Icarus Syndrome: A Lesson For Ikenga Ugochinyere

By James Chinonyerem

Anyone conversant with English literature will recall Christopher Marlow’s Dr Faustus, a chart buster piece. It is a play in parody of human vanities. The main character, with same name as the title, Dr Faustus demonstrates the inordinate ambition of man to surpass himself in his bid to dominate all around him. It also reflects the dangers of pride, mendacity, magical feats, mischiefs, and outright abandonments of essence of God’s intentions for man. Dr Faustus  validates the inevitability of the fall of man occasioned by desire to equate self with his creator. Dr Faustus,  consumed by the inordinate desire to dominate his environment and all things therein, sought and obtained power from the devil. This power was tenured for twenty four years in exchange of his life. He exercised the power in full relish but suffered eternal damnation afterwards.

Another round of reading of the play text draws mind Icarus the son of Daedalus, a sub character in text and the nexus between and Ikenga Ugochinyere, the son of Ikeawgwuonu.

Comparatively, both are young, enterprising and adventurous. They seek higher grounds in boisterous manners. While one (Icarus) is a mythical character, the other, Ugochinyere is a real character. Therefore, he, Ugochinyere needs to learn from the misadventures of his mythical cousin, Icarus.

Ikenga Ugochinyere should learn and avoid the pitfalls of Icarus. Among these are, lack of self deflections, courting of omnipotence, recklessness, restlessness and contemptuous behavior etc.

Icarus’ bane was pride. He was not a hero but sought to play one. He had the environment to flaunt his pride, his new possession. His father playing the kind one, made for him, wings from wax so that he could fly as he desired, flew he did. The caveat from his father to him was, never go near the sun.

As the cliche goes, pride goes before fall, so Icarus’ hubris went before him and took him to the sun against the father’s advice. His wings melted and he fell into the sea and drown. Icarus became a metaphor for recklessness, vaulting ambition, disobedience, indiscretion, boastfulness, vainglorious posturing and boyish exuberance.

Those who love Ikenga Ugochinyere should recommend the text, Dr Faustus to him. Let him read and be wise and better guided. Let him know what to say, how to say it, when and where to say it. Let him avoid I repeat, the Icarus paradox.

He is lucky to be who he is. Some say he worked hard for it. Others opined that he’s not the most hardworking. Whichever, he is now in the national assembly as the representative of his people. He will be judged by the quality of good he brings home and not the numbers of hurried press conferences and releases he issued. He should allow himself a somber mood,  change the tenure of his discourse because he is now in a new field of discourse.

Pointing on the state governor, Sen Hope Uzodimma so cheaply and childishly, spinning infantile yarns against him and trying to set the fish against the sea will certainly not achieve good results for him. If anything, it will boomerang against him. He should be reminded of the Igbo adage which says, a child who sets traps in between the legs of his own mother, will only catch his father or his mother’s male friends. Either way, the child is doomed.

Let Ikenga Ugochinyere begin to see himself more as a patriot, stakeholder and co-builder of the state than his belligerence which no doubt, is  becoming rather anachronistic approach in view of the needs of the hour.

Time ticks for him. His score card as his people’s representative will be read loud in the open space. The results will be counted in concrete terms and in the unnecessary garrulousness fashions he presently prefers.

Ikenga Ugochinyere should stop stirring controversies, his serial attacks on the person of the governor and the office as a state institution, is wrong and condemnable. He should rather channel his intelligence and energy towards the efforts to build a better and greater Imo state as encapsulated in the 3R philosophy of the shared prosperity government. He needs not be a member of APC to do this, all he needs is to be a statesman politician with focus on collective collaboration and participation across the political divides.

This is the cardinal lesson Ikenga Ugochinyere should learn and apply to avoid being the modern Icarus.

Nze Chinonyerem wrote from Owerri