By Suyi Ayodele
Anyone who falls and does not want people to talk about it had better not fall like a man I know did, years ago.
It was a Sunday service at one of the Orthodox churches. The verger followed the priest closely with the pastoral staff delicately balanced in his hands as the pastoral team members made their way to the temple. Suddenly, the verger or macebearer missed his step. As he was about to stumble, he spoke the language of the elders to wit: Èmó tere ni t’Àjàò. That sounds esoteric. I will explain presently.
The words were not too audible, but the priest heard him clearly. The Man of God (MoG) threw a furtive glance at the macebearer, who pretended as if nothing happened. The procession continued. The service held and ended. After the benediction and the congregants departed, the priest asked the macebearer to come to the vestry for a discussion.
Alone with the macebearer, the priest asked if what he heard the young man utter while in procession to the temple was exactly what it meant. The macebearer threw a question back at the priest: “Would you have had me fall in procession and cause a commotion or prevent falling you as I fell?” The priest was alarmed. “How on earth would you recite incantation in the church?”, he asked the young man. The macebearer responded that he did not recite any incantation but merely uttered some words of the elders. What exactly did the young man say?
Àjàò is a bird-like animal. It has the same resemblance to the bat but slightly different from the bat. The tendency to mistake the two to be one and the same is very high for those not familiar with the two animals. Àjàò is a nocturnal animal and its dexterity at holding on to any object to prevent a fall is legendary. When shot at by hunters, Àjàò can hold on to anything as light as a leaf and it will not fall. The hunter must climb the tree to bring it down.
In Yoruba mythology, what holds Àjàò to any object is known as emo. Those who are knowledgeable harvest the Èmó usually on the palm of the animal, add other pharmacology ingredients and make an anti-fall medicine that gives one stability. Of course, when the one bathed in the Èmó substance experiences a trip or stumbles, he is expected to evoke the spirit of Àjàò as contained in the poetry line: Èmó tere ni t’Àjàò!
There is nothing so esoteric; just mere evocation saying: it is the emo of Ajao that prevents it from falling Èmó Àjàò is the Yoruba donation to the world medical science. It is a prescription every man, especially the older ones, should carry with him the way an asthmatic patient carries his inhaler. It enhances stability like the modern-day lithium enhances bipolar disorder. Yet another story.
“His jokes. He had a sense of humour. I can recall two or three. On one occasion, we were in the Supreme Court in Lagos. He had been addressing the court for a long time on the Weight of Evidence. As he sat, the chair broke. While everybody was worried, he quickly got up and said, “My Lord, I have been addressing you on the weight of evidence, now you have seen the evidence of weight!”
Chief Ladi Rotimi-Willians, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), is the first son of the late Lega luminary, Chief Fredick Rotimi Atanda Williams (SAN), popularly known as FRA Williams. Chief Ladi Rotimi-Williams (SAN) gave the above answer to the question: “What is the most enduring memory of him (FRA)?”, posed to him by the duo of Lanre Adewole and Elliot Ovadje, two reporters from the Nigerian Tribune stable, during an interview session. The interview was published on September 8, 2019, under the headline: “Day Rotimi Williams’ weight broke Supreme Court’s chair —Ladi Rotimi-Williams.”
I met Baba FRA Williams, perchance, in 1996, somewhere in the Yaba area of Lagos. I was an Editorial Test Candidate with The Guardian Newspaper then under the mentorship of the late Remi Oyelegbin, then Head of Transport Desk. I followed Oga Oyelegbin to see someone around Queen Street, Yaba, and it happened that Chief FRA Williams was also a guest of the man we went to see. As we prostrated to greet the legal icon, my entire being was assessing his huge frame. All I could say to myself was that the man was as huge as his contributions to world jurisprudence.
So, reading the account of his ‘fall’ as he ‘broke’ the Supreme Court’s chair, and the joke he made about it, I came to one conclusion: there is no big deal in falling; but there is a big deal in using euphemism to describe the falling. Every man falls – old or young. The giant FRA Williams did, and he told everyone present and those who might hear about the incident, why he fell. The old man, despite the temporary trepidation in the court that day, explained that he had fallen due to his weight.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu fell in faraway Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, last week. He was on an official visit to the country when the incident happened. How I wished Tinubu had the Emo Ajao prescription on him on that occasion; how I wished the President is familiar with that Yoruba pharmacognosy. It can be very handy. He should have one. Next time the big man travels, and he is about to tumble, he should simply utter those words of the elders. My prescription though!
One of the President’s media handlers, Bayo Onanuga, like a poor student of the Stylistics concept of Avoidance Strategy, told us that the president suffered just “a mere stumble, and thank God, not a fall.”
I read Onanuga’s reaction to the incident repeatedly, especially his “This is not a big deal, except for those who want to make mischief out of a fleeting incident.” and I imagined how the linguist, H.P Grice, would have turned in his grave, hissing at how poorly schooled Onanuga is in the Pragmatic concept of Felicity Conditions which Grice christened Cooperative Principle. How difficult it is for those in the corridors of power to know that silence could be golden at times baffles me.
But we shall not bother much about Onanuga and his handling of his boss’ outings. President Tinubu fell, so what? Men do fall. Even deities do. Tinubu is not the first President to fall, and he will not be the last.
It also does not matter how many times he has fallen in the last two years and how many more times he will still fall during the pendency of his presidency. The most important thing is how he gets up after each fall and what explanation he gives and the narratives that his hangers-on take to town. Chief FRA fell and broke a Supreme Court’s chair. The old man explained while he fell and why the chair broke. That is what noblemen do. He left no one guessing; he simply showed the court an “Evidence of weight.” Great man, he was, FRA, the inimitable Timi The Law!
