Nigeria As Lagbaja’s Perfect Mumudom By Okey Ndibe

Columnist: Okey Ndibe
The masked phenomenon known simply as Lagbaja is one of the few
Nigerian musicians whose art is inspired by the late Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti. In keeping with the Felaian spirit, Lagbaja's act and
art combine prodigious, heart-thumping entertainment with a political
message that, at its eloquent best, has the powerful effect of summing
up the Nigerian "condition."
Fela, for example, flung the word "zombie" in our faces. In the
heydays of military rule, when our uniformed men exhibited the complex
of mini, mindless gods – flinging the lash at hapless civilians or
shooting at the slightest provocation – Fela's term captured that
syndrome of senseless, rampaging power. The way Fela deployed the word
was deeply penetrating. "Zombie" entered Nigerians' social lexicon, a
handy word for all battered or potentially battered subjects of
military despotism. The word entrenched itself as the most natural way
to describe the military honchos who ruled (and ruined) us. It also
described the antics of the uniformed minions who – forgetting that
they were victims of misrule – seemed ever willing to keep the rest of
us in line, to still voices of dissent, to serve any regime with
rabid, ferocious efficiency.
Fela also gave us "ITT," deconstructing the name of an international
telecommunications corporation headed by the late Moshood Kashimawo
Abiola to yield a new term: "International Thief Thief." His song,
"Beast of No Nation," proclaimed the collective bastardry ofthe
Nigerian society just as his "Overtake Don Overtake Overtake" (ODOO)
is a shorthand for anomie.
Today, it is Lagbaja, I suggest, who hasoffered us the handiest name
for our collective malady. In a recent song that should become as much
an anthem as Fela's "Zombie," Lagbaja famously calls Nigerians 200
million mumu. The word mumu is a quintessentially Nigerian word, its
rich inflections and negative connotations derived from its pedigree.
It translates (rather prosaically) as a fool, a buffoon, a person
susceptible to scams and other forms of trickery.
In the lyrics, Lagbaja names some of the big men who have shaped –
that is to say, misshaped – Nigeria: Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha,
and Olusegun Obasanjo. But there's an unusual, jolting twist in the
song. As the listener settles to it, expecting to hear the familiar
"yabis" – words of insults usually lobbed at the country'spast and
present misrulers – Lagbaja turns his barbed tongue on the so-called
"ordinary" Nigerian, the "followers." In his worldview, all Nigerians
are part and parcel of the fabric of corruption and oppression that
the unfortunate among us bemoan.
In Chinua Achebe's fourth novel, A Man of the People, one of the
characters earns a chilly, censorious look when he teases the
ill-educated,prototypically corrupt politician, ChiefM.A. Nanga, with
an old joke: "MA, minus opportunity." Lagbaja uses a similar
linguistic move on all of us. Nigerians, all of us, are corrupt – he
seems to say – minus opportunity. At any rate, Lagbaja sees the lot us
as mumu, collaborators in our own oppression and debasement,
architects of our collective misfortune.
At first glance, Lagbaja's would appearto be a harsh, excessive and
even misplaced indictment. But it's hard to deny that there's a vital
sense in which the musician is right on target. In fact, it's
impossible to undertake any retrospective of events in Nigeria without
coming to the conclusion that too many Nigerians act as fertilizers
for the malaise that plaguesand wrecks their lives.
Let's take some of the recent events from the past week or two.
We've watched – some riveted with peculiar glee – as politicians from
Rivers State darted onto the stage to offer us a veritable theater of
the absurd. In an act of particular impunity, four or five members of
the state assembly attempted to stage a spurious impeachment of the
speakerand to replace him with one of their number. Backed by powerful
politicians in Abuja (including, some suggest, President Goodluck
Jonathanand his wife), these legislative renegades were prepared to
act on the proposition that they outnumbered 27 or so other lawmakers
loyal to the speaker they sought to remove.
A physical fight ensued to settle this sordid, "political" arithmetic.
In the melee, one legislator seized a make-shift mace imported by the
Abuja-backed renegades and used it to batter a colleague, Michael
Chinda – a member of the Abuja Collective. Numerous videos of the
fracas have gone viral on youtube. In them, we see so-called lawmakers
who should have been on Nigeria's boxing team at the London Olympics.
