Tẹ́nì Àpáta and the ghost of Bamidele Aturu  

To those who have not heard his name, Bamidele Aturu was a Nigerian lawyer, human rights activist and conscientious objector who lived an exemplary life. Aturu was born in 1964 and died in 2014 at just 49. In his short lifespan, Aturu did what Napoleon could not do. Having studied Physics at the NCE Level he would eventually end up as a lawyer.

Aturu hit national headlines in 1988 when, having completed top of his NYSC cohort in Minna, Niger State, he was nominated for a national award. Young Aturu refused to shake hands with Lawan Gwadabe, a colonel and military administrator of Niger State. He refused to shake the bloody hands of an impostor because soldiers were not meant to impose themselves on the country they are paid to protect. It was obvious the gesture was to make Ibrahim Babangida know how unwanted he was as an impostor. Babangida would eventually annul the 12th June 1993 presidential election he oorganised to return Nigeria to constitutional rule. Prophet Aturu saw it coming and protested before it happened. As future scribes would put it, Aturu’s act, his struggles for democracy and respect for human rights, behold they are available on Google for posterity.

For his daring, Aturu’s discharge certificate was withdrawn sealing any opportunity to find work in the public and indeed the private sector. For who would’ve hired an enemy of the establishment at that time? The answer is – nobody.

Aturu would later align with other conscientious objectors, cut his teeth in the human rights community and established himself as an icon in life and death. May God be pleased with his fighting spirit.

Naturally, I stopped watching any live telecast featuring Muhammadu Buhari. One is at liberty to protect one’s sanity from being serially assaulted by a man who has returned to destroy all insinuations of being a national icon and a redeemer of lost glory.

Buhari and his rogue elements were offered what they did not deserve and they have serially squandered every opportunity to redeem themselves. For one’s sanity, one should limit any interaction with this regime to media snippets.

However watching so-called National Awards, a charade lost its zen before Buhari came into office, but which he has come to bury, one would have thought that one of the ‘awardees’, a singer named Tẹ́nì had committed sacrilege. The level of condemnation and insult of Tẹ́nì as an incorrigible infant forced one to go searching for the original clip.

The final analysis is that Tẹ́nì gave Buhari more honour than he deserved. So, she walked nonchalantly to the podium, even posed with the man and walked off, leaving Buhari’s hand hanging. Buhari looked at her the way a hawk stares at a snail in the forest.

The girl did not smash that worthless piece of cheap placard and make a speech. Outside, she did not say anything about the incredible disappointment that Buhari is or how unworthy she felt getting an award where the likes of Magajiya Danbatta, Comfort Ọmọgẹ, Fatima Lolo, Ásà, Evi-Edna Ogoli were. She did not berate Buhari’s regime for the unprecedented hardship his cluelessnesw has foisted on her contemporaries.

She made no mention of the Lekki Massacre and how Fashola, one of the masterminds also craned his scrawny neck to receive an award. She made no mention of the eight-month ASUU strike that has crippled the image and integrity of public universities. She said nothing of the impropriety of honouring oneself as Buhari did to his lame duck cabinet members.

She did not touch on Buhari’s prisoner swap for which Buhari is honouring serving thieves. She said nothing about rising insecurity, the farcical victory against insurgency and how there is no safety at home, on the road or even on trains. She said nothing about a nation in perpetual darkness that has invested so much on power but is paying for darkness.

She said nothing about youth unemployment, the number of out of school kids in Buhari’s homestead. She did not remind Buhari of the broken promise of building one refinery for each of his first four years or the fact that his lack of focus and direction has destroyed the present and future of Nigerian youths. She did not speak about how the japa movement is robbing Nigeria of her most qualified experts and agile youths. She made no mention of how the Naira has come to its all-time low against any currency of choice. All she did was exhibit impudence before a man who has hung on past his best before date.

I am not Tẹ́nì’s fan. Whatever she sings would be far from the interest of my generation. I don’t know the criteria that qualifies her for national honour. I am too far removed from the Yahoo generation to care.

The National Award thing is as fraudulent as the organs nominating and conferring it. One is shocked and awed that there are srill Nigerians who think that an award from Buhari adds anything to their status nationally or globally. It is a sad evidence of how low we have sunk. It’s a testament to how low we actually rate ourselves as people and our sense of national worth and global value. That people fly to Abuja to pump the hand of a man who would not lift a finger to guarantee the God-given freedom to roam an open country shows that those willing to do so endorse and are in cahoots with the national morass.

What are these awards worth given to thieves, brigands and dealers with a sprinkle of some respectable persons?

If Tẹ́nì had taken a cue from Aturu’s book of conscientious objection, she would have earned one’s respect (as worthless as it is in Sahad Stores or Shoprite). That she even humoured Buhari with her presence and posed with him makes her lose it for me. In the company of evil, there are no positives, comparatives or superlatives. Evil has no gradation.

Therefore let us stop dissing Tẹ́nì and remember that the award she and others got are not worth the plague or the medal. They were created for an avenue to squander our wealth and waste divert our attention from the things that really matter – another opportunity to rescue our nation from these prebendal buccaneers, religious bigots and ethnic champions. Our most important preoccupation as citizens is to ignore any of Buhari’s diversionary tactics and egg him in the hope that the fox that he is would not interfere with the plan to ease him into oblivion in 2023. We should work with him to ensure that after him, we don’t live on sad introspection.

Tẹ́nì couldn’t have been disrespectful of Buhari because you can’t give what you don’t have and can’t take away from what does not exist.

Asaju is a reputable journalist, public relations practitioner, columnist, and more. He describes himself as a “heckler of bad governance: