Looking back in anger: Shasore’s ‘A Platter of Gold’

Title: A Platter of Gold Author: Olasupo Shasore SAN Publisher: Quaramo Publishers Pages: 340  Reviewer: Amedu Francis Obiabo  Nigeria today has seen a lot of historical negationism by rent seeking historians who distort evidence about the nation’s past to suit the evil agenda of their pay masters. This is not surprising as we live in […]

Title: A Platter of Gold

Author: Olasupo Shasore SAN

Publisher: Quaramo Publishers

Pages: 340 

Reviewer: Amedu Francis Obiabo 

Nigeria today has seen a lot of historical negationism by rent seeking historians who distort evidence about the nation’s past to suit the evil agenda of their pay masters. This is not surprising as we live in a country of moral ambiguity and nationalistic cynicism where ethnic nationalism and regional triumphalism has become the order of the day. The lines of right and wrong being constantly intercepted and blurred by the very individuals and institutions whose role it is to maintain our collective community’s moral standard. Olasupo Shahore’s attempt to set the records straight is therefore a welcome development. The Platter of gold is very important in terms of the fact that it puts our present circumstance in proper context by going back to trace the roots of our problems, in a near objective fashion, History it has been said is never truly  ‘objective,’ but always a construct that presents the historian’s view of things. At its most objective, and even this is debatable, history presents basic ‘facts’; the task of the historian, then, is to interpret those facts, the outcome of which can never be truly objective, as interpretation is by definition a subjective mental process.

The platter of gold is surprisingly good for very obvious reasons,  the Learned Silk is a self-trained Historian with a flourishing legal practice after having returned from public service where he had served Lagos state as Attorney General  and Commissioner of Justice for eight years. Olasupo writes with clarity and the reader will find it easy to read and comprehend his well-crafted narration of what has come to be known as Nigeria today. A platter of Gold serves the reader with several behind the scenes and insider secrets about the various dramatis persona that played pivotal role in the Nigerian journey to nationhood:   from Lord Fredrick Lugard and how he used the maxim gun to bombard his way into conquering the northern Nigeria and also his brinksmanship and high horse trading in bringing about the now quarrelsome marriage between southern and northern Nigeria. From the book we are told of Lugard’s immortal hate for Lagos and how he went all out to break his perceived dominance of Lagos as the only viable commercial port city in Nigeria. The then Governor General (Lord Lugard) had to bribe Lord Lewis  Harcourt to establish another port original known as Iguocha  by naming the new port city Port Harcourt.  We are informed that the hatred for Lagos was because of the cities urbanized and highly cosmopolitan populace who questioned and opposed several policies introduced by the Lord Lugard especially the Water tax which the people of Lagos opposed because according to them they could not pay for what God had given them for free. 

‘A Platter of Gold’ is a great historical book, but still it is not perfect, take for example the name precedes on the basic premise that the independence of Nigeria was secured on a platter of gold, upon further interrogation one cannot help but fault this assumption on the following basis. Even from the narration of events in the book, the conquest of the various empires that made up Nigeria was through the murder of several hundreds of thousands of people. By extension therefore, the Independence of October 1960 was not gotten on a platter of gold but on the back and blood of several indigenous people who fought to ensure that our subjugation did not take place. There is more. However, ‘A Platter of Gold’ is a great book that will make delightful reading any day, it comes in handy in a day and age when the truth about our past is becoming increasingly scarce, hence the need for  a book that will set the records straight . 

Amedu Francis Obiabo is a lawyer living in Abuja.