Nigeria Is An Egungun Federation By Lasisi Olagunju

Nigeria is an Egungun Federation

By Lasisi Olagunju 

THIS system of eight Egungun eyeing six bean cakes can’t breed peace. Where I come from, everyone is challenged to be fair to everyone. Everyone is equally tasked to take on any unfair arrangement. That explains this noise about federalism and restructuring. It is true there is too much unexplained grammar in the call for restructuring. But the meaning is not about private hunger and cries of famine. It does not include personal advantage. It is not about scavengers and scavenging. It is to re-channel justice to serve just causes. It is what we were taught from the days of our beginning: We must not cheat. We must not accept cheating. If you must eat pounded yam, you must pound yam. If you pound, you mustn’t go hungry. The lazy ones who live solely by their wisdom must never be trusted. That was the wisdom of the past which departed us. And that is what the noisemakers want us to get back.

Nigeria runs an Egungun federation. In the peculiar world of the Egungun, the smart, lucky dudes following the masked one collect and pocket the offerings. They collect, they appropriate, they misappropriate. They speak with the tongue of authority, their words are final. The entertaining, masked spirit in hot costume can only sweat, sing and dance. He must have no idea how much is made. The Egungun has legs to dance his heart out but he has no mouth to taste his sweat. That is the economic relations imposed by the ancestors. The masked dancer cannot change it. It is what those who own Nigeria tell us. Northern leaders say with finality that nobody can tamper with the country as presently constituted. They say it is not negotiable and their minions down south sing their songs like the Egungun ensemble, dancing to strange beats, chorusing songs of servitude.

The strange song has got sad chorus in political circles in the South West. Those who could find their voice and speak for a re-federation of Nigeria don’t have power. The power clique have the voice, they have the cord, the vibration and the muscle. They are wealthy and wise and their costume is made of riches. They see a restructured Nigeria as a shot at the high horse they currently ride. They miss it. They forget that in politics, there is no finished product. All processes are work in progress. History is there to teach us, if we don’t know, that there is no society that is structurally cast in iron. Immutability is a divine attribute. They forget that nations are human creations, and that just like humanity, nations continue to evolve, continue changing. If a nation refuses to get better, it regresses, it decays. That is the trouble with Nigeria. It is a nation in perpetual denial. It is sick but its caretakers are insisting that ‘nothing do am…’ They say the noisemakers are distressed physicians without patients. The caretakers strangely think caring for Nigeria’s ailments is a sly call for its dissolution.

Where eight Egungun mouths scramble for six pieces of akara, the one with the right connection in the right place eat. The only spirit that won’t  go back to the ancestral grove hungry is the well connected. We know the taboo of friendship. Why are we doing the taboo? When Disobedience (Aigboran) invaded the sacred grove with his rude implements, have you forgotten what happened to him? He became a goat, tethered for sacrifice. A dysfunctional federation is a friendship that cheats. Cheating kills love no matter how intense it ravages the heart. Egungun again has a story that warns about cheating and its consequences. His eternal rival is Oro. But they did not become sworn rivals for nothing. Something caused it. They were business partners: dancing, singing and making money together. The treasurer was Egungun who abused the trust of friendship. He spent all their earnings on his costumes of pride and extravagance. Wherever this happens, there are tensions and wars perpetually among the spirits. You’ve heard this proverb before: “We do not see Egungun at an Oro festival.” They parted ways. Cheating collapsed their union. That is why we say let all families fry enough cakes and bake enough bread for all in Nigeria. But the custodians of the grove have said it is not necessary. Monkey must continue working. Baboon must continue to chop.

Where I come from, we go to school, we seek knowledge and wisdom. Poverty is not an excuse for lack of education where I hail from. But this dysfunctional federation impedes equal access to education north to south, east to west. And we were told education holds the key to a tomorrow of greatness. That is what we grew up to know. Our elders say “great wisdom is the key to getting greater wisdom.” They insist that “if we don’t have great wisdom, we don’t earn great wealth and if we don’t earn great wealth, we can’t do great things.” But Nigeria tells us we can spend money without being rich; we can be rich without having knowledge. Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina announced a few days ago that his government subsidises pilgrimage to the tune of N1billion a year. He has been spending unearned billions. His state is poor in learning and knowledge but that is not his worries. He bought 300 coffins for his people as democracy dividend the other time. This is a federation, if his people want coffins, we would be wrong to say he was wrong. But we will be right to say it is wrong for the hard worker in Mushin and Uyo to pay VAT for a governor to use to buy coffins and subsidise religion in Katsina. That is why we are out and saying let’s redefine the union. But they have said only those bent on the desecration of the ancestral shrine call for parity in efforts and benefits. They miss it. It is a system of short-cuts; cheat and be cheated. The owners of Nigeria have said hunger is at the root of all calls for equity in national fiscal structures. Let us assume this was true, would hunger not be enough to repudiate any union? The ones who daily wake up to recline, eat and sleep with women cannot continue to eat the food of the children of the early riser who farm and get soaked in the dews of dawn.

Our leaders don’t think we are right when we say things cannot work as they are. They didn’t work for the examples they cite of ideal federalism. They cite Italy, they cite America, India, Brazil, Canada. They are undertakers. They haven’t looked at these countries beyond sending their children there to enjoy the fruits of true federalism. They won’t know that Canada’s original federal constitution of 1867 wasn’t as just and workable as it is today. Some people constantly work on the structures, retooling the system, remodelling the nation. We want the good of the first world without the hard work of that realm. We are like the pilgrim enamoured by the glitz and gleam of Mecca. The pilgrim should  know that those grand streets of Mecca, some sleepless persons sweep them clean. Canada is a first world country, but it has Quebec – distinct, French-speaking and very noisy in calling for a restructuring of the Canadian federation. It has been doing that since the 1960s, even adding a separatist flavour to it. No one there has ever called the agitators hungry and sick. A scholar says Quebec “has always led the way in pushing for greater provincial powers, and for limiting the federal ability to encroach on provincial areas of jurisdiction.” That sounds very much like what we say restructuring means to us here too. Our caretakers have not learnt restructuring from Canada. What they know is that the Canadian system works for all, how it works they don’t want to know.

The undertakers prefer this Egungun structural arrangement for Nigeria. Egungun is the ensemble of the strange. The language of today is understood by only the select few in the concave of principalities. It clothes only the initiates to enjoy the cozy protection of the ancestral forest. In the caste of the privileged, some parts are female, effeminate. They may watch the dancing Egungun; they may worship, sing, dance and give offerings. They may pound yam and cook sweet egusi soup with ram meat. But it ends there for them. They cannot collect offerings, cannot eat the pounded yam and sip the palm wine. They must not wear the costume, must not even touch the costume and must not see the spirit behind the cloth. That is the Egungun federalism foisted on 21st century Nigeria by the power clique. But the wall won’t hold the deluge that is coming. And for those who because of today repudiate the wisdom of the past, the elders warn about the drizzle that drives the addled child home. It will soon rain. It won’t drizzle.