THIS Thursday, the sky will shed tears, the cloud will scream, heaven will quake and the stars will mourn, the arrival of a guest uninvited, given a brutal exit from mother earth, for being a man of peace. Yes, another soul will go down under the rubbles of sand.

He will live there, that six-feet hole, down the unseen, all alone: his bones, his flesh, his eyes, his skin, his skull, his humanity. And then his oratory, his brain, his skill, his rare knowledge, his wisdom, his being and then his earthly greatness, will be lowered, all not by his own free, will, prior and informed choice.

Comrade Olaitan Oyerinde, the Principal Private Secretary to Edo State Governor,

Olaitan Oyerinde. Four men, we were told, walked up to his house in Benin, an ancestral community which agelong custom and values forbid such. The impish fellows rose up their nozzles and shot him, probably several times, to ensure he was dead. In the most boorish manner, these beasts, we were told, first met his wife, and then Olaitan’s cousin, who was then sleeping in Olaitan’s bedroom.

He was not to be found, so they made for his living room. There they carried out their devilish act in the most bestial, gruesome fashion. They killed him, at the glaring, awed presence of little children and a bewildered wife. Olaitan’s angel, probably had two options: either to pounce on the killers and in blind rage, tear them with her teeth, or to allow them, in a rage of confusion, to flee, with the hope that she could still save a bleeding, helpless husband.

They should not have killed him. But they did, in the most heartless, brainless, callous, inhuman, wicked and spiteful manner. We do not know yet who killed him, but certainly they must be people that detest logical thoughts, illiterates that dread knowledge, vagabonds that dread wisdom. The last time I met him was last year in Benin, months ago. We spoke on the future of Nigeria.

Olaitan stood for critical, logical thoughts. He was Homo Viator in the students’ movement of the mid-1980s. I met him first around 1986, not too long after his suspension from the Kwara State Polytechnic for students’ union activism. “Kwara Tech” as we called it, was habitat for some of the most vibrant students union cadres, the school was the wealthiest, considering the retinue of radical elements, and in fact, Kwara Tech was the father of many universities, given its penchant for producing radical, progressive elements, fired by the dream to make Nigerian great and break the circle of want and repression and despotism that have been the lot of Nigerians.

He understood Marxist-Leninist theory and he domesticated it. He dreamt of a people’s revolution in Nigeria. He worked tirelessly for it. He built cadres. He gave lectures to students and workers on week-ends, outside the prying eyes of our tormentors. He was in Calabar in 1989, when the first modern attempt was made to establish a Workers’ Party. I saw him then.

He stood for the tallest dream for the people of this country. The Nigerian radical movement has many tendencies, but Olaitan blended. He was good to all the sometimes fractious tendencies, factionalised along mutually exclusive ideological lines.

One of his saddest moments was when the CD broke into two factions. Even then, there were no guns shot, no heads broken, it was a division informed by differences in ideology. Chima Ubani and Beko Kuti went different ways.

The cadres formed lines behind each of them, after the convention in Ibadan. It was painful. But there was never a bitter note left.  The CD was in a position to have taken over leadership, of at least a huge section of Nigeria in the post military era, like the ANC in South Africa.

Rekindling the flowers

Olaitan, by the time you came, the locusts have eaten up the flowers, the grass have withered, and now, the locusts are killing those who have come to rekindle the flowers for a new life, for the good of all. All the efforts flew away, like chaff in a whirlwind, but maybe for a destined purpose. Maybe Nigeria as a country is destined not to be saved, though the end is yet to be seen. Given the culture of debate in our tradition, against their own gangterism and bullying, death from within is an anathema.

This is why it is difficult for me to believe that, as the mischief makers wish to suggest, that Olaitan’s murder was within. Edo has one of the largest concentration of progressive cadres, our tradition was and is critical thinking, logical criticism which informed and informs the outcome of our collective actions.

I fear, we fear, that this murder may have been masterminded from without, by the same leopards, not known for changing the skin, with the main aim of withering the psychology of a political leadership in Edo on the heels of an election, destabilize the state, cause confusion, and wear down the stone-cast spirit of a people desperate for transformation.

We have seen this over and over in recent years, of armed hooligans, taking over the space of contest, killing dialogue, fueling fear and trembling and sustaining a culture of agony, all in the bid to cow the people and give the oppressors unquestionable access to power.

When will the killings stop? When will our leaders stop laughing when we are crying and dying? How many times shall we shake our heads before they know that we are downcast? How many more souls will perish before they know deaths have become as numerous as sand on the ocean shore? How many more tigers will be killed by dogs and cats?

How many more lions will be swallowed by ants? What of the melancholy that lives with Olaitan’s children, and hundreds, if not millions of Nigerians now, in this rotten shape, almost forever?  Olaitan used to weep for Nigeria, but now he weeps no more.

Those that will cry and weep for ever are those whose hands are stained with the blood of this innocent dove. But this remains a mere wish. The task now is to find the killers!

By Adewale Adeoye