Professor Toyin Falola has put it most concisely: Pius Adesanmi is the
man who leaves and lives. He argues that although Adesanmi is leaving the
scene, still he lives. He’s gone, but he’s not done. He’s gone, but he’s still
on. He’s dead, but not dusted. There is more to Falola’s dirge than the lyrical
alliteration.
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| *Professor Pius Adesanmi |
There’s also more to the oxymoron of a departure that yet defies an
exit. To capture or press a point, you must confront it with its alter ego. To
prove Adesanmi 'lives' on, you challenge his death with the greater fact of
what he has left behind that offers assurance of his being alive, as it were.
You put the two opposite each other: Adesanmi’s death and his works and life
that touched many he seems to have left orphaned.
The point is that you resort to colourful and high language shrouded
in rich imagery when paying tribute to momentous events or to a great
personage, living or dead. Some of the all-time greats of the poetry we have
known had those qualities: Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinth, Wole Soyinka’s
Abiku, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, William
Shakespeare’s sonnets etc.
But as I said, we must look beyond the language of homage and
interrogate what it gave birth to in order to locate some lessons for our
politicians and political office holders. Pius Adesanmi was only 47. Yet the
encomiums he’s receiving would seem to be targeting a man with nine lives, or
one in his 70s or 80s or more. For, in our clime we equate achievements with
long life. We don’t believe we can deliver much in a short time.
The politician seeking elective office wouldn’t plan and strive to
achieve in four years all he promised during his campaign; he would scheme for
an encore even in old age. He relies on effete constitutional legalism to
insist it is his right to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ by opting for a second
coming. He adds that, truly a term, no matter how long (5, 6 or 7), isn’t
enough.
If it is at all, shouldn’t he satisfy the constitution which clearly
approves a two-term deal for the president and the governor along with their
lieutenants? Should he who swore on oath to protect the document turn around to
trash it? God forbid! Adesanmi is counselling them.
He packed much in his short
stay such that some commentators have wondered if he had a premonition of
untimely death that pushed him into delivering a lot in little time. He wrote
books and turned in well-researched newspaper articles that we all consumed
week by week.
These are (they still are living articles according to Falola and a
host of others honouring Adesanmi) great pieces addressing national issues we
shall be consulting as we collectively seek to salvage our beleaguered nation.
As it was said of Wole Soyinka when the world first began to acknowledge his
literary prowess, Adesanmi ‘riffled’ the English language and injected it with
vernacular idioms that got critics alarmed at his unbridled temerity! So
sometimes, right in the middle of a serious essay you’d find Adesanmi writing,
“I was sitting down jejely’’. Another: In the title of a column piece, he would
shock you with “igbo re, ona re’’. Somewhere else he would talk of ‘’babanla’’
or agbalagba''.
He wasn’t afraid to go pidgin, in both symbolic and real attempt to
demonstrate his identification with the hoi polloi. So if in some instances you
felt class alienated because of Adesanmi’s intimidating intellectual
credentials, he would disrobe himself for easy reach. He told the story of how
he once demystified a high class restaurant in Europe by taking a driver to
lunch instead of asking him to stay in the car while Adesanmi enjoyed his meal,
as others would. The waiters watched in horror as both gobbled their meal the
African way. These are the type of the people the man touched with his love. It
scarcely amazes one then concerning the torrent of tributes accompanying his
exit. It also hardly surprises us that, on account of the great work to his
credit in his short life, many refuse to accept Adesanmi is dead. How can he be
dead, they fight back, when they see still him in the monuments of good work
attributed to him by the high and the low?
Our public office holders don’t need more than a term of four, or at
most five years, to accomplish their goals for the people. We can conveniently
amend the provision in the constitution to outlaw the two-term arrangement.
Looking forward to a second coming and the battle to stop it not only breed the
violence in our politics, but also they make our leaders unenterprising and
unimaginative. They can’t sit down to work hard through sleepless nights in the
interest of the people, knowing they have some eight years to play with.
But we have many one-term leaders who did quite well, better indeed
than longer-staying ones. In our continent, Nelson Mandela of South Africa
excelled on just a single outing. In Nigeria, although a military ruler,
Muritala Mohammed had a short stay; but his time was defined by a discipline
not since duplicated. John Kennedy of the United States was killed in less than
three years of his first term. His feat outshines those who finished their
first and second terms.
Let Nigeria’s politicians learn from Pius Adesanmi that what we need
from them isn’t their Methuselah life in office. We are not interested in their
barren longevity in power. We are for a brief stay that would be fruitful,
flourishing and flowery, as it was with Pius Adesanmi, the one who ‘leaves but
lives’!
*Mr. Ojewale, a public affairs analyst, is a regular contributor to this blog
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