T.Y. Danjuma’s Alarm And Alert -By Festus Adedayo

I was at the Tribune newspaper’s launch of 70 years of Progressive Journalism, a book which detailed the newspaper’s 70-year battles with runners of the Nigerian state and its triumph over many of those forces. The launch took place in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, last Thursday. I indeed did the review of the said book. At the forum which hosted the Who-is-Who of the Nigerian society, General Theophilus Danjuma, former Chief of Army Staff and ex-Minister of Defence, who was one of the awardees, elected to speak after being given the award. His comment has become an issue of dissection in Nigeria, with very many of the commentators arguing, as usual, from the narrow prism of political party and crass naivety.

Danjuma had said: “In Yorubaland, everybody seems to have lost their voice. People appear not to care about what is happening. If I tell you what I know that is happening in Nigeria today, you will no longer sleep.”

The above has provoked so many hollow comments that do not seem to track the big dilemma that Nigeria is in today. Among some of the ill-informed comments I have read, many condemned Danjuma as having said this because he allegedly fell out with Buhari over some oil bloc that the latter allegedly withdrew from him. Some also accused him of being part of the Nigerian problem.

We should ask ourselves, as well as Danjuma, some pertinent questions if we are desirous of apprehending the real issues at stake. The first question to ask is, if indeed Nigeria is in a big hole as the Danjuma alarm seems to indicate, who between him and us is likely to be a victim of the “big hole”? If I am not mistaken, Danjuma should be closer to his grave than many of those making the comments. That translates to mean that the number of years that he has to live inside “the hole” is significantly lower than ours. Third is that, for someone whom the Nigerian state has been taking care of since he joined the Nigerian Army, just like Muhammadu Buhari, Olusegun Obasanjo, among others, is Danjuma likely going to be a recipient of the economic crises that could likely follow the effect of “the big hole” he claimed we have sunken into? These put together mirror the vacuity of the arguments of many of those who claim that Danjuma could have made the statement out of frustration.

We have got to a sorry intersection in engagement with the public sphere as a country that many who are genuinely pissed-off by Nigeria’s slide in the hands of her runners would elect to keep silent for fear of some urchins spitting saliva on them. Politicians are most probably the highest beneficiaries of the uncharted free information highway of the social media. All they do is hire some jobless hounds with bare knowledge of society and give them the names of victims to descend upon. Pronto, as the Americans say, they begin to let out a whoosh of very illogical arguments that lack substances and deep thinking.

Danjuma, I suspect, was not alarmed because he was a saint who wasn’t complicit in the Nigerian problem. Virtually all of us are. He most probably spoke because he was first and foremost a Nigerian and an elder statesman. At the event, you would pity him as he attempted to speak. The words came out of him in measured droves, sometimes taking 20 seconds at intervals to let out. I saw a man whose heart was burning with searing information but which he could let out at his peril. The last time he spoke on his native Taraba’s fate in the hands of Buhari’s Fulani herdsmen, I would not be too sure he didn’t suffer negative riposte for it.

I doubt if there is any one in Nigeria who does not know that the country is in a very deep hole in the hands of the current landlords of power. The extent of this hole is what we may not know. Danjuma’s last advice to Nigerians at the Tribune event was that the solution to the Nigerian hole is in the hands of Nigerians themselves. This has gained less currency in the cadence of arguments about his statement. The piece of advice is however the crux of the matter. The choice is ours: Remain in the hole so that the foxes would pick us up for supper one after the other or elect to leave the hole by rescuing ourselves.