Continued from yesterday

WADA Nas and all campaigners for the release of Bamaiyi and others are quite right, but they are woefully wrong in their strategy for obtaining bail for the accused. What they should do is as follows: get Bamaiyi to enrol in Party De Power. It would not matter what the official party leaders say or what they believe in. There are obviously forces within the same party that blithely contradict and overrule them, powerful forces which permit no minor thing like common decency to restrain them. In any case, we all know that party membership cards can be obtained even more easily than a voter's card. You'll see. These movers and shakers will personally deliver mint fresh membership cards to Bamaiyi and company. Next item, elections. There will be no need to wait for bye-elections. Two or three incumbents, either of a senatorial seat or even of a governor's lodge will simply have a change of heart and decide that they are not cut out for politics. Resignation letters will be presented, even videotaped affirmation of the resignation letters. The party will nominate their new members as sole candidates" needless to say, even without leaving prison, they will defeat the combined forces of APGA, AD, ANPP, JP etc. Naturally, they win.

Long before then of course, responding to an acute shortage of accommodation in Kirikiri, you ensure that all accused are placed in the same cell with their accusers, the prosecution witnesses. In fact, there is a sudden shortage of beds, so Al Mustapha shares the same bed with Sergeant Barnabas Jabilia alias Sergeant Rogers, while Bamaiyi dosses down with Alhaji Sofolahan. Now do remember that Sergeant Rogers is a born-again Christian, so what is more natural that he undergoes yet another conversion. He sees true light, discovers that everything he has ever uttered against his bosses was a lie, recants and asks for forgiveness on his knees.

Now of course, overcrowding in prison has more than one set of consequences. One of them is that you contract all kinds of diseases and so, coupled with the excitement of having won elections without stirring from their cells, Bamaiyi falls down in a dead faint. Al Mustapha has an epileptic fit, Sergeant Rogers has an attack of whooping cough while Alhaji Sofolahan develops an uncontrollable itch. Alarmed, their lawyer dashes to the courts for bail on health grounds and" that's it!" all are out on bail in time to be sworn into office, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Well, Wada Nas, there it is, in a nutshell. Always follow tried and tested routine. If something works the first time, it will work again and again until the opposition finds a way round that particular methodology. But it will work, I promise. Nigerians, I have had cause to remark in places, love to provoke Fate by what appears to be a habit of calling down ill luck on their own heads. 'If only Nigeria would undergo a major calamity', I have heard people say, usually in moments of helplessness, 'then perhaps we would discover a quick route to our salvation'. Prod them further and they refer to floods, as in the case of India, or earthquakes as in Japan, volcanoes as in Mexico or mud landslides as in some Latin American countries. Just a dose of such calamities, once in a while, then perhaps our respect for order and concern would be much higher, and Nigeria would be a moral example to the rest of the world.' Perhaps such people are also thinking of the flood wake-up call that appeared to have played a role in the ending of years of civil war in Mozambique.

The sum of reflection behind it all is that Nigeria is far too fortunate, being largely exempt from these destructive aspects of nature. Beyond the occasional tremor, there is no real convulsion of the earth. The rainy season, even at its heaviest does no real damage - apart from fraying the tempers of road users, and ensuring the seizure of traffic sometime for upwards of 18 hours. Except in some Northern parts, there is no extreme of climate, just wet season and dry, somewhat colder in the higher areas - like the Jos plateau. And of course there are no volcanoes, neither the history of one nor a suspect geological formation that might portend a hidden pot of lava waiting to boil over any time soon.

What such voices try to convey is simply that it is a lack of such major challenges that has contributed to our flabby moral muscles, to our habit of succumbing to the line of least resistance when faced with decisions that require the exertion of a moral will, the tendency to insist on a discount where a moral price must be paid, even where that price is no more than a temporary inconvenience. We are fast becoming a nation built on moral discounts, and it is this last, it appears, that has largely contributed to a questionable national character.

Ironically, we more than make up for this lack of nature's rigorous testing by man-made disasters, each of which becomes an index toward the determination of a national character. While questionable as a fixed value, I must insist that the expression 'national character' is not always misplaced, but it is a shifting one, quite malleable and capable of transformation. Its positive face can be seen in the manifestation of a survivalist will that follows an affliction, such as an epidemic or a civil war, a stubborn sense of community, an enterprising drive that transcends even the inefficiency or management failures of government. Its negatives are revealed in an ethical abandonment that trickles down from leadership, leading to the decay of social values and responsibility, and an embrace of the predatory ethic. Similarly, a national psyche can be said to exist. That psyche can be bruised by wars, debasement or environment, rendered insensitive by prolonged social neglect, repression and brutalisation. Yet it can be tended back to health through the transformation of environment, through governance by a genuine, popular involvement, and the restoration of the sense of human scale to policies and ventures.

