When A Man Dies -By Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor

When a man dies, it is sometimes unknown.

Death is something that we all owe nature. It equalises all of us living things. When and how death comes are the timelines crystal gazers could attain massive wealth from, were they to have the answers.

I have followed with interest the recent utterances of a certain Nobel laureate in our country, Nigeria.  When one juxtaposes his description of the new order awakening in Nigeria against his past actions for a democratically just Nigeria, the one word that comes readily to mind is “incongruous”.

On the 25th of February 2023, Nigerians, in their droves, especially the hitherto politically apathetic youths, went to the polls defying human and man-made obstacles to perform their civic duties.

This new order, like the mythical bird called the phoenix, arose from the ashes of a combusted democracy, giving life to a re-born government of the people, by the people and truly for the people.

But alas, in broad daylight, the old order wrestled the new order, aided by the non-independent referee called INEC (independent national electoral commission) attempting to rob Nigerians of our mandate. This wrestling match is still on-going in the ring called Nigeria, with the international community looking on as gleeful spectators, offering congratulatory messages to spice-up this mismatch that is the direct opposite, of what democracy is defined as in their nations. Their slippery approach is not surprising because their profiteering from such an imbroglio subserves their leeching of this hitherto slumbering giant of Africa. To be honest, in my opinion, they matter little because once Nigerians are internally determined to right the wrongs in our nation, external forces will have no option but to align.

What, however, has fascinated me the most, in this current drama, is the entry on to the scene of the Nobel Laureate who right now, to the new order of Nigerians, is considered not so noble.

So, this octogenarian enters the wrestling ring of the new and old Nigerian orders. He throws his incongruous fascist statement at the face of the new order. Then, the new order gladiators begin to respond to him. They take their eyes off the ball of the proper democracy struggle to chase the jibes of a man who just may have died.

Sometimes, living things expire while still retaining the characteristics of living things.  Simply put, a man may be dead in the heart, brain, or soul, and we know not when or where anatomically, spiritually, and psychically, the man died.

It takes the astute, the observant, the spiritually elevated and sometimes the medical initiate, to decipher that the man died. At the exact point he died, they may still not be able to tell.

Hence, it will be of no use, for the neo-Nigerian-phoenix, to delay its rising, by wasting time, seeking to interpret the incongruity of such. Furthermore, there will be minimal gains to be made in our geriatically-sensitive sociocultural milieu should the phoenix engage in this final scene of the last act with the vehicle that is left of the octogenarian.

Personally, I will continue to take what is positive from the old works of the Laureate. However, I shall not engage with the recent incongruous utterances about the new order pushing the frontiers of Nigeria’s positively evolving democracy.  We should kid ourselves not and expect the old order to just hands up and give in to the movement, which is the new order called “the obidients.”  Rather, world history lessons buttress the fact that it will be a long, drawn wrestling match. The combination of tenacity, teamwork and a unified sense of purpose will be the wind to propel this people-Obidient-phoenix far beyond the ashes of the old pseudo-democratic order.

Wasting time, responding to the hollow statements of a once great man who may have died in spite of us not looking closely enough to know when this death occurred, is of no benefit. Again, upon further reflection, of what use is it to the neo-Nigerian-phoenix arising, to know when ‘the man died’?

Dr Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor is the author of the book, My Father’s Daughter