We retrieved a whole aircraft of arms and communications gadgets from killed terrorists in Nigeria. We haven’t ever recorded such a weapons haul since the recoveries from Al Qaeda after the September 11 attacks on the USA,” declared Dr Sebastian Gorka, United States Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
It was meant to sound like triumph. Yet to many Nigerians, such pronouncements echo the old schoolyard charade of America Wonder – dazzling sleight of hand that enthralls the crowd while masking the emptiness beneath.
I remember the con artists who used to wander into our schools in the days of yore, plying their curious trade. They would dazzle us with sleight of hand: coins vanishing into thin air, handkerchiefs turning into birds, and the kind of abracadabra that made children gasp in wonder.
And just when the trick reached its fever pitch, they would command us to sing that refrain: “S’oye wa (Do we understand?)… Koye wa (We don’t understand)… America Wonder!” It was theatre, a 419 drama staged for innocent eyes, a ritual of deception disguised as entertainment.
I do not know if primary schools still allow such charades to play out before their pupils, but the memory lingers – an allegory of how spectacle can mask swindle, and how wonder can be manufactured to distract from the truth.
