by
Obododimma Oha
The recent physical attack on Sen. Ike Ekweremadu in an Igbo New Yam Festival in Germany is highly
regrettable, especially given his public rank in Nigeria and significance in
contemporary Igbo politics. But the attack, even though investigations may still be ongoing in Germany, brings to one's mind the power of signs (in silent speech) and cognition in
public drama. In fact, dressing , as one of those performances in signification, can be decoded or processed to our great advantage and disadvantage sometimes. As a matter
of fact, dressing, like other cultural performances, could
be seen as one of those deceptive gestures in its silent, identification rhetoric as performed by many African politicians. Such a politician or ruler who
may have, out of sheer mischief, left roads and other facilities in a community
to decay, could appeal to emotion of the mass population when the politician
wants to campaign or pay a visit, by putting on the type of dress style
associated with the population. The politician may not really be interested in that
cultural identity or the development yearnings of the group. In fact, such a
politician may openly loath the group. But the politician now feels like
putting on its dressing, a clearly deceptive visual rhetoric!
But, with this at the back of our minds, dressing differently or in
conformity has its unpredictable risks.
What more when one's dressing reminds the other about an imposition or a mistreatment from a source. The dressing style as a whole or its secondary
signifiers could enact this dangerous reminder, exciting the homo hostilis
(hostile human) in us, as the social psychologist Sam Keen, calls it. The homo
hostilis, operating from the region of hostile imagination, is ready to pick up
stones and throw at Mary Magdalene, no matter what Jesus Christ thinks. That
presence of the enemy recognized in the adorned entity is infuriating. Among social psychologists, especially those interested in crime fighting, looking out for or cognizing the enemy
in the drama of the entity's appearance (looks, walking, talking, dressing,
etc) is conceptualized as "the symbolic assailant." That symbolic
assailant is only a scape-goat and may even be innocent. In other words, attacking the windmill as a mounted knight may, in
fact, be deceptive! Indeed, the real enemy is not in the signifier but
in our imagination, in our heads.
Along this line, law enforcement agents run the risk of attacking innocent
crime fighters or innocent citizens if they do not have the right training and semiotic competence
to know that the symbolic assailant may end up being on their side, as in the
case of some soldiers shooting some police officers dead recently in Nigeria.
This observation made, the physical attack on Sen. Ike Ekweremadu who wore a
dress that carried Nigeria's coat of arms and not the popular Igbo head of
leopard, tiger, or lion, could mean stepping into the footprints of the enemy,
in fact, courageously accepting to take on the tag of the slippery symbolic
assailant. In indigenous Igbo criminology, the idea of playing the symbolic
assailant is woven around the notion of ịzọnye ụkwụ n'ụkwụ ndi ohi (stepping
into the footmarks of the criminal). In villages in th Igbo area in the past,
everybody in the community knew everyone's footmarks. That was before footwear
came and confused many. Everyone walked barefooted and everyone, therefore knew
everyone's footmark. Thus, footmarks
were easily used as evidence on the crime scenes. Stepping on the footmark of
the rogue clearly incriminated one!
Also, the Igbo in Nigeria has on
many occasions complained of a mistreatment and, with frontline groups, like
Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) leading the agitation for
self-determination, wearing a shirt that carried loudly the narrative of
one-nationness a plural Nigeria through reiteration of the sign, might be decoded as being
provocative (See Ekweremadu's dressing for the occasion below). In that case,
it is the Igbo isiagu, versus Nigeria's silencing coat of arms, or Nigeria's
one nation narrative versus self-determination. Indeed, such attempt to insist
on "One Nigeria," as if the postcolonial country is made in Heaven
and the white colonialists were on a divine mission, or that nations are no longer
imagined communities, is really disturbing. This conflict is also taking place on
the heels of many military operations in Nigeria's South East (tagged
"Operation Python Dance"). There was the loud public view that some
Igbo elite in Nigerian politics who had fallen silent to Operation Python Dance or could not do much, were
outright cowardly.
So, Ekweremadu may have suffered indignty on behalf of other major Igbo
politicians. The mesasge is loud and clear: tolerating mistreatment in Nigeria
also has payment out there in the global arena. The sign is only a site of the
struggle, not the struggle itself. The icon and the index are only handles held on to to disgrace
Nigeria's politicians out there. Thus shipwrecked, Nigeria's politicians would
now think twice before travelling out of Nigeria. Who knows what may be waiting
out there?
In this short blog essay, the tearing of Ekweremadu shirt carrying
Nigeria's coat of arms (another
important and revered sign of identity) is seen also as being symbolic. The
struggle between signs of identity moves from mere argument (note that
conversation on opting out or in is disallowed in Nigeria) to physical combat.
That means the handwriting on transition is clearly written on the wall. There
will inevitably be that transition to greater violence where some identities
some dress up in will be torn, even the entity called "Nigeria" we
have planned to preserve for the next 2000 years may be erased.
- Senator Ike Ekweremadu in a dress with icons of Nigeria's coat of arms at the Igbo Iri Ji Festival in Germany. Photo credit: Eyutchae in Afro-European Community WhatsApp Forum
Comments