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Atsar Terver
Public Commentator
Port Harcourt
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So why did Gani weep? Gani’s tears are not the tears of a coward. No! They are an expression of deep patriotism in the face of the helplessness that cancer has rendered him. What I hear Gani saying is that if not for this illness, it would have been aluta continua. Gani is saying that even if his body and mental faculties have been incapacitated by disease, he can at least cry for the beloved nation. Oh I feel him. Gani’s cry is also a cry for a successor. I scanned the horizon and realised that few lawyers have the size of feet that could fit into the shoes of Gani when he leaves the stage.

 

 

Weep No More Gani
 by Atsar Terver
 

In our contemporary African society when an elder, especially a man begins to weep publicly, for whatever reason, it calls for serious concern. Whatever it is that would make a man to break down and weep in public must be distasteful. Now if the person crying is a small-livered old man in the corner of the city, one may be forgiven for giving not more than a passing glance at it; but when the crier is man of stature, then something must be seriously wrong and we need to ponder.

Weeping could be one of the most misunderstood body language. For instance tears of joy could sometimes be mistaken for tears of sorrow. Crocodile tears may be mistaken for compassion. I remember when Jesus got to the tomb of his good friend Lazarus and saw the mob of professional mourners wailing and probably extolling the virtues of the dead man, with no sense of understanding that Lazarus was only sleeping and that he was going to wake him up, He wept. Jesus was weeping for the lack of faith and exasperation of even his close friends like Martha and Mary who did not know Him enough to understand that He was the resurrection and the life. But the people standing by misunderstood Him. They said ‘oh see how much He (Jesus) loved him (Lazarus)’

Close to the date of his second handover, Baba Iyabo- and I am calling him by that name for the first time- broke down in the house of God, the Aso Rock Chapel, and wept profusely. The crowd in the Chapel including journalist, political advisers, and the laity did not need to wait too long to know the reason for the presidential tears. The man said he suddenly remembered his late wife as he was handing over the Chapel to the then newly elected Vice President as patron. He wished the late wife should have been by his side while performing such a solemn rite. This diplomatic ‘alibi’ did not however stop some commentators from reasoning that the man was simply in fact overwhelmed with the reality of his exit from the Villa.

Weeping sometimes is not quite a bad idea anyway. It’s not necessarily a sign of weakness to weep. To the contrary, sometimes it takes some courage to weep publicly like Gani did recently on his return from London where he has been confined on a sick bed battling with cancer. The depth of his patriotism came to the fore despite his failing health, his major concern was the health of the nation. Gani was not crying for the cancer that is ravaging his body. He was not weeping for the children he may leave behind if the cold hands of death eventually lay hands on him. No, Gani was weeping for the state of the nation.

The tears of Gani must not be taken lightly. The Gani that Nigerians have come to know in the past three decades is not just the other man in the street. Gani is not a sulking fellow. We are talking about a man who has gone to prison more than donkey times fighting for human rights. We are talking about a man who stood up against the military dictatorships in clamour for freedom and democracy. We are talking about a man who took just about every government since independence to court over one constitutional matter or the other. This is the calibre of the man that wept bitterly over what he regarded as the sorry state of the nation.

So why did Gani weep? Gani’s tears are not the tears of a coward. No! They are an expression of deep patriotism in the face of the helplessness that cancer has rendered him. What I hear Gani saying is that if not for this illness, it would have been aluta continua. Gani is saying that even if his body and mental faculties have been incapacitated by disease, he can at least cry for the beloved nation. Oh I feel him. Gani’s cry is also a cry for a successor. I scanned the horizon and realised that few lawyers have the size of feet that could fit into the shoes of Gani when he leaves the stage.

Coming at the time Nigerians are groaning under the yoke of rising cost of food items, Gani’s tears are also significant. As the Senior Advocate of the masses, his cry is a cry of the masses whose silent groans may not be heard in the newspapers or radio. Gani has thus cried for them all. The masses may as well hold their peace.

But the picture is not all that gloomy. There is hope down the line for the nation. Even the Bible says that weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Nigerians for one are quite a resilient lot. They have weathered the military regimes of the past and even survived eight years of the worst dictatorship under a civilian government during which they also witnessed the worst kind of election ever conducted on black African soil. They survived it all. Now the long dark years of dictatorship ended last year and the day is about to break in Nigeria.

So I urge Gani to wipe off his eyes and stop crying for Nigeria as Walt Whitman stated, in his poem ‘On the Beach at Night, ‘…The ravening clouds shall not be long victorious, They shall not long possess the sky…’. Indeed the ravening cloud of dictatorship, lawlessness, impunity, recklessness, financial impropriety are fast fading away and being gradually replaced with the new culture of the rule of law.

Yar’Adua has promised to create 10million jobs and trigger double-digit GDP growth by 2011. If this promise comes to pass then there will be smiles on Nigerians’ faces and not tears. Yar’Adua has put in place an electoral reform committee to look into what can be done to stop the kind of fraud Iwu perpetrated in April 2007. If this committee does a good job and the recommendations are implemented, then by 2011, we should be having a free and fair election devoid of rigging, candidate imposition, ballot box snatching and stuffing, result falsification and exclusion of opposition candidates. By then, we would be smiling and not weeping.

The Senate has on her part set up a committee to review the most criticized constitution Nigeria has ever had. They are even threatening to remove the controversial immunity clause, which has been blamed (erroneously though) for the high spate of corruption in the country. I don’t know if they will also remove the opening statement that said ‘we the people of Nigeria…’ since it was coined by the military without actual participation of ‘we the people of Nigeria’, but I know that a people’s constitution will cause smiles to bud on our faces and not endless tears.

I also know that the present Government cares for the stomach of Nigerians. In response to the rising cost of rice, the government not only approved the removal of import duties on rice but also proposed a whooping 80billion to import rice into the country. Though not quite a fantastic idea in my estimation, it underscores the sense of urgency and concern for the plight of the masses.

Unlike previous regimes that sought to jail human rights activist at the slightest provocation we now have a President who could defile his own sickness and put a long distance call from his German hospital bed to London just to wish an activist well on his birthday. If this is not a good omen for human right advocates like Gani then I wonder what it is. This symbolic act of solidarity should help dry Gani’s tears, at least for now.

 

 

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