A REVIEW OF "BEYOND THE EXECUTION" 

BY 

PROF. BASSEY EKPENYONG

I have come to share with you some of my thoughts after the privilege of reading the book Beyond the Execution before its formal presentation to you. I am convinced that my prompting will energize you to grab many copies of the book with the intention of keeping some and giving others to your friends who are not here.

Briefly, we will try to answer the following questions: what is the book about? Who is the author of the book? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the book? What are its contributions to the advancement of knowledge and solutions to the problems facing Nigerians nay Africans and the third world?

The book, Beyond the Execution: Understanding the Ethnic and Military Politics in Nigeria, written in 338 pages is about the origin and intrigues of perpetual ethnic chauvinistic politicking in Nigeria, the rape of democracy and the state squandering of minority-endowed natural resources.

These themes are interwoven on principal personages in a complex drama. Some of these actors are victors, some are victims and others are vanquished. The characters include Ken Saro-Wiwa: a writer, publisher, environmentalist and defender of economic justice who was killed in what this author calls state murder. Also in the spotlight is Sani Abacha whose professional naively eclipsed many visions and spelt a great doom on the country. Ibrahim Babangida is essentially portrayed as a dribbler who dribbled himself aside from the seat of power, while Moshood Abiola is highlighted as a metaphor for a people's mandate that the militia nipped in the bud.

On the lighter side there are comic characters like Alhaji Doctor Christopher Bassey Mohammed, the archetypal smart Nigerian from Akwa lbom State who like Ezeulu in Achebe's Arrow of God believes he can eat from several plates of meal prepared by different religionists, ethnicists and oppressors without suffering the constipation of an overzealous inordinately ambitious fellow.

The Ogoni struggle is also spotlighted as a powerful image of an undaunted irrepressible, immortal resistance by an oppressed minority people against the whims and caprices of the majority group who manipulate state power for selfish interest.

These episodes are conveyed in four neatly and coherently related parts of the book beginning with the birth of Nigeria in the Lugard's amalgamation midwiving through the orchestrations of the ethnic warlords whose seeds of ethnic discord have produced outbursts of intra and inter communal conflicts, bloody struggle for the national cake and the political imbalance in the Nigerian nation structured on the ill-fitted western democracy. This is in contrast with the African participatory politics as typified by the United Nation arrangement where nations despite size and population are accorded equal representative opportunities.

The author of the book, Tom Mbeke-Ekanem was bom in Ituk Mbang, Uruan Local Government Area of Akwa lbom State. He attended Government Secondary School at Eket where petroleum is the paramount language. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Petroleum Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. He is currently working as a regulatory Engineer for California Environmental Protection Agency. In 1995, he founded an organization christened Coalition of Petroleum Producing States of Nigeria (COPPSON) with the goal of drawing attention to the environmental pollution in the oil-producing region of Nigeria. Based on the above standpoint, Tom Mbeke-Ekanem is eminently qualified and largely justified to catalogue the woes of the oil communities and to proffer the way out

Beyond the Execution derives its greatest strength from the most obvious feature namely the knitting of historical events that have been rehearsed in

various newspapers and magazines. The meritorious originality that the book enjoys is not a product of novelty but sincerity and candour in the handling old stories. When you take stuff from a writer, it is plagiarism but when you take it from many writers, it is a research. Beyond the Execution is therefore a masterpiece in a robust research and informative journalism backed up with simplicity, which is the glory of its expression. As the saying goes, the most original authors are not so because they advance what is new but because they put what they have to say as if it has never been said before.

As you pick up the book to read, you discover that it is addictively unput downable, invitingly refreshing, incisively penetrating, wholesomely engaging and action-provoking. The clean leaflets held together by a stubby spine guarantees longevity for the book and makes it an immortal library item that generations to come will cherish.

The cover of the book glaringly portrays the principal actors in the tragi-comic history of Nigeria. Occupying the top right corner is Ken Saro-Wiwa whom the author justifiably portrays as a symbol of justice - vindicated, hope irrepressible and struggles interminable. This truism relates to the axiom that democracy is a system of self-determination.

The current wind of self-determination that is blowing across the nation is christened 'resource control'. This sacrosanct epigram is on the lips of the young and old. It is a product of self determination rooted in an upsurge of a democratic temper long suppressed by protracted regime of the militarization of the populace. The book "Beyond the Execution" is undoubtedly a prophetic proclamation of resource control as a panacea to our national problems. Resource control portends equity, fairness, economic justice and the path of national progress.

Henry Ford II long ago visualized our national experience when he said "our country is still young and its potential is still enormous. We shall remember as we look toward the future that the more fully we believe in and achieve freedom and equal opportunity the greater our accomplishments as a nation will be."

The author of this book with obsession about hope in equality sees beyond the execution, beyond the Saro-Wiwas, the Abachas, the IBB's and the Abiolas. He envisions in the profound while that embellishes the cover of the book purity, national repentance, a reinvention, a cleansing that will return all of us to that basic ingredient of love which alone holds all mankind together in peace. With love, ethnicity will perish, exploitation will cease, environmental degradation will be banished and beauty will reign supreme.

The grandeur of the book is based in its sharpness in the articulation of figures and episodes 'in driving home the message. With over 1000 names of persons and places listed in the book and the emphasis on the 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria, the book offers a down-to-earth picturesque x-ray of the Nigerian socio-political structure.

Some of the sub-titles in the book indicate the descriptive prowess applied by the author. Such expressions include Ironsi's Counter Coup, An Eye for an Eye, Buhari-Idiagbon and Dikko fiasco, the Advent of Scam 419, Price of a Minority, Lagos Group versus Home Group and Chief Doctor Alhaji Christopher Bassey Mohammed.

Also notable in the book are the account of major national episodes that are rendered in the microscopic instinct of the hawk - eye. Examples are the trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Abiola's prison notes, the story of Etiebet's political albatross, the MOSOP struggles and Babangida's political intrigues that earned him the paradox of Maradona and the evil genius.

We must admit that the size of the book is intimidating. This is because the author seems to accumulate a lot of historical, journalistic and legal issues all at once. The author came to the brink of chewing more than he can swallow. But with accurate grammar, spelling, punctuation and diction, he has sustained the readability of the book.

In a good blending of history, Journalism, geography and psychological foregrounding, the author sounds partly fictional, partly memorial and largely inventive. In his conclusion, he explicitly proffers that like his authorial style, Nigeria as a nation should be reinvented from where the rain began to beat us in ethnic chauvinism to a true federalism where the military power is decentralized and the nations (majority and minority) take their destinies in their hands while contributing their quota to the national keeping.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have only erupted the aroma from Beyond the Execution, for the real taste like the intellectual akara, you must have a bite.

Published by Inland Publication Company, P. O. Box 1231, Riverside, CA 92502. (909) 357-1192.

Prof. Ekpenyong is of the University of Uyo

12TH APRIL 2001, IBOM HALL, UYO, AKWA IBOM STATE