.
The Igbo must also stop playing the victim and organize, and forcefully contest for power in Lagos, govern Lagos, and protect their interests, and the interests of all citizens of Lagos justly, fairly, and purposefully. Register to vote in Lagos. Join political parties. Form alliances and partnership. Be well organized to defend your votes. Capture power in Lagos by all means necessary, and hang in there. The Igbo have governed Lagos before and must govern it again, to address these acts of needless, pernicious vendetta. There is nothing else to be said.
Politics is self-interest. Only those who organize for power can protect themselves against the harmful use of power.
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