By
Obododimma Oha
I would like to point out the obvious at this very beginning: it is human beings that author proverbs out of their experiences and great endowments as creative users of language. Proverbs, normally seen as wise sayings believed to have been received from our ancestors, are simply rhetorical expressions crafted by clever and deep-thinking folks, especially in reflecting on situations. When experiences become confounding and can be used in explaining other situations, analogically, they could give birth to expressions that are proverbial in nature.
Further, proverbs do not have to be excavated from the past; they could also be responses to recent social or individual experience. They could be reflection on current issues, with a style of indirectness and a cloak of analogy. Thinking proverbs descend only from a rich past is to accord greater respect to the past; to misunderstand the craft for rare super-expression. But, it has always been in us, with us, as humans to maintain an aesthetic touch in the manipulation of signification.
Also, proverbs do not have to be authored by special thinkers, sages, who have access to rare knowledge and its expression. Proverbs could be authored in beer parlours by simple folks filled with wine. In fact, it is belIeved in many folklores that when some people take some wine, they become very eloquent and could utter exceptional and pithy things; they could even become philosophers, or rather the philosophers slumbering in them could wake up!
Even animals could be attributed some wise sayings! According to the dog, thuose who have buttocks do not know how to sit down, as one Igbo proverb couches it. Another attributed to the same dog says: the dogs is asking those it gave some money to buy mat for it to bring the money back, that it is already used to squatting. You know that dog squats a lot! That literal experience of the dog’s squatting, that KNOWN, would help us to understand impatience and endless waiting and by extension, a disappointing wait! Don’t ask: Where did you see a talking dog and when did it declare that? You did not just arrive from another galaxy.
It is with this at the back of our minds that we explore interrogative proverbs from current Nigerian experience, focusing mainly on the Buhari saying, which, from all indications, qualifies to be proverbial, and to another interrogative proverb of recent Nigerian experience -- the Igbo “A kpuola gi?” (Have you been sculpted?) which has also become a highlife tune.
“Buhari, where are your certificates?” is an important and courageous question to Buhari, a president that claims to be committed to fighting corruption. Fighting corruption should start with individual lives, what more someone who wants to rule a country. The person should show good example, and should begin at the registration desk in a democratic election by showing his authentic certificates to indicate that he is qualified, instead of the unfortunate rigmarole of various conflicting narratives: “Oh, it is with my school teacher,” “Oh, it is with the army.” The army spokesman has come out to tell the public after four years of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidecy that the army is NOT with Buhari’s West African School Certificate. It is left for Nigeria to address the issue courageously. That it has become proverbial -- for telling someone that he needs to be straightforward (on the discourse situations) shows how important the issue is. Getting into the leadership of Nigeria is not an award; if one is not qualified in terms of level of education, one is not qualified. More than anything, Nigeria needs high quality leadership in order to survive.
Interestingly, Nigeria’s ex-presidents have had good formal education, some still prodding on academically. Olusegun Obasanjo and Yakubu Gowon have PhDs. It is interesting that at the time this is happening, the old man of Ota, Olusegun Obasanjo, who has written many books, earned his doctoral and is a theologian who lectures (obviously not for the pay) in Nigeria's National Open University. Is Nigeria's democracy moving forwards or backwards?
These interrogative proverbs clearly foreground a linguistic approach (pragmatic and syntactic particularly) and should engage the attention of students of language, at least and signification at least for academic reasons. “Buhari, where are your certificates?” and “A kpuola gi?” ask crucial questions. They interrogate and represent the critical voices of the population that is looking for uprightness and good example in leadership.While they represent the interrogations of the political system, they also laugh at it in corrective ways. The act of questioning or interrogation is clearly performed. A society that cannot ask questions again has missed it; has missed the way!
While in “Buhari, where is your certificate?” the questioning is direct (The addressee or his proxy is “Buhari,” in “A kpuola gi?” anybody playfully addressed is asked the question. Both, however, are rhetorical questions, provoking deeper thought on political misdeed, and not really seeking immediate answers!
These acts of questioning could prompt a closer syntactic analysis, that could reveal the interesting natures of the interrogative structures. The first, in which “Buhari” is the subject, does not really draw attention to that subject as it draws to “where” (the adverbial group or adjunct) and “your certificates.” That is to say that, in the syntactic structure, it is the adverbial group and the nominal group complement that are in focus and are areas of important information required.
In “A kpuola gi?” it is not the given and deliberately made indefinite pronoun “a” (unnamed sculptor or who commissions sculpting), that is important, but “gi" (you), that could be anybody. Both the process (“kpuola”) and “ gi" as the new or important information, are the areas of the joke on sculpting. The joke is on them as is on the person that commissions the sculpting of everything. The humour is that "gi" (you), which could be anybody or anything, underlies the irresponsibility of a government that leaves enormous problems to be addressed, including payment of workers’ monthly wages, to commission the sculpting of a the ex-president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, who had many corruption cases to answer in his country.What seems to justify the interrogation again is what Zuma contributed to merit being given such honour in another travailing African country, apart from the fact that Zuma was disgraced out of office months later.
These two "proverbs" become recontextualised and used in contemporary discourses that may not directly have to do with the original experiences. They provide paradigms or simply "cognitive frames" for engaging other experiences. "Buhari, where are your certificates" may be used in discourses where the person in question (Buhari) is understood as having done the following:
(1) providing conflicting or irreconcilable explanations, knowing the addresser can see that the narratives do not sit well;
(2) giving an unacceptable explanation, as if the addresser is senseless or cannot think;
(3) is behaving as if every person always accept mediocrity or can shut the eyes to clear case of inadequacy.
For " A kpuola gi?" the following are among the situational possibilities for its use:
(1) sheer enactment of humour or teasing, prompted by the historical sculpting of Zuma for Imo State;
(2) a challenge thrown to prompt the addresser to reject or deny the gesture, and by extension, reject the very government that commissioned the unacceptable sculpture;
(3) a call to reject fakery in development; and
(4) a reaction to a clear case of the beatification of criminality.
Nigerians are, indeed, clever, and cannot be fooled by their rulers. They indicate this by playing Tom against Jerry in a discursive hide-and-seek!
“A kpuola gi?” and “Buhari, where are your certificates?" suggest that Nigerians are actively deploying aspects of culture and discourse in trying to make their democracy sit up.
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