Nepal Bloodshed: Of Nigeria’s Big Masquerades and Gọntọ -By Festus Adedayo

Nepal, the Himalayan nation of 30 million people, boiled like water on a lit cauldron last week. As my people say, behind the logic of christening a woman at birth as “one who died with her glory,” (Kumolu) is a plethora of reasons. The bloodshed reminds me of the theme of resistance in the song of Ibadan bard, Tatalo Alamu. In one of his tracks, Alamu sang that the big masquerade (eégún) who walks into a gathering without recognizing the smaller one (gòntò) deserves the retaliation of non-recognition he gets. The song goes thus: “Bí eégún ńlá bá wọlé t’ó l’óhun ò rí gòntò, gòntò náà ò r’éégún …”

Ibeji, British-Nigerian Afro-soul singer-songwriter, whose fifth studio album, Intermission, won the Best Alternative Album at the 2022 Headies Award, also explored this motif. The eegun and gọntọ to him symbolize victory of the oppressed in the hands of their oppressors. The same motif can be found in Bob Marley’s Small Axe track where he asked the oppressors, “the evil men,” not to boast at their Pyrrhic victory against the people. They are “playing smart (but) not being clever,” he declared, because they are “working in iniquity” to “achieve vanity”. If they ever thought they were “the big tree,” the mass of the people, sang Marley, are “the small axe” that are “sharpened to cut you down” and “ready to cut you down.”

If you didn’t hear Tatalo or Ibeji sing in Nepal last week, the youths heeded the signification of their songs. Gọntọ will sooner than later conquer the selfish and oppressive big masquerades who are the political leaders bent on suppressing their voices. Yes, the gọntọ in power today may ignore the welfare of the common man on the street, the agency with which to challenge the gọntọ is resistance.

An unrest which began Monday got this landlocked country in South Asia tailspinning into unimaginable chaos. What set off public anger was Nepalese authorities’ ban of 26 social media platforms, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and WeChat, in a country where there is a heavy youth population reliance on earnings from social media activities. The bloody outing, self-styled “Gen Z protest,” then morphed into protest against perceived governmental ineptitude, corruption and nepotism.

Nepal has a dysfunctional leadership similar in texture and form to Nigeria’s. Unemployment, heavily concentrated among younger adults of both countries, has resulted in thousands seeking existential bailouts outside their shores. In Nepal, young men and women, in tens of thousands,  according to a New York Times report of last week, exodus out daily to the Persian Gulf, Malaysia and India. They swarm long-term contracts in oil-rich countries to work as seasonal migrant labourers. In Nigeria, young men and women risk their lives searching for daily bread. In the process, many die unsung in the Mediterranean sea. Nepal government data reveals that over 741,000 youth japa-ed in 2024 to eke a living. The World Bank reports that a fifth of Nepalese people, aged between 15-24, are unemployed and the country has a GDP per capita of just $1,447. The statistics are almost a replay of the scary figures bedeviling Nigeria.

There is however a truth that tastes as bitter as Jogbo leaf in the mouth of Nigerian and Nepalese leaders. It is that their dysfunctional leadership challenges are borne out of failure to recognize that a trinity exists between the voter, (people) votes and the voted. This trinity is almost like the sacred pact between the drum, the drumstick and the drummer. Late Ibadan Awurebe music lord, Epo Akara, alluded to this trinity in one of the lines of his song when he sang that the drummer and the brass bell are woven together like a tapestry. “Oní’lù l’ó ni saworo…” he sang.

Taking this further in his 1999 epic movie, Saworoide, Tunde Kelani deployed a biting satire to convey how Nigerian rulers have consistently betrayed this sacred pact with the people. He chose the sacred Yoruba drum, Ìyá ìlù, to convey this. He then used the ritual significance of the drum and the jangling brass bell decorating its neck as a motif. In the ancient town of Jogbo, (a very bitter leaf chosen as representative of the bitterness encountered by the people) this drum plays a central role in crowning kings. Kelani’s drum now stood as a mystical symbol, the people’s voice and a pact with kings (rulers) that they have the obligation of serving them. At the end, Kelani was able to explore themes of tradition, corruption, voice of the people and leadership failure in this highly rated film.

