Festus Adedayo
As Ngugi wa Thiong’o says in his Wizard of the Crow, (2007) ire is more corrosive than fire. Make no mistake about it: President Bola Tinubu is angry. When Tinubu was similarly angry, I wrote a piece entitled Tinubu the Ap’ejalodo and his strange fish friend (September 18, 2018). That fable was one of the stories that helped to tame the greed of pre and post-colonial Yoruba society, as well as any tendency within it to play God.
By that 2018, Tinubu had made up his mind to replace Akinwunmi Ambode as governor of Lagos State. The piece, using that anecdote, was to warn him not to take the place of God. Suchlike stories helped to shape the moral man in Africa. His cosmology was governed by anecdotes, lore and mores which prescribed moral codes. For centuries, these sustained the associational and moral forte of Africa. Anecdotes that restrained a potential emperor from treading the path of ruination were told to children, even in their infancies; same about petty thieves who came to ghastly ends. For instance, the destructive end of greed was foretold in pre-colonial Yoruba society in the emblematic story of Tortoise and the scalding hot porridge on the fire he stole and covertly put on his head. It burnt his scalp. Permit me to retell the anecdote.
Set in an African village, the story is that of a young wretched fisherman (Ap’ejalodo) who was ravaged by failure. He was unable to catch enough fish over the years to rescue him from the pangs of lack. One day, however, as he thrust his fishing hook into the river, it caught one of the largest fishes he had ever seen. Excited, Ap’ejalodo pulled his awesome catch up to the river bank and proceeded to yank it off the hook.
As he attempted to carry it to the basket, however, the fish began to speak like a human being. Ap’ejalodo was at first afraid but he eventually pulled himself up and listened to the sermon of the strange fish. Singing, Ap’ejalodo, mo de, ja lo lo, ja lo lo… (Fisherman, here I come…) the fish pleaded to be rescued by the fisherman.
It promised that if the fisherman spared its life, in lieu of this rescue, he should ask for whatever he wanted in life. Excited, Ap’ejalodo let it off the hook and asked for wealth. Truly, by the time he got home, the ragged clothes on him and his wife had become very big damask agbada and aran respectively, with their wretched hut transformed into a big mansion. Both now began to live the life of unimaginable splendour.
After a few years, the couple was however barren and the wife entreated Ap’ejalodo to go fishing again and ask his fish friend to rescue them from the social shame. As he thrust his hook into the river again, it caught the strange fish and the earlier process was repeated. This time, he asked for a child and the strange fish granted it, giving him children. Over the years, the fisherman magisterially summoned the fish through same process and the fish bailed the couple out.
Then one day, Ap’ejalodo and wife were just waking up from their magnificent bed when a blinding and intruding ray of the sun meandered into their bedroom. Enraged, Mrs. Ap’ejalodo couldn’t understand the audacity the sun had to intrude into their sacristy. Couldn’t it respect the privacy and majesty of the richest couple in the land? She then angrily commanded Ap’ejalodo to go meet his fish friend and ask that they be given the power to control the temerity of the Sun and other impertinent celestial forces.
Off Ap’ejalodo went to the river bank, thrust his fishing hook into the river and again invoked the strange fish. And Ap’ejalodo made his plea. The fish was peeved by the fisherman’s greed and audacity.“You were nobody; I made you somebody and you now have everything at your beck and call. Yet, you want to compete with God in majesty and you will not allow even a common sun to shine and perform the illuminating assignment God brought it to perform on earth!”
The fish angrily stormed back into the river and as Ap’ejalodo, downcast, walked back home, his old torn and wretched dress suddenly came back on him, his mansion transformed into the hut of the past and the couple’s latter wretchedness was more striking than the one of yore.
After writing that piece in 2018, as fate would have it, I was wrong and Tinubu was right. In spite of the several entreaties to him, Ap’ejalodo had his way and Ambode became history. Today, Ap’ejalodo has warred with all his governor nominees since 2007. He attempted to remove all of them but only succeeded with Ambode. On each occasion, he made himself the victim of his disagreements with his mentee governors, answering to that Oscar Wilde statement that you cannot be too careful in the choice of your enemies. Babajide Sanwo-Olu has joined the infamous train of victims of Tinubu’s ferocious anger.
As far back as January of this year, sullen murmurs of bees of power in Alausa and Aso Rock hinted that Ap’ejalodo was angry. While Ambode’s err was failure to offload requested funds, Sanwo-Olu’s was his indiscretion and temerity. An alleged female friend of the governor was said to have helped him courier Lagos funds to Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to enable him win the 2023 governorship. In violation of the laws of power, Sanwo-Olu thus outshone the Master. While he won his Lagos election, Ap’ejalodo lost. Ap’ejalodo actually didn’t mind him losing the election, with the aim of cutting his wings but regaining his overlordship of Lagos in a subsequent estimated victory in the court. At a meeting of the two, while the governor swore his innocence, Ap’ejalodo was said to have derisively laughed him off, maintaining he had security reports which affirmed the transaction. The stroke that broke the camel’s back was the governor’s effrontery in removing Speaker Mudashiru Obasa, Ap’ejalodo’s protege who had been overtly rude to the governor.
Twice in a week, Ap’ejalodo has ridiculed Sanwo-Olu, at both the Lagos-Calabar highway and Lekki Free Port road commissioning. He skipped shaking his hands in one and ensured his absence in the other. You could hear the ghoulish cries of vultures waiting to feed off the flesh of the governor. At the Port road commissioning, Ap’ejalodo was fuming from all cylinders: “I am glad the Deputy Governor of Lagos is here. Take it that we will remove all those approvals given on the setbacks already given. No more planning approvals for those unplanned island being created illegally,” he said. Ngugi wa Thiong’o was indeed right. Ire is corrosive.
Ap’ejalodo, having been lifted up by his fish god friend to have an elephant firmly rested on his head, still wants to know what tiny crickets are doing in their small holes. He is enraged by the audacity of Sanwo-Olu’s Sun to intrude into his sacristy. Couldn’t the lanky fellow respect the majesty of the No 1 Citizen of Nigeria, its richest man and the most powerful in the land?
Again, I am certain that we are about to witness the denouement of this macabre drama of Ap’ejalodo trying to appropriate and approximate the power of God. Perhaps, the young man who stoned the Iroko tree some years back is ripe for celestial forces’ retribution at his attempt to wear the same trousers with God?
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