By Promise Adiele
This essay is not intended to elaborate on Nigeria’s socio-political and economic regression or to emphasize the potential of a new socio-political beginning. It does not attempt to achieve a consensus about the more suitable quintessential habitation between City and Village.
Expectedly, Nigerians are divided
between the two spatial continuities. But of course, both City and Village are
important in diverse ways and serve distinctive objectives. As current
socio-political metaphors in Nigeria, they convey different orientations
towards the 2027 general elections. City and Village both present a choice
which must be made, and on time, too. In this journey, in choosing between the
two, William Shakespeare’s As You Like It will be our guide. The events in As
You Like It take place between two different environments, the Court and the
Forest of Arden.
While the Court represents City, the
Forest of Arden represents Village. Shakespeare creates a distinction between
the Court, which he describes as immoral and full of pervasion and the Forest
of Arden, which he describes as invigorating and rehabilitative. Thus, City and
Village take their positions early enough in this essay.
The play starts from the Court, which represents City in all of
its sophistication and glamour. However, one after another, all the characters
in the Court experience hardship, betrayal, jealousy, oppression and a level of
despotic cruelty, which forces them to relocate to the Forest of Arden.
They migrate to the Forest of Arden in
search of peace, revival, self-discovery and an intimacy with nature’s
therapeutic predilections. The hostile and brutal nature of the Court contrasts
with the idyllic, exciting, and infinite resources of the Forest of Arden.
Those eluded by happiness in the Court find it in the Forest of Arden. Those
despised in the Court find respect and honour in the Forest of Arden.
Those whose psychology of power is
characterized by autocracy in the Court find realization, truth and empathy in
the Forest of Arden. In this way, City and Village acquire different identities
as we move on.
Four different couples, Rosalind and
Orlando, Celia and Oliver, Phoebe and Silvius, Audrey and Touchstone, all find
love in the Forest of Arden and are joined in Holy Matrimony. The sadistic Duke
Frederick, on his way to attack Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden, is
confronted by a holy personage who convinces him to abandon his wickedness and
embrace a more conciliatory life.
Therefore, Village, as the Forest of
Arden, becomes a site of eirenic interplay, rehabilitation, and sublimity,
while the Court, as City, remains a site of fleeting emotions, irritabilities,
and temporal, pretentious convictions.
Since Shakespeare’s death over 400
years ago, his works have continued to define humanity’s warring and variegated
impulses in politics, love, and the intricacy of human relationships. Studied
across the world at every university, they provide a yardstick for measuring
human standards of existence while also offering a timely insight into the
seeds of time.
As bottomless wells of knowledge,
Shakespeare’s works are sacrosanct in the interpretations of reality. Through
them, he is more prophetic than any modern prophet and more Delphic than any
oracle. Little wonder the analysis of Nigeria’s current socio-political
situation fits properly into the Shakespearean narrative using As You Like It.
Today, every Nigerian is either
sympathetic to the emergence of the City Boys Movement or its reactionary,
combative counterpart, the Village Boys Movement. No one is sitting on the
fence. For proper context, the City Boys Movement was founded and energized by
Seyi Tinubu, President Bola Tinubu’s son. The primary purpose of forming the
City Boys Movement is to galvanize support for the re-election of Bola Tinubu
in 2027.
It is a legitimate aspiration for
any government to seek re-election for another term after successfully
impacting the lives of the citizens. However, it becomes a journey into
guaranteed perdition when a government trammels the lives of the citizens
through ill-conceived policies that plunge the people into hardship and misery,
then turn around to seek re-election.
If a government has done well, the
good works will advertise that government. But when a government has only
succeeded in inflicting anguish of scandalous dimension on the citizens, it
becomes an affront on the part of the government to seek re-election. By naming
the movement the City Boys Movement, Seyi Tinubu situates the principles of the
movement around city life, fraught with pretences, betrayals, and an impotent
lack of originality, devoid of any traceable roots.
Those who populate the City Boys
Movement are temporary, yesterday’s self-styled wealth mongers whose source of
wealth is at best questionable. Some of them have subtly insinuated that they
joined the movement not because they genuinely believe in the re-election of
Mr. President but because they need to protect their businesses and inscrutable
sources of wealth.
The ostentatious lifestyle of the
members of the City Boys Movement is an insult to the collective desolation and
wretchedness of millions of Nigerians. The movement is banking on exploiting
the poverty of millions of Nigerians to hoodwink them for votes in 2027. Such a
primitive conception of politics flounders before the electorate who have seen
through the guile of city life. Therefore, the populace would make a better,
informed decision even after ingratiating themselves with the City Boys
Movement. City, like the Court in Shakespeare’s play referenced above, offers
short-term, ephemeral, fleeting moments which dissipate like a mirage upon the
dawn of reality.
Cities are to be plundered and their
resources returned to the village. In a way, we can profitably argue that the
City, for Nigerians, offers political eroticism, which collapses on the hills
of fidelity. A City Boy could be sublimated to mean a person who lacks an
identifiable background without any roots. When some people return to the
village to celebrate holidays, others, without roots or whose roots have
questionable genealogy, stay back in the city.
On a more ideological level, the
City Boys Movement represents the nouveau, capitalist, rich class with all its
exploitative, condescending attitude towards the poor. Let the City Boys
maintain their identity for now, as we have designated them above.
On the other hand, we have the
reactionary Village Boys Movement, a populist group with unrestricted
membership access. As Shakespeare educates us above, the Village is a natural
site of justice, fair play, and equitable competition. It abhors pretence and
outlandish discourtesy, which always seeks to renegotiate humanity’s natural
inclinations for doing what is proper.
The Village Boys Movement is a
subset of the Obidient Movement, which comprises millions of youths and the
young at heart who believe that Mr. Peter Obi is the direct answer to Nigeria’s
current economic misadventure. Although Peter Obi has not emerged as the
official presidential flagbearer of any registered political party, his
followers, in a display of maniac loyalty that defies explanation, sing his
praises as the next president of Nigeria.
While many Nigerians are circumspect
about his chances in 2027, Peter Obi has assured his followers that he will
definitely be on the ballot as a presidential candidate in the next election.
The Village Boys Movement prides
itself on being a reflection of the originality and sublimity of the Village as
a site of recovery, peace, and equilibrium. As Shakespeare educates us further,
Village possesses that uncanny ingredient to heal and edify.
However, it appears that the Village
Boys Movement is more interested in countering the deceptive, often desultory
narratives of the City Boys Movement rather than espousing its own philosophy
and ideology. Like a wildfire, the Village Boys Movement has spread all over
the world with posters and fliers of various global, self-appointed
coordinators dotting the internet. Market women, young professionals,
university students, petty business people, everyone has become a coordinator
of a particular sphere of influence within the Village Boys Movement.
While the City Boys Movement, in all
its vulgar posturing, is thinly populated by the affluent, wealthy few, those
who have benefited, one way or another, from the plum economic vibrations of
the country, the Village Boys Movement is populated by ordinary, self-funding,
struggling Nigerians who believe that the country must be rescued from the
stranglehold of power profiteers and political opportunists. The contest is
real. The stage is set between the City Boys Movement and Village Boys
Movement.
Both movements rely on different
power strategies for victory in 2027. While the City Boys Movement deviously
rely on state instruments of cohesion and ultimate exploitation of the poor for
victory in 2027, the Village Boys Movement rely on a recalibrated resolve to
ultilize the instrumentality of mass appeal anchored on their newfound mantra
“rig and die” to win the election. Who triumphs between the two movements, time
shall tell.
*Dr. Adiele writes from Mountain Top University, Ogun State, Nigeria
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