When the face of this sacred trinity between the people, the drum and the drumming stick is trodden upon with impunity, there will be disequilibrium. Rats will cease to chirp and birds won’t chirrup as they used to. Just as is the case today in Nigeria. In order to avoid the catastrophe of violating sacred pacts, Yoruba drummers make sacrifices to drums.

With offerings of palm wine, blood gouged out from the neck of a sacrificed hen, kola nuts and bean cakes, the drummer pours them as libation on the drum’s carvings. The ritual ceremony is to imbue the spirit of Ayangalu, the revered deity of drum, its patron saint and originator of, especially the talking drum, to give drummers spiritual power and protection. It affirms and recognizes the drum’s deity. The drummer making the sacrifice pleads with the god of the drum to ensure that neither he nor the drum encounters calamity at performance grounds, as well as a guarantee of safe passage to performance grounds. With the libation and invocations, he equally establishes a bond between him the worshiper, the drum, and the divine.

The Siamese of Nepal and Nigeria is not just in both countries’ humongous population rascality of 300 and 200 million people. Their leaders also share texture of irresponsibility. The Nepal protests, which fed into longstanding economic woes, find a corollary in Nigeria’s. They both reveal countries where, like vampires, their leaders suck citizens’ blood with abandon. Both countries are also riddled with corruption, unemployment and inequality. Social and economic gulfs exist between the rulers and the ruled of both countries. While children and families of political elites in Nepal and Nigeria live lavish and luxurious lifestyles, most young people in both countries struggle to eke a living. Uncountable number of the ordinary people die from lack and avoidable diseases. The youths of both countries are plunged into abysmal poverty because a great proportion of them cannot afford to eat one meal a day. In its rebellion last week, it will however appear that the Gen Z of Nepal, unlike Nigeria’s, was pushed to the wall against leaders who have over the decades fixed their individual stomachs, rather than fixing the nation.

I agree that sometimes, leaders’ intention can be misjudged by the people. Leaders also sometimes suffer for their stiff-necked commitment to doing good. Former First Lady of the United States, Rosalynn Carter, had a fabled quote in this regard. Late Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State gleefully reproduced it to explain his leadership road map. Carter had posited that, while “a leader takes people where they want to go,” a great leader “takes (them) where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” This was the fate of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the 1954 federal elections.

Pardon this other digression. At the risk of being labeled phobic of calendar fatalities, September 11 looks to me a doomed day. For the Yoruba, on that day in 1963, Awolowo’s political assailants got him jailed in the Calabar prison. America equally witnessed its’. That day, Osama bin Laden and other terrorists penetrated it and wrecked global-wide colossal damage. For the reggae music world, it was the day Peter Winston MclnTosh was gunned down in Kingston, Jamaica by two rough-heads. Last Wednesday, Donald Trump’s ally, Charlie Kirk, escaped the September 11 phobia, getting shot and killed the day before, September 10, during an event at Utah Valley University.

Back to Awolowo. He became a casualty of the Carter admonition. As Premier, he brought before the Western Region parliament four policy frameworks which eventually became his political undoing. They were (1) agricultural development, which included rubber plantation (2) customary courts reforms (3) democratization of local councils and (4) free universal primary education and free health service. Though these policies later revolutionize the West, they cost Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) victory in the 1954 federal elections. The electoral loss made AG the only party in power to lose a parliamentary election supervised by it.

Because no meaningful agricultural revolution policy could be achieved without acquisition of lands, peeved, those whose lands were acquired for the policy voted against Awo in the election. The 1953 law enacted to replace old and illiterate customary court presidents, many of whom were chiefs, with educated ones, suffered backlash. Adelabu Adegoke for instance rode on this to form the Mabolaje/NCNC alliance, becoming the doyen of the common people in the process. Also, the AG’s new policy of democratizing local councils by stopping nomination and replacing it with election of members irked those steeped in the past. They in turn voted against the AG.

The most sweeping rebellion against Awo’s AG came with the free education and health policies. While Awolowo supported voluntary education, many leaders of the party voted for compulsory education. Many members of the farming population, afraid that the policy would deny their children and wards’ help on the farm, voted against AG in the 1954 election. Also, a capitation tax of 10 shillings to fund the policy imposed on every taxable adult boomeranged. Opposition elements went out to incite the people that the tax was meant to enable ministers build personal houses and buy cars. These all led to the AG’s loss in the 1954 election.

