CUNNINGLY DEVISED FABLES │ Banji Odurombi

When the Apostle Peter wrote that the declaration of the coming of the Lord to believers isn’t a fable, he was saying that against the background of fables that were being told in their time; cooked up, refined and falsified stories that overtime have come to be accepted as the truth. In our time, there are such fables that their origins seem improbable but their contents can be challenged. Let’s consider some of them.

One fateful day in football history that Nigerians will not forget in a hurry, according to them, is the Nigeria/India football match. It was said that India was leading by 99 goals with none to Nigeria and because it was so obvious that the India national team was using juju to play against our national team, the national team players were told that if they could score just a lone goal, the match would be decided in our favour. Was the goal scored and who scored the goal?
Well, you may have to help my understanding. I am sure you know this and you probably told someone too.

Another that looked at it was the penalty kick taken by Teslim ‘Thunder’ Balogun. It was said that Thunder Balogun had boasted that no goal keeper could stop his penalty kick. A goal keeper challenged him and interestingly, when he took the kick, the kick opened up the bowels of the goal keeper and the ball went into the net. What an interesting site that would have been for spectators that day!

Probably, you didn’t hear this because you grew up in more modern environment than mine. The late sage, Pa Obafemi Awolowo, was said to be so diabolical that you could see him sitting up the sky (perhaps beholding what his fellow Yoruba men were doing or having a nice a time beholding celestial bodies). Maybe it was one of the reasons why people revered him so much. But I still don’t understand why he traveled to places on helicopters.

He never should have needed it because it would have been a wonderful sight to see Awolowo coming down the sky to address his teeming political supporters or perhaps address his supporters from such Celestial height.

Heard of the story behind the construction of the third mainland bridge? That bridge, according to them, was what resulted in the death of the construction engineer, Julius Berger. It was said that in an encounter with a mermaid when the construction of the bridge was about to commence, Julius Berger was warned (by the mermaid) not to but his decline led to his death. Julius Berger was said to be diabolical too that he caught the mermaid in a bottle so that it will not constitute an obstacle to the construction of the bridge. Berger was said to have been buried just beside the river. Please, will somebody show me the tomb of Julius Berger in Nigeria? At least, I can speak convincingly of the tomb of Mary Slessor in Calabar.

Please, keep reading.

You must have joined them in the spread of this particular one on the dwindling state of our economy, which had relied monolithically on crude-oil. Malaysia was said to have come to Nigeria to collect palm kernel from us (Nigeria) and now they are the leading producer of palm-oil in the world. This is not true! I once read an interview granted Punch Newspaper by a Professor at the Nigeria Institute of Palm-oil Research who debunked this. You can’t debunk what a Professor that has been working with the institute for almost three decades said. Someone much senior to me in age once mentioned this same story after this discovery when discussing with me and I kept sealed lips. There are yet more to debunk. 

You must have heard that erudite literary icon, Prof. Wole Soyinka finished with a third class. Those behind this third class tale are the increasing motivational speakers in the country who can hardly distinguish between ‘not completing school’ and ‘dropping out of school’. They will usually say that the likes of Bill Gates dropped out of school, painting a picture that it was because someone like Bill Gates couldn’t cope academically that he ‘dropped out of school’. You can do yourself well by checking the facts.

You had better not argue that mythical legends such as Achilles (Heel), Helen of Troy, Bacchus, Dionysus (all products of Greek mythology), and Oduduwa, acclaimed to have come to the earth with a chain never really lived and if they did, it was only in the mind of creative writers.