THAT “BACK TO SCHOOL” ADVICE

Prof Wole Soyinka

"For instance I have always thought that when God made man in his image and after his likeness, and assigned them to multiply and replenish the earth, he was providing a means for that purpose by creating them male and female. Now, I have to unlearn that! I have to come to grips with the new reality that procreation is obsolete and the womb is one body part that needs not have existed. The world is already over-populated anyway."

Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka does not suffer fools gladly. You wouldn’t too, if, like him, you are a literary icon of such gigantic stature that your people call you their very own WS, sharing as you do initials with the late world renowned William Shakespeare.  You wouldn’t too if you were Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature whose forte covers the whole gamut of literary expression as poet, playwright, and actor, novelist, essayist, polemist, even lyricist and singer! You wouldn’t too, if all the elements of learning fit smugly in you.

Yes, Wole Soyinka does not take hostages, unless of course you find yourself in a radio station when he happens along to make an important broadcast to a nation held hostage by a bunch of unschooled soldiers. Which brings me to the issue at hand, school and education for our lawmakers, particularly, those at the centre in Abuja.

According to our highly respected omniscient professor, the whole lot of them need to return to school. Although he didn’t say which, I would not be surprised if he recommends some secondary school in Abeokuta where they can study civics, and in the process get to learn to differentiate between private and public affairs. The legislators including the professors amongst them need to be herded into a classroom to be taught that what two adult consenting males or females do with each other is not the business of the state.  

Although the activist professor didn’t say so, all of us who support the anti-gay marriage bill passed by the Senate and, which has gone through first reading the House of Representatives would necessarily have to join the legislators in school. That would be one a classroom to behold!  Students will come in babanriga and one-footer caps, long-tail shirts and resource control caps will abound; head-ties and scarves will add a kaleidoscope of colours while contour-emphasising day dresses will not be missing. Muslim leaders in colourful turbans, priests in cassocks and pastors in flowing robes with giant size solid-gold crosses won’t be left out. God help untitled people like us who might not find space in the classroom or, if we did, might not hear a word from the back of behind that classroom.

For me though, it won’t matter much, because I think I have an idea of, not only what I shall be going in there to learn, but also what I shall be going to unlearn. Apart from a crash course in the expanding frontiers of human rights and civil liberties, and the absolute irrelevance of religion in the public domain, as already canvassed by the Prof, I shall have to unlearn some of the “idiotic” things that being a Christian has made me believe.

For instance I have always thought that when God made man in his image and after his likeness, and assigned them to multiply and replenish the earth, he was providing a means for that purpose by creating them male and female. Now, I have to unlearn that! I have to come to grips with the new reality that procreation is obsolete and the womb is one body part that need not have existed. The world is already over-populated anyway.

I used to think that God didn’t make me fearfully and wonderfully (see Psalm 139:4) just to demonstrate his creative prowess. For instance I’ve always marvelled at the information in Finis Jennings Dake, the Bible scholar and writer’s the Doctrine of Man, that the body consists of “various chemicals—iron, sugar, salt, carbon, iodine, phosphorus, lime, calcium, and others”; that it “has 263 bones; 600 muscles; 970 miles of blood vessels; 400 cups on the tongue for taste; 20,000 hairs in the ears to tune in to all sounds; 40 pounds of jaw pressure; 10,000,000 nerves and branches; 3,500 sweat tubes to each square inch of skin (or 40 miles long); 20,000,000 mouths that suck food as it goes through the intestines; 600,000,000 air cells to the lungs that inhale 2,400 gallons of air daily; and a communication network that relates to the brain instantly any known sound, taste, sight, touch or smell;”  and also that “the heart beats 4,200 times an hour and pumps 12 tons of blood daily.”

Benjamin Carson, the Black American neurosurgeon’s statement that the human brain has hundreds of billions of interconnections and is therefore much more sophisticated than anything that man has ever or possibly would ever create…” also concentrates my mind on a purposeful God. One, whose purpose should be respected not thwarted.  

Now, I know I have to unlearn that. Now I know, it doesn’t matter what we do with what: defecate from the mouth (talk of diarrhoea of the mouth); fart through the ears or feed through the eyes! If it feels good, do it, as long as you find a consenting adult to do it to or with. Society has nothing to do with it; talk less of a God you cannot see.

Another thing to unlearn is the so-called truth that “the risk of contracting the Human Immunodeficiency Virus through anal sex is seven times higher than through vaginal sex”, even if one Mrs. Aisha Adaranijo, senior manager, New HIV Vaccine and Microbicides Advocacy Society had the temerity to restate it as recently as last week.

Her explanation that “the anus being a narrow and dry passage is susceptible to tears when penetrated” making “the risk of contacting the HIV “very high”, is obviously of no consequence. Not even the fact that governments the world over have spent enormous resources in AIDS research that subsequently led to the development antiretroviral drugs, gives them the right to legislate our sexual choices. Neither does the fact that those resources could have been expended more productively elsewhere give society any role in what adults do behind closed doors.  Antiretroviral drugs, after all, are administered behind closed doors, even if they are subsidised with public funds.

The international gay lobby has a big influential backer, active or passive, in Professor Wole Soyinka, who as I said earlier does not suffer fools gladly. But then, why does Psalm 14:1 keep ringing in my head?  Merry Christmas; see you all in 2012, by God’s grace.