THIS REPUBLIC OUR REPUBLIC is the title of a poetry
collection by AJ. Dagga Tolar, a collection of poems largely about a brief
period of government of a onetime president of Nigeria. One major thing about the period of rule of
this late man is that it clearly revealed the docility of the youth of this
nation as to their desire for ‘change’, although this government has been gone
for over four years before this current dispensation of Mohammed Buhari in whose
name during the 2014 electoral campaigns was made the cry of ‘change’, the cry
of ‘change’ which was thoughtlessly flung here and there from mouth to mouth as
to been desired and envisaged in the person of MohammhedBuhari given the
options of candidates during the 2014 general/presidential elections, but this
was nothing but a blind envisioning. I remember clearly on the day of the
election one of the things I posted on the facebook social media while others
were also making posts was that ‘abstention’ was also an option. I simply
wondered why the post sort of refused to show up; anyway if it had shown up how
much wouldit had done for the generality?I now call it to the consciousness of
the Nigerian people, that for your own goodif the candidates accredited for an
election are not up to the standard of being able to deliver the drastic change
you are seeking based on general assessment from your everyday arguments with
friends and others pre the election then do know it that ‘abstention!’ is a
beautiful option: all that one or more than one of you have to do is rend the
air with a good scream or shout of ‘abstention!’, or wear a shirt clearly
stating ‘abstention’.
In usage of one of AJ. DaggaTolar’s expression ‘failed dead past’, an expression in one of the
poems of the collection THIS REPUBLIC OUR REPUBLIC, I hear say it is clear that
if the youths of this country knew a thing or two about been prepared for revolutionary
change abstention would have been the right course to follow at that point in
time to stall against the spirit of the ‘failed dead past’ coming to rule,
because having experienced OlusegunObasanjo a spirit of the ‘failed dead past’
it was clear that going on with the presidential election of 2014 the probable
chances was high that MohmmaduBuhari also a spirit of the ‘failed dead past’
would ascend to the throne; for the youths to have seen ‘change’ in the spirit
of the ‘failed dead past’ which is in the person of MohammaduBuhari was simply nothing but a desire born out of not
wanting to be responsible and contributory to that ‘change’ clamored for,
because the truth about the Nigerian youth is that they are looking towards a
revolutionary government and this was blindly envisioned in the person of
MuhaamaduBuhari, and this is purely ridiculous as we can see. Dagga Tolar’sTHIS REPUBLIC OUR REPUBLIC was largely
about the brief dispensation of a president which in Dagga Tolar’s poetry
passed for the ‘sickening one’ whom in refrain he sang the heart of this
president as the ‘Public heart of Love of the Sickening One’, an expression
which captures the well meaningfulness for the public good on the part of this
presidential personality but of course as we know he was physiologically having
a hard time. I come to the issue of this one time president because his tenure
of presidency clearly showed the docility of the youths of this country. Am I
part of these youthful persons? Yes of course since the majority is what is
used to represent the nature of the group.
Cutting to the chase, the point I am trying to make hereon is that in
the face of flagrant and quotidian corruption in all spheres of the country’s
government, a situation good enough to stir a general outburst from the youth
against the government but somehow the spirit of ‘Satan’ prevailed over the
spirit of youthfulness that in this dastard state a good as dead human being, a lifeless human being ruled a
nation of over fifty-million youthful living souls; and somebody dares to tell
me the youths of this country are not docile, that I am wrong in saying the
youth of this country do not really burn for the ‘change’ they were and are clamoring
for and saw in the person of MuhammaduBuhari, for to have seen it in Mohammed
Buhari was a clear-cut display of a
lackadaisical and unrealistic approach towards desired ‘change’ which is as a
result of the youth of this country, Nigeria, shying away from the fact of not
sincerely making it loud and popular talk among themselves in market places,
offices and other places of meeting,that we need a revolution, which is because
they would not want to shoulder it so they therefore envisage a
revolutionary government, but to
envision it on the spirit of a ‘failed dead past’ was the display of the
ridiculous nature of our youth in relation to their presidency as it absurdly
happened like it was not a strange thing that a dead man ruled a nation of over
fifty-million youthful souls for over three months, this period is concerned
with the desired ‘change’ by the youths of this nation because this desired ‘change’
has been long hitchhiking on the road before the coming to pass the transition
from military rule to civilian rule in 1999, it’s only that the word ‘change’
was sloganized during the 2014 elections in this desired ‘change’ been blindly
envisioned on MuhammaduBuhari a ‘failed dead past’. With apologies to the family of the man whom
while dead ruled a nation of over fifty-million youthful souls, I hear say no
body dare make issue of the man not being dead but in coma because we knew he
had not the slightest chance of even returning as a zombie if zombies are
a fact. If not because of the chicanery
of the principalities of darkness that be in this country I see no reason why
his wife was put through that political mess as a first lady to keep up the
front for their selfish pursuit which was an insult to the memory of that dead man.
