By Azu Ishiekwene
The proper thing to do when readers respond to a newspaper article is to respect their right of reply. There were two irate responses to my article last week, “Not the Iran We Thought It Was: What Has Changed in the Persian Gulf.”
One, entitled “Not the Azu We Thought He Was,” by Yakubu Musa, a guest author for 21st Century Chronicle, an online newspaper, and the other, “Basking in the Euphoria of Narrative Origami,” by Mahfuz Mundadu, a friend of one Hassan Karofi, who claimed he is a journalist.
Both articles could have been from the spiteful fingers of one hand. Of particular interest, however, was the second article. It was WhatsApped to me by Karofi on behalf of his friend, a certain Mundadu, whose photo he refused to provide and whose name he faked. He also faked a Kaduna address for his fake friend. Despite the layers of disingenuity, “Mundadu” deserves, if not a right of reply, the courtesy of his or her opinion:
“To read Mr. Azu Ishiekwene’s article ‘Not the Iran We Thought It Was’ is to witness a masterclass in doublethink. That Orwellian art of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind and believing both. To know that Israel is a nuclear power armed to the teeth and yet present it as a trembling David before an Iranian Goliath.
“To remember decades of pre-emptive strikes, assassinations, and occupation, and yet narrate them as self-defence. To bend history into a shape so unfamiliar, it must be admired. We call it narrative origami, and then we present the resulting illusion with a straight face beneath a yam cap.
“Nothing completes the theatre of intellectual mimicry like cultural fabric draped over borrowed imperial scripts. Mr. Azu doesn’t merely distort reality; he stages its semblance. Armed with metaphors, blindfolded by bias, and conducted by the invisible hand of Western hegemony.
“Azu’s article, ‘Not the Iran We Thought It Was,’ reads like a desperate telegram from the last surviving bureaucrat of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Only this time, instead of “Oceania is at war with Eastasia (sic),” we are told “Iran is David (sic); Israel is Goliath,” while the United States, ever the omniscient puppet master, is left conveniently backstage, sipping its habitual cocktail of oil, contracts, and self-righteousness.
“Let us begin with the metaphor. Mr. Azu, in a stroke of Biblical theatre, casts Iran as a Goliath of sorts, towering, terrifying, menacing, and poor little Israel as the shepherd boy of peace with nothing but a sling and a smile. Never mind that this “David” owns an arsenal of nuclear warheads and is bankrolled by the world’s most militarised empire.
“Never mind that this Goliath-sized David has, since 1948, bulldozed villages, murdered children, and claimed the role of eternal victim while hoarding some of the world’s most advanced weapons. It seems Mr. Azu mistook his ‘Testament’ for a press release from the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
“Had I not read the name, I might have thought this piece was penned by a clever intern at Lockheed Martin, fresh off a propaganda boot camp and eager to impress his line manager. But alas, it bears the name of a seasoned editor.
Even though I am not a philosopher, I’ve heard somewhere that lies can be mistaken for wisdom when repeated with sufficient polish, frequency, and decibels. Mr. Azu’s article does not merely repeat lies. It baptises them in footnotes and anecdotes and then dresses them in history. Thereafter, he sends them out to war on behalf of the criminal enterprise of Zionism.
“Now, let us speak of memory, the selective kind. Azu writes of October 7, 2023, as though history were born that morning. He forgets, or pretends to forget, that Netanyahu has been threatening Iran since ‘Fantalo, Garmaho and Sakadali’ were fashionable. He forgets the years of assassinations, sabotage, cyber-attacks, and open incitement. He forgets, like an old man with convenient amnesia, that this conflict was manufactured in laboratories of paranoia long before Hamas fired a single rocket.
“Azu wants us to believe that Hamas is a remote-controlled invention of Tehran, programmed to harass ‘innocent’ settlers. What he fails to mention, or perhaps deliberately buries under rhetorical debris, is that Israel itself initially nurtured Hamas to fracture Palestinian resistance. Yes, Israel midwifed its own Frankenstein, then turned to the world and screamed ‘monster’!”
“Let us not waste too much ink debating whether Iran is a saint or a sinner. That is not the point. The point is that Azu’s article presents a caricature, a reduction, a fairy tale where the villain wears a turban, and the hero rides an F-35. It is not a critique of policy. It is a bedtime story for geopolitical infants.
“And yet, Mr. Azu expects his readers to clap like trained seals. To swallow each sentence like sugar-coated arsenic. To believe, in 2025, that the same old tricks still fool the world. But alas, the internet has arrived. The children of this generation carry in their palms a library of resistance. The age of monopoly over meaning is over. The age in which we carry our transistor radios around, waiting for Western media outlets to dish out imperialist propaganda as world news, is over.
“It would serve Mr. Azu well to recall that journalism, like history, is not a mirror but a lamp. Its duty is not to reflect the faces but faeces of the powerful and illuminate the oppressed’s footprints. Right now, the footprints are red, the trail is long, and the truth bleeds through the white noise of mainstream punditry.
“Let Mr. Azu, if he is so fond of metaphor, visit Gaza and bring back a sling. Let him visit Tel Aviv and count the silos. Let him read the nuclear declarations of Israel, if he can find them, for they are kept like family secrets in dynasties of denial.
“Until then, we the readers, armed with logic, reasoning, and the inquiry of philosophers, shall continue to ask uncomfortable questions, to deflate inflated narratives, and to demand that those who write for the public do so not with fear of favour, but with favour for the truth.
“Mr. Azu, you are not the journalist we thought you were.”
….. Laws of Human Stupidity
In a post on Premium Times, which also published the article, pharmacist, banker, and author, Olu Akanmu, referenced the “Five Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” by Carlo M. Cipolla, and wrote: “Good article by Azu. Iran has truly (surprisingly) been made to look so ordinary. It overrated itself and fails with its Hamas ally, the military maxim that war is not just about your attack, but whether you have the counterforce to neutralise what will be a counterattack to your attack. Can’t but relate Hamas to one of the quadrants of Cipolla’s law of stupidity.”
Ishiekwene is Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.
