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OPINION: KWAM 1, Eccentricity And Big Man Syndrome

By Festus Adedayo
At the risk of being labeled thanatophobic – a preoccupation with death or its anxiety – the grim reality is that, last Tuesday, Nigeria’s music world would have lost veteran Yoruba Fuji musician, Wasiu Ayinde. Being Muslim, it is in order to say the man popularly known as KWAM 1 would have been buried same Tuesday or early Wednesday. He would have been killed over a mere tiff with an airline official over allegation of carrying liquour on board an aircraft. There is no grimmer way of putting the potential calamity than this. It is a signpost of the paper-thin divide between life and death.
A footage of the musician hurriedly ducking the wing blade of a taxing ValueJet aircraft on the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, with a potentially disastrous consequence, left everyone gasping for breath. KWAM 1, in his usual haughty display, had engaged the airline’s personnel in a needless altercation over his obvious breach of airline protocol. So, how do you label what the musician demonstrated that Tuesday; eccentricity, Big Manism, suicidal inclination or substance intoxication?
Looking for a musician or artist who is not eccentric may be akin to searching for the teeth of a hen. Name them: Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Oscar Wilde, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Captain Beefheart and in Nigeria, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Wole Soyinka, Davido, Wizkid, Portable and many others. They all have one thing in common: they are eccentric. They are weird, unconventional, against-method and display rare traits, mostly for attention and in support of their trade. For them, acting unconventionally is a private code, a badge of identity. Lady Gaga’s is in her flamboyant fashion and performances. The truth is that, eccentricity, what Americans call ‘wacky’, is the lifeblood of music, musicians and the art in entirety. For most of them, it is intentional eccentricity, a bold effort to wow the audience through appearance or presentation. The media also feeds off their wacky lifestyles, raking millions from their unconventional public images.
Michael Jackson is an example. Michael lived a bizarre life with a unique public persona, unusual lifestyle choices, as well as weird dressing and dancing styles. He deliberately cultivated a mysterious and flamboyant image with rumours and speculation enveloping his entire life. He took eccentricity to a new high as one who was not only eccentric but who was gloriously audacious. He decorated himself with clothes that charmed his vanity and was just like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, the character in his The Picture of Dorian Gray, who didn’t want to lose the purity of his youth to age, who then admonished that, “when your youth goes, your beaty will go with it…time is jealous of you and wars against your lilies and your roses”.
Michael Jackson abhorred decaying flesh and wanted longevity. To achieve this, he lived in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, conducting extensive plastic surgeries on himself which included cosmetic procedures of rhinoplasty (nose jobs), cheekbone, forehead lifts and lip-thinning. After this, he was afflicted by vitiligo, a skin condition whose feature is pigment loss, prompting his fans to accuse him of skin bleaching. He also lived like a recluse in his Neverland Ranch home designed with amusement park rides. In the zoo, he collected exotic animals. Michael’s invitation to children to stay with him in the Ranch fueled speculations and accusation of his being a pedophile. This landed him multiple accusations of child sexual abuse, leading to prolonged legal battles which significantly impacted his mental health and public image.
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In the odd life they live, odd ways they dress, queer acts they display and their unusual performative actions on stage, artists and musicians demonstrate how eccentricity can be used as a powerful tool to shape musical identity.
Musicians’ lyrics also bring out the eccentricity in them. In 1986, New Jersey-born American singer-songwriter and pianist, Gwen Guthrey, burst the bubble of a prude world when she sang her very controversial and materialistic track, “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on But the Rent”. It was raw talent combined with artistic bravura. For a world that was not used to such realistic outburst from the female to the male gender, that track, especially its matter-of-factly pronouncement, “You’ve got to have a j-o-b if you want to be with me/No romance without finance” shocked the world. Guthrie was to die of uterine cancer on February 3, 1999, thirteen years after the song. Same audaciousness went for reggae musician, Winston Hubert MclnTosh, one of the now deceased trio of Jamaican reggae group, the Wailers. Popularly known as Peter Tosh, against the grain of global public morality, Tosh’s first major hit after the separation of the band was an iconoclastic album he called Legalize It, released in 1976 with CBS Records. In it, Tosh uncompromisingly beatified the banned narcotic drug, Indian hemp, lauding its health benefits and the widespreadness of its abuse. The album sleeve had him smoking the marijuana chalice pipe in a countryside hemp plantation.
