By Remi Oyeyemi
It was the legendary world famous musician of Nigerian origin, Fela Anikulapo –Kuti who introduced the word “zombie” to our political lexicon in 1976 through his album with the same title. It was a musical response from Fela to the “fury stirred among the Nigerian police and the military by Fela’s furiously confrontational albums.” The albums – Alagbon Close (1974) and Kalakuta Show (1976) – were followed by beatings and harassments of Fela and members of his band.
Those beatings and harassments were “nothing compared to the reprisals following this 1976 album, Zombie.” The reprisals by the Nigerian Army were ordered on February 18, 1977 by General T. Y Danjuma who told General Olusegun Obasanjo that it was “time to solve this Fela problem once and for all.” It would be recalled that it is this same General Danjuma that murdered General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, then the Military Governor of Western Region, in Ibadan on July 29, 1966. The popularity of this album and public ridicule it appropriated for the Nigerian Armed forces were not only “wide scale” it was agonizing for the Nigerian men in uniform.
The reprisals ordered by General Danjuma were on a large scale and left Fela’s Kalakuta Republic compound burnt to the ground and many of its occupants including Fela assaulted, wounded, maimed and even killed. Those killed included Fela’s mother, Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome – Kuti, a foremost nationalist who fought for Nigeria’s independence, women’s right advocate and the first Nigerian woman to drive a car. Her credentials did not earn her any respect from a power-drunk and blood – thirsty Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, regardless that she did not commit any crime other than being the biological mother of another great African in Fela.
Two dictionary meanings of the word “Zombie” were selected to explain the perspective of Fela and the purpose of this article. The first one translate “Zombie” as “a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automation.” The second meaning defines “Zombie” as “the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.” In simplified semantics, it means that zombies do not think or do not have the capacity to think or reason.
Listen to the lyrics of Great Fela from the album “Zombie”:
Zombie o! Zombie 2x
Zombie o! Zombie (chorus) 2x
Zombie no go go unless you tell am to go
Zombie
Zombie no go stop unless you tell am to stop
Zombie
Zombie no go turn unless you tell am to turn
Zombie
Zombie no go think unless you tell am to think
Zombie
(Repeat)
Tell am to go straight; na joorojaarajooro
No brain, no job, no sense; na joorojaarajooro
Tell am to go kill; na joorojaarajooro
No brain, no job, no sense; na joorojaarajooro
Tell am to go quench; na joorojaarajooro
No brains, no job, no sense; na joorojaarajooro
Go and kill – joorojaarajooro
Go and die – joorojaarajooro
Go and quench – joorojaarajooro
Put am for reverse; joorojaarajooro
Go and quench – joorojaarajooro
Go and kill – joorojaarajooro
Go and die – joorojaarajooro
Put am for reverse; joorojaarajooro
Go and die; joorojaarajooro
Go and quench; joorojaarajooro
Go and kill; joorojaarajooro
Put am for reverse; joorojaarajooro
Anh anh anh
Joorojaarajoorooooooo
Zombie way na one way
Joorojaarajoorooooo
Zombie way na one way
Joorojaarajoorooooo
Zombie way na one way
Joorojaarajooroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
One has decided to leave out the rest of the lyrics because the above lines clearly explain what zombie is all about. The relevance of this concept of zombiism and the challenges it poses to the need for urgent arrest of the collapsing socio-economic system of Nigeria under the Mohammadu Buhari led administration of the All Progressive Congress (APC) is the urgent task that has to be accomplished. It is to nudge those who are supporting this travesty of a Buhari Administration to put on their thinking caps.
It is time the Buhari supporters open their eyes and see what is happening on the ground to Nigerians and Nigeria. It is time for Buhari supporters to stop acting like zombies and begin to reason with facts and follow the evidence. The Buhari supporters should stop making excuses and begin to call a spade its real name. Their usual visceral reactions to any well meaning criticism of Buhari is not advancing the course of Nigerian state and the fortune of Nigerians. And unfortunately for them, it does not matter what they say and how much they defend Buhari, his failures could not be covered. Our children are feeling it. The people are feeling it. The impact of Buhari’s ignorance is evident on the streets, in the markets, banking halls across the country; in the schools, in the hospitals and all over the place.
It is difficult to convince a man ensconced in a hospital bed that he is having the best times of his life. He would probably hit you from the sick bed if he could because he knows you are lying to him. But the fact that he might not be able to hit you does not mean that he does not know you are lying to him. No matter how many times Buhari is defended or how hard his supporters defend him, it won’t change what the people are seeing in their lives or are feeling about their lives. There is always a limit to propaganda.
