I have read competing perspectives on the correctitude (or lack thereof) of FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and Lt. A.M. Yerima’s conduct in the viral video of their gladiatorial rhetorical combat. My concern, however, is different.
Several social media commentators, irrespective of partisan affiliations, appear united in proclaiming that Wike finally “met his match” in Yerima.
Interestingly, the Wike-Yerima confrontation reminded me of a puzzlingly paradoxical but deeply philosophical aphorism we were fond of as student union activists in the 1990s.
We used to say that when an unstoppable force (which Wike fancies himself as and which many people ascribe to him in light of his unfailingly boisterous, venomous-tongued cantankerousness that causes him to get whatever he wants all the time) meets an immovable object (which Yerima unwittingly became), something has to give.
Yerima has emerged, without planning to, as the first person, at least publicly, to make it clear to Wike that although Wike has acquired well-earned notoriety as a vicious, perpetually drunk, psychotic pocket tyrant who railroads people into kowtowing to him through intimidation, boozy taunts, and primitive vituperative aggression, he is “not a fool” who yields to inebriated, power-drunk, geriatric bullies.
Yerima’s repeated refrain of “I am not a fool, sir,” in response to Wike’s crude, unwarranted insults transcended a mere forceful retort. It communicated respectful but firm defiance to an insufferably self-important ministerial hoodlum.
I wrote:
“One of Nigeria’s enduringly lumbering cultural burdens is that it’s hopelessly trapped in regressive reverse ageism, i.e., the idea that only old age, not youth or knowledge, should confer authority on people.
“Everyone who is older than the next person thinks his numerical age bestows some superiority on him over another.
“Emotional and intellectual age are immaterial in this culture of reverse ageism, so that even emotionally and cognitively immature dimwits trapped in adults’ bodies think of themselves as superior to biologically younger but intellectually superior people because of the accidents of their years of birth.
“But if you’re older than someone, someone is also older than you are, and the person you’re older than is also older than someone else. It’s an infinite continuum.
“Only backward, lowbrow bumpkins are hung up on age and invoke it to delegitimise valid criticism that they can’t confront with the resources of logic and evidence.
“Anyone who is over the age of 25 is a full-grown adult.”
Everything I wrote in that three-year-old article applies to Wike. Yerima (incidentally, Yerima is the Kanuri word for “prince,” which most northern Nigerian ethnic groups, including people of northern Edo, now bear as a personal name) is infinitely more mature and certainly more dignified than Wike can ever be in a million lifetimes, in spite of his youth.
So, who cares if Wike is older than Methuselah, especially because he behaves like a rambunctious toddler uneasily stuck in an adult’s body?
Follow us on all social media platforms @dailyquery for news and analyses around the globe.
