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.