While it may be unpatriotic to call for a walk on the Nepalese violence road, the truth is that, Third World leaders are sworn to self-destruct unless a seismic shake recalibrates their brains. Yoruba, in affirming that likes should attract likes, say “ó jọ gáté, kò jọ gáté, ó f’ẹsè méjèèjì tiro”. They similarly render a call for similarity of treatment of felons in an illustration of a limping man who leapt out of the same closet where a limping masquerade just leapt into, costumed in the usual enormous, multi-colored regalia.

Like AG in 1953, the present FG must have persuaded itself that, by taking Nigerians down the murky alley of a rough road, it was going the route of Rosalynn Carter. The ousted clowns in Nepal must have similarly thought so. Regime clowns may cite AG’s 1954 public perception as justification. However, in barely two years, the rhythm changed for Action Group. As it launched these policies, especially the free education and health service in 1955, by 1956, the dividends began to trickle in for the people. The party then won that year’s regional election by 48 to 32 seats, as well as subsequent elections.

Conversely, in Nigeria today, what we get is impostor economics. Early in the month, the Nigerian president, at a Villa event, declared that he had met revenue target for 2025, ahead of schedule. The country would no longer rely on borrowing to fund its budget, he said. The exchange rate, he further said, had stabilized after initial turbulence and that the Naira had appreciated from over N1,900/$ to about N1,450/$.

Regime fawners went to town with these bogus statistics. Again, just as his lickspittle Senate President said last year that FG had dashed states N30 billion each, he and his commissars have engaged in a binge of demonizing Nigerian 36 states. The question people ask the fawners is, how have all those mantras of “revenue target”, “stable Naira” and “downward inflation” impacted the common man? Have transport fares gone down? Are medications cheaper? Are Nigerians dying less from acute poverty? The “revenue target” was met as a result of squeezing the people to pay tax. So, how much has been given by government back to the people in terms of social safety nets? Yet, the presidential economy is becoming elastic, the president’s second home is France and the I-don’t-care attitude of the leadership is worsening.

I am on a WhatsApp platform where there is intense musical-chair competition to fawn and capture the hearts of powers-that-be. Someone there asked why, rather than “state governments,” FG is pilloried for stagnation of development. He hoisted Prof Toyin Falola who he said constantly “bemoan(s)” Nigeria’s “dysfunctional federalism” and “the generous financial inducement of the media” as reasons why this FG-bashing view is gaining traction.

My reply to him was, “Doesn’t this sound awkward  and I dare say, self-serving? To divert the proportion of blame and responsibility of Nigeria’s developmental stagnation from a central government that collects 52% of federal allocation and laying such at the feet of states – 36 of which share 32% of such national allocation – isn’t a watertight logic. The truth is, Nigeria’s federal government is big-for-nothing, wasteful, and needed to be pruned if we want development. It is why there is unbelievable squandering and theft at the Aso Rock Villa. Not heaping proportionally high blame on the FG as against states for Nigeria’s stagnation, seeking a whipping boy in states and scapegoating the media equal playing the ostrich. This is the usual singsong of Nigerian politicians.”

This generated reactions. What the revenue formula means is that, with 36 states collecting 32% of federal allocations, each state collects less than one per cent of this monthly allocation. While no one should defend state governments’ incompetence, many of whom are inept and wasteful, we should not lose track of the fact that the federal government has grown too unwieldy, receiving too much, superintending over too much, giving so little and is a bastion of corruption.

Recently, some ministers in this government were accused of owning properties that are far beyond their means. Like General Yakubu Gowon, perceived as timid in the face of corrupt elements in his government, mum has been the word from the Villa. In 1975, the scandal surrounding the importation of cements, nicknamed the Cement Armada, which was handled by officials of the defense ministry and the CBN under Gowon, was mind-boggling. Governor of Benue/Plateau State, Police Commissioner Joseph D. Gomwalk, was one of the accused. Gowon acquitted him.

The way out of the Nepal volcano that will surely sweep through Africa is for governments to prioritize the welfare of their people. Regime fawners and data boys can only worsen the fates of rulers. Once President Bola Tinubu, in his imperial power as the Eegun, does not serve miniature pounded yam to the gọntọ – the Nigerian masses – he can be assured that the fate of Nepal Prime Minister, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, commonly known as K. P. Sharma Oli, will be far from him.