Abdul Mahmud
Perhaps, tomorrow will remember things yesterday would like to forget. If it does, it will be a terrible mistake for it not to express shock at yesterday, wonder at our grotesque blunders, and how we arrived at the failed parse in which bonds, once unique to us, became in themselves troubled fads which had us in a stew over who we were once – a people with the common resolve and will to live together as one indivisible nation and to struggle together towards one destiny, while encountering the small change of everyday life, only altered by time for the good of all – and what we had become. Such was the power of love, the peaceful co-existence we derived from the love that our history once bore witness to, until we replaced love with hate, peaceful co-existence with division, as things began to fall apart. Life is what it is is because as always it masks a substantial part of itself that is bestial. So, when, yesterday, we engaged in the business of evincing harmony, in order to be, feel and live, rejoice with life, to paraphrase that German philosopher, Johann Herder, who enthusiastically proclaimed that “I am not here to think, but to be, feel, live! And to rejoice!”, our purpose was to give effect to the harmonious part of life, live in the experience, beauty and peace of humanity, away from the beast that constituted and still constitutes the masked part of life.
Yet tomorrow must look back and express shock at our yesterday.
When it does that, it will point its torchlight to uncover the truth of that truth which yesterday perpetually conceals within itself and expose that very past, perverted by us, who, born into this earth our home to speak things that unite us into a common existence and to shape our lives, thoughts and feelings within the single framework of love, chose to live life at daggers drawn, it must not fail to see the point where life returned to the Hobbesian state and the tragic drama that had a sad ending, nor must it fail to teach, discipline and warn itself of the dangers of compromising its moral core. There is a teachable lesson in seeing the very point that love gave way to hate, peace to chaos, order to disorder, so that tomorrow will also not be locked into the hare-brained competition, problems, tensions and strifes that dragged yesterday to the brink of an abyss. But yesterday is not a chimaera that tomorrow cannot grasp and understand tomorrow. Since it is a tangible reality shaped by keystones of remembering, fragments of memories yesterday carries within itself, fixations on bloodbaths, it becomes easy for tomorrow to see yesterday through the points, knots and junctures of history spread over time and space, grasp and understand yesterday well from the testimonies of those who lived through it and draw from them not only the great knowledge of yesterday but the knowledge of knowing those who are survivors, while it wonders how yesterday would give a detailed accounting of itself.
The shock of how yesterday arrived at the sorry pass will never end, so long as shame will never fail to take hold of us; and time, involved in the endless interchange from one era to another era, manifests change. The shock of tomorrow will not only be over how we employed repellent values to define our times, but how as barbarians we took off the mask to reveal the horrors of our nature and became blind to the fact of being at sea about our barbarism. Tomorrow will not be inspired by guesswork when it chooses to scrutinize, understand, offer an explanation for our yesterday’s behaviour and wrongdoings, and interpret those experiences recorded by time to shame humanity. So while it will be hard for tomorrow to share in our shame, it will be careful not to stumble on the foundation stone we broke. This can be put in another way. Tomorrow will not allow itself to be guided by the wrong values of yesterday, nor will it be obedient to the mediocrities that formed the entourages of yesterday’s life, obedient to the culture that aimed to destroy and not build, and to practices which signalled all to vices and not virtues.
Tomorrow will resist whatever seeks to undercut its march to its tomorrow- our collective future. What this tomorrow is, will be revealed by the social cooperation of members of tomorrow’s generation and how they build the bulldog defence of their values. Tomorrow’s future will not be a flight into the fantasies and bloodletting of yesterday, it will rather be the future for acknowledging the greatness of the whole over the sum of the parts and for reinforcing the intrinsic worth of all.
Tomorrow will become its own praetorian guard.
Now, I come to my two central points.
Firstly, our country is today swamped by vices – from gruesome killings, rape, kidnappings, and forced disappearances, to corruption. In the past few weeks, men and women, including children have disappeared without a trace. The missing persons’ list is growing. Those who are lucky to be found, like the Nollywood actor, Chris Iheuwa, live to tell their stories of a great escape. Iniobong Umoren and Daddiyata weren’t as lucky. Iniobong was murdered by a man who lured her with the promise of a job. Daddiyata disappeared without a trace. The billionaire businessman who was murdered by his side chick in Lagos wasn’t lucky either. Ours are shifting tales of woes: from Igangan, through Orlu and Minna, to Yauri, there’s a race to the bottom of the well. Here, bandits, kidnappers, terrorists, unknown gunmen, and security personnel are locked in the battle of the first: who can kill the greatest number of people by a single shot.
Secondly, the lunacy that citizens must be devalued, rendered powerless, that they become a conquered people, subjects, is the feature of yesterday that tomorrow will resist when it comes. But, in this present era of subjugation, closure of civic space, Twitter ban, and enactment of anti-social media laws that restrict free speech and freedom of assembly, it will not be hard to see tomorrow learning something invaluable from yesterday’s hours of revolt in which freedoms are forever lost or regained. When tomorrow comes, it will not struggle to recognize the pitfalls of yesterday because every patch in space and time is littered with memories and plaques raised in remembrance. This is certain: tomorrow will abide by its own vision and ground itself within the vision of the future that will ultimately define it.
