In ancient Greece, a bald-headed man had his bath and applied oil on his head one afternoon and left his home for a walk.He had not moved more than ten metres from his house when a very big tortoise fell on his unprotected head.He died instantly.Within seconds, the town was thrown into serious confusion.What was most confusing was that tortoises have no wings and therefore cannot fly.The elders of the Town had an emergency meeting.They decided to go and consult the oracle of Delphi to know which god to appease for the unprecedented disaster. A philosopher gave an answer to the puzzle.
The philosopher told the elders that they should not go waste their time in Delphi that no god was annoyed that would require to be appeased.He said the carnivorous eagle was to blame. He told them that eagles like the meat of tortoise but because of the hard shell, they pick tortoise from the ground, fly high into the sky and leave the tortoise to crash on a rock.With the tortoise's shell shattered, the eagle could conveniently eat the flesh.The shining bald head of the dead man was mistaken for a rock by the eagle.
I try at times to compare the above story to the story contained in the GREAT PONDS by Elechi Amadi. Where, unknown to the communities in dispute over the ponds,the influenza that claimed many lives in 1918 was responsible for the deaths in the communities rather than the oaths they took.
A few years ago in Benin City, a lunatic in the night climbed a high-tension NEPA pole apparently to commit suicide. He stayed till the early hours of the morning without touching any wire.Those who saw him first raised an alarm that a wizard that was returning from the witches’ coven was hanging on NEPA pole because certain forces had prevented him from getting home.It took the intervention of the T V stations in the Edo State capital to convince the people that the man was a mentally sick person who was actually residing in the neighbourhood.
In the 80s, the late professor Lambo as the Vice-President of WHO visited the University of Athens medical school with some of his colleagues.As they toured the departments, a Nigerian medical student asked the late professor what he would suggest he specialises on once he graduates. The kind and simple late professor told him "I would have suggested psychiatry because that is my field, but today’s Nigeria will require many cardiologists." Nigerians he said are now dying in large numbers from heart-related diseases. But beacause the average Nigerian is paranoid, they attribute those deaths to witch-craft and other customary-beliefs.
Some years ago, a popular artist of the NTA Benin programme-“HOTEL DE JORDAN” died in his sleep.Those suspected to have been responsible for his death were close relatives,co-artists and co-tenants.It was however a known facts that the artist was an unrepentant abuser of alcohol.Avery well known professor of law died in her sleep recently in Lagos.While the causeof death may be purely pathological, I am sure accusing fingers are pointed at certain direction.
The Edo State commissioner of Information was found dead in a hotel room in Benin City. He had died on Friday but the corpse was discovered on a Monday.From the time he was declared missing till the time he was found dead, the issue had raised a lot of political dusts.The PDP had accused AC of having kidnapped the commissioner and wanted him produced within 48 hours or AC will face the ugly consequence.Taking into consideration that the Election Petitions Tribunal of Edo State had delivered judgement in favour of AC a week earlier and the late commissioner was very critical of the judgement, it was a foregone conclusion that he was murdered by the opposition party.
Because of the political nature of the case, the IG ordered a full investigation..The family of the late commissioner dismissed the result of the post-mortem as a cover-up because they believed someone murdered him.The younger brother of the late commissioner who was present during the IG’s press briefing told the IG that his brother had just returned from a country in Asia where he had gone for medical check-up and said he was not sure his late brother had any pathological problem.The IG told the brother that as an engineer he was not knowledgeable in medical issues. A month later,a chieftain of PDP in the State was found dead in a hotel room.This time around at Bins hotel along Ekewan Road in Benin City but almost under the same circumstance as the commissioner.
The reality of this thesis is that the eagle killed the ancient Greek, the influenza of 1918 killed those who died in Amadi’s fiction (THE GREAT PONDS), the man who climbed the high-tension NEPA pole was mentally sick and the late commissioner and the PDP chieftain in Edo State had a heart-related disease.
Written by AISAGBON OMOGIADE
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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