The Af’eyinpin’ran intervention in Rivers

By Festus Adedayo

The piece of paper claiming resolution of the crisis was audaciously one-sided. In one of the issues, while ordering lawmakers who had earlier defected to the APC to be recognized by the governor, it didn’t ask the defected lawmakers to return to the political party under whose banner they secured membership of the House. Hitler couldn’t have authored a more tyrannical verse.
After President Bola Tinubu intervened in the seismic crisis that rocked oil-rich Rivers State last week, one thing and two people unraveled. By their unraveling, pretentious veils were lifted off their faces. They were, the president himself, the nature of Nigeria’s presidential democracy and the governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara. Nigerians distrusted the piece of paper that emanated from the Tinubu intervention. To them, it reeks of the proverbial partiality of one entrusted with the task of deploying their incisors to halve a piece of meat called the “af’eyin pin’ran”.
Let me break into granules who the Yoruba af’eyinpin’ran is. Whenever there is a tie in the need for an equal halving of a piece of meat, Yoruba are often suspicious of the human teeth being able to dispense equitable justice. Their fear is that, hiding under the cavalier clouds of the mouth, meat justice, with the incisors as the gavel, often results in inequity, tyranny and cheating. In their resignation to this incisors tyranny, they say only God can judge the af’eyinpin’ran.
There is often a cache of assumptions in cases where an af’eyinpin’ran’s equitable justice sense is sought. One is that they are older in stature and wisdom. Second, that they are assumed to be reputably impartial arbiters, and third, that the meat to be halved is beyond the oesophageal lust of the one to share the meat; that is, they are not greedy. But in most cases, the dental-judge, an alagata, is the arbiter who no one trusts. He is guilty, ab initio of hiding chunks of meat inside own mouth.
This same Yoruba, in their extreme sense of empathy, reserve ample space in their hearts for one who is down. So they say, even if you are as unfeeling, uncaring and beyond bother as to be able to crush the ugly, meatless head of a tortoise with your teeth, you must wail on behalf of the mother who begot the person undergoing travails. “Eni ba j’ori ahun, yio se’daro alabiamo” they say. I mean, the matter of Governor Simnalayi Fubara of Rivers State and his abductors deserves our wails. Yes, Simnalayi has been abducted. No, there are no physical manacles around Sim’s feet and hands; yet, he is in chains. Or, forgive the disgusting epithets it evokes, but no pun or alliteration is intended, Sim is in deep shit. His situation can be compared to that of little Alice and her adventures in strange wonderland. In that famous and widely burnished 1865-written children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, authored by Lewis Carroll, a pot-pourri of fantastical tales and riddles are cobbled together to explain Alice’s dilemma. The young girl, Alice falls asleep in a meadow and begins to dream that she accompanied the white rabbit into its hole. In the hole, she encounters several wondrous, bizarre and illogical encounters with strange creatures which changed their sizes. Alice attends strange endless tea party in the company of the Mad Hatter as well. She then gets to the presence of the Queen who calls for the execution of almost everyone present. Later, the Queen ordered for Alice to be beheaded even in her presence. She then wakes up.
In that Aso Rock resolution, Simnalayi was literally beheaded on the request of FCT Minister Wike. It reminds one of biblical Herod Antipas. Antipas had ordered the beheading of John the Baptist on the request of Herodias’ daughter. The head was subsequently placed on a platter. If you don’t want to go that Alice or John the Baptist extreme to describe the Simnalayi fate in Aso Rock last week, think up the fable of Tortoise the trickster and the Squirrel. Justifying the need for the evocation of the Tortoise to explain contemporary phenomena, Alice, in the same Alice in Wonderland, had asked, “Why did you call him Tortoise if he wasn’t one?” and the reply she got was, “We called him Tortoise because he taught us.” Tortoise teaches us that we have contemporary tricksters scattered in every plane of life, at the political, leadership, governmental and all existential levels. The wary enter their traps and some never return. So animals are deployed as metaphor for life, simply because in them is an embodiment of human potentials. They also mirror the vagueness and vagaries of life and the tensions that we encounter in the daily struggles while journeying to the top.
Last week, perhaps assuming that the race for the jugular of Rivers State was a duel between gentlemen, Simnalayi was in Aso Rock, with Peter Odili, the state’s first Fourth Republic governor. It was a meeting most probably called by President Bola Tinubu. Rivers had fluctuated dangerously in the past couple of weeks, so much that if not tamed, the oil-rich state could implode and explode. In an act reminiscent of pressing the nukes, Simnalayi had ordered the demolition of the State House of Assembly while the 24 defecting lawmakers from the PDP, in cahoots with Wike, had begun to march Rivers towards the precipice. The resolution, which later turned out to be an autocratic military decree from Aso Rock has received scalding criticisms from Rivers people and Nigerians. Ijaw youths held a public protest against it while some of their leaders have threatened court action against Tinubu and Fubara. The general belief that originated therefrom was that the age-long Tortoise trickery was deployed to wangle the way for Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyensom Wike’s continued Adolf Hitler hold on the oil-rich state.
The tortoise trickery? So, one day, there was a contest for animal leadership kingdom in the forest. Tortoise and squirrel hit the finals of the contest. The ageless trickster, Tortoise put forward a suggestion of a race to determine who the rightful animal leader was. Other animals were astounded. Tortoise runs in a crawl and is reputed to be one of the most snailish of all animals. The Squirrel was in high spirit, persuaded he would win the race. The night preceding the race, however, wily Tortoise went to the proposed race track and decorated its strategic paths with noticeable palm-nuts. He also dug a hole beside the last track by a bush path, decked it with grasses and decorated the holes with palm-nuts. As all animals gathered the next day for the race, the two sprinters were invited. And the race begins. In a jiffy, the Squirrel sprinted off like a cheetah. However, at each stop where Tortoise decorated with palm-nuts, Squirrel stopped, looked sideways and not seeing Tortoise, assumed that he had enough time. He then began to feast on his favourite nuts. He stopped at every intersection the nuts were placed and when he got to the final one, he began to eat the palm-nuts and fell into the ditch. Struggling to wriggle self off the entanglements, by the time he came out, Tortoise had beaten him to the race and emerged winner. The slowest animal, Tortoise thus emerged the fastest and leader of the animals.
Festus Adedayo is a Public Policy Analyst