Before I hastily undertake this non-fictional pilgrimage as my African
pen will not concede to a traffic regulation or ‘’go slow’’, I will like to
apprise my audience on this ‘’green- white- green’’ stage that it will be
disingenuous of my literary characterization and ministry (LITERATI) not to un
sheath my fleshy sword from its fragile skin and pierce its blade into the
uterus of the situation in status quo as the goings- on in the Nigerian polity
thus mandate.
Innocent A. Emechete in his book titled THE CONCEPT OF DEITY IN AFRICAN
POETRY makes clear the person and character which sail into the
characterization of a poet which I am proud to be one when he says:
‘’A
poet is a Teacher, a Critic, a Storyteller, a Musician, a
Philosopher, a
Theologian and the
moral conscience of society.’’
He goes further not relenting to abruptly add that:
‘’the moral depravity of the action and
or the individual involved is thus exposed by the
poet.’’
Also, in her Inaugural Lecture
Series 2012 titled DESTINATION FREEDOM: VEHICLE, SYMBOLISM IN BLACK LITERATURE.
Professor Karen King Aribisala opines that:
‘’the means by which
the poet effects this transition is through the vehicle of words. Here, vehicle is seen as ‘’a medium of communication
and expression.’’ (WIKIPEDIA FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA). A vehicle can be further
defined as ‘’any means in or by which someone travels or something is carried
or conveyed.’’ (WIKIPEDIA FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA).’’
In essence, Aribisala
is of the opinion that in every activity, there is always a trigger, an impetus
and a ‘’metallic monster’’ that carries and dislocates to one’s intended
destination one’s ideologies, philosophies, ambitions, prospects etc.
It must not be blindly
misconstrued or distorted that this dissertation is on a cowardly campaign or
an Islamic exoneration of the frivolous nuclear dispensations of ‘’toy bombs’’
that have selfishly and un- dutifully claimed
the lives of innocent, unguarded and unescorted Nigerian civilians in
their domestic homes, huts and sacred monasteries. But, I shall employ the
instructive tool of the figurative paraphernalia titled ‘’satire’’ driven in
the vehicle of ‘’sarcasm’’ by the driver (at least a car must be driven by
someone or thing) ‘’lampoon’’ to give a Romanticization of Boko Haram
Terrorism.
The ironical episode of
these sects’ theatrical display which employs an Elizabethan stage in a
Nigerian setting and ambience is the fact that the Hoi Polloi of the society
which the romantics adore and deify are the same polity that these
‘’Puritanistic Farcical Characters’’ called Boko Haram war against but yet, the
enemy is seldom known, whether this indecisive and depraved ‘’hardcore
Northerners’’ as Soyinka calls them are actually vexed with the ‘’upper
strata’’ or the ‘’lower strata’’ of the society or even both for as Professor
Wole Soyinka exposes in his evergreen enlightening documentary of the Boko
Haram genesis that ‘’The third phase of Boko Haram will be a selective
assassination of leaders from here.’’ (THE NEXT PHASE OF BOKO HARAM TERRORISM)
Having all these above
and employing the permutation devised by the latter in his article, mine as a
me-too of his’ shall as well go thus.
Was Romanticism a
movement for or against the society?
Having brandished
Alfred Tennyson’s ‘’The Lady of Shallot’’, and having understood the essence of
Victorian literary works as a work of literature that ‘’evaluate and observe
the society’’, I will like to say and postulate (though a prima facie) that the
romantics in their ingenuity saw the hazardous features of the technological
evolution and proliferation and having foreseen the adverse effects of these
technologies on man for whom it was made, they resolved in a common voice that
‘’technology is Haram’’ and should be escaped from, to places where the talons
of technology can’t reach and aren’t in
existence. So, eventually, they chose the primitive, where perfection, peace,
solitude are utopian, courtesies of its proximity i.e. the primitive, with
unalloyed nature. They settled in this slum by segregating from the city. Let
it be understood that if ‘’the lady of shallot’’ wasn’t mesmerized by the
activities of the mirror which we must note ‘’is a product of technology’’,
which was capturing the dealings in the world where she had been incarcerated
i.e. the city and beholding finally the harbinger that caused her death which
is ‘’Sir Lancelot’’. For at the sight of him, she left comfort for discomfort,
life for death.
The romantics sought
their Destination Freedom via the vehicle ‘’imagination’’ into a particular
part of the world which they considered the best, their Eldorado i.e. the
slums, villages and the primitive setting.
What is a romantic man’s
disposition towards the harshness and eccentric destructiveness of nature?
Since as earlier said
that the romantics see nature as their dues ex machina, it can’t be disputed as
false that we have and there exists natural disasters that as we know have brought
some nations to their dark ages. But let me quickly say, ‘’if not for the
scientific explorations of man on nature and man’s technological exploitation
of nature, would she rage and be violent?’’
The romantics, especially Byronic Romantics see these natural anomalies
as a means by which ‘’mother earth’’ sheds her tears and expresses her
annoyance as natural humans will do when upset. These literary blocs also see
beauty at the moment when these natural unoccurrences occur. This is not
ordinary if agreed with me; rather, this is mystic and scholars have given this
mysticism the term ‘’TRANSVALUATION.’’
Who is Boko Haram and
what does it stand for?