We all know what this man would have preferred to be done with him in his state
of moribund unconsciousness, and this would be nothing short of the honourable
thing. The expression ‘failed dead past’ caughtmy attention in the collection
of THIS REPUBLIC OUR REPUBLIC, because having read some of the poems at the
time I did corresponded with the poet AJ. Dagga Tolarover the few I had read, and
in his correspondence back to me he made mention of the popular folk tale about
the tortoise who ascended with the birds to heaven which was with the maximum
help of the donation of feathers from all the birds to provide the tortoise
wings to ascend to heaven. In AJ Dagga’s mention of this he clearly and
succinctly stated an oracle, this story of the tortoise is clearly an oracle of
democratic ascension by popular support given by people which becomes votes for
persons to get into offices to becoming rulers. Based on comments I made on the
few of the poems I had read at the time from the collection THIS REPUBLIC OUR
REPUBLIC, in correspondence with me Dagga made succinctly this insightful reply
in reference to this story about the tortoise, stating that we are yet to behave
like the birds who retrieved their feathers from the tortoise, and he made
clear that the feathers were the votes of the people. Why did this clear
oracular interpretation given by Dagga Tolar in this story of the tortoise
attract me to the expression ‘failed dead past’ in this poem of his. First and
foremost the birds alongside with tortoise all went to party in heaven, it was
an issue of food, an issue of hunger, and hunger is the first motive of any
living organism, believe it Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said ‘man
shall not live by bread alone’; reason being that our worries are more than
that of four footed beasts, but at the very base a common hunger unites us with
them. But then the issue of the feathers
and all of them taking names was clear cut as Dagga mentioned that the feathers
are the vote of the people which actually brings the politrickster into office in which is the throne of
governance in the kingdom in relative jurisdiction of government, the most heavenly
place in the land and when the tortoise got to the heavenly place he did
terribly by taking the people for a fool, which as we have with our various
political leaders whom ascended to the throne by our various votes and in the
light of ‘name taking’ the tortoise had taken the name ‘all of you’ which in
our reality of politics in this story being an oracle is when by our vote the
elected politician becomes our voice, his or her say is voted to become our
say, he or she becomes our mouth piece, even in a foreign land which the visit
to heaven represent in the journey of the birds with the tortoise, and the tortoise
betrayed their feathery vote of confidence as our politicians have been doing
both at home and abroad in foreign countries right from ninety-gbidigbidi-no-date till this date have been doing to the common
populace. Before coming to the birds divesting the tortoise of their feathers I
would come to the issue of the matter of the ‘failed dead past’ and this is in
the biological nature of the tortoise in terms of lifespan expectations of
existence in relation to the birds. The birds are symbols of youthfulness,
flightful in almost everything and the tortoise
is an animal who has the potential to live for two centuries refusing to
die, never wanting to quit while all the birds come and go having been doomed
to a short life span in comparison to the possible lifespan of the tortoise, and
the tortoise aged as it is ever still desirous to ascend to heaven to vie for
the seat of power of the kingdom, and had taken the name ‘all of you’ which is
the spirit of the ‘failed dead past’ politician in deceptive campaign for the
seat of power and who in the nature of the tortoise can get there only by been
aided with the wings of the birds, the birds which are the youthful ones whom
are used to their own detriment for political campaigns and political violence and
who also get to vote on finding reason in the misleading speeches of the old
politician seeking office who is the tortoise ever tricky, slothfulnatured and
slothful minded to things of change that would bring about the alleviation of
hunger and poverty in the life of the youthful who die continually everyday
while he or she the aged politrickster is ever living the heavenly life in the
nature of the tortoise the spirit of the ‘failed dead past’ which was what we
had in the dispensation of OlusegunObasanjo and we are having in
