The witchcraft in London

In 2012, midway through the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, a friend was captivated by the pyrotechnic displays and synchronisations of the cast of dancers, delegates, artists and athletes performing for the spectators that he muttered, “Oyinbo na winch”—the white man is a witch. It’s a praise of the extent of science and technology […]

In 2012, midway through the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, a friend was captivated by the pyrotechnic displays and synchronisations of the cast of dancers, delegates, artists and athletes performing for the spectators that he muttered, “Oyinbo na winch”—the white man is a witch. It’s a praise of the extent of science and technology explored to actualise the astonishing spectacle that even the organisers referred to as Isles of Wonder.  

Four years earlier, at the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese had demonstrated that such mastery of witchcraft wasn’t a white man’s business in organising what was remarked as the most extraordinary opening ceremony in Olympics history. The extravaganza was, for the Chinese, a declaration of the power they had projected on the international scene and to show the competing powers in the West that a lot of water had passed under the bridge since, in modern history, the Tiananmen Square incident, and they had Deng Xiaoping to thank for opening up the country to accommodate such witchcraft.   

Queen Elizabeth II’s televised funeral this week was a reminder of the order that played out at the opening of the London Olympics, delivering yet another well-choreographed performance—a befitting tribute to their longest-reigning monarch. I chanced upon a dazzled viewer following the funeral procession who, again, attributed such order to oyinbo’s witchcraft and it’s an amusing thought in a country where chaos has become the norm.  

The conversation around the royal spectacle has coincided with Lagos State Government’s attempt to achieve London-type order in what’s probably the most chaotic big city on the planet. Last week, the Lagos State Taskforce announced the government’s bid to auction 134 vehicles confiscated for various traffic offences, and it sparked polarising reactions. For some, the penalty was extreme, and they shared stories of self-admitted offenders who claimed ignorance of the law or exploitation by employees of the agency to present the state government as disingenuous. For some, such extremism is the vehicle to the order we applaud in London.  

There are always grey areas in almost every conflict between the government and the people. Each side is self-serving, and it’s not different in reading the narratives of the affected Lagos traffic offenders whose side of the story contradicted the claims of the Lagos State Taskforce’s spokesman, Gbadeyan Abdulraheem, that the enforcement of the laws broken by the offenders was done in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Justice.  

Lagos is a paradise of two extremes. It has earned the demographic disadvantage of being the den of the nation’s most disorderly elements and the headquarters of rogue law enforcement agents. The encounters of these two extremes produce the frightening incidents that make the news almost every second, and it’s easy to tell why the shockwaves of the #EndSars protests against police brutality began there.  

Deficient supervision of law-enforcement teams has granted them licenses to play God. The arrest of Abba Kyari, for instance, is proof that governments at state and national levels are sleeping on their oars. Before he was unmasked as an accomplice in an FBI report on the criminal enterprise built by Nigerian fraudster Ramon Abbas, who’s popularly known as Hushpuppi, and then exposed as a drug dealer by the NDLEA, Mr. Kyari, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, was the head of the Inspector General of Police’s Intelligence Response Team in the Nigerian Police Force Headquarters. He had also headed the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Lagos State Police Command, building a fancy profile as the “Nigeria’s most-decorated police officer”—and he was always quick to flaunt this citation wherever there were cameras or patronising journalists.  

The Lagos state‘s pursuit of order is one we must applaud, but there’s no contradiction in doing so and asking them to adhere to the operating laws of the agencies designed to make witchcraft thrive in our space. That the state’s Ministry of Justice was a part of the process that led to the auction of such a number of vehicles insulates the law-enforcing taskforce from some of the accusations trending online, and the victims must exercise their right to sue and seek the justice they deserve. This is how an order is built. Even though it’s not as simple here, it’s an outcome that has favoured so many victims of state-authorised injustices.  

The most problematic thinking in our glorification of the spectacles in London is the assumption that the order we see there is the default orientation—as though the people were born so. Adhering to law or sustaining an orderly society isn’t genetic or racial; it’s an outcome of the government’s exertion of its power to control and demand compliance to existing laws and refusing to compromise or treat any citizen differently. This explains why law-abiding Londoners won’t feel pressured to adhere to binding laws in Abuja, aware they are going to get away with it in this current chaos.  

Lagos State may not get it all right, but it’s at least realised the necessity of applying strict rules to perform the witchcraft we see in functional countries. When, in August, The Arise TV anchor, Rufai Oseni, rushed to his Twitter platform to alert his followers that “A Nigerian police officer pointed a gun at me and forcefully took my keys and drove my car off, because he wanted to enforce a traffic infraction (sic),” he was instantly countered by the PRO of the Lagos State Police Command, Benjamin Hundeyin. “Your claim that Google maps took you there is not tenable,” he tweeted. “You disobeyed and resisted the officers. We’ll sanction the officer who misused firearm, if proven.”  

When the video of Mr. Oseni’s encounter with the officials of Lagos State Traffic Management Authority appeared on social media, with him bragging in a typical Nigerian big man fashion that he would call the state governor to wriggle himself out of the offence he attempted to deny. He had to face the court to plead his case. He was found guilty of contravening Lagos State Transport Law (2018), and fined N70, 000. He also apologised on TV, for misleading his audience.  

Mr. Hundeyin returned on September 2 to share another proof of the chaos in Lagos. The Nigerian rapper, Ice Prince, “abducted (a) police officer in his car, assaulted him and threatened to throw him in the river.” The music star, he shared, “was stopped for driving without license plates.” Ice Prince, whose government name is Panshak Zamani, had to appear in court on, according to reports, “Three counts bordering on assault, obstruction and abduction of a policeman”. 

Mr. Zamani’s first tweet, about 13 days after his arrest—a possible hint about his departure from police custody—was a pithy declaration: “Freedom is priceless”. The witchcraft we celebrate abroad, and the reason we obey laws in London and violate similar laws in Abuja, rests on the assurances that everything has a price—breaking the law is enough to make one become a philosopher. It’s also unsurprising that the Executive Producer in the production of the very opening ceremony of the London Olympics we attribute to witchcraft is a Nigerian woman named Catherine Ugwu. She wouldn’t have found the power to cast such a spell in our chaos.