by: Biodun Jeyifo
Esu threw a rock yesterday; it kills a bird today/Esu throws a rock today; it killed a bird yesterday/ Esu sleeps in the courtyard; it is too small for him; Esu sleeps in the bedroom; it is still too small for him; Esu sleeps inside a palm kernel; now he has space large enough for him to sleep in!
From the praise chants to Esu, the Yoruba trickster god Nano: a combining form with the meaning “very small, minute” used in the formation of compound words, e.g. nanoplankton. In the names of units of measure, it has the specific sense “one billionth”, e.g. nanosecond, nanometer, nanotechnology.
Dictionary.com (online)
If my memory is not playing tricks on me, one of the words that had a deep and exceptional fascination for me when I was a child in primary school was the Yoruba word, ‘firi!’ (Yes, with the exclamation mark). Roughly translated, it means something that happens, something that flashes by in the twinkling of an eye. More expansively, firi! (please think of it only with the exclamation mark, compatriot) means something that is so brief, so instantaneously transient that it is gone even before you have perceived it, even before its presence has registered in your mind, leaving only the trace of its passage. Firi! Oh word and concept that filled my youthful imagination with wonder! In my imagination, in my mind’s eye, you opened up vistas for which, at that very tender age, I had no words and no speech! That is until about five decades later, when I encountered the word, the concept “nano”, especially as compounded with those units of space and time, meters and seconds to give us nanoseconds and nanometers. In nanometers especially, I at last found a scientific, technological correlation to firi! But more on this later in this lay, secular, iwalesin “sermon”. First, we must talk about that other phrase in the title of this piece, that term of abuse, “big for nothing”, that I remember now also in the reflected light of a particular use that we had for it in my youth.
In Nigerian pidgin, “big for nothing”, as we all know, stands for huge size or number without sense, without discernment and sometimes without compunction. In my youth, boys who were corporeally and vertically challenged by being much smaller than their age were the special prey or target of bullies who invariably tended to be physically much bigger than their years. For the small boys, the ultimate putdown for their gigantic tormentors was, yes, “big for nothing”! Of course, this was usually shouted from the presumed safety of considerable distance between the abused child and the bully. I remember also that in my school’s football team that we called the “First Eleven”, the positions of full backs, right and left, were usually reserved for the biggest boys in the school. The thinking behind this, I suppose, was that you needed size, combined with cunning, to counter the nimble-footed strikers of opposing teams. On the whole, the calculation worked, sometimes so much so that some full backs who were as big as our teachers had legendary renown as terrors to all strikers, nimble-footed or not. But sometimes, the thing did not work and then one encountered the incredible spectacle of a swift but pint-sized centre forward running circles around a full back the size of a giant. I remember in particular one big fellow with the nickname of “Akanmu Jaji” who had size but not – shall we say – a lot of grey matter inside his occiput. As a result of this, we could not dispense with his renown as a right full back, but neither could we be indifferent to the fact that, with his lack of discernment, he could as much cause our “First Eleven” penalties as save it from almost certain goals by the jitteriness that took control of strikers when he approached them. For this reason, though we all thought of him as “big for nothing”, this was whispered only among us; no one dared to say it to his hearing! [Akanmu Jaji, this is all coming back to me from memory of things that happened more than a half century ago. If you are still alive and happen to be reading this piece, please know that I was not one of those who called you “big for nothing” behind your back!)
If, so far in this “sermon” I have given the impression that “big for nothing” is a malaise that comes from nature, let me quickly and emphatically assert that this is not the case at all. Whether one is big, medium or small, in height or girth, has no inherent connection at all to being brainy, resourceful or humane. What is at issue here is the extremely fatuous notion that the bigger a thing or a country is the better, together with the associated belief that with size and numbers come superior endowments or status. And on this account, which country in the world is more benighted than our own country in the association of size and numbers with inherent worth? Which nation, definitely on the African continent but also perhaps in the whole world, is more smitten by this ideology, this false consciousness that equates size with status than our beloved country, Nigeria? If, compatriots, you feel that this observation, this claim is an exaggeration, an expression of the habit of seeing nothing good in Nigeria that is itself a very Nigerian habit, than I ask you to please carefully consider the following few observations that I have randomly selected from a myriad of commonplace realities in our national public life.