I will not want to give
an animate nominal design ant to the non polar question about Boko Haram
because to me, whatever it stands for or whatever grievances it aims to
project, whatever its composition is and is its ‘’Lord Voldemort’’, I won’t
want to believe its assembly, congregation or audience to be made up of
rational human beings but rather, a colony of destructive ants and a gathering
of blood thirsty vampires with un-deserved ‘’black skins’’ and betrayers of the
sanctity of the ‘’Nigerian Lingua Franca.’’
Well, with all
sentiments tamed, I think in his article stated above, Soyinka, I opine, has
given a satisfactory analysis of ‘’the Whos and What’’ of these
fundamentalists. These are things that have decided to publicly rape Islamic
religion of her dignity and fuelling its hideous shenanigans and pollutions in
the filling station of ‘’diluted religious principles’’ under the
‘’phariseeship’’ of accursed and excommunicated ‘’mullahs’’ and political
Nebuchadnezzars.
Soyinka in his wit
says;
‘’
all they need to be told is that this is an enemy of religion and
they are ready to kill. No matter the motivations, no matter the
extra-motivations of those who send them, they need only one
motivation: that they are fighting the cause of that religion.’’
Does Boko Haram have a
destination freedom and what is the conveying vehicle?
Boko Haram in its
shallow mind might be thinking or might have thought it has a destination in an
enslaved doctrine and rite, riding in foolishry and in the delusive vehicle of
mediocre bombs and dud galloping guns. The Latin dictum that prophesizes ‘’vox
populli: supreme alex’’ will bring hungry Boko Haram to a barren wilderness
where it will ‘’weep and gnash its teeth.’’
Does Boko Haram have
‘’akin’’ relativism with the romantics?
Maybe a morphological
dissection of the entirety of the compounding communion of the word Boko Haram
should be explained. BOKO means western education, HARAM means forbidden.
Having this at the back of our minds that they say ‘’western education is
forbidden’’, it should also be emphasized that romanticism after which romantic
writers are named is a ‘’highly intellectual’’ literary movement that has its
full expressions in EDUCATION. So, to say Boko Haram is akin relatively with
romanticism is a logical contradiction and an irreconcilable fallacy. In fact,
it is an exaggerated oxymoron driven in the vehicle ‘’ignoramus’’ to an
enslaved destination. Romantics are diplomatic people rooted in sensibility.
Believe you me, if William Wordsworth were to be alive and were to be apprised
of the delinquencies of this sect, he would have entreated Lord Byron to plead
and evoke ‘’mother nature’’ to cause an earthquake in the hidden graves of this
sect. Though, romantics are against rationalized knowledge that books and
civilization brought and celebrated natural ingenuity and knowledge of the
commoners, though romantics disliked technology and the rationalization of
nature by science, Boko Haram is just a feeble and malodorous usurper of these
principles at the surface level.
Below is a simple
dramatic similarity and dichotomy
Similarity
Both Romantics and Boko
Haram preach the theme of austerity and primitiveness in entirety.
Dichotomies
Romantics we employ the wit of poesy and rhetoric to preach our ideologies.
Boko Haram: look at this fools and neophytes, the only drilling and effective
mechanism is to act on the outside and not the inside, so bombs, guns, matchets
and violence are my diplomatic permutations.
Romantics: that is too animalistic pal, psychological and physical escapism from
the urban to the rural would have been better instead…….
Boko Haram: shi shi shi… look at these ‘’fiful’’, don’t you know that the
illegitimate ‘’farafernalia’’ is struggling where you have been declared ‘’fersona
non grata’’ and make yourself legitimate?
Romantics: well, since I’m a Luddite and a lover and pioneer of natural things and
her offspring, I can’t afford to self- contradict myself.
Boko Haram: My own is even if your mother nature stands my way, I go Haram am. If
you are not for me, you are against me.
Are you saying that
Romantics didn’t fight or kick against education and books?
In William Wordsworth’s
THE TABLES TURNED, he mildly and diplomatically through the educational vehicle
of poetry, speaks about the stress and burden of books compared with the
relief, enjoyment and relaxation that natural knowledge, education and
entertainment which nature brings. If William Wordsworth didn’t have and taste
education, would he have known the weariness of education and its stress?
At least it’s said ‘’No
pain, no gain.’’ I wouldn’t have read his poems if I had not reached this
echelon of education. The essence and ideal end product of education according
to Auguste Compte is for ‘’the betterment of the society.’’ Even if Boko had
any educated ant in its colony, it wouldn’t have been the kind of educational
advantage Auguste spoke of for the society.
Your word to Boko Haram
If any of them relishes
intellectually and not in an Islamic or political semantics this dissertation,
then, ‘’it’’ must be a chronic betrayal of the education that groomed ‘’it.’’
My literary epilogue to Boko Haram is that as
the romantics escaped from the urban to the rural through imagination, and also
physically exiled into the rural places, let Boko also take such noiseless and
impalpable salient move to places where ‘’its’’ doctrines will be held sacred
and this pettifogging hullabaloo would easily be avoided. For the audience are
tired of ‘’its’’ theatre and all the ideals of neoclassicism are apparently as
proposed by Aristotle and Horace in their treatises are oblivious in
‘’its’’ drama on stage, for dialogue hasn’t been employed. All we have seen is
soliloquy that is nebulous and unrealistic into the intangible wind which has
made the air poisonous to the breathing masses.
BABAJIDE LITERATI