It is same for Marvin Gaye. Described as shy, fearful and ambitious, yet also capable of great passion and charisma, his eccentricity is in a complex interplay and conflict between his artistic vision, personal struggles and unconventional approach to music and life. He was a non-conformist who pushed boundaries, both musically and personally, and which sometimes manifested in his erratic behaviour of a troubled personal life, childhood abuse and his struggle with insecurity. He struggled to balance social commentary with eroticism in his songs, especially in his world classic track, ‘Sexual Healing.’ This unwittingly revealed his multifaceted personality. He also struggled to balance his feeling for his father, a strict and reputedly abusive religious figure and his love for his mother. He was eventually shot twice by his father after he intervened in an argument between his parents. He was pronounced dead upon being rushed to the California Hospital Medical Center on April 1, 1984. His father later pleaded no-contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in an Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, California, USA court.
Like Wasiu Ayinde, Tosh, the 6.4-footer dreadlocked singer was arrogant and self assertive. For instance, immediately his colleague, Bob Marley died, Tosh shocked the world in an interview where he made the allegorical claim that Bob peaked in his musical career while he (Peter) was decorating the stage. The truth is, Tosh was too assertive, too hot to handle and never hid his disdain for what he called “Babylonian” lifestyle of hedonism. Tosh also believed in marrying words with action. Towards the latter part of his life, he cut a queer image of a revolutionary ready to carry arms. With his imposing height as he adorned a black beret, with a guitar that had the shape of an M16 assault rifle, Tosh didn’t mince words in projecting the narrative that he was a musical militant. He told those who underrated him that he was “like you are steppin’ razor” and asked, “don’t you watch my size” as “I am dangerous!” In comparison to others, Tosh said “I’m the Toughest,” an apparent reference to the trained karate belt holder that he was. He was once asked by an interviewer why he never smiled. His reply was, since he sang revolutionary songs, not love song, nor a tea party, there was no reason to smile.
While putting up eccentric shows, however, many of the musicians and artists have met their waterloo. One of KWAM 1’s Yoruba musical ancestors, Ayinla Omowura, was not as lucky as he was on the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport tarmac. As KWAM 1 woke up that Tuesday morning in Abuja, on May 6, 1980, the Apala songster also rose at cockcrow in his Itoko, Abeokuta, Ogun State home. By midday, he was history. For the Egba-born musician, a trivia, a needless beefing over possession of a motorcycle in a barroom brawl, extinguished his hugely billowing musical career fire.
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Eccentricism comes in various forms. To some, it is in a violent lifestyle. For some others, it is acting like a child, what is called infantilization. Its victims deny their maturity and treat themselves as helpless and dependent. Many of them express their bohemianism through consumption of drugs. Apala music Lord, Omowura, Awurebe’s Dauda Epo Akara and Fuji’s Ayinde Barrister – the latter, up until a point when he left the craze before his death, consumed marijuana heavily. Omowura once walked into an Abeokuta High Court smoking the banned substance. For yet some others, it is arousing sexual desire or excitement in others through their looks, while to some others, it is blasphemy.
Take for example, The Beatles, a famous American Rock music band, widely regarded as the most influential Western popular music ever. It was formed in Liverpool in 1960 with a core lineup of artists like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Lennon had sparked controversy in a 1966 interview with British reporter, Maureen Cleave, when he said The Beatles were even “more popular than Jesus”. He further said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right … Jesus was alright but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
The Lennon comment resulted in a huge backlash and created an uproar which led to wide protests against the band. US religious and social conservatives were outraged. Even the Ku Klux Klan joined the fray. The controversy it sparked was such that The Vatican issued a protest letter. The Beatles’ records were also banned by Spanish and Dutch radio stations and on South Africa’s National Broadcasting Service. When the backlash became too severe, a press conference was organized for Lennon to make a clarification and he said, “If I’d said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it.,” but at further promptings from reporters, he grudgingly said, “If you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then okay, I’m sorry.”