Nigeria, I often feel, is yet an inchoate entity whose 'national character' is at a critical stage of formation, but with a national psyche already ravaged from civil war, religious and ethnic strife, and a pattern of conduct that panders to evil, encourages the cult of impunity and glorifies even potential criminality. It is the failure at critical times, of the national character that bruises the collective psyche and may lead to an irreparable psychotic condition, manifesting itself in all acts of social anomie, a breakdown of law, norm, and discipline.

Everyone has his or her watermark, the moment of an act or lack of it that defines and deforms a nation. For some, it might be the judicial murders of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight companions. For others, that defining moment was the murder of a woman, the wife of an elected president, Kudirat, in the streets of Lagos. For others, it was the murder of that elected president in goal. I somberly state mine; that moment for me was not even when Bola Ige was murdered, but the ensuing moment that his accused killer, still under trial, took his seat in the Senate House and was sworn into office. Wada Nas and I are uttering precisely the same sentiment, we have merely chosen our individual ways to express it.

Is ours a nation that treats morality as only another commodity that can be bargained for, and purchased at a discount? Let no one think that this is a passive question, or that morality is an indeterminate value that has no impact on real life. Anyone who imagines that a discernible pattern of conduct, endorsing the doctrine of impunity, as manifested in Ige's tragic event, is not directly related to the ongoing saga of Anambra that has brought this nation to ridicule, that event, that which some at first deemed a purely intra-party affair, should have a second think.

In the judgement just delivered by a judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, and the immediate response of the earlier abducted governor in defiance of that decision, we are witnessing the beginning of full scale anomie, the clash of the judiciary and the executive, not unprecedented admittedly, but one whose antecedence of organised thuggery and criminality by officers of the law, empowered to keep order and peace, has made it a watershed experience in the history of this nation. I repeat: the fallout is yet unimaginable.

Let me end with a very simple illustration, one that is based on our most visible activity even on the streets - buying and selling. What happens in the market is most illustrative of our predicament. In the market or indeed on the streets, it is the norm to haggle over the price of a commodity. You beat down the first pronouncement and you continue to beat it down. There comes a point however when the salesman or woman turns and looks at you, gives you a prolonged hiss and tells you where your mother or father was raised.

The alternative scenario is this: there is a particular brand of that very commodity that you wish to purchase. When the bargaining goes beyond decent limits, the salesman quietly takes it from your hand, returns it to the shelves or the basket and picks up another brand, size or shape of the same item. Here, he says quietly, very gently, even sympathetically. There is no aggression. Look, I think you might prefer this. I can let you have it for the price you have just named. That is it. It is then up to you to return to the original brand that you truly want, possibly even need, or make do with a heavily discounted but cheap version of the same item, guaranteed to self-destruct, disintegrate before you have reached home with your prized possession. The choice is always yours.

The price of ethical rigour is not to be discounted, no, not when the consequences can extend to more than the principles. We shall watch and wait. Those who insist that we should be satisfied with a discounted ethic must know that they are consecrating a nation that is already so heavily discounted in the estimation of the world that any further damage to its psyche has placed it on the path of self-destruct.

A final word to my letter writers. You say that if I do know who were the brains behind the murder of Bola Ige, I should help the police with my information. As it happens, I never did say that I knew who the brains were, only where they are located, and for the avoidance of all doubt, I repeat that charge yet again" they form a highly placed, extremely ruthless cabal within the ruling party. That is what I claim, with every fibre of conviction. Much has happened since that claim however, and today, I shall go even further. We are gradually becoming even more assured of the identity of the master mind. We do not proceed rashly however, and since we are naturally apprehensive of the contrary use to which any premature information can be put, we shall leave the courts to complete their task. After all, we do have the advantage of some bitter but instructive experience from the past. We learnt a lot from the murder of Dele Giwa for which, if you recall, an organisation with which I am associated repeatedly advertised a modest sum for information that would lead to the unravelling of his murder. We followed this up with a mission of tracking down a vital witness, whom, I shall reveal today, was so terrified for his life that he fled to Italy and has only returned to this country once. I tried to bring him to testify before the Oputa Commission but did not succeed. He expressed fears for the new family that he has since acquired.

Whatever knowledge is unearthed, I ensure that it is shared among close, dependable political associates, just in case of 'accidents'. We have commenced, with all the resources at our disposal, and within our human capabilities, the task of bringing this individual, and any associates yet to be uncovered, to book. Our guiding principle is a simple one: Justice, must not be discounted

 Concluded.

 Professor Soyinka is a Nobel Laureate in Literature