By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Many readers wondered why I didn’t write about President Buhari’s “past-is-prolog...
By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Many readers wondered why I didn’t write about
President Buhari’s “past-is-prologue” statement in my analysis of his inaugural address last week. The simple answer is that I ran out of space. I exceeded my word limit.
There is no doubt that this Shakespearesque expression
was the most puzzling in Buhari’s inaugural address. It appears to contradict
the statements that preceded it. “A few people have privately voiced fears that
on coming back to office I shall go after them. These fears are groundless.
There will be no paying off old scores. The past is prologue,” he said.
A prologue is
the introduction to a play, and has been extended metaphorically in popular usage
to mean a beginning, an opening, as in, “Appetizing delicacies were the
prologue to a long dinner.” That was the sense of the word America’s 4th
president James Madison had in mind when he famously said in 1822 that “A
popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is
but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both.”
If prologue means the beginning, what did Buhari mean
by “the past is prologue,” especially after saying “there will be no paying off
old scores”? When we say “past is
prologue,” we usually mean the past matters and will shape the present and,
perhaps, the future. In other words, it means whatever happened in the past
won’t be forgotten. That sense sharply contradicts the conciliatory sentiments
that the preceding sentence conveys, that is, that “there will be no paying off
old scores.”
As I hinted earlier, Buhari’s “past-is-prologue”
statement is derived from an adaptation of a statement from a Shakespearean Play called The Tempest where Antonio
says "(And by that destiny) to perform an act, Whereof what's past is
prologue; what to come, In yours and my discharge."
The phrase is used in modern times to mean we can’t
ignore the lessons of the past. For instance, during the 2008 American vice
presidential debate, when Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin
accused then Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden of dwelling too
much in the past at the expense of the present and the future, his retort was, “Look, past is prologue.” After Biden’s remark, there was an exponential spike in Google searches for “past is
prologue.” Biden, by that quote, meant that we can’t wish away the past; that
the past has an abiding effect on the present.
Buhari’s speech writers clearly misused the expression.
If Buhari had said, “A few people have privately voiced fears that on coming
back to office I shall let criminals who raped this nation go scot free. These
fears are groundless. There will be no ignoring the wrongs of the past. The
past is prologue,” he would have made sense. But to juxtapose a message of
forgiveness of the past with “past is prologue” absolutely makes no sense. If
the past is prologue, it means Buhari will indeed pay off old scores.
There are several stock expressions that can help make
the case that the sins of the past will be forgiven and forgotten, such as
“what is past is past.” There are also countless inspirational quotes about the
past being past from well-known personages. Take, for example, Bil Keane’s
memorable “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God,
which is why we call it the present.” Or Mother Teresa’s “Yesterday is gone.
Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” Or Søren
Kierkegaard’s “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived
forwards.” Or Rick Warren’s “We are products of our past, but we don't have to
be prisoners of it.”
Some people suggest that Buhari intended to send a
message that he would go after past leaders who pillaged the nation but chose
to make the message intentionally cryptic and ambiguous by juxtaposing two
mutually contradictory statements. I am not persuaded.
"…ensure
their votes count and were counted.”
In last week’s article, I corrected the above phrase
in the inaugural speech to “ensure their votes COUNTED and were counted.” Many
readers asked that I take a second look at my correction.
Someone said “count”
was used as a noun in the sentence. I disagree. It was undoubtedly used as a
verb and is synonymous with “mattered.” If something “counts,” it means it
matters, it carries weight, as in, “in our company everybody’s opinion counts.”
If one’s vote counts, it means it has weight, that it matters.
As the reader can see, the sense of “count” that means
“carry weight” is indisputably a verb, and verbs are inflected for tense when
they express an action. In our case, the action was in the past, so the verb
should be inflected for (past) tense. If we replace “count” with other synonymous
words, such as “matter,” the awkwardness of the present tense in the sentence
would stand out in bold relief. Try, for instance, “ensure their votes matter
and were counted.” That certainly sounds awkward.
If “count” were
used as a noun in the sentence (which would be sloppy, ungainly phrasing), then
"votes" shouldn't be pluralized, so that "vote" would have
functioned as an attributive noun that modifies "count." But it would
be an awkwardly meaningless sentence.
“Rescue
alive”
Someone called my attention to the needless
repetitiveness in the phrase “rescue alive,” which appeared in the inaugural
address in the following sentence: “This government will do all it can to rescue
[the Chibok girls] alive.”
Rescue means to save from harm, so it goes without
saying that you can’t be said to have rescued people if you can’t bring them
alive. If the Chibok girls are brought back dead, then they are not rescued.
Since bringing victims alive is central to the notion of a rescue, “rescue
alive” is pointless verbiage.
I suspect, however, that Buhari’s speech writers chose
the tautological “rescue alive” for emphasis and clarity. Rescuing the girls
from Boko Haram would require both combat and tact, which could either result
in death or rescue. The speech intended to convey the message that in rescuing
the girls, care would be taken to ensure that they come out alive.
It is worth noting that tautologies are not errors. As
I pointed out in my June 9, 2013 column titled “Between Useless and Useful Tautologies in English (II),”
“In all natural languages, tautologies are inevitable. We all commit
tautologies either consciously or unconsciously. I am sure I’ve committed quite
a few in this write-up. Tautologies sometimes help give clarity to our
thoughts. At other times they intensify, reinforce, and accentuate the messages
we seek to convey. They can also be used for literary, aesthetic, stylistic,
and humorous effects. Yet, they can be products of laziness and sloppy
thinking.”
I think the use of “rescue alive” in Buhari’s
inaugural address is inspired by the desire for clarity and intensification of
meaning.
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