When your speech appears to contain gibberish or is empty, a famous Yoruba slang gives such talk the moniker, bala-bala or in another context, pala-pala. None of the two has a formal linguistic translation or meaning but have existed long enough to gain individual notoriety. Last week, two Nigerians, both of the APC, spat such nonsensical talks that they could jolly well qualify for the slangs above.
Last week, Senate President Godswill Akpabio mounted the gibberish podium. Give it to him: Akpabio is a professor of gibberish. Sometimes, many wonder if Nigeria’s senate president first talks before engaging his thinking cap. At a senate plenary last week, like an illusionist or magician who Yoruba call the pidan-pidan, Akpabio stunned an unshockable Nigerian people by heaving out a bag of magical statement: He has never truly been a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“My spirit might be there, but my heart was never there,” the senator, who deserves to be garlanded “the most loquacious parliamentarian in Nigerian history,” said.
That pala-pala came when a motion to beatify late former Kogi State governor, Ibrahim Idris, came at plenary. And Senator Jibrin Isah went nostalgic of a time when all of them belonged to the PDP. Akpabio then jumped into the fray and denounced the label, saying he had always rejected the label, describing himself as a “progressive” who was nevera true member of the party.
Now, what can pass as bala-bala more than this? Sometimes when a talk verges on the idiotic, Yoruba call it pala-pala ilu apala (as inchoate as Apala music drumming). If you ask me whether Apala music’s symphony is discordant, I will say ‘no’. I however think the authors of that phrase were just having a nice time with the onomatopoeia and assonance in it.
The man who said his “heart was never there” served for eight years as governor of PDP’s Akwa Ibom State from 2007 to 2015. He was nominated by PDP governors to be their chair at the PDP Governors’ Forum. In 2015, he becameSenator on the PDP platform and rose to become PDP’s Senate Minority Leader,from 2015 until 2018. If a man occupied such pinnacle of a political party in over a decade, yet felt no qualms in ditching his benefactor by saying his “heart was never there,” then President Bola Tinubu must be wary of Akpabio. I do not think Judas Iscariot did worse thing to our Lord Jesus Christ.
The spit of Akpabio’s bala-bala had hardly dried when Okoi Obono-Obla,APC founding member, mounted the saddle. He was on a national television last week. Ordinarily in Yorubaland, when you wake up early in the morning to be confronted by a messy and unpleasant scene, of the texture I found strung to Obono-Obla’s mouth that morning, the day is totally fouled up. Nothing good could come out of it. You are advised by our forefathers to go back to bed for a remedial of a metaphysically damaged day. Upon listening to Obono-Obla, I did the needful and re-hugged my pillow.
Listen to the bala-bala: There is nothing wrong with the Rainbow Coalition being championed by FCT minister, Nyesom Wike. “Such is not knew in Nigeria”, he further went on and cited a Kenyan coalition and what he said was an alliance of the ruling NPN of Shehu Shagari government of the Second Republic with the PRP. Yet another, he said: “Reverend Jesse Jackson formed a coalition (that)was a mixed bag of Republicans, Democrats, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, conservatives, and socialists.”
Then he veered into what seemed to vex him most. APC governors had marginalized and alienated original party members like him. He then justified Wike’s interloping role by saying “APC governors are responsible for the circumstances under which Minister Wike is trying to draw people into his coalition.” Not done, when asked about the present state of the PDP, he said, “I don’t think the PDP is scattered.” He justified that cant by saying Wike’s PDP had “candidates nominated to INEC, the PDP has candidates in almost all parts of the country, unlike the NNPP or ADC. The PDP is still there, largely thanks to the efforts of Wike. That is good for the country’s democracy.”
First, in that interview, Obono-Oblacommitted what is called the fallacy of false analogy. What the ruling NPN did in 1979 was to form a working legislative and political coalition with the NPP shortly after the 1979 elections. Their aim was to secure a working majority in the National Assembly. The alliance howevercollapsed in 1981, three years after, due to mutual political discordant tunes. The other analogies Obono-Obla gave were what they were: “bala-bala” and “pala-pala ilu apala”!
While all the examples he gave were institutional, involving political parties in alliance, what we have with Wike’s solo romp in the APC has a flavour similar only to what Chief Bola Ige did under Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. The man of honour that the Immortal Ige was, he retraced his steps out of the bind when he found out that it was like tying one’s legs to a spot with the Yoruba rope called “okun agba”.
I think, between Obono-Obla and Godswill Akpabio, last week was laced with enough gibberish to last a lifetime.