MANY years ago, we were members of a seminar class led by Dr. Uter Gide, a French professor. He was teaching us Things Fall Apart, written by Professor Chinua Achebe. Before then we had considered ourselves some kind of authorities on the works of Achebe. And now the French professor gave us a shellshock, something we escaped from in Biafra. It came in the form of a question: Why is Things Fall Apartso successful, such a global hit?
Of course, there was no shortage of suggestions. And there were nearly as many as there were attentive seminar students. But for the French professor, it was in the architecture. Achebe's genius, to quote him, was his uncanny sense of the deployment of (s)pace and movement. So, Things Fall Apart supplies you the illusion it is a pond, a series of ponds.
Yet on stepping in you feel it is a great flowing river, leading you away to the untapped, and deepest of oceans. In a sense, it reads like a group of themed short stories and also an integral novel. Within this dichotomy, you can mine a universe he held. Genius, the professor continued, was in created differences, potential differences, pressed to yield their treasures. This is the internal secret and logic ofThings Fall Apart. This is the point at which that great work of Achebe falls together, he concluded, with a wry, an all-knowing smile, only the French can forge.
Of course, Things Fall Apart was not the only subject on the curriculum. The French professor also taught us about Feudal Societyby Professor Marc Bloch. Generally, it is held that Feudal Society is one of the half a dozen greatest historical works since Thucydides completed his masterpiece.
What is impossible to imagine is how Professor Bloch managed an unbelievable super abundance, an ocean-load of data, philosophy, literatures, insights and more into a mere volume. The miracle again, said the professor, was in architecture.
Jimenez, he called out, perhaps, thinking I have Spanish ancestry, architecture is destiny and the rest is in emptiness. Jimenez, our destiny is in our architectures and how we mine emptiness for gold, for treasures. Jimenez, now the difference between hell and heaven despite popular ignorance is not in the crowdedness of hell and spatial freedom of paradise. No, the difference is in their architectures. Hell is a default architecture driven to consume and destroy its producer inputs, which may be citizens. Paradise is designed, sites and services, to grow and prosper her habitués, her producer agents. So in hell, the world and or its world, in spite of whatever heroic efforts fail and are doomed to fail. But in paradise even the least effort is given the greatest leverage and things thus of their own come into glory. It is all in architecture, Jimenez. To be in hell is to get the architecture wrong. It is not so much as to have sinned (as Adeboye may canvass). The sinning is in lack of creative and or architectural gifts or genius (perhaps, that is why Madubuko, Oyedepo Inc., all preacher-architects, must make interesting characters).
(As a rule, kids in Ajegunle are more cantankerous than their Ikoyi counterparts, yet have one common humanity. The difference is not in their father's wealth, stolen or otherwise. It is architecture. Face-me, I Face-you architecture is a default training ground for aggression, for coup makers, for thuggery etc.)
Jimenez, without architecture, all non-simple, non-linear systems, not excluding human societies turn into chaos. They additionally take charge and will be converting effort into load. So, even if the sheriff ever did good, even for himself, it would self-degrade into evil and abscess for all, for the system.
And nothing proves this better than the foretold failures of APC and Buhari. The point is that Nigeria as an architectural or architected chaos, is simply put, not governable. The fault is in its architectures. It thus will be easier to govern and organise hell than Abuja, Lagos or Nigeria. And to organise hell at all, you needed the genius of Satan. Yet the guys tinkering at things in Abuja are human, all too human. Things are thus destined to crash like Nigeria's Stock Exchange after Soludo, the economic sheriff came and sold us naked into the financial cold.
That is why it is funny when you see rather intelligent people adorn Awolowo, Bello, Zik, Okpara, etc. with special haloes. It is as if they are suggesting that these folks are from some strange planet, or that some other gods created them. The point is that these guys worked wonders under an architecture created by the British. Now, the British did not just come with Maxim guns. The Brits are a civilisation, heirs to the glories of Greece. That is following the Attic way, the architecture the British bequeathed us was not just creative, it was civilisational and civilising. It was what gave the bounce and leverage to whatever it was that the founding fathers, so-called, ever did. It was what made them the rightly guided caliphs, or the just heirs as it were.
