The King’s hoe and cutlass

By Theo Adebowale
|
Oh! The old time religion.  The socialisation began very early in those days.  The family altar was sacred.  It held twice a day without fail.  After the family had communed with the Maker, we proceeded to church for the morning service. It was the briefest of the services.  It lasted one hour except on rare occasions when the Holy Spirit intervened.  A member of the congregation said the opening prayer, thanking God for taking us to sleep and waking us up into the land of the living.  Without fail, she also offered thanks to our Creator for disallowing government hoe and cutlass from cutting our heels.  At evening service that prayer was similarly repeated.  But the closing prayer at the morning devotion interceded that as we went out, our heels would be protected from government hoe and cutlass.  Paradoxically the only government official I ever saw with hoe and cutlass was our Agric teacher, he never aimed at anyone’s heels or feet.  The hoe and cutlass no longer feature in prayers these days or they do not feature in our new community of prayer warriors.

Even then, some citizens are so convinced that government must use ‘hoe and cutlass’.  When the economy is down, they expect government to raise taxes and levies from the impoverished citizens.  Why would government not send detectives after those who criticize her policies or officials?  To be sure the prayer originally targeted the monarch.  So today, many citizens still refer to the president, governor and even local council chairman as their father.  They appeal to Mr. President as their father to do something about epileptic power supply, about failed roads, about insecurity.  And when a government official comes around to promise government patronage, they dress in their best attires put forward the beautiful maidens to stage cultural dance, expending time, resources and physical cash to lure or hire people to attend such an august occasion.  This might have informed public officials during the military government years to request communities lobbying government to execute a project to raise a percentage of total cost before approaching government to come to their aid.  Afterwards the impression is that government is being magnanimous in carrying out any project.  That requirement helped to placate many communities.  The hoe and cutlass concept of government could be amusing and pleasing to any bully at helms of affairs.  What for the massage it applies to the ego?  It was that feel that made a particular governor to announce to his audience that he had power over life and death!  Abi?  But it is also a snare.  Unions believe it is within the power of the state to meet any demand.  Ego has replaced transparency.  Gone are the days when government disclosed the cost of a project.  No more.  Government these days only commissions a project.  Sorry, the Governor ‘flags off a project.’  The Governor does not disclose cost.  Why must a father bring himself so low to be explaining such trivialities to his slaves?  So when workers’ agitation comes up, public activities are paralysed, millions of man hours are lost and the public space is awash with fake news.  The communication gap between government and the citizen portends danger, great danger even as emergency situations lurk around the corner.  Two weeks back, Governor Yahaya Bello bemoaned the havoc wrought by rainstorm in Kogi State.

He was credited to have claimed that the isolation centre built for patients of coronavirus which the wind blew away had cost government a whopping sum of seven billion naira.  This was taken as a false claim, whereas if the government business had been transacted with accountability, that situation might not have arisen.

Many of the school of hoe and cutlass believe the approach provides solution to socioeconomic problems.  They are jolted by reports that more people have tested positive to COVID-19.  They do not consider the economic, psychological and financial dimensions that come to play.  A faction in the school of thought is the sacrificial citizenry.  They are wont to tell the citizen, including the hungry and the hopeless not to think of what government can do for them but what they would do for government.  Among the things, they believe in the unlimited power of government to impose levies and taxes.  They believe government should impose total lockdown on the system indefinitely.  A Christian prophet even suggested that the system should lockdown permitting only radio stations to operate.  He asserted that no one can die of hunger.

Governor Nyesom Wike seems to have taken advantage of that recommendation by locking down two local governments including Port Harcourt.  The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 does not forget to remind Nigerians of possibility of total lockdown of Nigeria even as Kano state has provided a reference point of justification.  The state does not just impose restriction on its citizens.  It must have acquired legitimacy which is earned in a democracy in the electoral process.  Performance and carriage of public officials may reinforce or erode such legitimacy.  From the archives, we know that the traditional authority was lost in France when the monarch could not find solution to economic hardship as it were, while the gap between those who had and those who did not, continued to widen.  Again proponents of a total lockdown of the system seem not to be aware that underlying diseases rather than the pandemic is essentially responsible for deaths of victims of coronavirus in Nigeria.  As a matter of fact rather than the expertise of our hardworking and devoted healthcare personnel (God bless them), or the state of equipment in our health institutions, the death rate is low because coronavirus is contained by nature over here.  Because we have survived much more ruthless epidemic in the land, rather than being cowered like the nations of the Northern Hemisphere, we should be emboldened to promote home grown solution to the pandemic.  It is a well known fact that medical and pharmaceutical scientists as well as traditional health practitioners have drugs that are potent.

A man suspected that he had coronavirus and wanted to consult for local herb.  Informants contacted the Divisional Police Officer who promptly notified the National Committee for Disease Control.  They raced from Akure to Akoko to abduct the patient.  This is a hoe and cutlass mentality to public health delivery.  It does not seek primarily to prevent the further spread of the pandemic.  Rather it is to maintain the myth that only the orthodox system can arrest the pandemic.  Transparency in public health delivery should dedicate a facility for local herbs where a patient may opt for the local option.

Oko Oba, ada oba ko ni sawa l’ese o.  May we not be afflicted with cut from the king’s hoe and cutlass?