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By Root 750 0

But you cannot do that unless you first set about to purge yourselves, to clean up your act. You must learn for a start to hold your own student leaders to responsible performance; only after you have done that can you have the moral authority to lecture the national leadership. You must develop the habit of scepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch doctors and professors. I see too much parroting, too much regurgitating of half-digested radical rhetoric… When you have rid yourselves of these things your potentiality for assisting and directing this nation will be quadrupled.” Tremendous applause. Surprisingly?

The questions kept coming hard and fast. In the end the chairman simply had to get up and say: Enough! It was then close to midnight. He thanked Mr. Ikem Osodi for a most stimulating lecture and equally stimulating answers to audience questions. He praised the lecturer’s contributions to the nation’s cultural and political growth in the fields of journalism and literature and hoped that whatever misunderstanding had been responsible for his suspension from duty would soon be resolved. Applause. But there were two issues which he would like to touch upon however briefly. Mild restive protests from the floor. He promised to be brief. He was raising these issues as a sociologist of literature in the context of a writer’s ideological development and clarity. First he must confess that he found Mr. Osodi’s concept of struggle too individualistic and adventuristic. Some applause. Secondly, on a general note he must state once again his well-known contention that writers in the Third World context must not stop at the stage of documenting social problems but move to the higher responsibility of proffering prescriptions. Applause.

“Writers don’t give prescriptions,” shouted Ikem. “They give headaches!”

Uproarious laughter.

“Well, on that note we say thank you to Mr. Osodi for a most entertaining evening.”

13

ONE OF THE MANY questions Ikem had had to field in the course of his lecture, some briefly and others at some length, concerned a fairly persistent rumour that the Central Bank of Kangan was completing plans to put the President’s image on the nation’s currency. Was it true and if so what did the honourable lecturer think about such an eventuality?

“Yes I heard of it like everybody else. Whether there is such a plan or not I don’t know. All I can say is I hope the rumour is unfounded. My position is quite straightforward especially now that I don’t have to worry about being Editor of the Gazette. My view is that any serving President foolish enough to lay his head on a coin should know he is inciting people to take it off; the head I mean.”

The statement which was roundly applauded in the auditorium was to reverberate louder still throughout the country from the very next morning when the National Gazette came out brandishing in the heaviest possible type the headline: EX-EDITOR ADVOCATES REGICIDE!

One of the ifs of recent Kangan history is what the fate of Ikem might have been had he backed out of that speaking engagement at the university. Those who hold that the lecture was decisive are probably underrating the sheer indefatigability of Major Johnson (Samsonite) Ossai, Director of SRC. For he was moving and closing in relentlessly on a number of alternative fronts the most menacing coming from the direction of the controversial expatriate Director of Administration at the Bassa General Hospital, Mr. John Kent, popularly called the Mad Medico. For over a year now the perspicacious Major had had the foresight to keep Mr. Kent under very close but discreet surveillance. And what accrued to the Major from this particular exercise was of such crucial importance that it might have sufficed by itself even if the lecture had not happened. This is not by any means to underrate the new opening offered by the lecture for it did make a dramatic pincer movement and quick kill easy and inevitable.

Mr. Kent was hauled in quietly for interrogation, held secretly and incommunicado for