By
Obododimma Oha
The trickster is imagined in Igbo folklore as “mbe”
the tortoise or “mbekwu,” in Yoruba as “ijapa,” and Akan as “Anansi” the
spider. But, generally, the trickster may feature not only in folk narratives, but
also in politics, religion, education, commerce, etc. In fact, the trickster
proudly steps out of the folk narratives and swaggers into contemporary African
politics and in these other sites mentioned above. The typical Nigerian
politician has to be a pupil sitting daily and learning from “mbe,” alias “ijapa.”
If such a politician has to repair a short neck of road anywhere, he or she
would have to make a loud noise about it, but may get only 40% only as the pupil-trickster, unless he or she
remembers to submit the project on falsehood and noise-making to the teacher aftertwards!
Anyway, the
main issue is that the trickster usually makes others victims. But this
trickster can also make self a victim without intending it. This
self-outwitting, obeying the law of retributive justice like every karmic
action, shows that anyone, just anyone,
can be a victim of tricks.
The trickster politician may make populations stand in
the sun on a queue to cast their votes, after receiving some bribe to convince
them to come out, and may get these votes thrown into the dustbin when five or
so gentlemen raise their hands in a courtroom for or against being elected. And
that is it. Standing in the sun and voting for the person who would come last
or first is pure rubbish. The courtroom will do it better, even embarassingly.
The raising of hands is a drama that must be acted! To make the fourth soldier
the winner is a task that must be done.
Is it the trickster in education? That trickster has
has to invent a large image of self as a knower, when such a trickster actually
knows nothing. The trickster may even be writing essays regularly on his or her
blog, just to compensate for lack or to be diversionary.
When the mbe
in education can no longer reconnect and be a player like others in the field
of knowledge in the wider world, such a trickster just has to use politics to
make up, high politics or low-level one. It is no longer fashionable to answer
a radical thinker. So, this false knower in the site of learning cannot answer
a radical, or at most, leave a long, unkempt beard. The trickster can play up
dead or dying primordial politics and use it to hold sway in the sphere of
knowledge.
Are you
thinking of handouts and sex-for-higher-grades? Oh no; these are old and discarded
strategies. Only beginners and blockheads use them still. The wise and very
clever tricksters eat shit and clean their mouths fast, very fast. These are
just elementary. Mbe in education
knows but does not know. Ka ị ma nke a, ị ma nke ọzọ? If you know this (strategy), do you know the other one?
There are many tricksters crawling around, playing
gentle, walking with measured steps, watching the scene and looking for an
opportunity.
I no longer look for tricksters in folk narratives.
They are there in the streets, in social life, in reality. I look and see the
trickster hiding in that fold of agbada; I see the trickster in that seemingly
harmless policy they sing like an anthem.
The trickster tells the media crew to write
mouth-watering stories about the commissioned project, but even fools know that
such stories also tell other stories. The best thing is not try to make them
mouth-watering. Who does not know that a whitewash tells viewers that what is inside
is terrible to behold?
The new trickster, in stepping out of folk narratives
to live in flesh and blood, is only telling us that folk fantasies are close to
observed reality. There may be mutations. Those, too, have their own
motivations and headaches. But the point remains that these folk narratives are
not just stories of fantasy. Societies that produce them live by them somehow, and may have attributes manifested for the
narratives also to learn.
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