President Tinubu. like any other human being of his age, is susceptible to falling. And nobody born of a woman should make a joke of such an incident. The problem with the latest ‘mere stumble’ of President Tinubu in Turkey is not about the fact that the president fell but the way his handlers had projected him in the past as a man so perfect that he does not suffer what other people suffer. World over, presidents had fallen before and many more still do.
Among the gods and deities, the esoteric beings also fall. If people like Onanuga are familiar with this fact that the esoteric too also do fall, there would have been no need for his tirades on “those who want to make mischief out of a fleeting incident”, as he did. It is not every time the Aso Rock Villa Media Unit should be paranoid about the public opinion of the president. The Tinubu media boys should wean themselves of that infantile PR colic!
For instance, O̩balúayé the Yoruba god of Sònpòná (smallpox), is said to be lame and very old. Then one day, fortune smiled on him and his legs gained strength. A party was thrown to celebrate the recovery of O̩balúayé’s legs. In the excitement of the feat, the deity forgot his frailty. He rose up to dance to the Bata drum.
He fell with a loud thud. Other gods present at the party laughed and in anger, O̩balúayé infected all of them with smallpox. It took the intervention of the Yoruba god of creation, Obàtálá, to heal the afflicted and O̩balúayé was banished to the evil forest. This, the folklore says, is why the sacrifice for the healing of smallpox is usually taken into the deep forest.
In ancient Egypt, Osiri, the god of the bad elements (underworld), once fell at a public function. His younger brother seized the occasion to attack him and Osiri was murdered before he could rise and his position taken over by the younger brother who became the lord of the underworld. Also, Greek mythology tells us about Hephaestus, the god of artisans, who fell twice from Mount Olympus. On his second fall, it is said that his mother, Hera, pushed him off because he was considered too ugly as he became lame from his first fall. Despite his supernatural power, he stumbles and falls, never to return to the heavenly places but resides, to date, on the Aegean Sea, Lemnos Island.
Among mortal presidents, we have had powerful heads of states who had fallen publicly. The United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, fell in 2019 and landed in a river while trying to jump over a puddle. In 2027, American President, Donald Trump, fell while boarding the US Air Force One. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa had his own fall in 2015 while climbing a stage to deliver a speech.
Our own self-acclaimed Mai Gaskiya (the honest one), the late General Muhammadu Buhari, fell in 2017 while alighting from a vehicle. Joe Biden, who Trump nicknamed ‘Sleeping Joe’, former President of America also fell in 2021 while boarding US Air Force One. The young Emmanuel Macron, President of France, tripped and fell while visiting a factory in 2020. The list is endless.
The difference between the above-cited cases and last week’s “mere stumble” of President Tinubu in Ankara, Turkey, is the mistrust between President Tinubu and the Nigerian populace. The puzzle around the age, health and ancestry of the President has denied the man the natural empathy he would have gotten each time he falls. Many Nigerians doubt the 73 years age the President claims. Some say he doesn’t look it; others question his gait in relation to his age. Anyway, a man is as old as he thinks!
More so, many wonder why a 73-year-old man has not been able to point at any Nigerian as his childhood playmate. Tinubu himself fuelled that dubiety, when, at the launch of the Nigeria’s Agricultural Mechanisation Programme, he introduced one Alex (Alexander) Zingman, a Belarusian businessman, as his Chicago State University classmate.
Nigerians were not amused that, like the proverbial impotent whose wife and children are always faraway, from Ibadan to Lagos, Maiduguri to Onitsha, Tinubu could not identify anyone as his schoolmate or childhood playmate but had to travel to a Bullamakanka, called Belarus, to pick a nondescript of an Alex!
Such an attitude from the President and his frequent trips to France have eroded a lot of the public IOU sympathy he would have attracted naturally should he suffer any mishap like the Ankara ‘mere stumble!” Truth be told; it is not enough for President Tinubu to dismiss the public concern about his health and mental ability for the Presidency job with his 2022 line of “the job of a president is not bricklaying.” It is not debatable, as the President submitted that the presidency is a “job of the brain; intelligent thinking; it is a job for someone who is ready to do things right.”
The problem now is that Nigerians have yet to see which thing the Tinubu administration has done the right way since 2023. The people are yet to see the intelligence this Presidency has brought to the table; they are yet to see a man, the President, who thinks outside the box. Governance is not about rhetoric. No! Whatever the President is doing must translate to improved conditions of living for the masses.
The key sectors of the nation’s economic and social life must change for the better for the people to agree that the President actually “went to school to study accountancy and management”, as he claimed. If the management of the nation is dancing ijó yóyò, if the President travels and when asked when he will return, the response from Onanuga is: “President Tinubu is expected to return to the country at the conclusion of the visit”, then the President has failed in simple managerial acumen and has stood ‘accountability’, the basic element of the discipline, ‘Accountancy’, on its head. A good accountant, I submit, must be accountable to the people!
While one will not necessarily celebrate the fall of the President in Turkey, Nigerians have every reason to be worried that after that fall, President Tinubu presented a picture of a man in dire need of help as his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, practically became like a baby-minder to him! Nigerians should be genuinely worried if the picture of the President they saw in Turkey would be on the roads in the weeks to come, seeking votes for a second term.
Those in the turn-by-turn league of Èmilókàn political philosophy should be concerned if this product is worth hawking or not. These are what I think Onanuga, and his men should explain instead of his recourse to the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem, leaving the issues to attack the perceived enemies of the president.
It is heartwarming to note that President Tinubu has since returned to Nigeria after the visit to Turkey. It is indeed happy news to note that the President suffered no injury after the “mere stumble” incident. One cannot but wish the President the strength of a bricklayer and the stability of a carpenter as he returns to face the job he was elected to do!
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