Now, coup adventurers came and thought that muscles can make up for brains, that all that the thug required were good intentions. To summarise, all they did was to destroy that "Parthenon'', the near divine architecture that civilises and makes of us achievers.
So, these coup makers thought that the state was like a tuber of yam, to cut and be scrambled for. And they cut the great tuber into pieces without any overarching strategy. All what was important to these coup-makers and coup-made Generals was that they stole the most slices of yam and other tubers; local governments, senatorial seats, states, etc. for their own states, peoples and religions. And Nigeria as a political space became anti-creatively, anti-architecturally unbalanced, unhinged and thus ungovernable.
The lesson is that there will never be a time when guns may replace brains or muscles be passed off as genius. A soldier in fatigues is not a god. A soldier with a gun is not a genus of any special kinds at all. The men who are nearest to the deities are the philologists, the mathematicians, the historians and the logicians. In a word, it's the men of the faculties, not the barracks, no matter their bleeding hearts. Even to bleed is then a sign of immaturity, a sign that the man's hearts need further intensive-care observations. So, how can he who is to be saved come to save another?
So, those who are agonising that Buhari and APC are spending four or 4000 days or just anything in-between junketing the universe, that they have failed their promise to pay N5000, that the usual fuel queues are back are missing the point. With the architecture of power Buhari inherited and which he has consolidated, he has castrated himself and his party. He cannot any further consummate power. Nigeria in his hands, like hell, will only be self-destructive.
In the end, it is quite brilliant of Buhari to be sojourning abroad rather than stay at home and be overwhelmed by the problems that are as ancient as Gowon and Nzeogwu, which though in a greed and grab for unitary powers he is intensifying.
Anyway, there is now only one way out. It is to go in the way of the French professor or of the book, Things Fall Apart. That is the only way we can hold things together in Nigeria. And we can assure if we are able to create a masterpiece - nations, at least, great nations, are architectural masterpieces, of power and not just geographic artifices; America is, so also is Singapore and the rest. Biafra too was and that accounts for why we did great and mighty deeds under her - then Nigeria will begin to mint great men like the Awolowos for the West, the Okparas in the East and the Bellos of the North.
Meanwhile, the smartest thing to do is to tighten your seat belt. You are in for the bumpiest ride ever, a one chance ride, on the political hit and run highways that is Nigeria. Ahiazuwa.
RE: Knowledge is also in being less ignorant
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Dear Jimanze, you have to forgive people for not challenging Ben Bruce for his unfortunate analysis on which part, the South or North, depends more on the other; for some reasons. The first is that only research-bend minds like you read more than one newspaper on daily basis and at whatever cost. Let us ignore the economic aspect, which cedes many Nigerians from such an 'excessive' practice. Other reason is when a man of Bruce's clout goofs on logic, for reasons best known to him, great minds ignore it and go on with life. Bruce must be in his seventies or close to it, to know that, prior to independence, the three major regions were dependent on agriculture for revenue generation to run their affairs. None was specifically dependent on the other for survival. Jimanze, please, forgive his logic. Let it be rested on his right of expression. Ahiazuwa, as you would conclude on such worrisome issues.
Lai Ashadele. 07067677806
Dear Sir, Re: Knowledge is also in being less ignorant. I read your above titled piece in the Daily Sun of Thursday, November 12. While I commend you for your insight, I totally disagree that Senator Ben Bruce spoke out of ignorance. I have traversed the length and breadth of this country, especially the North and can say without any fear of contradiction that the senator was spot on. I have also always believed like the senator said that indeed, Nigerians need one another. It is not enough for us here in the South to grandstand about oil, as if that is the only resource that makes nations great.
Peter Nwokolo, 08063194911
Dear Sir, your piece today on The Turf Game is another classical Ahiazuwa; yours truly has become less ignorant too. You just won a disciple. More ink to your pen.
M. O. 08064018215
Dear Oga, for me, you remain an enigma. I read you as often as I can get your writing. Ben Bruce should be pitied. It is sad that most of them who purportedly lead the South East and South South have warped 'education'. Most times, the Ariaria trader is more intuitive and wiser than the things that 'lead' us.
08039453385
Dear Sir, You would have ended today's excellent piece with Ahiazuwa because ahia zuru azu. Men, you are deep. Thanks.
08060066455
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