The madman and his mother-in-law

Life, in its quiet cunning, teaches through circles. It sketches no straight lines, draws no permanent borders, grants no eternal exemptions. It is a revolving door of moments – entry and exit, ascent and descent, command and compliance. Those who pass through it often imagine they are moving forward, only to discover, too late, that they have been walking a curve. And at the far end of that curve, waiting with patient inevitability, is consequence.

There is an old African proverb about a madman who picked up a stone, intent on hurling it into a crowded market. His rage was uncalculated, his impulse unrestrained. But just as he raised his hand, a sudden thought pierced through the fog of his frenzy: what if my mother-in-law is in that market? In that instant, madness paused. The arm dropped. The stone returned to the ground. What reason could not teach, proximity did. What impulse ignored, imagination corrected. That proverb is not about madness.

It is about foresight. It is about restraint born of self-awareness. It is about the simple but profound realization that the circle of our actions is never as wide as we think. Somewhere within the radius of our decisions stands someone connected to us, if not by blood, then by fate, by time, by the quiet reciprocity of human affairs. Nigeria’s recent legal ironies read like an extended footnote to that proverb.

Two voices have risen, at different times, from different positions within the same system:

“Where is the law?”

“Where is the order?”

Two questions, uttered in different tones, one in protest, the other in defiance, but both rooted in a single demand: justification. Legitimacy. Proof that power is not merely acting, but acting rightly. When Nnamdi Kanu stood in court, challenging the basis of his sentencing, his words cut through the procedural choreography of the legal system. “Where is the law?” It was a question that reached beyond the immediate case. It interrogated the very foundation of authority: by what rule do you judge me? By what statute do you confine me? It was, in essence, a demand that the stone about to be thrown be first examined. Yet, the machinery of state had already gathered momentum. Kanu’s journey to that courtroom had been marked by a controversial episode, his forcible return from Kenya to Nigeria, widely described as extraordinary rendition. The process bore the imprint of state power, supervised at the time by Abubakar Malami, then Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.

The law moved, as it often does, with the confidence of authority. Proceedings advanced. Judgment followed. But the question lingered, like an unanswered riddle: was the law leading, or was it being led? Then, as life would have it, the circle began to close. Years later, the locus of power shifted. The enforcer encountered enforcement. Allegations surfaced, investigations commenced, and the instruments of state, once directed outward, found a new object. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, acting on a court order, moved to seal off property linked to Malami. And in that charged moment, a familiar refrain returned, now voiced from the other side of authority: “Show me the order.” It is here that the proverb breathes. For what is this, if not the madman, stone in hand, suddenly remembering the market is not empty? What is this, if not the realisation, arriving perhaps a little late that the reach of one’s actions may extend, in time, to oneself? The irony is not merely poetic; it is instructive.

When Kanu asked for the law, he stood as the subject of power, questioning its foundation. When Malami asked for the order, he stood as the object of that same power, demanding its procedure. The positions changed.

The questions remained.

Two voices.

Two questions.

One system.

But systems, like markets, are never empty. They are crowded with possibilities; today’s actor, tomorrow’s subject; today’s judge, tomorrow’s judge. The stone, once thrown, does not choose its landing. It obeys the logic of motion, not the intention of the thrower. This is the central lesson of the proverb: act as though your own kin stand in the market of your decisions. For whether you acknowledge it or not, they often do, if not literally, then symbolically. Your future self stands there. Your reputation stands there. The integrity of the institutions you will one day rely upon stands there.

Power, however, is notoriously forgetful. It speaks in the language of immediacy, intoxicated by the urgency of control. It convinces its holder that the present is permanent, that authority is self-sustaining, that consequences are distant abstractions. It raises the stone without imagining the market. It acts without anticipating return. Yet, time is the great corrector. It restores perspective where power distorts it. It reintroduces vulnerability where authority suppresses it. And when it does, the questions once dismissed acquire new urgency.

“Where is the law?”

“Where is the order?”

These are not merely legal inquiries. They are moral checkpoints. They ask whether power has remained within its bounds, whether procedure has accompanied action, whether justice has been done, and seen to be done. In a well-ordered society, such questions should have ready answers. The law should be visible, consistent, and impartial. Orders should be documented, transparent, and lawful. Enforcement should follow procedure, not precede it. But where the law becomes elastic, stretched for some, tightened for others, uncertainty creeps in. Where orders are executed without clarity, suspicion thrives. And where power operates without restraint, it creates precedents that may later ensnare its own architects.

This is the deeper irony: power does not merely act; it records itself. Every decision becomes a template. Every action becomes a reference point. And those templates do not disappear when offices change hands. They remain embedded within the system, waiting sometimes silently, sometimes patiently, for their moment of reuse. Thus, when the roles reverse, the system does not pause to consider past positions. It simply applies its logic. The madman, in the proverb, is saved by a moment of reflection, a fleeting but decisive awareness that his action may rebound upon him. That awareness is what power often lacks. It is what institutions must cultivate. It is what justice demands. For without that awareness, governance becomes reckless. It becomes the throwing of stones into unseen markets, with consequences left to chance.

Nigeria’s legal and political landscape stands in need of this reflective pause. It must ask: are we building a system that protects all, or one that serves some? Are we strengthening the law, or bending it? Are we enforcing order, or merely performing it? The answers will determine whether the twin questions – “Where is the law?” “Where is the order?” – remain episodic or become endemic. For a nation cannot thrive on irony alone. It cannot sustain itself on cycles of reversal, where yesterday’s authority becomes today’s grievance. It must break the pattern by anchoring power firmly within the discipline of law and the transparency of due process. Otherwise, the market remains crowded. The stones remain in motion. And the distance between the thrower and the target continues to shrink.

The madman, in his moment of clarity, chose restraint. He lowered the stone because he imagined connection, because he recognized that the circle of his action might enclose someone dear to him.

That is the wisdom power must learn.

To pause before it acts.

To consider before it commands.

To remember, always, that the market is never empty.

For in the end, the stone we throw into the market may yet find its way, not just to our neighbours, not just to our adversaries – but, inevitably, to our own doorsteps. It may return not as a stone, but as a summons; not as a bruise, but as a burden of explanation. For consequences rarely retrace their path in the same form; they evolve, gather weight, and arrive clothed in the very authority we once trusted to shield us.

This is why restraint is not weakness but wisdom. It is the discipline of imagining oneself at the receiving end of one’s own decisions. It is the moral foresight that asks, before every exercise of power. If this standard were applied to me, would I still defend it? If this process were turned inward, would I still call it just? Nations endure not because they avoid error, but because they institutionalise reflection. They build systems where the law is not an afterthought but a starting- point; where orders are not instruments of intimidation but expressions of legitimacy; where authority is accountable, not absolute. In such systems, the distance between action and consequence is shortened by conscience, not lengthened by impunity.

For the individual, as for the state, the lesson is enduring: power is a trust, not a trophy. It is held briefly, judged permanently. And every decision taken in its name inscribes a future that may one day be inhabited by its author. So, the question is not merely where the law is, or where the order resides. The deeper question is whether, when the circle turns, as it always does, we will recognize our own handwriting in the verdicts we once endorsed. Because when that day comes, as it surely will, it will no longer be about power. It will be about memory.

Show me law!

Show me the order!

Agbedo, a professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Fellow of Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, is a public affairs analyst.