Soros, Tems, and Bob, on Sorrow, Tears, and Blood
Tems sang as one who knows Ramonda’s interior pain and political exhaustion
"I am Queen of the most powerful nation in the world and my entire family is gone. Have I not given everything?"
Angela Bassett’s outburst conveyed Queen Ramonda’s pent-up pain in the teaser of the sequel to the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
However, at the outset of the movie trailer, Tems’ voice reminds the Queen and every woman, mother, sister, daughter, and those who know their fears or see their tears, of Bob Marley’s admonition that “everything’s gonna be alright.”
Tems, the Nigerian Diva, clearly made a soulful imprint on this 79th cover of Bob Marley’s 1974 song, No woman no cry, as she breathes the spirit of the times into Marley’s intense spiritual.
She displayed what Smokey Robinson described as “know”, when he wondered how a much younger Michael Jackson could sing “Who’s loving you” - a song Smokey wrote and recorded years before Michael did - “like that”.
Tems sang as one who knows Ramonda’s interior pain and political exhaustion.
She knows that Queen Ramonda’s words were also those of the widow queens of 9 Nigerian soldiers and 5 police officers ambushed and cruelly murdered on duty by terrorist groups last week, with 8 of the 9 soldiers killed in Abuja, the country’s capital.
Tems knows that Ramonda voiced the same anguish of Nigeria’s bereaved mothers who lost their children to unhinged state forces in Delta State, at the Lekki Toll Gate and in Ogbomoso; of the confusion and pain of the baby that was amputated by Nigeria’s celebrity bandits last week; of mothers who still lose their all daily to cruel, violent groups that have overtaken every part of the country.
Her ballad revealed a deeply felt “know” of her people’s sorrow back home in Nigeria - a knowing she had internalised and now internationalised in the Black Panther soundtrack in such a personal and political way as Fela Anikulapo Kuti mused in his song, Sorrow, Tears, and Blood, over 40 years ago.
Yet, Tems knows this same situation differently from Fela, her musical forbear. For instance, Fela, in 1977, identified the agents of terror and bloodshed in Sorrow, Tears, and Blood, as the Nigerian Army and the Nigerian Police, who earned the dreaded nickname of “kill and go” for their trademark wanton “wasting” of innocent lives with impunity.
Now, in Tems Nigeria, the Nigerian Army and Nigerian Police no longer have the monopoly on the trade in Sorrow, Tears and Blood. Formidable Nigerian terrorist organisations, celebrity bandits, and ethnic militias now surpassingly “leave sorrow tears and blood” in their trail as their “regular trademark”.
While the substance of angst and dread in Sorrow, Tears and Blood persists, the remix of terror in Nigeria since 1999 has morphed from Fela’s 1977 mix.
The dread of Boko Haram, ISWAP, and other upcoming terrorist gangs now dominates the real and ethereal realms of the people’s consciousness - deeper than the fear of misguided soldiers and policemen that still terrify the people each day.
Soros: On Political Power and Personal Sorrow
George Soros knows Queen Ramonda’s plight too - that the fate of a “powerful nation” like hers could tangle tragically too.
He exemplified this by citing two world powers, Russia and China, and even the United States, in his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos this May.
“What do the two dictators Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have to show for themselves.… They rule by intimidation, and as a consequence they make mind-boggling mistakes”, Soros explained.
The Nonagenarian political philanthropist knows that a country’s military and economic power is insufficient to guarantee individual liberties or social cohesion.
Soros knows that Nigeria may be the largest economy in Africa; that it may be the most powerful, populous, and prosperous nation in Africa, going by its strong and young population. But he knows that as long as Nigeria’s leaders “rule by intimidation”, they too would make mind-boggling mistakes that perpetuate their people in mind-boggling misery.
The first mistake dictators make is to establish closed societies or close open societies aggressively. “Repressive regimes are now in the ascendant and open societies are under siege. Today, China and Russia present the greatest threat to open society”, Mr Soros remarked.
Defining an open society, Mr Soros, who has committed more than $32 billion of his fortune to fund the Open Society Foundations’ work around the world, puts it this way: “In an open society, the role of the state is to protect the freedom of the individual; in a closed society the role of the individual is to serve the rulers of the state.”
Soros fearlessly commits his life to what Fela said his people in Nigeria fear to commit themselves to - “my people self dey fear too much … we fear to fight for freedom, we fear to fight for liberty, we fear to fight for justice, we fear to fight for happiness”. That is why Nigerians still rank themselves extremely low today on every index of happiness.
If the people’s freedoms measure open societies, Nigeria is a closing space. And if open societies measure happiness, Nigerians are losing the fight for tangible happiness.
Citizens of Rwanda, Mozambique, Mauritius, Tanzania, Botswana, Ghana, and Niger are lacking in other areas of happiness, yet, they feel free to make life choices than moderately free people in other countries of the world. Still, Nigerians express frustrations about their lack of freedom to make life choices as long as they live in the “geographical entity” called Nigeria.
