but now defunct Drum Magazine
recalled an interview his magazine had
in 1952 with a certain man he
described as the king of the blind in
Lagos.
According to Bailey, the opening
words of that interview had forever
touched his heart : “We blind men live
in a beautiful world. Have you ever
heard of a blind man dying of a heart
attack?” There could not have been a
better consolation for a life of
irreversible, eternal darkness!
But I am not interested in the beauty
of Bailey’s king’s darkness and that of
his kingdom. I am interested in the
surreal image the statement evokes
and the prophecy in those powerful
two sentences.
Quite instructive that Drum said the
man was the king of all blind people in
Lagos in pre-independence Nigeria. I
feel like asking who occupies that
position now in, not just Lagos, but in
the country as a whole. Could it be that
the kingdom of the blind has been
democratised so much that kinglets of
darkness strut the landscape? I am not
interested in any answer to that
question but I want to know if Nigeria
has not become one huge centre for
the blind. Sacrilegious assertion?
The past week has been as confusing
as it has been quite amusing to the
interested.
From Lagos to Taraba, one’s
senses were thoroughly challenged. I
read of concession of roads, tolling and
buy –back of concessions. One got
confused as you heard that
concessions had to give way so that the
poor won’t become poorer. You read
that if the poor won’t pay more to
concessions then an ingenious way
had to be found to appease the gods
of the rich with blinding billions
borrowed from the rich! The logic of
the illogic is quite mind blowing: If the
poor won’t get poorer, then the rich
must, today, pack all the monies of the
future instead of waiting 30 years as
originally agreed in the concession
pact. So confusing and some still
maintain that we are not all blind!
And in Taraba, we were all insulted as
blind bats that could not see how
Danbaba Suntai was de-planed and
loaded like a bag of onions into a
vehicle last Monday.
You and I were
told that the harvested vegetable was
still alive and well in its bed at the river
bank. The elements playing all these
games know Nigerians don’t see what
they are supposed to see. They will
rather want all of us to play naked like
the king in Ali and the Angel.
Even the
media are guilty of the insult. Someone
who was shown by the media being
carried off a plane on Monday had to
be exhibited on the front pages of
some newspapers on Friday - standing,
posing upright for a photograph! And
we were not told a miracle healing
occurred...
A certain vice chairman of a local
government in 1992 opened the
darkness of the politician’s mind to me
and left a lasting impression of what
government (especially so called
progressive ones whose mantra is
impunity) do with people’s lives. He
said: “If the masses ever get to know
the real thing we do in government,
they will roast us all.” He was later to
describe the guys he worked with as
clever, flea-brained rogues. That man
is today in Abuja and when I look at
him today and the company he keeps, I
wonder if he could ever remember
uttering those sincere words.
I wonder
if the people will ever know what goes
on in the minds of their kings.
Back to Lagos. Like the king of the
blind, the masses there enjoy the light
of their darkness. Their malaria corpses
are never tired of singing messiah to
mosquitoes-their nemesis. That is one
place where area boys are kings and
abnormality is the normal. The few
ones who attempt killing mosquitoes
there with brooms (yes, brooms! ) are
branded mad.
Like the madmen of
Plato’s cave, what else if not insanity
would make a man break off from the
chains of eternity? The way to live in
the cavernous depth of eternal deceit
is to wallow in it .That is the beauty of
darkness and the reason why blind
men don’t die of heart attacks. Bailey’s
king of the blind was very right. He
spoke to a future that has met you and
I flat footed, vision blurred.
Monday, 02 September 2013 00:00
Published in Monday Lines
Written by Lasisi Olagunju
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