Death, the ultimate harvester

“In the midst of happiness, there is danger!” That was one of the slogans inductees chanted on initiation into the Palmwine Drinkerds’ Club in those good old days. We laughed over it then, but how true it all is. Just as we are looking forward to another Christmas and New Year, some people are quietly […]

“In the midst of happiness, there is danger!” That was one of the slogans inductees chanted on initiation into the Palmwine Drinkerds’ Club in those good old days. We laughed over it then, but how true it all is. Just as we are looking forward to another Christmas and New Year, some people are quietly keeping their appointment with eternity.
Tons of inks have been deployed in trying to come to terms with the phenomenon of death, but nothing quite adequately prepares us. Former Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki was buried last week. I remembered his time at the Nigerian Railway Corporation and the Local Government Reform Committee. We are but potty in the immortal hands of the Unmade Maker.
Art patron Rasheed Gbadamosi also reached the end of his earthly journey about the same time, though he was only 72, two decades younger than Dasuki. If Soyinka’s coinage of ‘setting off at dawn’ has any meaning, it applies to Rasheed like custom-made garb. He was barely out of his 20s when he was appointed Commissioner for Establishment and Economic Development in Lagos State in 1973. He later served as Minister of National Planning. As an economist, his was a respected voice. He never tired of suggesting new ways of doing things for the benefit of the people.
In between being an industrialist, public intellectual and public servant, Gbadamosi found time for his passion, the arts. He was a patron of many a veteran or rookie artist. He breathed the arts. In his own right he was also an art creator because he was a very engaging published playwright. One of his plays, “Echoes from the lagoon”, is billed to be staged as part of the activities marking Lagos at 50.
Of his demise, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka wrote: “In the process of re-acquainting myself with his works, I was reminded of Gbadamosi’s early creative promise. I wrote him, lamenting that the Artistic world had lost him to business… In strict terms of course, the artistic world never lost Rasheed. That was where his soul was, and he manifested it in the commitment that made him turn his estate into vast exhibition gallery of Nigerian painters, to which many flock till today.  Rasheed – let this be stressed as a public challenge – Rasheed put his money where his heart beat! Both young and old generation artists will testify to this in abundance.”
While Dasuki and Gbadamosi were given rousing send-offs, some other mortals of the lowly stock made their exit noisily in ways that ought to shame all of us if we insist on laying claim to civilisation. A young man was roasted in broad daylight in the full glare of the public last week for being a petty thief.
I gathered that in the Alafia area of Lagos, there are gangs of thieves who routinely stab passersby in their attempt to rob their victims. The young man was allegedly a member of one of the gangs. There was initial confusion about his age and his exact offence. While initial reports said he stole garri, later reports said he was a member of a thieving gang.
I don’t care what the young man was alleged to have done. Even if he had been caught with a knife dripping with blood, no one had a right to maim and roast him the way those animals I saw in the viral video clip did. How do you live with the knowledge that you had a hand in taking human life for reasons other than self defence? I have said it before: we are regressing by the minute into prehistoric barbarism. The famous educationist, Tai Solarin, had warned us to beware of becoming unshakeable. That was why he made it his business to personally collect corpses from Lagos roads and deposit them at the nearest local government offices so as to sensitise society to respect human life and treat corpses with respect.
One of Nigeria’s more respectable creative artistes, Ihria Enakhimio, was so riled by the cruelty meted out to the Citizen Doe in question that he declared, “We set ablaze people driven to theft by hunger and reward with titles, national honours, and the keys to our common wealth in riotous ceremonies those who drove them to hunger; those who rob us blind, and steal our collective futures! We expend valuable time and miles of media space debating, defending the rights of judges and politicians who rob us of ours but cannot take our outrage to the streets in the face of this size of bestiality!  We are a very sick people!”
Where was the police? If that kind of crime could be committed so brazenly without the police even attempting to track down and prosecute the ring leaders of the killing (whose faces are very well captured in the video) what hope do the rest of us have. When a society descends to the cesspit of jungle justice, anyone can be a victim. All it takes is to have a foe who sets you up  – and you goose (or rather your hide) is cooked!
And still on the grim reaper, the ranks of past student leaders continue to be decimated after the loss of Jibril Bala Mohammed, Mustapha Jumare and Abdulrahman Black. As folks were marking the first anniversary of the death of Bamidele Babatunde, another one, Femi Kuku, was bidding us bye. The lives of all five could be encapsulated in a poem written for Kuku by educationist Bisi Anyadike:
When someone pushes me down,
Not only physically,
But Mentally and psychologically,
I will pull myself up and say,
“Nice try, but it’s going to take more than gravity to keep me down
Because I am a fighter”