THOUGHTS OF FEMOLAD: AKUKO GAGARA (The Giant Rooster)
Many years ago while still in my teens, (around the time I sold out to my church bus), we had this lucky rooster. You know those type they call parent stock. I call it lucky because it survived miraculously three times. It scaled through Christmas because a goat took it's place. It survived my birthday in March because I was in school sitting my mock school certificate examination and I didn't come home. During easter, dad came home with a big turkey.
The rooster became so big you could hear it's footsteps in the compound without seeing it. That's not enough.
When it crows, the whole neighborhood knows which rooster crowed.
At dawn, nobody needed an alarm clock to wake up early. When it clapped it's wings, it was something else.
After the exams were done and I came home, my mom bought four more chickens. One cock and three hens. The big cock played Big Brother to them all as they free-ranged in the garden.
One day many weeks later, the younger cock crowed. We laughed at it until there was some commotion in the garden. My brother Obatunde Oladapo and I went to the garden to find out.
Lo and behold, the big rooster was chasing the smaller cock all around and pecking at it anytime it caught up with his younger brother. We had to chase it and tie it's leg to a pole before the other one had some respite.
When my parents came back and we narrated our experience, they told us that is why Yorubas say 'Akuko gagara kii fe ki kekeeke o ko' (Big roosters never want smaller ones to crow.) Need I tell you the big rooster did not survive that weekend?
'Iseniyan nise eranko' (The ways of animals are often akin to that of humans)
Today I see many people in different facets of life who fall into same ken with my rooster.
People in high positions, those who have achieved greatness, those seen as models and envy of others, but feel threatened by the fact that another person is growing.
I have seen people in power, on the top rung who went gaga because someone under them dared climb the first rung. He would rather everyone else stood at the bottom and hold the ladder.
A businessman going crazy because his employee is starting his own business is not different from my late rooster.
In politics, business, government and everyday life people abound who want to be the only one who is seen and heard. They fret at the possibility of another person picking up in life. A musician or artist who tries to pull down a budding artist or an athlete who tries to railroad a budding talent and a professor who stands in the way of another intellectual student are all guilty. They don't want to just lead, they want to dominate.
Like my rooster they are soon exposed. Their weaknesses and foibles which had been hidden are soon in the open.
This leads to their fall.
Like the AKUKO GAGARA who doesn't want to hear the little cocks crow, they soon come tumbling down into the frier.
The period before crashing may differ, but the big one who wants no other around him will eventually fall.
Let the great roosters allow the little ones grow and crow, and complement them to form an ensemble, else the little ones will succeed them.
Femi Ladapo writes from Ibadan, Nigeria
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