We see the police at their inefficient worst, unable to control a
rowdy gathering of thuggish legislators and their hiredthugs. We see
one of the lawmakers ready to kill or die because the state governor,
Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, had insulted his "mother," aka Patience
Jonathan, aka (the fuming pugilist's) "Jesus Christ on earth."I wrote
a few weeks ago that there was no substantive principle at play in the
political crisis in Rivers State – or in any location in Nigeria, for
that matter. It's all a game about who getsto steal the most from the
commonwealth and who gets to rape the people. Neither faction in the
dispute is actuated by the public good. Power, the acquisition of raw
power for self-aggrandizement, is thegoverning motivation.
If Mrs. Jonathan now functions as divinity, a "Jesus Christ on earth,"
then her husband, who fancies himself a "transformational leader,"
must occupy a special seat in any gathering of leaders, dwarfing such
figures as Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel, and Paul
Kagame. Yet, the terribly injured Chinda could find no hospital within
the precincts redeemed by Mrs. Jonathan and transformed by her husband
for treatment. Instead, it wasto Mr. Cameron's Britain that the
battered Chinda was flown for urgent surgery.
Here's a safe bet: Mr. Chinda is not spending a penny of his money to
payhis bills at the Bupa Cromwell Hospital in Britain. There's a
chance that the hospital demanded and received full payment before
commencing treatment. At any rate, those bills will be paid with
public funds, most likely provided by his sponsors in Abuja.
The arrangement makes a mumu of all of us who accept this daylight
abuse of public resources. Nigerian lawmakers, state as well as
national, are paid obscene sums of money. Yet, they hardly ever use
the instrument of the law to address the crises that menace the lives
of Nigerians – including a non-existent healthcare system. Instead,
they gallivant, carouse, undertake meaningless jamborees in Nigeria
and abroad, and – when it suits them – take to boxing. They hardly
work, but when they fall sick, they travel to such addresses as
Britain, Germany, South Africa and India where people work hard and
use their brain power.
As if Chinda's transfer to a British hospital was not wasteful enough,
last week a group of his backers, including a junior minister, Nyesom
Wike, flew to London to commiserate with him. The odds are excellent
that the government in Abuja paid for the flight tickets and hotel
accommodation of the five or so well-wishers – to say nothing of
spending cash. Mr. Wike and his team must not know how ludicrous they
appear to their British hosts; they have no idea how the British would
use them as the butt of jokes: Here are these Africans who have too
muchmoney but not a bit of sense to do anything for themselves!
It's an altogether awful picture. I doubt that Mr. Chinda has
sponsored asingle bill that improved the lives of the people of Rivers
State by a jot. Instead, he lent himself as a stooge tocarry out the
designs of those in power in Abuja, determined to lay waste to his
state. He is injured serving this despicable agenda. And then
Nigerians, including the hapless people of his home state, must pay
the tab for his treatment in London. A statement released by Mr.
Wike's team underscored the ridiculousness of it all. It began:
"Prominent leaders of Rivers State from across political and
professional divides on Saturday visited the member representing
Obio/Akpor State Constituency 2 at the Bupa Cromwell Hospital in
London, United Kingdom, where the legislator is recuperating from head
and jaw surgeries carried out on him by medical experts in the health
facility." Then it stated that "the leaders were grateful to God for
the survival of Hon. Michael Chinda despite the vicious knocks he
received from the mace-wielding Majority Leader of the Rivers State
House of Assembly, Mr. Chidi Lloyd."
These parasites, shameless consumers of other people's productsand
enterprise, are the kind of characters who pass for "leaders" in
Nigeria. There are also figures like Ango Abdullahi, a saber rattling
jingoist who insists that Nigeria's presidency must be turned over to
a "northerner" or there will be mayhem. Even though Mr. Abdullahi
wears the prefix of professor, he doesn't evince any interest in
stellar leadership. It suffices for him that somebody from the
so-called North – any "northerner," however mediocre or visionless –
assume the presidential office.
It all boils down to clownishness. I'm with Lagbaja: the fact that the
vast majority from all parts of Nigeria permit certifiable clowns to
pollute and deform our lives makes us 200 million mumu inhabiting a
perfect mumudom!
Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe
( okeyndibe@gmail.com)