Ochereome Nnanna
3 November 2005
column
On Wednesday the 26th of October 2005, I was on the Oshodi - Apapa Expressway at around the time that President Olusegun Obasanjo had asked Nigerians to honour the dead Nigerians over the tragic weekend before. I was not sure how far ordinary Nigerians were going to react. It was already 11. 59am as I neared Sanya bus stop. Then suddenly, vehicles began to slow down on the Expressway until one by one, there was a complete standstill. Ours was not like the Kaduna incident we saw on television where Road Safety officers carried out a presidential directive and stopped the flow of traffic along the Ahmadu Bello Way, Kaduna's main inner city artery.
Nigerians who were walking along the kerbs also came to a stop. Everybody kept standing for a full minute before normal movement resumed. This was unprecedented in the history of Nigeria that I know of. Sure enough, occasions had arisen in the past when tragedy struck inside the household of the leadership and Nigerians mourned voluntarily. The case of the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed on February 13, 1976 readily comes to mind. Was it not a female hotel attendant who turned over Col. Dimka in Abakaliki, where he needed just another 24 hours to hop across the border into exile and freedom?
There were three main reasons for that spontaneous demonstration of solidarity. In no particular order of importance, I start with the involvement of the victims of the air crash. Normally, the obvious failure of government to find the crash site almost 24 hours after it occurred illustrated the general inadequacies of the aviation sector and disaster management abilities of the government. It should have created widespread anger among the people, followed by a sense of aloofness over the presidential family tragedy. But it did not. Why? That is where reasons number two and three come in.
Reason number two was that for the first time in the life of this administration, President Olusegun Obasanjo showed excellent leadership qualitites in a national emergency. The President made Nigerians proud. It would seem that the news of his wife's death broke first. I say this because while the Nigerian Television Authority was still announcing the "breaking news" of the Bellview Airline's disappearance at 12 midnight on Saturday, 22 October, it was already running the stories of the life and times of Chief Stella Obasanjo. The loss of a wife will devastate anybody, or in fact bring down some otherwise strong men. So, for the President to remain on top of the situation, coordinating the search for the missing plane, making an early morning speech to console the nation, visiting the families of some of the deceased when the sad news became obvious, and leading Nigerians to the crash site for an interdenominational worship; these were acts of great statesmanship for which we must commend him. We recall an occasion in the past when he failed woefully to rise up to the occasion when a similar incident took place. Remember the Ikeja Cantonment bomb explosions of January 27, 2001? His conducts were downright shameful and ordinary Nigerians told him off.
The third factor that brought Nigerians united behind him in his moment of need was the essential good name that Stella Obasanjo left behind. Stella was the people's First Lady. She was not the high-horse queen whose subjects came to pay obeisance to. She was genuinely humane and melded excellently among the downtrodden, the royalty, the destitute, the "disco" set as well as the politicians, each of which group she helped promote their causes usefully. For once, Obasanjo re-enacted Comrade Adams Oshiomhole's legendary ability to rally Nigerians to unite for a national cause. They responded to his excellent conduct and the good woman that Stella was in her life time. Let this be a useful lesson for him and others who aspire to lead Nigeria.
However, there a sad side to this matter, which we had to put aside before in order not to divert attention from the sublime memories of the departed. The truth is a bitter medicine, but we must swallow it for our own good. This "tummy tuck" saga was a good example of how vanity easily takes over the mind-set of the high and powerful. The loss of Stella was not unavoidable. It was man-made! As reverred human rights crusader, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, rightly noted earlier this week, Stella was a beautiful woman from a good background who carried herself with great panache. She did not need any improvement physically beyond the excellent work that God had already done. She could have fallen victim to the hordes of vainglorious women who flock around highly placed people and sell all sorts of fantastic ideas for selfish gain.
The lesson here is that Nigerians should learn to accept themselves for what they are. Let us be our age. Even if we will rig elections, let us not rig nature because God made it that way. If God wants us to look like teenagers when we are centurions, it is easy for him. But he wants us to have our time and move on to let the next generation have theirs. Our refusal, in Nigeria, to give way to the younger generation is responsible for this endemic youth idleness, for which the youth seek sometimes vicious outlets for their abundant energies. The amount of vanity that pervades our official circles must be curbed to let this nation grow. We should stop throwing away public funds in pursuit of sweet nothings. We should keep official and personal affairs simple and smart to free up funds for the development of our country.
A word is enough for the wise, and the story of Black Weekend was certainly more than a word!
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