The bohemian nature of The Beatles was to come out more later. They provoked a great furore in June 1966 with the cover of their Capitol LP with the title ‘Yesterday and Today.’ The album sleeve had them dressed in a butcher’s overall with raw meat and mutilated plastic baby dolls splattered on it. They grinned from ear to ear. On a tour of the Philippines the month after this furore, they unintentionally snubbed Imelda Marcos, the nation’s First Lady, who had arranged a breakfast reception for them at the Presidential Palace. Angered, the Marcos organized a nationwide riots against them. Seeing that their lives were hanging precariously in a balance, the Beatles fled the Philippines. In 1970, a legal row ensued in the band leading to its dissolution on December 29, 1974. In 1980, Lennon was murdered and in 2001, George Harrison died of cancer.
The eccentricity of Oscar Wilde, Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, poet and critic came in a different form. He was, to date, one of Ireland’s most dramatic and eccentric writers. As brilliant and ecumenical-minded as Wilde was, he was a homosexual, a heinous crime of the world of the 19th century. Extremely talented, having been educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford, Wilde, son of a successful surgeon father and writer, literary hostess mother, wrote a popular string of comedies like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and Salome (1896). His real life was marred by drama and tragedy as well. While married to Constance Lloyd and with two sons, in 1891, his gay affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed ‘Bosie’, was revealed by Bosie’s father, the Marquis of Queensberry.
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Wilde’s eccentricity is said to be a deliberate self-creation of his public persona. Famous for his flamboyant clothing, unmatchable wits, and unconventional lifestyle, he cultivated all these to carve an image of an aesthete and a dandy. Dandyism is characterized by the philosophy of placing great emphasis on appearance, fashion, and sophisticated style. This creation of an eccentric persona ultimately helped Oscar to express his artistic ideals, as well as becoming a tool to critique the rigid social norms and conventions of the Victorian society of the 19th century.
In April 1895, Oscar sued the Marquis for libel. During trial, however, evidence adduced revealed details of his private life as a homosexual. Imprisoned for two years at the Reading jail after being convicted for gross indecency, in prison, he wrote a long letter to his gay partner, Douglas which was posthumously entitled De Profundis or Letter to Sir Alfred Douglas. In the letter, he wrote, “I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to describe my anguish and shame… I disgraced (my parents’ name) eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into synonyms for folly…the two turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford and when society sent me to prison.” Upon his release, Oscar lived the rest of his life in Europe, writing his last known work in 1892 with the title ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900.
Nigeria has its huge supply of such bohemian characters. Fela smoked marijuana everywhere with abandon, wore underwear in public and married 27 wives in a day. Davido, Wizkid and their clan frighteningly scarify their arms, necks; wear dreadlocks and hang on their necks dangling, hefty ornamented laces like prisoners’ chains. Burna Boy, a jailbird once held in a UK slammer for gang-related stabbing. wears violence on him like a necklace while Portable is brash, crude, violent and in love with disorder. But, in which of these atypical behaviour can we locate Wasiu Ayinde and his disorderly portrayal last Tuesday?
I once met KWAM 1 some two decades ago in a friend’s home. Like many of those bohemian musicians, he was brash, haughty, nutty, naughty and crude. From my examination of artists and musicians, society’s kitschy acceptance and love of their display of unnatural, artificial, even fake lifestyles fuels their eccentric behaviour. Consumer culture is in their favour. Marketing of contemporary popular music draws from this tradition that requires artists to be eccentric. It is a culture that began as Dandyism back in the 19th century. Its theme was to exalt bohemian artists, and in the words of Susan Lee Sontag, an American writer and critic, to lift up “glorified otherness/the queer, being distinguishable as an important part of artistic expression.”
On stage, wowed and giddy female audiences have reportedly removed their undies and flung them at musicians.
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JUST IN: Okpehbolo Appoints New VC For AAU

Edo State governor, Monday Okpehbolo, has approved the appointment of Professor (Mrs.) Eunice Eboserehimen Omonzejie as the new Vice-Chancellor of the state-owned Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma.
A statement issued late night by Secretary to the State Government, Umar Musa Ikhilor, said her appointment takes immediate effect.