First, there is the widespread belief among Nigerians from every part of the country that because we are the most populous nation on our continent we are, or have a manifest destiny as the “giant of Africa” no matter how foolishly and wastefully we use our national wealth. Secondly, there is the regularly bruited boast of the ruling party, the PDP, that it is the largest ruling party in Africa, as if that claim can rid the party of the odium, the colossal scandal of the abysmal level of its misrule in every single one of its three presidential administrations since 1999. Thirdly, what of the claims of Nollywood directors, producers and actors that the Nigerian video film industry produces more films annually than any other national film industry in the world, not excluding Hollywood and Bollywood, the national film industries of the United States and India respectively? No one has done independent research to validate this claim, but even if it is factually or literally true, does this erase the fact that we produce more trashy products, more extremely poorly made and distributed video films than any other country in the world? Finally, what of the fact that with the President and the Executive Governors of our thirty-six states we have more major and mini heads of state than any other country in the world with the possible exception of the United States? And yet what good has this done the country? Has it not in fact made us the country with one of the very highest administrative cost of governance in the world? And are these not all indications or expressions of “big for nothing” writ large and inscribed into the very lineaments of our national psyche? To put this in the plainest form possible, hasn’t the obsession with size and numbers become a fetish that we tend to see as a magical or divine protection against all the things that are terribly wrong with our present way of life?
If my observations and reflections so far in this piece point to the simple ethical and spiritual proposition that big and numerous are not necessarily or inherently good, I would like to say that this is definitely part of my purpose in this piece. So also is the corollary proposition that oftentimes, small and minute will do as well if not more than big and numerous. But this “sermon” has far more important or substantial things to explore than such undoubtedly beneficial moral and psychological truths. This leads us to the enormously important world of ideas, practices and technologies connected with nanofabrication whose central place in the productive and communicative processes of contemporary global civilisation is absolutely not in question.
I have two and only two purposes in bringing this discourse on nanofabrication to bear on this lay “sermon” on our national obsession with size and numbers. One is this: Compatriots, please pay attention to nanofabrication; it is central to many of the things we take for granted in the contemporary global civilisation of which we are a part, things that we ignore or pay scant attention to only at our cost. This is the second of my two objectives in this piece: In one way or another, the ideational and practical applications of nanofabrication have always been with us, with our humans species; if this is the case, we are only returning to some of the best and most positive aspects of our heritage as humans when we turn our attention, our curiosity to nanofabrication.
Is one billionth of a second or of a meter thinkable, not to talk of being practicable? I confess that with only the evidence that I can collect or sense or even intuit with my five senses, the answer to this question is a ringing, categorical no! If you, dear reader, can think of not a billionth, not even a millionth but a thousandth of a second or a meter, I can’t. But then here is the core of this conundrum: there are now so-called super-colliding super-computers that can measure and calibrate at the rate or speed of one billionth of a second or meter. Not only this, there are now thousands of devices and practical applications in everyday life that give concrete proof to this dizzying idea and claim of the measurement of space and time in infinitesimally minute but phenomenally efficient quantities.
For want of space, I will in this discussion give only one example, partly because it bears direct relevance to my profession as an academic and partly because I have never stopped being simply dazzled by it. This is it: In my travels around the world in connection with my work, I carry with me a mini laptop computer that weighs less than five pounds; in the little carrying case that comes with this mini laptop are small pouches into which I place flash drives each of which has a dimension of about two inches weighing a few ounces. And yet, and yet again, with this extremely compact baggage of mini laptop and flash discs, I carry with me books and monographs of hundreds of thousands of pages. In other words, anywhere I am in the world, I have nearly everything I need to keep on working without the need for checking out books and journals from the local library.
I think of the wondrous fascination with the word, the idea of firi! (always with the exclamation mark, remember compatriot) in my childhood. I think of the lines of the first epigraph to this essay and the beautifully poetic enigma of Esu’s abrogation of simple, literal and linear conceptions of time and the paradox of his finding the most ample room for his being only in the tiniest of spaces. I see in these two prefigurations of nanofabrication. “Big for nothing”, your day of reckoning has come! Let all our rulers, all our political parties, all our emergency contractors, all our corrupt public officeholders hearken to these good tidings and take note!
TheNation
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