By Promise Adiele
I have taken the title of this essay from a recent response by a student in a 400 level Fiction class. The critical focus of the lecture was Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard. The student had responded thus “sir, I think the turning point in the novel is that the narrator had to update his CV before embarking on a journey to the land of the dead”. The whole class laughed. I am sure they were all laughing at their colleague’s use of the term CV. While I was wondering what Curriculum Vitae (CV) had to do with the issues at hand, the confident student continued, “sir, I mean that it was proper for the narrator to equip himself for the journey to the land of the dead to bring back his palm-wine tapper just as it is proper for the Nigerian electorate to update their CV towards 2023 elections to elect a good leader”. There was uproar in class. By CV, the student meant that the narrator had to revalidate personal attributes, divest himself of all traits of timidity, bootlicking, cowardice, and become equipped with items that will aid his choices in the land of the dead. To journey into the land of the dead and return is an apt metaphor for the Nigerian electorate towards 2023.
To appreciate the above scenario, a brief synopsis of The Palm-Wine Drinkard is necessary. The narrative immediacy of the novel is consistently sustained by magical realistic elements. With a literary spine that straddles the mystic and the incredible, leaving no room for verisimilitude, the novel weighs in on parental irresponsibility and excessive child indulgence. The palm-wine addict narrator recalls how his father employed a palm-wine tapper to meet his excessive appetite for the intoxicating liquor. As a conscientious worker, the palm-wine tapper produces palm wine for the narrator which makes him happy, attracting many friends. Because happiness has a fragile body that breaks too soon, the narrator’s father dies, the palm-wine tapper also dies after falling from a palm tree. Faced with imminent hardship, the narrator embarks on a journey to the land of the dead to seek his palm-wine tapper and bring him back to continue producing palm wine for him. Knowing quite well that he is embarking on a dreadful, indeterminate journey, the narrator had to equip himself to succeed in the journey. According to my student, he had to “update his CV”. He took his native juju and also his late father’s juju. These he knows will never fail him.
The interstice between literary enterprise and society is obvious to the conscious mind. Besides everything, it provides a penetrating, discerning lens for students and scholars to interpret social tensions. Certainly, beyond all the familiar issues of economic despoliation, insecurity, poverty, and infrastructural decay in Nigeria presently, the other issue that dominates our newsreel is the 2023 elections. Even before the elections, some people have surreptitiously made up their minds on who should emerge as Nigeria’s next president. It is indeed sad that having survived (have we really survived?) eight years of a socio-economic whirlwind and tempestuous politics, it appears that those who should know better have not learnt any lessons. Nobody is talking about the justice, fairness, and equitability of a rotational practice that should see the South, more precisely the South-East produce the next president. If Nigerians are sincere, if indeed we profess the divine order in public and private places, if we have any shred of honesty in us, there should be no debate about where the next president of this country should come from. But because we are a people steeped and established in hypocrisy, we all hide under the scorching, deluding umbrella of politics to undermine fairness. Of course, politics does not understand the language of fairness. It is dubiously unfair for any other ethnicity to produce the next president of Nigeria besides the South-East. Never mind such jejune, stale expressions that it doesn’t matter where the president comes from as long as he performs well. Those inclined to such a mindset will unconsciously deny the heterogeneity of Nigeria as a political entity. Even if we want to pretentiously cling to sophistication and chant the mantra of “it doesn’t matter where the president comes from” Buhari’s time in office has brutally reinforced Nigeria’s heterogeneous realities and we must pay attention to this.
Anyway, since I do not have the power or political muscle to determine where Nigeria’s next president will come from, let me at least say something about the electorate, those we believe will have a say at the ballot boxes. The question is – has the Nigerian electorate learned any lessons since 2015? Have we all updated our CVs towards 2023? Are we ready to do things differently to ensure that the country is not steamrolled and trammeled in the next four or eight years? I do not wish to delve into the CVs of political office seekers because I know that would amount to stirring the hornet’s nest, I would never go there. I am interested in the preparedness of those who will vote in the next general elections. Are we ready? Are we prepared? It is sad to imagine that a section of Nigerians are willing to sweep disgraceful conditions such as questionable academic qualifications, deficit morality and character, disguised health conditions, debatable age statistics, demonstrable incompetence in governance, and all sheds of enervating totality under the carpet as long as their chosen principal occupies the office of the president. I am an Igbo man, but as much as I want an Igbo man to emerge as the next president of Nigeria, will it be proper for me to support an Igbo person with numerous baggage to become president? We must break free from the mentality of insisting that our chosen candidate must ascend the coveted office no matter how dubious and incompetent he is.
The road to the 2023 elections is laced with different types of magical, mysterious elements and like the narrator in Tutuola’s novel, Nigerians must update their CVs to successfully access that road. Crass considerations such as benevolence of the candidate, wealth, and political sagacity should never be advanced to the detriment of more enduring, leadership legacies like economic literacy, moral uprightness, educational qualification, and ability to effectively interpret global trends and implement them in all spheres of our national lives. The electorate must be clear and determined, shunning crumbs from the demagogue’s table like branded food materials and such ephemeral demonstration of pettiness which has no concrete consequence in the future. There are states in Nigeria today comparable to Afghanistan in terms of social retrogression but during the last elections, women in these states were given clothes with the images of the present governors on them. School children were given books with the images of the present governors on them. Bags of rice were distributed with the images of the present governors on them. Vegetable oil, bags of salt, and other edible items were also distributed with the images of these underperforming governors on them. Because Nigerians are hungry, serially vanquished by successive governments, they fell for these cosmetic, insincere schemes, and vote in masquerading predators into power. This must not happen in 2023. In updating their CVs, the Nigerian electorate must do so according to the dictates of their conscience.
The Nigerian electorate must update their CVs by rejecting voter apathy. If there is a collective agreement and private assurance to participate in the elections, then it becomes difficult for the plunderers of the electoral process to perpetuate their dastard acts. To refuse to participate in the election is a sublime way to validate unsuitable candidates for leadership positions because unsuitable candidates will do unsuitable things to succeed. On the CV of the electorate must include a proven resolve to reject those who hold a medal, champions in the historical debasement of Nigeria’s electoral process. We know these people, don’t we? To support a tribesman, a brother, a godfather, a church member ill-fitted for a political position is to outsource our humanity and surely, posterity is a vengeful creditor. From our eight years of experience under the present government, desperation to rule does not necessarily translate to the ability to rule. Part of the CV updating process must include the ability to separate desperation and genuine commitment. The road to 2023 is inevitably laced with magic and all manner of intimidating snares but with updated and upgraded CVs by the electorate, it will be impossible for the hawks to carry the day. In updating their CV, the Nigerian electorate must divest themselves of the putrid and reeking apparel of attack dogs in their unfortunate commitment to enthrone a structure of political stasis. Let the Nigerian electorate end the career of political vultures by doing one thing, let the electorate update their CVs. Have you updated your CV for 2023?
Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University