According to the statement, Prof. Omonzejie was appointed amongst the three names submitted by the Governing Council of the university to the state government.
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The statement partly reads, “Professor (Mrs.) Eunice Eboserehimen Omonzejie
Professor Omonzejie is a distinguished scholar of French and Francophone African Literatures and a long-serving academic in the Department of Modern Languages at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma.
“She is a prolific researcher and editor, with contributions to African and Francophone literary studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.
“She has served as the President of the Ambrose Alli University Chapter of the National Association of Women Academics (NAWACS), where she has championed mentoring, research, and advocacy for female academics and students.
“Professor Omonzejie has co-edited several seminal works including French Language in Nigeria: Essays in Honour of UFTAN Pacesetters and Language Matters in Contemporary West Africa, and is the author of Women Novelists in Francophone Black Africa: Views, Reviews and Interviews,” the statement added.
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OPINION: Every democracy ‘Murders Itself’

By Lasisi Olagunju
In ‘Jokes and Targets’ by Christie Davies, a Soviet journalist interviews a Chukchi man:
“Could you tell us briefly how you lived before the October revolution?”
“Hungry and cold.”
“How do you live now?”
“Hungry, cold, and with a feeling of deep gratitude.”
This sounds like Nigeria’s malaria victims thanking mosquitoes for their love and care. Between democracy and its opposite, reality has blurred the lines.
Last week, a group of White House pool reporters travelled with President Donald Trump on Air Force One as he returned from his U.K. state visit. At the beginning of the journey, actor Trump sauntered into the rear section of the plane, the traditional part for the press. He granted an interview and ended it with a morbid wish: “Fly safely. You know why I say that? Because I’m on the flight. I want to get home. Otherwise I wouldn’t care.”
Ten years ago, if a US president said what Trump told those poor reporters, his presidency would suffer immediate cardiac arrest. But this is Colin Crouch’s post-democracy era: the leader, whether in the US or in Nigeria, in Africa or elsewhere, is the law; whatever he does or says, we bow in gratitude.
I live in a Nigeria of gratitude and surrender. In the North-West and the North-East, traumatised communities are grateful to bandits and their enablers. They invite them to the negotiation table and thank the murderous gunmen for honouring the invitation. A grateful nation anoints and weeps at the feet of terrorists. In emergency-weaned Rivers State, its remorseful governor is effusive in appreciation of a second chance. The reinstated is ever thankful for the favours of a six-month suspension. From the North to the South, on bad roads and in death-wracked hospital wards, sonorous hymns of appreciation for big mercies ooze. The legislature and the judiciary, even the fourth estate, are all in congregation, singing songs of praise of the benevolent executive. Is this still a democracy?
American political scientists, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman in 2020 wrote ‘The Fragile Republic’ for The Foreign Affairs. In that essay, they list four symptoms of democratic backsliding. Prime among the four are economic inequality and excessive executive power. “Excessive executive power” is a three-word synonym for autocratization of democracy. It is a by-word for a democracy hanging itself.
The second president of the United States of America, John Adams, saw today; he warned of democracy decaying and dying: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Adams was not alone. There was also William Blake, 18th/19th century English poet, who said “if men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny.” This reads like it was written today and here. If you disagree, I ask: Is it wise (and normal) for the tormented to thank the tormentor?
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Listening to what Trump wished the reporters, we could see that big brother America now leads in democratic ‘erantship’, the Third World merely follows. An enormous country, strong enough to appropriate the name of an entire continent, America, in 2025, is blessed with a strongman that is armed with a licence to rule as it pleases his whim; a president who does what he likes and says what he likes or ‘jokes’ about it without consequences. The result is an imperial presidency that has redefined democracy across the world.
We say here that the yam of the one who is vigilant never gets burnt. The American system used to be very resilient in providing a leash on presidential excesses. It still does, although under a very difficult situation. Donald Trump, in his first term between 2017 and 2021, signed 220 Executive Orders. In his ongoing second term that began in January 2025, he has, as of September 18, 2025, already signed 204 Executive Orders upturning this balance, rupturing that tendon. An American friend told me that he could no longer recognise his country. But the good news is that those who should talk and act are not surrendering their country to Trump and his faction of the populace. Because it is America (and not Nigeria), there are over 300 lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders or policies in his second term.
