You Must Set Forth at Dawn

by Wole Soyinka

  In attendance as usual on that day was a mutual friend, Michael Olumide, then controller of the broadcasting station in Ibadan. The election results dominated all discussion, and it was not long before a pall of depression hung over an afternoon that was normally devoted to pure, unabashed gluttony. The West, to which we all three belonged, was being stolen from under our noses.

  And then, quite casually and in all innocence, Michael Olumide dropped a bombshell that instantly launched a turmoil in my head. Michael had been summoned by the premier to record his victory speech. There was also the possibility that the premier would come into the studio and do his broadcast live. The recording was intended as a backup in case he could not leave what had become his prime ministerial fortress—and prison. Whatever the final decision, the victory broadcast of the NNDP, and Akintola’s reelection as prime minister of the West—our West—would be made that night!

  The broadcast had to be stopped! Mazi Ukonu and his radio crew had long departed, so a counterbroadcast, relayed through the Eastern transmitters as the election results had been, was impossible. The premier held all the cards. A fait accompli, consecrated on radio waves, would demoralize the opposition, and that broadcast, from a position of incumbency strength, would commence the process of legitimizing a detested regime, with the consequent danger of resignation and apathy from a cowed populace. Another four years under the NNDP could easily become a life sentence for a struggling democracy; there was the very real danger that the now barely hidden agenda to formalize a one-party dictatorship by the victorious alliance would become irresistible. Opposition would be crushed. There would be money- or contract-induced defections. Some would succumb to blackmail. Others would be squeezed into submission through assaults on their means of livelihood. Some of the NPC and NNDP politicians had already begun to raise a chant for a “one-party democracy.” The continent was filled with such models of power consolidation masquerading as democracies. Their would-be imitators in the nation virtually drooled in envy as they cast glances at such bastions of the crudity of power. The formal capture of the West was bound to reinforce the proponents of an iron hand.

  I had wrestled intermittently with the problem of violence. To be caught up in a violent situation, compelled to respond to it, presents no agonizing choice; to initiate one is another matter. I had never seen myself as a pacifist, never persuaded myself that the liberation of any tyrannized space can always be achieved by nonviolent means. I tried to caution myself, however, about the dangers of unstructured violence, violence that comes to exist for itself, as a glorified end that loses all focus and control and no longer discriminates between its two principal clients positioned at either end of a living axis: Power and Freedom. The most principled of struggles has its share of psychopaths— and I was fortunate to have received early education through encounters with a few of these almost from the start of my political involvement. I was equally lucky to find myself within a close-knit group whose members believed that violence was a stage to be avoided for as long as and wherever possible, insisting, however, that self-defense constitutes its own justification. This includes defense against violation, such as acts of robbery or extortion. Rape. Any form of dehumanization. Even to be robbed is to be diminished, and to be robbed of the seemingly intangible—such as a civic voice—is to be diminished as a citizen. To resist such a diminution meant, in my view, a simple act of self-defense, of self-preservation.

  The elections had thrown up many instances where the most diffident individual found himself compelled to write his own limited rules of engagement in response to real violation. My favorite recollection was that of a young politician, Soji Odunjo, a few years younger than I. He was probably the youngest of the Action Group candidates, a wispy, normally mild-mannered youth, rather retiring in demeanor. I had long known him, before he entered politics, only as the junior brother of a colleague from the old University of Ibadan. Perhaps politics did course secretly through Soji’s veins—he was, after all, the son of one of the founding members of Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the Yoruba cultural organization that later metamorphosed into the Action Group. Nevertheless, I was quite surprised to discover that Soji considered entering the wild world of politics of the mid-sixties.

  After voting had ended and the votes were tallied, Soji found himself faced with a crooked returning officer who refused to release the results in his electoral ward. He had campaigned hard and fair, against all odds, displaying unsuspected political instincts, and now all he wanted was that the results, already announced to the waiting crowd, should be set down so that he and his opponent could sign the returns as required by electoral law. The officer, however, insisted that the results would be released only at the state capital, Ibadan, and from there be broadcast by the radio station. Since Soji knew by then—as did the entire nation—what happened to returns en route, he dashed home and returned with a loaded shotgun, whose muzzle he then pressed against the head of the returning officer. I remain convinced that Soji would have been incapable of pulling the trigger even if the officer had persisted; still, by the count of three, the man had handed over the card. His mission accomplished, Soji drove to the collating office in Ibadan, where he logged the results. Then he went home to sleep the sleep of the just.

  Thinking of the course I was about to embark upon, I found my position no different from Soji’s, except that I was not even a candidate but was acting as one of the electorate who felt bound to protect his rights. In consonance with the majority of the populace of the Western Region, I was being robbed of a voice. A series of false results had already been announced, of increasingly cynical attributions. Now this act of robbery was about to be made official by the head of the robbery consortium, the premier, also the principal receiver/ beneficiary of the stolen goods, all rolled into one. Picking somewhat distractedly at my plate in Femi’s dining room, I found it only slightly incongruous that I should be considering, and with complete equanimity, whether or not I should arm myself before going to recover—or at least prevent the formal acquisition of—this stolen property. I would have preferred that we take over the broadcasting station entirely and occupy it for some days, stoking up the now-inevitable uprising with the usual messages of resistance and solidarity, but what forces we could muster were hopelessly inadequate for such an undertaking. We had no precedent to follow, not even the time to stock up for a prolonged siege. A well-directed police action would flush us out in no time!

