By Dan Amor
A calculated insult and the guilt preceded his death,
stealing from the actual murder all its potential impact and drama. There never
was a crime more dramatically rehearsed, and the tale only provides it could
not have been otherwise. Yet there are no clues to be uncovered, no enigmas to
be revealed; for this was a murder almost predicted like its predecessors. As a
principled and astute politician, even though he agreed to serve in former
President Olusegun Obasanjo's cabinet, Chief Bola Ige did not preach to
Nigerians. But he provoked questions and left us in no doubt as to where he
stood . He shared none of the current tastes for blurred conflicts, ambiguous
characters and equivocal opinions. Nor was he disdainful of strong dramatic
situations building up for firm climaxes. From the critic's point of view, the
plot of Ige's senseless murder in December 2001, in its high velocity
treachery, summarizes modern Nigeria
in one word: "shame".
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| *Late Bola Ige |
In his epic novel, Shame (1983), Salman Rushdie, the
Indian born controversial English writer, paints the picture of a disconcerting
political hallucination in Pakistan,
which he calls "Peccavistan" - existing fictionally as a slight angle
to reality. The major thrust of the novel is that the shame or shamelessness of
its characters returns to haunt them. Yet the recurrent theme is that there are
things that cannot be said, things that can't be permitted to be true, in a
tragic situation. To this end, fiction and politics ultimately become identical
or rather analogous. That so banal and damaging an emotion could have been so
manifestly created from within the Yoruba nation itself, is a ringing surprise
to us keen observers of that macabre drama. But the truth or falsehood of the
accusation or counter-accusation is not of the first importance.
