As a bright pupil-teacher in lower primary school Reginald Okong had attracted the attention of American Baptist missionaries from Ohio who were engaged in belated but obdurate evangelism in his district. They saw a great future for him and ordained him at the age of 26. In their Guinness Book of Records mentality they often called him the youngest native American Baptist minister in the world. Native American? Good heavens no! Native African. But, while they were conscientiously grooming Okong slowly but surely into the future head of their local church in say twenty or thirty years, the young Reverend, bright, ambitious and in a great hurry was working secretly on schemes of his own, one of which was to take him away altogether from the missionary vineyard to the secular campuses of a southern Black college in the United States of America itself to the dismay of his Ohio patrons who did not stop at accusations of ingratitude but mounted a determined campaign with US Immigration aimed at getting him deported. But he too was tough and overcame all his difficulties. Augmenting his slender resources by preaching and wrestling he graduated in record time by passing off his Grade Three Teachers’ Certificate as the equivalent of two years of Junior College. Four years later he was back home with a Ph.D. in his bag, and went to teach at the university.
I was editor of the National Gazette at the time and he approached me with a proposal for a weekend current affairs column. I was mildly enthusiastic and although I was aware of the reservations some of his academic colleagues often expressed about his scholarship I proceeded to build him up as a leading African political scientist, as editors often do thinking they do it for the sake of their paper but actually end up fostering a freak baby. But I must say Okong was a perfect contributor in meeting deadlines and that kind of thing. And his column, “String Along with Reggie Okong,” soon became very popular indeed. No one pretended that he dispensed any spectacular insights, wisdom or originality but his ability to turn a phrase in a way to delight our ordinary readers was remarkable. He was full of cliché, but then a cliché is not a cliché if you have never heard it before; and our ordinary reader clearly had not and so was ready to greet each one with the same ecstasy it must have produced when it was first coined. For Cliché is but pauperized Ecstasy.
Think of the very first time someone got up and said: “We must not be lulled into a false sense of security.” He must have got his audience humming. It was like that with Okong; he was a smash hit! My friend, Ikem Osodi, was always at me for running that column. He said Professor Okong deserved to be hanged and quartered for phrase-mongering and other counterfeit offences. But Ikem is a literary artist, and the Gazette was not there to satisfy the likes of him; not even now that he sits in the editorial chair! A fact he is yet to learn.
Naturally Okong never upset the politicians; he kept their constituency amused. I didn’t mind, either. I had enough contributors like Ikem to do all the upsetting that was needed and a lot that wasn’t. But on the very next day after the politicians were overthrown Okong metamorphosed into a brilliant analyst of their many excesses. I thought he had finally overreached himself changing his tune so abruptly; but not so my readers, judging by their ecstatic letters. Apparently he had scored another hit by describing the overthrow of the civilian regime as “a historic fall from grace to grass!” After that I doffed my cap to him. And when His Excellency asked me to suggest half-a-dozen names for his Cabinet Professor Okong was top of my list.
This calls for some explanation and justification. His Excellency came to power without any preparation for political leadership—a fact which he being a very intelligent person knew perfectly well and which, furthermore, should not have surprised anyone. Sandhurst after all did not set about training officers to take over Her Majesty’s throne but rather in the high tradition of proud aloofness from politics and public affairs. Therefore when our civilian politicians finally got what they had coming to them and landed unloved and unmourned on the rubbish heap and the young Army Commander was invited by the even younger coup-makers to become His Excellency the Head of State he had pretty few ideas about what to do. And so, like an intelligent man, he called his friends together and said: “What shall I do?”
I had known him then for close on twenty-five years, from that day long ago when we first met as new boys of thirteen or fourteen at Lord Lugard College. And so I found myself advising “a whole Head of State” who was, in addition, quite frankly terrified of his new job. This is something I have never been quite able to figure out: why the military armed to the teeth as they are can find unarmed civilians such a threat. For His Excellency, it was only a passing phase, though. He soon mastered his fear, although from time to time memories of it would seem to return to torment him. I can see no other explanation for his quite irrational and excessive fear of demonstrations, for example. Even pathetically peaceful, obsequious demonstrations.
In his first days of power his constant nightmare was of the people falling into disaffection and erupting into ugly demonstrations all over the place, and he drove himself crazy worrying how to prevent it. I had no clear idea myself. But I imagined that a person like Professor Okong without having any clearer ideas than either of us would be helpful in putting whatever came into our heads into popular diction and currency. And so he was number one on my list and His Excellency appointed him Commissioner for Home Affairs. He had his day and then went into partial eclipse. But I hardly think he is due for prison, yet.
2
HIS EXCELLENCY’S deep anxiety had been swiftly assuaged by his young, brilliant and aggressive Director of the State Research Council (SRC). He proved once again in his Excellency’s words as efficient as the Cabinet was incompetent. Every single action by this bright young man from the day of his appointment has given His Excellency good cause for self-congratulations for Major Johnson Ossai had been his own personal choice whom he had gone ahead to appoint in the face of strong opposition from more senior
officers. And it had happened at the very tricky moment when His Excellency had decided to retire all military members of his cabinet and to replace them with civilians and, to cap it all, add President to all his titles. There were unconfirmed rumours of unrest, secret trials and executions in the barracks. But His Excellency rode the storm quite comfortably thanks to two key appointments he had personally made—the Army Chief of Staff and the Director of the State Research Council, the secret police.
So when Professor Okong was marched in by the fierce orderly he found His Excellency in a tough and self-confident mood.
“Good day, Your Excellency, Mr. President,” intoned Professor Okong executing at the same time a ninety-degree bow.
No reply nor any kind of recognition of his presence. His Excellency continued writing on his drafting pad for a full minute more before looking up. Then he spoke abruptly as though to an intruder he wanted to be rid of quickly.
“Yes, I want you to go over to the Reception quadrangle and receive the delegation waiting there… Well, sit down!”
“Thank you, Your Excellency.”
“I suppose I ought to begin by filling you in on who they are and what they are doing here, etc. Unless, of course, by some miracle you made the discovery yourself after I left you.”
“No, sir. We didn’t. I am sorry.”
“Very well, then. I shall tell you. But before I do I want to remind you of that little discussion we all had after the Entebbe Raid. You remember? You all said then: What a disgrace to Africa. Do you remember?”
“I remember, Your Excellency.”
“Very well. You were all full of indignation. Righteous indignation. But do you by any chance remember what I said? I said it could happen here. Right here.”
“You did, sir, I remember that very well.”
“You all said: Oh no, Your Excellency it can’t happen here.” The way he said it in mimicry of some half-witted idiot with a speech impediment, might have raised a laugh from a bigger audience or at a less grave moment.
“Yes, Your Excellency, we said so,” admitted Professor Okong. “We are truly sorry.” It wasn’t yet very clear to him what point or connection was being made but what his answer should be was obvious and he repeated it: “Your Excellency we are indeed sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter. You know I’ve never really relied on you fellows for information on anything or anybody. You know that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should be a fool to. You see if Entebbe happens here it’s me the world will laugh at, isn’t it?”
Professor Okong found the answer to that one somewhat tricky and so made a vague indeterminate sound deep in his throat.
“Yes, it is me. General Big Mouth, they will say, and print my picture on the cover of Time magazine with a big mouth and a small head. You understand? They won’t talk about you, would they.”
“Certainly not, Sir.”
“No, because they don’t know you. It’s not your funeral but mine.” Professor Okong was uneasy about the word funeral and began a protest but His Excellency shut him up by raising his left hand. “So I don’t fool around. I take precautions. You und’stand?”