  That afternoon, with its lack of alternatives, informed me with a quiet certitude that I was finally tired of dramatic sketches that, however scabrous, drew only symbolic blood from the veins of Power. Suddenly, that language of intervention—despite the occasional physical assaults on the actors and threats of disruption—became inadequate, even self-indulgent. Fast receding was that homecoming projection of my role as being no more than that of a truth crier, with weapons no more lethal than my portable typewriter and paper.

  The next few hours flashed before me in that instant—as already defined motions as well as logistical options—but not the likely consequences; that section was blanked out. Looking back, I appeared to have been focused entirely on practical matters, details. I knew at once that I had to obtain a good tape recorder and recollected, in that same instant, just who possessed such high-fidelity equipment: a serving U.S. Peace Corps volunteer doing some field research at the University of Ibadan. Now all I saw, detachedly, was my doppelgänger walking up the back stairs of the broadcasting station where I had been a frequent contributor, into the corridor where the director’s office was located, past his office, past Amos Tutuola’s cubicle, then up a short flight of steps to the left before a right turn at the landing. The crucial door was on the right. It led into the control room through which one had to pass in order to enter the studio where I had done dozens of broadcasts. I would not be going into the studio, however. The control room from which the tapes and records were played was the target. I wondered who would be on duty, knowing, however,
that I could rely on the commitment of the majority of the staff in that station.

  Would the premier come in person? The political situation was unraveling fast, and the premier was a shrewd calculator who instinctively homed in on survivalist tactics; it was therefore quite possible that he would decide to make a live broadcast. Between recording and broadcast, much could happen, and Akintola, a master of improvisation, would want to enter any last-minute development into his speech and manipulate it to his advantage. This complicated my thinking, since the prime minister would then travel in a motorcade and the studio would be swarming with police escorts and perhaps a truckload of his party’s “irregulars.” Obviously I would have to arrive early, just before nightfall. A curfew was in force, which was good, since we were masters of the curfew. We needed the dark. I chose the record library as the most strategic position in which to place myself; one had to walk past it to reach the studio. If the premier came in person, however, what would we do?

  We? No, in my mind’s eye, everything was reduced to one person. I am always amused—or irritated, depending on my mood—by much that has been written about my so-called loner mentality. As if the one individual in a mountain climb who plants the flag on the summit and beats a quick retreat before a snowstorm obliterates all landmarks were not backed up or preceded every step of the way by the rest of the team! On any of them could have fallen the task of making that final sprint to the summit. Of course I entered the studio alone. There were armed police swarming all over the outer premises. If I were to take others with me, detection would likely occur before we even breached the perimeter of the building—unless, of course, the intention was that others should expose themselves to detection and so create a distraction for my entry. That option was unnecessary. It was much easier for one person familiar with the building to slip into and out of the storage space, record library, offices, and corridors all the way to the studio. If we had had one more day, we could have found an excuse to bring others into the building in broad daylight, given them the opportunity to memorize the geography of stairwells and landings. There simply was not time.

  The recording of my countermessage settled, it was easier to concentrate on peripheral but crucial details, such as who would drive me to Broadcasting House. Next thought: guns. To go armed or unarmed? That did not generate much agonizing; the unpleasant but unavoidable word was coercion. I was not going into the studio to preach to the studio engineer and the continuity officer that their moral duty lay in removing the prime minister’s tape and substituting my own. I had no idea who would be on duty, and even if I did and their sympathies were with the opposition, they were entitled to their overt neutrality. If they were militantly with us, they would enjoy the charade of submitting—like the broadcaster, Ukonu—to force majeure. If they were not . . . well, then they could wallow in the indignation of having been made to act under duress. If things went wrong and the police were somehow alerted— there was no time to think of consequences beyond knowing that unless I was shot at or about to be shot at, I would calmly surrender myself for arrest once the tape was running. I was of no two minds about that.

  Finally, there persisted one critical question: Suppose the man came himself, surrounded by his entourage? The only answer was to prevent him from entering Broadcasting House in the first place, scare off his motorcade en route. Again, the niggardly collaboration of time! There was not enough of that commodity to mobilize the entirety of our small band. Still, I knew the normal haunts of the marginal members, including the faithful Kodak, a former thug and mercenary who had chosen to throw his lot in with us. In turn, he could rouse another four or five from whichever dens they had thought to pass an uneventful or predatory weekend in. Hidden in the dark among the buildings, behind vending kiosks or trees—the trees had not yet been eaten on Ibadan roads, or in other urban centers for that matter, to assuage the hunger for development—they would man the immediate approach to the premier’s destination and pepper the motorcade with a few shots. Knowing the high state of alert in which the town was seized, it was certain that the immediate reaction of his security outriders would be to accelerate and tear past Broadcasting House without pausing. Unable to determine how large a force was firing at them from the darkness and the ominous emptiness of streets under curfew, that was only common sense.