Howbeit, Mr Soros regrets that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being employed to produce instruments of control that help repressive regimes and endanger open societies; that the rapid development of AI has gone hand in hand with the rise of social media and tech platforms; that China has turned its tech platforms into national champions; and that Xi Jinping’s China collects personal data for the surveillance and control of its citizens more aggressively than any other country in history.
But China is not alone. The current regime in Nigeria leads other West African countries in “collecting personal data for the surveillance and control of its citizens” and for closing down free civic spaces. Nigeria holds the record of 446 (or 75%) of the 594 incidents of closing spaces in West Africa as of June 2022.
Indeed, Nigeria may not be the most powerful country in the world like Wakanda, or like Russia and China. But it holds its place among the most dreadful nations of the world, where leaders rule by fear, and the agents of the state and deep state leave a trail of sorrow, tears, and blood as their regular trademark.
Sorrows: The Economic Cost of Mental Pain
Those who measure sorrow do so not just for its emotional weight, but even more for its economic waste to the individual and society.
A World Bank Study on mental pain in Nigeria shows a nexus between mental health, negative incidents, and economic investment. It also revealed that chronic depression affects about 20% of Nigerian male and female heads of households.
The paper, Depression and its links to conflict and welfare in Nigeria, revealed that the poor mental health of Nigerians is strongly associated with having experienced shocks, conflicts, and/or deaths.
According to the World Bank, “While the effects of adverse events (defined as conflicts, shocks, and/or deaths) on physical loss tend to be easier to measure, very little is usually known about their psychological effects and implications for decision-making.
Adah Ameh is one of the few celebrities in Nigeria to open up on this link between adverse events and adverse economic decisions, and declining labour output.
“I have an issue right now and it’s taking my life, but I won’t die”, she cried out. “We would get over it. I was given a job, but I didn’t do it because I have mental health issues. Would people understand when say you have mental issues? No, they wouldn’t.
She regretted that her people could not measure her sorrow and managed to live for 4 more weeks.
“Conflict, death, and other shocks may be much costlier than previously estimated and, if so, this amplifies the importance of addressing them, the World Bank study concluded.
The researchers suggested policymakers should take these augmented costs into account when making decisions on policies and designing programs mitigating conflict and shock, such as those related to insurance, prices, and security.
Really, it is sound economic thinking to proffer prophylactic care for the increasing mental pain in Nigeria because the toxic mental space in the country also contributes to the dearth of therapeutic care. Economic and political insecurities and a general lack of happiness force entrepreneurs, problem solvers, and caregivers to flee the country.
According to the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria, there are only 250 psychiatrists, 200 psychiatry trainees, and 100 Associates left to care for 200 million unhappy, distressed, and depressed Nigerians.
Tems: So Dry Your Tears, I say,
Sounds like sadness & healing at the same time. What a spiritual dirge her voice turned it to 😭... This is a Hymn - Paschal Madubata, capturing the mood of Tems’ cover of Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry.
Blending raw hope with naked pain in each chord of her song, Tems betrayed the only carriage Nigerians deploy to push on through their individual and collective fate - that it’s taking my life, but I won’t die poise - when enduring sadness and attempting healing in one breath.
For some, mental pain and material possibility can cohere. So, Tems tried to convince a woman she met in her sojourn in Wakanda of this possibility. And it seems she has spurred every female athlete in her home country to make such international feat out of their national fate.
As with Tems, Nigerian women are breaking away from the space their country occupy on the Melancholy Table and breaking records instead on the Medals Table as one of the happiest individuals in the world.
Tobi Amusan began when she broke the world 100-metre hurdle and eventually won the gold medal in the 2022 Track and Field World Championships in Oregon, USA.
Yes, it was the reward of rare opportunity and years of hard work. Yet her emotions became complicated only when the world stood for her and her country, as the music of the Nigerian anthem was played.
She stood tall on the dais, sang on in tears of victory, emitting molten pain for her distant nation, in thoughts for its past heroes, hoping their integral labours do not sum up to a net pyrrhic victory.
Ms Amusan’s fellow sportswomen took the same path to golden, silvery, and bronzy honours, putting Nigeria on the best 10 among 34 countries in the ongoing commonwealth sports in Birmingham, UK.
So dry your tears. What more can Tems say?
Bob: Everything’s gonna be alright!
What more can Nigeria hear?
If our women get it right, everything’s gonna be alright.
They have shown golden resilience in crossing hurdles, golden results in weightlifting and powerlifting, taking off weights and burdens when their men have grown weary.
Top of it, Nigerian women have proven through the golden reach of their Discus that they can be trusted to move the country through the distance to its desirable future.
When Nigerian women win 10 medals while men win 3, there should be more thoughts on the higher returns on investing in women’s education and emancipation by Nigerian families.
Then there will be more tracks of joy from the likes of Tems, more tears of joy from the likes of Tobi, and more taste of joy for the entire nation.
When the ratio of women to men in golden leadership positions in Nigeria becomes 10:3, everything’s gonna be alright.
What more can Bob Marley say?