Busuyi Mekusi

The aphorism: ‘No Paddy for Jungle” is not only popular among West African-Pidgin speakers, but has become a resource material for poetics among artists, which come as songs or slangs for social engineering.

The commonality of this platitude is reminiscent of the easy acquisition and deployment of pidgin, which has been developed beyond its initial acceptance as a language of contact and commoners, to a prestigious linguistic marker used by a recognisable speech community that spreads across geographical boundaries globally. With its various brands existing in the Nigeria Niger Delta region, to what is obtainable in Ajegunle epicenter in Lagos, to the unique version found in Cameroon and elsewhere, higher institutions in Nigeria are now viable communities for the use of pidgin, for the purpose of easy communication and leveraging.

It is nonetheless worrisome that pidgin has ‘corrupted’ the use of the English Language by many learners in Nigeria higher institutions of learning, even as English Language remains both the official language and that of learning/communication.

The word ‘paddy’ could mean the place where rice is grown, or in pidgin lexicon friend. Fela Anikulapo used the word repetitively as ‘paddy paddy’ (friend friend) to capture the nepotistic consideration of the regime of Olusegun Obasanjo, in matters he considered too sacrosanct to be so considered. The Nigeria political firmament, just like those that exist elsewhere, is replete with infantile considerations and patronage when capacity, competence and relevance should ordinarily come to play in placement and assigning of responsibilities.

The ‘paddy paddy’ model has deliberately bequeathed authority and power to mediocre who continue to mismanage institutional and collective interests to the detriment of knowledgeable people who have been frightened out of the corridor of relevance and political participation by charlatans and miscreants. The muddy dirty waters of politics, globally, are breeding grounds for power seekers, and no one should get scared of jumping into it. It should be noted that it is when one is in the pool that you could contemplate a clean-up.

Recently, Chief Bisi Akande, the former Governor of Osun State, ex-Chairman/leader of the ruling APC, and known ally of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the indefatigable multi-talented APC leader and rumoured presidential hopeful, reminded us of the limits of self-writing in relation to truth, lies and half-truth, with the unveiling of his autobiography titled My Participations.

Like I observed before, as a teacher of criticism, I have always reminded my students of the need to deconstruct any self writing as evidently demonstrative of the quest for self glorification and inscription, as such attempts to say nothing but the truth, as implied in the so-called eye-witness or eye-of-God narrative accounts are both deliberately and inadvertently bugged down by many ellipsis, that is omissions that are due to either deliberate and willful forgetting or limitation, occasioned by deficient recalling process that is similarly found in memorialisation. Beyond the foregoing recognisable minuses is the fraudulent peddling of biographies as autobiographies, which is nothing but robbery, as it borders on the usurpation of intellectual property and ownership of thoughts.

Anyway, most paths in Nigeria, even in religious places, are crooketh!
The accounts of Bisi Akande on various issues have generated very many reactions and countering from different concerned and interested quarters, with the book been trashed by some as an attempt to wipe up sentiments for Tinubu in the desperate racing to the Aso Villa, with a culmination in 2023.

Without prejudice to the validity of the claims made by Baba Bisi Akande or the acceptability of the reactions to his postulations, the major concern here is the evaluation made by PMB of Bisi Akande at the unveiling of the book, in relation to the perception Buhari had of him before their political alignment in 2015, and the narratology about Buhari’s quest for the presidency, in relation to the form and content of the intention of Tinubu for the same seat in 2023. PMB had described Bisi Akande at the public book presentation of My Participations as a “perfect public officer” who has retained his “inflexible integrity” in and out of public office, never accepting or offering bribes, with whom he could go into the jungle.

Evident of a stroke of irony, the above assessment of Akande by born-again democrat PMB was a remarkable contrast to the corruption and conspiracy allegations that the military regime of Buhari leveled against Bisi Akande and Bola Ige, following the military coup of December 31, 1983, that ended the second republic. Curiously, even though Baba Akande clearly documented his travails, and those of other ‘fallen’ political office holders in the military dragnet, and scathingly upbraided these monstrous military elements for the violation of democratic tenets and principles, he demonstrated willful amnesia and selective recall by maintaining a worrisome silence about the military Head of State, General Buhari, whose regime was responsible for the disruptions and haranguing.

To reinforce what he wants to see and note about PMB, Baba Akande remembered to counsel that it would be needless for anybody to blame Buhari for the challenges the nation was going through under his watch. However, Baba Akande should listen to Fela Anikulapo’s advice not to teach us nonsense too. Who says autobiographies are no testimonials of deliberate forgetting, after all!

Baba Akande’s double or multiple seeing and speaking are indicative of the deconstruction of the notion that there is no ‘paddy’ in the jungle. We need to be reminded that the jungle is a large, undeveloped, humid forest that houses wild plants and animals. It is also a metaphor for a place where people behave ruthlessly, unconstrained by law or morality.

The uncommon friendship in the jungle is fallout from the desperate need for personal survival, in the face of threats and annihilation. While Akande embarked on mere circumlocutions to dissemble, Buhari is evidently right to tell us of his readiness to go to the jungle with him, as he did when his regime sentenced him to 42 years imprisonment. Further is the claim contained in his deflections that Buhari breeched his initial accord with Tinubu to make him his running mate in 2015.

While people in the South West play politics as if there is no ‘paddy’ in the jungle, people of northern extraction, as epitomised by PMB, hold the strong view that you must form friendship in the jungle for the purpose of existential survival and relevance. If not, how best can you relate to the same examiner returning the verdict of corruption and impeccability on the same candidate’s examination script at different times? Something, no doubt, must be wrong with the marking guides, and we all need to serve as an external examiner to review the process.

The ideology of ‘paddy’ in the jungle also defines the relationship between F. W. de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa and Nelson Mandela, the first President of non-racial democratic South Africa. Hendrik Verwoerd was at the centre of implementation of the apartheid policy in South Africa, who made a jungle of the geographical space, with the circumscription that reduced blacks to slaves in their own country. The jungle experience similarly allowed Black Movements that deployed all strategies, including guerrilla warfare, to end the stranglehold of the oppressors.

With de Klerk being the face of terror and Mandela the torch bearer of the violent revolt against it, it was very instructive when the two of them led the initiatives that ended the jungle life constructed by apartheid for an alternative that would promote inclusion and collective ownership, even though the disaggregation of the past is still hunting both the present and future of South Africa.

As PMB is ready to go to the jungle with Baba Akande, the former must note that the victimhood precipitated by the gullibility of the former should not always be exploited for advantageous placement and personal survival. The political jungle in Nigeria should stop being either a place of rage and ‘cannibalism’, as insinuated in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, or a site of exploitation as found in Defoe’s Robison Crusoe.

PMB and Baba Akande should aspire to jointly win the Nobel Peace Prize like Mandela and de Klerk “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa”, as they jointly rid our ‘jungles’ of ‘paddies’ that play fools with one another or each other! I wish you a blissful Christmas and prosperous year 2022!