The active legal challenges view the Trump orders either as unconstitutional, exceeding statutory power, or violating rights. And the courts are also doing their job as they should. A 2025 study found some 150 judicial decisions concerning these orders. Some are preliminary injunctions, others are full rulings. President Bola Tinubu last week acknowledged the existence of “over 40 cases in the courts in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Yenagoa, to invalidate” his Rivers State emergency order. Our courts, especially the Supreme Court, are yet to acknowledge any of the cases with trials, rulings and orders.
It is easy for presidents with unrestrained executive powers to assume imperial airs. In the past, when they did, they feared losing their link with the people and a fall from power. Today, they are on very solid ground, no matter what they do with their people. Midway into his term as US president, an increasingly unpopular Jimmy Carter reassessed himself, and in lamentation told Washington Post’s David Broder that he (Carter) had “fallen into the trap of being ‘head of the government’ rather than ‘leader of the people.’” Today is not that yesterday of sin and punishment. We have surrendered to the point of giving ourselves away. Today’s leaders know that what they need is the government, its power and privileges, certainly not the people. And they keep working hard at it such that America has Trump, and is not the only country that has a Trump. There are Trumps everywhere. We have them in Africa, from the north to the coast.
What democracy suffers in America it suffers more in Africa. Former President Goodluck Jonathan said at the weekend that “democracy in the African continent is going through a period of strain and risk of collapse unless stakeholders come together to rethink and reform it.” He said politicians manipulate the electoral system to perpetuate themselves in office even when the people don’t want them. “Our people want to enjoy their freedom. They want their votes to count during elections. They want equitable representation and inclusivity. They want good education. Our people want security. They want access to good healthcare. They want jobs. They want dignity. When leaders fail to meet these basic needs, the people become disillusioned.” That is from Jonathan who was our president for six years. Did he say these new things because he wants to come back?
Democracy is like water; a wrong dose turns it to poison. If disillusionment has a home, it is in Africa. It is the reason why the youths of the continent are bailing out for succour, and the reason for Trump’s $100,000 fee on work visas.
In The North American Review of November 1910, Samuel J. Kornhauser reproduced a quotation that contains warnings of what threat a people could constitute to their own freedom: “The same tendencies to wanton abuse of power which exist in a despot or a ruling oligarchy may be expected in a democracy from the ruling majority, because they are tendencies incidental to human nature.” The solution was “a free people setting limitations upon the exercise of their own will” so that they would not “turn democracy into a curse instead of a blessing.”
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In his 1904 essay, ‘The Relation of the Executive to the Legislative Power’, James T. Young, observed a dramatic shift in American governance: while Woodrow Wilson had earlier warned of “Congressional supremacy,” Young argued that “we now live under a system of executive supremacy,” showing how the traditional checks and balances had failed to maintain equilibrium among the branches. That was in 1904, a hundred and twenty one years ago.
Someone said a leader’s ability to lead a society successfully is dependent on their capacity to govern themselves. It is that self-governing capacity that is lacking in our power circles. Plus the leaders don’t think they owe history anything. “From the errors of others, a wise man corrects himself…The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.” Publilius Syrus (85–43 BC), the Roman writer credited with uttering those nuggets, was a master of proverbs and apophthegm. We don’t listen to such words; we don’t mind being tripped by the same stone, and it does not matter falling into the same pit.
A democracy can enthrone emperors and kings but it is not that easy to ask them to dismount the high horse of the state without huge costs. We elect leaders and for unsalutory reasons, we let them roam freely with our lives, our safety and our comfort. We promote and defend them with our freedom. I hope we know the full import (and consequences) of the seed we are planting today. A Pharaoh will come who won’t remember that there was ever a Joseph.
A Roman emperor called Caligula reigned from 16 March, 37 AD until he was put to sleep on 24 January, 41 AD. ‘Caligula’ was not the name his parents gave him; it was an alias, “a joke of the troops” which trumped his real identity: He was named after popular Julius Caesar.
