Nothing is funnier than the plot of a comic and his poop. Not even the poop of a pope could have popped any more laugh than Baba Suwe’s. But it was a laugh with an itch, with a niche.
The man died and we still can’t boast a hearty laugh. His was a funeral with a spectre of the sh*t, a faecal ghost.
I recall one of his TV acts, when he went into a deal and he spoke in a parody of his Ibadan neighbours. “Fity-fity, no seating.” Fifty-fifty, he meant to say, no cheating. But the man, Babatunde Omidina,63, expired a cheated man.
He dedicated his life to the thespian laugh. But we laughed in vain. Laugh without gain.
All of that started when he was travelling out of the country in 2013. The scan said he had something in his body interior. Something like drugs. The NDLEA arrested him. The headlines spilled blood. Comedian Baba Suwe arrested over drugs. The imagination set itself free. The slim, simple man with little stomach, bearing illegal substances. Why? He wanted to be rich? He made our homes rich with guffaws, tickled our ribs, wet our eyes. Why Baba Suwe? Why, Baba Suwe?
The man had been condemned. No courts necessary. It was an archetype of Nollywood deviance. They looked large. But had no money. They had to live large. So, if Baba Suwe was innocent, many were not ready to give him a humour of a chance. If what he bore like a tumour was not revealed, he had to be separated from it.
So, in his cell, it was time to confirm. Not to investigate. But then he did not stool in time. The officials hated a biological dillydallying. But he would have no ease until he eased himself.
It was not only a wait for the poop, but for the test results. The nation was in a poop vigil, a toilet watch. Baba Suwe was not on television or on stage. He was fulfilling Shakespeare’s words that the world is a stage. The stage was beyond our eyes. No one saw him in cell except those assigned to see him. No one saw him crouch and out the bowel contents. No passage for the public to see the passage of the thing. It was in the mind. The public imagination was the playwright. They concocted him sighing, silent, sitting, moping, eating, drinking, farting, pooping, frowzy. They didn’t see poop but they pooh-poohed him.
After nine tries in eight days, a dramatic disappointment. Excreta without evidence. Execrable! They saw nothing. But they would not release him. If the scan said it was there, so what happened? Was he not supposed to let it out? Such things were not supposed to give much problem. They wrapped them in little bags and swallowed. So, if swallowed, they were supposed to be in only one place, the stomach. To remove it, you either puked or defecated.
The scientist ought to believe the evidence of the scan more than eyes. But that pertained to invisible things, to microbes, to viruses, like those things that run in the body in the name of Covid-19 that no eye can see. But drugs in a bag? Habba!
If it burst, Baba Suwe would have been no more. Is that not how it works. But rather than ask, is it not the misreading of the equipment by our scientists? Like the doctors who said the wife of a prominent Nigerian – name withheld – had pneumonia three times and treated her to no avail. The same body went to the United Kingdom and it turned out to be Parkinson’s Disease and was healed there. Or was it not a prominent hospital here that said the great Gani Fawehinmi had malaria until it was too late?
So, if the scan was contradicted by other evidence, why not let him go?
Baba Suwe’s Vigil
Nothing is funnier than the plot of a comic and his poop. Not even the poop of a pope could have popped any more laugh than Baba Suwe’s. But it was a laugh with an itch, with a niche.
The man died and we still can’t boast a hearty laugh. His was a funeral with a spectre of the sh*t, a faecal ghost.
I recall one of his TV acts, when he went into a deal and he spoke in a parody of his Ibadan neighbours. “Fity-fity, no seating.” Fifty-fifty, he meant to say, no cheating. But the man, Babatunde Omidina,63, expired a cheated man.
He dedicated his life to the thespian laugh. But we laughed in vain. Laugh without gain.
All of that started when he was travelling out of the country in 2013. The scan said he had something in his body interior. Something like drugs. The NDLEA arrested him. The headlines spilled blood. Comedian Baba Suwe arrested over drugs. The imagination set itself free. The slim, simple man with little stomach, bearing illegal substances. Why? He wanted to be rich? He made our homes rich with guffaws, tickled our ribs, wet our eyes. Why Baba Suwe? Why, Baba Suwe?
The man had been condemned. No courts necessary. It was an archetype of Nollywood deviance. They looked large. But had no money. They had to live large. So, if Baba Suwe was innocent, many were not ready to give him a humour of a chance. If what he bore like a tumour was not revealed, he had to be separated from it.
So, in his cell, it was time to confirm. Not to investigate. But then he did not stool in time. The officials hated a biological dillydallying. But he would have no ease until he eased himself.
It was not only a wait for the poop, but for the test results. The nation was in a poop vigil, a toilet watch. Baba Suwe was not on television or on stage. He was fulfilling Shakespeare’s words that the world is a stage. The stage was beyond our eyes. No one saw him in cell except those assigned to see him. No one saw him crouch and out the bowel contents. No passage for the public to see the passage of the thing. It was in the mind. The public imagination was the playwright. They concocted him sighing, silent, sitting, moping, eating, drinking, farting, pooping, frowzy. They didn’t see poop but they pooh-poohed him.
After nine tries in eight days, a dramatic disappointment. Excreta without evidence. Execrable! They saw nothing. But they would not release him. If the scan said it was there, so what happened? Was he not supposed to let it out? Such things were not supposed to give much problem. They wrapped them in little bags and swallowed. So, if swallowed, they were supposed to be in only one place, the stomach. To remove it, you either puked or defecated.
The scientist ought to believe the evidence of the scan more than eyes. But that pertained to invisible things, to microbes, to viruses, like those things that run in the body in the name of Covid-19 that no eye can see. But drugs in a bag? Habba!
If it burst, Baba Suwe would have been no more. Is that not how it works. But rather than ask, is it not the misreading of the equipment by our scientists? Like the doctors who said the wife of a prominent Nigerian – name withheld – had pneumonia three times and treated her to no avail. The same body went to the United Kingdom and it turned out to be Parkinson’s Disease and was healed there. Or was it not a prominent hospital here that said the great Gani Fawehinmi had malaria until it was too late?
So, if the scan was contradicted by other evidence, why not let him go?
