2023: Alaoma Community as Metaphor

GUEST BY OKEY IKECHUKWU

The frenzy is palpable. There are rumours and insinuations of subterfuge here and there. The hysteria is picking up speed. Outright declarations of intention to contest for the office of president are pouring out of every street corner. Among the many who consider themselves fit, and who are now prancing forward to be crowned King of Nigeria you find those with unsteady gait due to age. You will also find others who have no quotable quote, or memorable achievement, after some 20 years in politics.

We say nothing about the coarse ambience, history of financial debauchery and curious political trajectory of nearly all of them. Their assumptions about themselves is, perhaps, the only explanation for has the special type of blindness, and a peculiar form resolute deafness, that is propelling them to seek the Presidency. Otherwise, many of them would have seen from the word to that their projects collapsed long before it even took off. That little masquerades of questionable profile and laughable pedigree trying to pass themselves off as Ijele? Mbanu! Usu abughi nnunu! (The bat is not a bird).

Which brings to mind the story of certain community known as Alaoma. The society’s core values forbade certain types of people from aspiring to be made King. Alaoma traditions made it clear that leadership was not some sort of vain aspiration. It was no platform for self-inflation and egocentric excesses. “Kingship is no hobby” was always the rallying cry of the wisest in the land. And a time came when this age-old core value of Alaoma had to be affirmed on behalf of the people by an elder, known as Ichie Omee-Okachie.

His opening statement on the occasion of his fateful intervention was pithy and to the point: “No, not while I am alive! Not while I still have a say, and a role to play, in the matter of who becomes King will a never-do-well be crowned inn this community!” This was just before the commencement of preparations and processes for the selection of a new King. With the clamouring and noisy clattter of uncouth voices everywhere, everything seemed possible.

But not with Okachie, and not if he can help it. He rose felt beside with indignation the day one lousy fellow falsely invoked the name of the oracle before the Council of Elders, alleging that it had proclaimed him the next King of Alaoma. Bunkum! He simply told the man and his supporters, point blank, that a lizard was not a type of crocodile. For good measure, he explained to him that no amount of feeding, and no type of special diet, can turn a domestic cat into a lion. “You might as well have told us that the gods had decreed that you would grow wings, fly into the sky and hover there forever – and probably for a few market days thereafter.”

That was when it dawned on the people of Alaoma that someone may yet claim that he had been given a spare key to the land of the ancestors; wherewith he could always enter and consult with the gods at will when others were locked out! This, and despite the machinations, the desperation and the false ambition of several misguided individuals, they all had something else thing coming, because the people of Alaoma had woken up to the following questions: “Where is our Ijele? Who should we make our Standard Bearer at a time like this? Where is that individual, and where is that concatenation of ideas, whose presence would ring the bell for propriety and for the gathering of wits?”
As meetings were being held to determine a way forward for Alaoma, it became evident that many elders and titled men still did not quite understand the people’s need for spiritual, economic, leadership and moral rebirth. These presumed leaders did not notice the need to resolve the brewing disaster arising from the confiscation of the Commonwealth by many who were put in positions of trust. They perceived nothing of the hovering stench of “unsanctity” beclouding public affairs. Things had really gone very bad indeed!

Even then, some of the aspiring leaders were still busy recruiting Alaoma youths for socially disruptive activities. These were the very youngsters who needed to be refocused for a better society, if Alaoma was to move forward. These were the very youths that the false leaders had turned into Ndi oti mkpu, or hired praise singers, who would gather and sit idly at event venues looking morose, until whoever paid them for the day turned up. Then they would then come alive and begin the job of jumping up and down and shouting all manner of praise names for their paymaster. Tufiakwa!
Imagine this: A leader would send paid youths and ‘Assistants” ahead of him during a public event. These “workers” would wait in the wings for hours. When the paymaster arrived, they would do their best to bring down the heavens with shouts of `leader, leader.’ That was the job of the new service corps of Ndi oti Nkpu, under the aberrant leadership of many who are now asking to be made King of Alaoma. To think that some of those who fueled and benefited from this ruination of Alaoma youths now want to be crowned King? Really!

For Alaoma to have Ndi oti mkpu, that is “people who shout,” as a demographic group means that the aspiring leaders are not interested in becoming part of a forward-looking world. It also means that the aspiring leaders are not asking themselves whether the respected founding fathers of Alaoma, who held sway in the past, lived thus. The life-reversing draught they are drinking, and also dispensing, had immunized them against questions like: “How will this ‘shouting profession’ affect youth development, moral values and the future of Alaoma?” None of them was asking himself this question: “Should we not be worried that our youths have learnt nothing good that could make them useful in a normal community?”

They did not ask such questions, because they did not care. The misled youths had not been trained as farmers, or craftsmen. They had not been given any skills for survival and respectable livelihood. Many of them had become thieves, wayward young ladies and sundry miscreants. And the reason is simple: they were used for nefarious activities and then abandoned by masters who never thought of their future.

The youths needed to be tooled, or retooled. They needed new skills, beyond the ability to shout. They needed to be re-tooled for a new and better society. Otherwise they would all still be available for the next evil paymaster. The dumping of disoriented and misguided young men and women, partially ruined by the very elders and leaders who should mentor them for the better, had become a hydra-headed problem in Alaoma. A solid foundation had been laid for a bleak tomorrow for the youths, and for the people, by many of those now aspiring to be King.

Should it not have been the business of true leaders to equip the next generation with the right type of knowledge, values, capacities and for responsible living and livelihood? But this pristine task is precisely what they cheerfully failed to deliver on. And to think that, even as they hope to mount the throne as King, they are still assembling Alaoma youths for further praise singing, as their future journeys downhill.

Now that a new King must emerge to create new value paradigms, Okachie and a few elders have made it their bounden duty to get Alaoma people to ask themselves this question: “What type of person should be the new King of our now fractious, traumatized and morally confounded community?”
Intimations of purposeless, blind ambition, tomfoolery and a refusal to learn from past errors were evident in the behaviour of many who wanted to be King. Tiny, but badly inflated, egos were still trying to follow their has an previous bad example. Unearned income, and a morally loose lifestyle, had given some people a false and totally laughable feeling of importance. The background of some of the self-proclaimed messiah’s promises nothing good for Alaoma. Only in one or two, still obscure, cases do we see true capacity for leadership and genuine understanding of the problems of the land. Even at that, there was still much to worry about.

But not to worry: A flying termite that mistakes itself for a bird soon learns, by its encounter with turbulent winds, that the ability to be airborne is not all that it takes to become a soaring bird. Okachie is involved! At one of the meetings called to assess those who, contrary to tradition, had announced themselves aspirants to the throne, Okachie likened them to the various types of small masquerades in Alaoma. He urged the people to take a good look at those putting themselves forward and ask about their antecedents. The people must ascertain their means of livelihood, their source of their wealth and what they would do with, and about, the youths who have imbibed the wrong values.

These questions were made more urgent by the fact that Alaoma faced a new and strange elite culture. Many people who were totally disconnected from the people, and who had nothing of lasting value to offer, simply believed that all they should be crowned King. Capacity for violence or conspiracy, the ability to dole out gifts, or threats to whomsoever seemed an obstacle to their ambitions were the credentials they seemed to put forward in order to take the crown! Unbelievable!
Well, well, well! Ichie Omee-Okachie, the wise, now has a say. He also has a deciding hand in the matter! Which means that Ndi Akologoli, the rough necks and layabouts of Alaoma, will not take over and continue to desecrate the land. The big and small masquerades must leave the village square, because it was time for the Ijele. But no one, not even the people, will see it coming. Watch out!