The need for the supporters of President Buhari to extricate themselves from the bondage of Zombiism and free themselves from the complex it inflicts is an urgent call for patriotism. It is time to learn from John F. Kennedy who admonished that “Any country that cannot provide for the many that are poor, will not be able to protect the few that are rich.” It is time for them to realize that there is a social and economic state of emergency in Nigeria as we speak. It is time for the leaders of APC and their supporters to extricate themselves from the binds of denial.
It is not a crime to make a mistake. Those who have been blessed with many successes have had to make some mistakes. It would be an attestation to the leadership’s integrity to recognize and accept the fact that President Buhari is a mistake. But it would be a crime to make a mistake and keep insisting that no mistake has been made when the evidence on the ground is underscoring a different narrative. Leaders are supposed to lead. They are supposed to look ahead and be guided by evidence. Emotions, dedication, commitment, loyalty, even indoctrination and every other variable needed to build support for the governance of a polity must have empiricism as a point of departure.
When people are dying of hunger; when teachers are dropping dead in front of students because of non-payment of salary; when the principals are collapsing in full glare of their students for lack of wages; when people are dying on the streets because they cannot afford NGN450 worth of asthma inhaler; when doctors and nurses could not attend to the sick because of lack of salary; when teaching hospitals are like slaughter labs and our leaders have to fly to Europe for medical treatment; it is time to reconsider a lot of things about the way the country is being governed.
When otherwise honourable and hard working citizens have to compromise their dignity to beg for hand outs so that they could feed themselves and their family; when businesses are grounded across the nation; when people have to kidnap their fellow citizens to make a living; when armed robbery is on the rise; when several sections of the citizenry are rising up in arms against the State and against themselves; when all these and many more calamities are pervasive in a society, it should NOT be politics as usual. It is a national emergency.
The cloud of darkness doggedly descending on the landscape of Nigeria should send shivers down the spines of those who understand the implications of all this and force the real patriots to tarry and think. To remain cocooned in zombiism and unabashedly continue to manifest the zombie complex is fast appearing like an act of treachery; treachery against yourself and the country you claim to love. To continue to make excuses for glaring failures, profane policies, skewed solutions, poisonous attitudes; “holier-than-thou” mentality; preposterous “righteous indignations”; undue incorrigibility; moribund methodologies, is to reinforce the path to the total collapse of the country.
The Buhari administration is claiming to have recovered about 2 trillion naira, yet it is chasing a loan of $2 billion to China and across the planet. Is this another layer in the lies of Buhari and his goons? Does it make any sense that the administration would have NGN2 trillion somewhere and our people would be dropping dead for lack of wages? Is this a government by total deceit and lies? If this money is truly there, could this be deployed to pay millions of Nigerian workers? Or this Buhari administration does not really care if citizens are dying for lack of wages?
One is not really excited about advising this government, because of its incessant blatant exudation of recalcitrance. But for the sake of our people one is advising that it is important to pump some money into the system by paying all the arrears of the wages of all categories of workers. This would infuse a new lease of life into the economy and the country. It would reduce tension and stabilize the already ruptured lives and calm the nerves of Nigerians. All capital projects should be suspended for the time being. The welfare of the citizens should be of utmost priority. It is of no use to hoard trillion of naira (if the claims are true) while millions of your citizens are going hungry and dying because of non-payment of salaries.
Apart from agriculture and security, areas that should get simultaneous attention with the payment of wages are the health and the educational systems. The Federal government should not take it upon itself to be involved in farming. Funds should be forwarded to the states and be monitored by the federal ministry. Misapplication of such funds should be met with serious consequences including jailing. Long term planning could follow as the scarce revenue flows in. Dead citizens have no use of good roads. Sick citizens would not be productive and improve the economy. Hungry citizens would turn out to be angry citizens.
This is an emergency. There is desperation on the Nigerian streets. Agony and frustration pervade many Nigerian homes. The earlier the administration responds the better. The supporters of this administration need to get real. It is time for them to allow themselves to be led by evidence. It is time to end the zombie complex. Nigerians should cry out in unison for the leaders to be able to respond. It does not make sense to continue to defend the indefensible. These are hard times. The leaders of APC must rise to the occasion and help out this obviously incompetent administration.
“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.”
– John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address January 20, 1961
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