Four Legs Good...Two Legs Bad

Monday, November 17, 2014

NOTA BENE

IF YOU NEVER READ "ANIMAL FARM" BY GEORGE ORWELL, YOU MAY FIND THIS PIECE RATHER PUZZLING.

Four legs good, two legs bad…Four legs good, two legs bad…

Doesn’t that phrase sound just a tad familiar?

If you ever read that 1945 satire called “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, then you probably came across a point in Chapter 3 where Snowball provided a condensation of the Seven Commandments of Animalism – commandments which were themselves a summary of the highlights of the rousing call to animal unity given by Old Major. The condensation offered by Snowball was the slogan "Four legs good, two legs bad". That slogan helped simplify the Principles of Animalism because it taught the most simple-minded of animals the basic lesson that Animalism was founded on resistance to anything human; because humans walked on two legs whereas animals walked on all fours, it was easy to classify those beings that walked on two legs (and by extension, the values that they stood for) as bad ... Of course a clarification had to be supplied at some point that exempted pigeons and other birds from the stigma of being two-legged…

Four legs good, two legs bad…

That phrase is also familiar for another reason – it appears to form the foundational principle on which the statements and activities of the PDP and the APC are based.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are two major political parties in Nigeria as of November 2014. The former group is most popularly represented by an umbrella, whereas for the latter group, a broom fulfils a similar role.

For the people of the Broom, those who carry the Umbrella are thieves. For the people of the Umbrella, those who carry the Broom are brigands.

When the umbrella keeps out the rain and keeps the people dry, the people of the Broom condemn the umbrella for denying the people an opportunity for a good rainwater bath.

When the broom removes the cobwebs in the office, the Umbrella wielders condemn the broom for destroying such a sophisticated example of arthropod artistry, by so doing, depriving the world of the beauties of Nature.

Because each of the two political platforms seems to have a manifesto defined by indiscriminate opposition to whatever the other stands for, their knee-jerk reaction to any announcements or activities by the opposing party seems to conform to the principle of Four legs good, Two legs bad... The legs are bad not because they are legs but because they are two in number - and the same legs that are bad when they are two, become good when they are four.

Besides, because in my opinion, the track record of the APC for tolerating and encouraging impunity and corruption exactly mirrors that of the PDP, I, as an ordinary Nigerian cannot even determine whether it is the four legs that are the problem or whether it is the two legs. In many ways, I find myself in the same position as the animals did towards the end of "Animal Farm". This is the point where Napoleon and other pigs were at a table, playing a card game with Pilkington and other humans who were visiting in the farm, (the name of the farm had by now reverted to Manor Farm from the revolutionary Animal Farm). As the animal onlookers at the window watched the players play and quarrel, they suddenly realized, looking from Napoleon to Pilkington and then back to Napoleon, that they could no longer distinguish which was man and which was pig.

Four legs good, two legs better…