MohammaduBuhari, and nobody dare say there was nothing we could do about
OlusegunObasanjo coming on as a civilian president, that would be a lie because
it is still the same docility of the youth that allowed of course through an
election which is no excuse to write off the docility of making it possible for
the military transition to civilian rule to pass into the hands of a tortoise
in the person of OlusegunObasanjo a spirit of the ‘failed dead past’. To the
expression ‘failed dead past’ I associate the word spirit with it in saying
“spirit of the ‘failed dead past’” because it is a spirit in the sense that it
is not only the aged ones that get to be as the tortoise, even a fellow of the
same relative younger generation could be such which we witness among young
persons not more than forty-five years governing as councilors and local
government chairmen, and on the presidential level we experienced the person of
the ex-president Jonathan Goodluck who is of a different generation from the
Obasanjos and Ibrahim Babangidas. Jonathan in the spirit of the ‘failed dead
past’ did rule, which shows also that the tortoise is one who was once a
commoner or anonymous fellow who having not been in a given political office presents
himself as one to be for ‘all of you’ the epithet of the tortoise, but on
getting there he or she assumed the style of leadership of the tortoise the spirit
of the ‘failed dead past’.
The youthful of the nation are not hungry enough for
revolutionary change because this brings me to the birds making it clear to the
tortoise that he or she the tortoise has lost their vote of confidence, and
they did not go just talking about it, but in anger divested him of their
feathers because they were hungry enough to express their anger against a
slothful, demagogic and politrickster tortoise the ‘failed dead past’, and what
did the birds do if not do in fulfillment of the visionary declaration of Jesus
Christ when Jesus Christ declared ‘I see Satan fall like lightning from heaven’.
Why would Satan fall like a lightning from heaven, Satan whose wings more than
any other of the heavenly beings supremely spreads eagle than anyother if not
that it had lost its wings, this purely shows the picture of the Mexican legend
Quetzalcoatl splendid feathered, which by nature given its specie is not
naturally endowed with feathers to which as poet in mythopoesis I say the
legend Quetzalcoatl got its splendid feathers, looking more splendid than all
the birds, got it like the tortoise in
the feathery vote of confidence by the birds, and then alas the given
Quetzalcoatl with a contagion of corruption in Jesus’ visionary declaration passes
for the Satan falling from heaven, Satan the fleeing serpent in the nature of a
clan of corrupt Quetzalcoatl that has been divested of its splendor, cast away,
chased out, debased from the throne in overthrow been drove by a drove of
revolutionary birds or angels if you may. The youths whom are the birds tired
of hunger and the all what not of lies, chicanery, and scheming of the Satan a
corrupt Quetzalcoatl of a tortoise who is a spirit of the ‘failed dead past’,
these birds in their hunger therefore cast out tortoise the Satan from the throne
to the earth just as Jesus Christ did say ‘I see Satan fall like lightning from
heaven’, the Quetzalcoatl divested of its feathers in an uncontrollable fall, the
fall of the tortoise. Statistics has shown the average Nigerian eats no more
than a dollar per day, and we have a president with whose senators take earnings
per month that runs absurdly in the millions, while all past president earn
twenty-three million naira monthly for their spirits of the ‘failed dead past’.
In economic measurement the appropriate and first item to
measure the economic situation of a country is the amount of food per
three-square meal on the table of the common individual in the society; like
the birds that became hungry enough to cast out the dis-splendoured
Quetzalcoatl Satan the tortoise from the throne of the kingdom therefore
dethroned and debased, when shall the youths be hungry enough to cast out the
never wanting to leave but to die on the throne tortoises in power, scheming cunning
serpent tortoises on the throne whom are the spirits of the ‘failed dead
past’? Come what may, I see Satan, the
corrupt Quetzalcoatl, divested of its feathers by the angels, by the birds the
tortoise divested of its feathers and the spirit of the ‘failed dead past’
Satan the tortoise falling a falling star overthrown in heaven by the
revolution of the birds.
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