  At last I could feel inwardly at peace. I rejoined the conversation, putting a few innocent questions to Michael, and abandoned the rest of the Saturday feast.

  IT ALL PROCEEDED according to plan. The duty officers responded as any sensible persons would under the gun: they removed the premier’s tape and replaced it with mine. It ran long enough for the message to the government to be clearly transmitted: Drop your stolen mandate, leave town, and take your reprobates with you, and so on, and so on. Then a disbelieving senior operator in another control room roused himself from his paralysis and depressed a control button that cut off the transmission. By that time, I had slipped away. My retreat was unhindered.

  Before dawn, I was in flight to the Eastern Region, later to confront the weird experience of seeing my face pasted on the pages of newspapers as a “wanted” man. One of the studio staff, A.O., had sworn to the identity of the intruder! Indeed, he recounted in detail a conversation that, he claimed, had taken place as he carried out the intruder’s instructions—under a gun pointed directly at him, he repeated ad nauseam—to remove the premier’s tape and substitute it with his. The evening of the raid, A.O. had indeed proved an unstoppable conversationalist; perhaps he did need to babble in order to steady hands that quivered so badly that, in the end, it was a junior assistant, Friday Ifode, who completed the task of threading the tape.

  Once the police investigations began, A.O. continued to supply details of the one-sided exchange, a virtual monologue: how he had expressed astonishment at seeing me in Ibadan since I was supposed to be in London, and so on. The others swore they had heard nothing of the kind or else had caught only snatches of the exchange not sufficient to identify the gunman. We thought the intruder was his friend, they said with a shrug, since A.O. appeared to know everything about the stranger’s movements, even while he was in London.

  I WAS ALREADY UNDERGROUND when I was declared “wanted”; that was all part of the decision of the small band of “irregulars” that went under different aliases for the purpose of a public but elusive voice, including, at one stage, the Committee of Writers for Individual Liberty (CWIL)—a most misleading title, since only the poet Christopher Okigbo and I thought of ourselves as writers. There were, however, two or three lecturers from Ife and Ibadan University. Other members, such as Kodak, belonged on the fringes of mainstream society. Members of my itinerant performing group, the Orisun Theatre, had slipped, imperceptibly, into the role of an informal intelligence-gathering unit, a productive network that co-opted friends, families, lovers, and former school-mates working in junior positions within the establishment. The Pyrates— that campus fraternity that meant so many contrary things to bemused or terrified Nigerians—refused to be left out of any direct action, though their participation was limited to a hard core of three or four at any time. Doig Simmonds, a British medical illustrator, was the sole expatriate member—mostly on the periphery. A designer and printer of most of our leaflets, he was not involved in any of the public activities. Doig did, however, surrender his fowling piece to me, a skeletal gauge that could just about pluck the feathers off a bush fowl at a ten-yard distance but made an impressive amount of noise, especially in an enclosed space. It earned its keep in some of the encounters that took place as we monitored the electoral process in remote areas, where violence had replaced even the semblance of an electoral choice.

  By the time the police felt sure of the identity of the intruder, I had left Ibadan town and indeed the borders of the Western Region. I resurfaced in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria, whose premier, Dr. Michael Okpara, was in active alliance—United Progressive Grand Alliance—with the opposition Action Group of the West. I
told him of our plans to muster a sustained resistance against the NNDP government, and he gave me the run of his state, requesting only that I keep out of sight of the police force, which was under a central command—that is, mostly took orders from Lagos. Just to be on the safe side, however, he invited in the commissioner of police in Enugu and introduced us to each other. Nothing more was said.

  MY HOST IN ENUGU was Dr. Sam Aluko, the economist who had been crudely ejected from the campus of Ife University. Through some strange workings of his mind, he would find himself, a quarter of a century later, quite comfortable in the position of economic adviser to the nation’s most notorious despot, General Sani Abacha, who looted the nation’s monetary reserves with as much abandon as he tortured, imprisoned, and killed her citizens. It was, however, the familiar face of my activist colleague that welcomed me without a thought while the police pursued my imaginary trail to phantom sightings all over the country.

  It did not take long before the police tracked me down to Enugu. My telephone calls to Femi Johnson had been monitored and their originating station easily traced. If the fugitive was in Enugu, thought the NNDP police, it also stood to reason that an obvious point of contact for him would be his erstwhile colleague Sam Aluko. Within two days of my arrival, the Eastern Region police command received a signal from Ibadan that Aluko’s house should be searched. Sure enough, Sam received an advance notice from the Enugu police that they would arrive the following morning on their hunt for the fugitive.