By Bala Ibrahim.
“Balaspha. U’re quite for the last few days, since kidnappings, killings and insecurity reached an all time high. Or have you been kidnapped too?”
😅😅😅😅”No, I am around but my brain is kidnapped”.
This article was triggered by the conversation above, which was started by an old friend of mine, who happens to be an academician. And you know by training, academicians are people who judge the merit of situations from an academic angle. In the time when I was a student, I never liked them, because of the speed with which they used to disagree with my work. The love for academicians only came later, after I came to properly understand the meaning of constructive critique. Yes, now I love and sometimes support them, except for those of them that belong to ASUU, that umbrella of academicians that is at cross purpose with the ambition of our children. I like the ones that don’t belong there, because I realize they evaluate works objectively and mostimes analytically.
Now because my friend does not know my situation, and I don’t want him to subject my silence to undue academic analysis, I feel I owe him a response, in the form of an article like this. For starters, I want him to know that, pursuant to what is happening to my country Nigeria, alongside the loss of my mentor in journalism, I found myself bundled below the best balance of behaviour. In the situation I found myself, my emotion is competing with my outer disposition. What I feel inside me, is in conflict with the facial appearance I am putting before the public. I seem not to see things with the same subjective feeling, or react to issues with the expected physiological response they deserve. Because of these behavioural changes in me, my instinct told me to take a break, until such a time when something comes to motivate the behaviour to good health. I am confused.
When one’s country is visited by a new version of barbarity, such that children in schools are being seized from the schools and taken to unknown abodes, your sense of emotion would be struggling between different factors, some physical, some psychological. You are constantly at a loss, because of fear. You don’t know how soon the calamity may visit you, or your loved ones. For some bizarre reasons, since the threat by the US President, for a military action in Nigeria, over what he called the killing of Christians by radical Islamists in the country, there seems to be an upsurge in school children’s abduction in Nigeria, with two happening notoriously within few days interval. The two abductions, and an attack on a church in the west, where two people were killed and dozens snatched away, have put everyone, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in a state of disease. The President has cancelled international engagements, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, so that he can pay attention to the crisis.
To call such a situation frightening is an understatement. Like many Nigerians, I am frightened, frightened to the teeth, and I pray to God for his merciful intervention. As patriots, parents and people with emotions, we are all at that point of equilibrium, where opposing forces are equal, or where a trade-off between competing elements is considered optimal, hence the apprehension of being bundled below the best balance of behaviour. For a country that is yet to recover from the loss of nearly 300 girls to Boko haram terrorists, at Chibok, in the north-eastern part of Borno state, more than a decade ago, to commence going through that rough road again, it means no Nigerian can claim immunity to the scare of kidnapping. More so, when events are now unfolding in a manner that seems in tandem with something scripted.
The second reason for me being bundled below the best balance of behaviour is the demise of Dan Agbese, my late mentor in journalism, who had his degrees in mass communications and journalism from the University of Lagos and Columbia University, New York, respectively. Dan Agbese was the former editor of The Nigeria Standard, the New Nigerian as well as former General Manager of Radio Benue. Along with Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed, Dan Agbese founded the Newswatch magazine, which became Africa’s most influential weekly newsmagazine, that was consistently challenging power and reshaping investigative reporting in Nigeria.
As a team, their work was constantly facing danger. Because they were confronting military dictatorship, Government crackdowns were intensified against them, with censorship always visiting their newsroom. In 1986, the media world was shocked by the assassination of Dele Giwa, through a parcel bomb. Through it all, Dan Agbese, who was described by his colleagues, as the calm in the storm, remained unflinching. Dan was always analytical, steady, and quietly firm.
I must confess that, I owe most of the things I do in journalism, to the private support, sometimes even one-on-one tutoring, by late Dan Agbese. He was the mentor that puts me through to the technique of using alliteration in captioning, with a view to drawing the attention of the reader. Like Laolu Afolabi said in his tribute, indeed a “tireless pen takes a bow”. Your exit has bundled me below the best balance of behaviour. May you rest in perfect peace, ameen, my professional mentor.