advertisement

ibnaija@yahoo.com Political Scientist USA

ANNOUNCE THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS

REMEMBERING THE FUN TIMES WITH LT. COL MIKE IYORSHE & THE POETRY OF MAJ-GEN. MAMMAN VATSA

s we celebrate our 43rd independence anniversary, I was reflecting on the various tragedies that had bequeathed our country in the last several decades, and the cases of Lt. Col. Mike Iyorshe and Major-General Mamman Vatsa, came to mind. It was in the early 80s I met Lt. Col. Mike Iyorshe of Benue in Lagos [he was a Major then] at an army social. Hitherto, the impression I had of army officers as epitomized in Fela's tunes of "Zombie-O-Zombie" was by no means a complimentary one. I had categorized all military officers, especially, army officers as "Zombies", illiterates, society's misfits who could only find productivity in the muddy trenches of war. But all that changed when I met Iyorshe.

He was an officer's officer. A gentleman of 'elephantic' proportions. Those who knew him will attest to this. He was endowed with a sharp mind and spoke Elizabethan English that even the likes of the Queen would be scrambling for her royal version of the Oxford dictionary. When he spoke, I couldn't comprehend his verses. He was polished, sharp in his literary endeavors, unperturbed by the dubious reputation of the institution in which he served. He was a gentleman of Victorian distinction. If the Nigerian Army was looking for a few good men, as is the logo of the US Marine, they got one in Iyorshe. In that brief informal meeting, where food, suya, and drinks were served ever so liberally, he spoke eloquently about American politics, calling President John F. Kennedy, his kind of president for his flamboyant posture and his progressive policies. He talked authoritatively! about the Civil Rights movement in the US, the American civil war, about President Abraham Lincoln, and how he moved bravely at the expense of his life to unite his country.

As if he had not impressed me enough, he switched topics and talked about Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in general. How many army officers can profess knowledge in this area? How many of them who parade themselves today as officers of our armed forces can spell “Shakespeare”? What most of our officers do these days is to drink and shoot. Anyway, not to be distracted from my presentation of this fine officer. He talked about those characters as though he were part of the cast. I wished at that point that he were my literature teacher. Where did he learn literature? At the Nigerian Defense Academy? I doubt it. While I do not know his educational background above and beyond the NDA which I assume he attended as all officers do, I do know that he possessed an impeccable mind. I listened and learned from his wits, his superior intellect and his wise cra! cks. All along, I was thinking [to myself] how such an intelligent man ended up in the Nigerian army. I will be remiss if I do not add that Iyorshe single-handedly changed my perception of army officers, positively, if I might add.

Iyorshe was not a tall man. He was of average height, dark-skinned with seemingly broad cheeks. He was very soft spoken, but made his point very eloquently with unsurpassed temerity. Even though he was not a tall man, he had very tall jokes which often eased tensions in a very tense military enviroment. I watched as he brought most of his fellow officers to their knees with his jokes. Officers were shedding tears of laughter as he threw one funny joke after another at them. At one point, the jokes were coming in a flurry that other officers couldn’t keep up with the laughter to the point that they jokingly ordered him out of the mess [cafeteria] to protect their ribs. He told riddles and put his fellow officers on the spot. One of the riddles he told was - there was a busload of passengers heading from Jos to Lagos and yet there was no single person on the bus! . He asked his fellow officers to solve the riddle. All of them present cracked their bains, but to no avail. They consulted amongst themselves, but still they could not come up with an answer. After about five minutes, Iyorshe answered his own riddle - all passengers on the bus were married, thus, no single person on that bus. The laughter that followed was palpable.

I could also remember one of the jokes he told of a drowning man who was holding on to a straw only to find out that the straw was the bone of his dead wife whom he killed months before and threw her remains into that very river. Regrettably, for the man, both he and the straw sank to the bottom of the river. The moral of the joke--don't kill your wife, she may get back at you in more ways than you care to think about. All the officers present at the time laughed riotously with one giving him a high five and a few others chasing him around the mess with their fist rolled up to punish him for making them shed so much tears of laughter. That was Lt. Col. Mike Iyorshe of Benue, an officer who gave me a bird eye's view of the other side of army officers.

Now, to Major-General Mamman Vatsa. Who was he? Where did he come from and what kind of officer was he? While I do not know much about this officer, I do know that he, like Iyorshe, possessed a sharp mind that was unexpected of a man who was trained to kill and defend his fatherland. He was a poet whose work of poetry was widely acclaimed. Even the legendary Chinua Achebe, reckoned his talents in this regard when he said of him in the preface of his book titled “The Trouble with Nigeria”, I quote, “…to Mamman Vatsa whose kind but soldierly poem on my fiftieth birthday bluntly reminded me of the unredeemed promises of a certain publisher’s list.” He had a particular style of writing, a style that earned him many readers like me. He was said to entertain his guests with prose, similes and metaphors. As one officer put it, many of his familiar guests warned him in advance not to con! fuse them with grammar before they went to visit him.

His poetry flowed from the heart--utterly untainted. He wrote love poems and saturated them with words that were unexpected from a tough soldier of his caliber. He wrote political poems about his homeland, its future and struggles and about the institution in which he so proudly served. His poems were unobstructed, uncapped and unhinged. They were sometimes solitary, sometimes comical, sometime melancholic, sometimes plain realistic. He was a man of letters, a man who knew the value and worth of education. He was responsible for my interest in poetry and I was hoping that one day, I would have a chance to say "thank you". That day never came.

The story was told of an officer who approached this General in his office. When the officer saluted the General and he returned the salute, General Vatsa asked the junior officer if all was well at home as a lead off to a more serious discussion. As the junior officer was confessing his problems at home to the General, the General stopped him and recited one of his poems about life to the young officer. After the impromptu recitation, the young officer greatly encouraged, had a fresh perspective on life and went home to make amends.

That was Major-General Mamman Vatsa of Niger, IBB's Minister for Abuja who was caught in the coup of 1985 and executed along with Iyorshe and a handful of officers on March 6, 1986, which ironically, was the birthday of Iyorshe's son. Vatsa was IBB's closest friend. They had been friends since they were little boys. They rivaled each other in many ways and whatever IBB accomplished, Vatsa sought the same accomplishment. It was rumored that it was this intense rivalry which assumed an unhealthy proportion that prompted IBB to make him the Minister of Abuja in order to keep a close eye on him. Reportedly, it was also this rivalry that caused his alleged participation in the coup as IBB claimed he wanted to be HOS because he had attained that office.

But at last, the end came for this officer when his best friend signed his death warrant and ordered that he be given the harshest military treatment for insubordination - death by firing squad. And so on that fateful day, he was brought out, in spite of many pleas for clemency from all quarters, including a most passionate plea from his family who had thought that their familiarity with IBB would save their father and husband. It was not to be. IBB was even advised to retire him from the army and send himn on exile. He refused, fearing he might return and try his hand at coup again in collaboration with his many contacts in the army. At the last minute, tied to the sticks, before the bullets got the best of him [and his mates], he removed his wrist watch, gave it to one of the officers and asked that it be given to his wife. That was the last act of one of the most int! elligent officers in the entire armed forces of the federal republic of Nigeria.

As I think about these tragedies and bloodletting that have engulfed our nation in the last forty-three years and the road we have traveled to get to this point of democracy, I am reminded that military life is like one playing musical chairs. One has to be very careful, attentive and strategic while playing this game. There is no room for error, for at the end of the music, he who is caught standing, loses. Regrettably, at the end of the music, Lt. Col Mike Iyorshe and Maj-Gen. Mamman Vatsa were left standing.