Roman historian, Claudius Suetonius, records in his ‘The Lives of the Caesars’ that Caligula became emperor after his father’s death and then “full and absolute power was at once put into his hands by the unanimous consent of the senate and of the mob, which forced its way into the House.” The new leader came popular with a lot of the people’s hope invested in him. Suetonius says the young man “assumed various surnames (for he was called ‘Pious,’ ‘Child of the Camp,’ ‘Father of the Armies,’ and ‘Greatest and Best of Caesars’). Soon the fawning appellations entered his head and he became the opposite of what his people wanted in their leader. One day, Emperor Caligula chanced “to overhear some kings who had come to Rome to pay their respects to him” doing what Yoruba kings love doing: He found them arguing at dinner about whose throne, among them, was the greatest and the highest in nobility. The emperor heard them and cried: “Let there be one Lord, one King.” He called them to order and from that point, it was clear to everyone that republican Rome now had one Lord, one king, and that was Caligula.
The man said and did things that frightened even the heartless. At a point during his reign, Caligula saw a mass of Roman people, the rabble, applauding some nobles whom he detested. He voiced his hatred for what the people did and said what he thought should be their punishment: “I wish the Roman people had but a single neck so I could cut it through at one blow.” That statement became a quote which has, through centuries, defined his place in history.
It would appear that 79-year old Donald Trump defined himself for history last week with his “fly safely…because I’m on the flight” statement. A leader, a father and grandfather said he did not care if a plane-load of young men and women perished (without him) in a crash. And he told them so.
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A Twi proverb suggests that “the chief feels the heat only when his own roof is on fire.” Trump’s unfortunate remark is said to be a joke. Even as a joke, what the US president said sits in a long tradition of expensive jokes. Trump’s cruel ‘jest’ couldn’t be funny to any people even if they were under the spell of the leader. History and literature are full of such costly quips that come light from the tongue but which reveal something raw about power and rulers: power does not agree that all human beings possess equal worth, equal dignity, and equal rights. Power talks, and whenever it talks, it sets itself apart.
King Louis XV of France is remembered for uttering the line: “Après moi, le déluge (After me, the flood).” Some commentators say it was a joke, some others say it was a shrug. History interpreted what Louis XV said as the king not caring a hoot whatever might happen to France after he was gone. That statement is a sound bite that has clung to him forever as Abraham Lincoln’s mother’s prayer clung to her son.
When Louis XV said it, no one saw what the king said as a prophecy, grim and ghastly. I am not sure he also knew the full import of what he said. But it was prescient; fifteen years after his reign, the “flood” came furious with the 1789 revolution culminating in the effective abolition of the French monarchy by the proclamation of the First Republic on September 21, 1792.
Emperor Nero of Rome is remembered forever for playing the fiddle while Rome was burning. In William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, we read a verse that ends with “Nero, Play(ing) on the lute, beholding the towns burn.” What is remembered of Nero is the image of a leader who ‘enjoyed the life of his head’ while his empire got destroyed by fire set at it by the enemy. But did the emperor really do that? Read this from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “So, did Nero fiddle while Rome burned? No. Sort of. Maybe. More likely, he strummed a proto-guitar while dreaming of the new city that he hoped would arise in the fire’s ashes. That isn’t quite the same thing as doing nothing, but it isn’t the sort of decisive leadership one might hope for either.”
I have roamed from imperial Rome to medieval France, to democratic America and its Nigerian side-kick. What is next here is to go back, and salute John Adams with this his dispraise of democracy: “It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.” A system or a country becomes a joke when its leaders toy with its destiny; when they make light of the fears of their people.
The Akan of Ghana warn that if you sit on comfortable rotten wood to eat pawpaw, your bottom gets wet and your mouth also gets wet. This is to say that there are consequences for choices made. A kabiyesi democracy is an autocratic monarchy. And what does that feel like? I read of a king who joked to his courtiers during famine: “Hunger has no teeth sharp enough to bite me in my palace.” It was a careless statement of a monarchy that has found its way into the mouth of our democracy. I saw it where I read it that the ‘joke’ “was remembered bitterly by the starving commoners who later sang satirical songs about the unfeeling king.” Some jokes outlive their laughter.
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